Why Do Innocents Suffer

I have never seen innocent persons suffering. Innocence is such a deep blissfulness that whatever happens around it makes no difference to its bliss. Even death is irrelevant

Many people ask me why innocent people suffer. First, they don’t understand what innocence is. Secondly, when they suffer, they think it is because of their innocence…and that the cause must be somewhere else. The same kind of question has been asked differently — why do good people or religious people suffer? I have never seen any religious, good or virtuous person suffer. But what they mean is that they think themselves to be good, religious, virtuous, innocent. And all that is not right.

Perhaps they are good — but out of fear, not out of love. They are good because they are afraid of hell, they are virtuous because they are desirous and greedy of the pleasures of heaven.

And they are not innocent, but simply ignorant — and there is a very delicate, fine line between ignorance and innocence. A child is ignorant, not innocent. And when you are reborn in a spiritual way, you become again like a child — innocent.
The division between ignorance and innocence is so fine, but the ignorant person is always trying not to be ignorant. These are the symptoms: he is trying to become knowledgeable. The innocent person is trying to be more innocent. If any knowledge has remained somewhere hanging around him, he is trying to throw it away. He wants to be completely clean.
One man came to me — I know that he is not a bad man, but that does not mean that he is a good man either. He is simply a coward. He wants everything that bad people have — riches, prestige and power, he wants to become a president, but he is not ready to go through all the gutters that you have to pass to become a president…. He wants simply to become a president because he’s a good man.
He wants to be rich, but he does not know that the rich man has made his wealth through tedious effort, cunningness, cheating. This man wanted it all, but also wanted to remain good, virtuous. This is asking too much.
If you are really in love with goodness, innocence or virtue, you will be ready to sacrifice everything for it — all success, respectability, prestige. Even if the laws of existence change and it is said that now only bad people will be able to enter paradise and all good people will have to go to hell, you should be ready to go to hell, but never let go of your goodness.