COMMON DENOMINATOR

Life is not all suffering, but largely it is suffering. According to Buddhist psychology, every moment of life when happiness and inner peace are absent is a moment of suffering. When we are rushing, impatient, irritated, frustrated, anxious, angry, fearful, bored, sad, or jealous, when we are filled with desire for something we want that we don’t have, or feel aversion for something we do have that we don’t want, we are suffering. When we are reliving a painful experience from our past or imagining a future one, we are suffering. Nothing on this planet is free of it. Even long-time Buddhists who endeavor to not suffer still do so, because one cannot eliminate all of his or her sources of suffering.

To ease our pain we seek out what pleasures we can find here and there, food, sex, alcohol, adventure. The trouble is, we adapt to these to where we need more and more of them to get the same effect. The same effect, however, is not the same effect.

The solution is to have nothing and to want nothing. Successfully cultivating a mind set such as this, however, can take a lifetime, by which time it is too late.