Can one ever really help another being? The answer might seem as if it’s obviously yes, but in what sense can help of the highest kind truly be offered?

In this connection, we might contemplate Anandamayi Ma’s reply to a disciple who pointed to the “karma yoga” of Mother Theresa:

While it is obvious that Ānandamayī Mā agrees that alleviating physical suffering, if carried out in a selfless spirit, contributes to one’s spiritual advance, She herself, just as the Buddha, is concerned with getting at the root of all suffering, to eliminate it once and for all. Her diagnosis is that alienation from the One (one’s true Self ) is the basic cause of all suffering. Therefore by [only and temporarily–AT] doing away with physical suffering one deals with the symptoms, not with the underlying cause of the disease. In fact, one-sided concentration on eliminating physical suffering may even prolong the disease [which is none other than samsara].

Alexander Lipski, The Essential Anandamayi Ma, p. 67

We need to take this line of thought very seriously. If I help you to get over a failed relationship, have I thereby helped you to stop turning the wheel of samsara? Hardly. What you’ll notice now is that you don’t think about that relationship any longer; instead, you’ll be caught up in your strained relationship with your parents, with your questionable health, or with your unsatisfactory work situation.

Then suppose, miracle of miracles, that we clear up all three. At which point, you’ll start to see that the mind is insanity, ill-at-easedness. It’ll go on to cling onto something else: your apparently crappy neighbor, your feeling of not being at home in your current city, the desire to move or travel, the supposed need to have fresh experiences, and so on and so on and so on.

The most charitable thing that can be said about getting past some of the grossest forms of suffering is that it may give you the space you need to really embark upon the spiritual path whose singular purpose is for you to be Liberated, to get beyond all suffering.

In fact, clearing up these gross forms of suffering will, if you listen closely, lead you to a dizzying realization: None of what I was hung up on was the Fundamental Matter; so far, I’ve only been rearranging chairs in the same room. Therefore, if I wish to get beyond all suffering, I need to go straight to the heart. To do that, I must either love God (bhakti) or know Myself (jnana). And to love God or to know Myself, I must henceforth be earnest and thus must devote myself to this highest concern alone or above all else.