The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, a stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by biologists and antiquarians chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit — not a fossil earth but a living earth.
You come to see that suffering is required; and you no more want to avoid it than you want to avoid putting your next foot on the ground when you are walking. In the spiritual path, joy and suffering follow one another like the two feet and you come to a point of not minding which 'foot' is on the ground. You realize on the contrary that it is extremely uncomfortable hopping all the time on the joy foot.