One who would understand sorrow must be free of the brutal, self-centred, egotistic triviality, which is self-pity. Whether you are diseased or have lost somebody, have not fulfilled or are dull, self-pity is the root of it. Look at sorrow, neither worshiping it or escaping from it, nor giving it an extraordinary spiritual, sublime significance – that you must suffer to find God, which is utter nonsense. It is only the stupid mind that puts up with sorrow. So there must be no acceptance whatsoever of sorrow; not the denial of it, not the acceptance of it. Then you have deprived sorrow of all sentimentality, all emotion – sentimentality and emotion spring from self-pity – and then you are able to look.