The Budda said, “Life is suffering.” I know suffering, but I respectfully would like to disagree with the Budda. We all know suffering, and some of us have had more then our fair share, but life is -- just that… life is.
Suffering is a response to self-blame, not to life. When we perceive that the unkindness of others or nature is somehow our due, our suffering is great. But when we feel no self-blame, when we truly know, deep in our heart, that we are good, we are innocent - then we take the life handed to us without suffering it. That is not to say that we don’t feel disappointment or sadness, or even a spark of anger - but we do not carry it within us. We do not dwell on the upset, we move forward, focusing on the solution.
Our lack of self-blame allows us to be in touch with our true self, our innocence, our deservingness, and we move forward standing upright - not doubled over in pain. It is not suffering. We are feeling our feelings and our strengths, hopes, confidence… our self-love. We are moving forward in acceptance of what is.
If you defend your right to feel wrong or deny it when you do, you will experience life as suffering. But… you can be free of suffering and you can experience life as is -- and then choose to focus on the love, the good, the cup half-full.
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"Life is Suffering" is one of the lst of the Budda's four noble truths. However, that is a mistranslation. What he said, according to the earliest scriptures, is that life is dukkha.
ReplyDelete"Dukkha" is Pali, a variation of Sanskrit, and it means a lot of things. For example, anything temporary is dukkha, including happiness. But some people can't get past that English word "suffering" and want to disagree with the Buddha because of it. The budda did not mean "suffering" literally. This is such a simplification of what budda meant so as to misunderstand buddahism completely. I would suggest to just forget the english suffering and just stick to dukkha. To simplify - the Buddha taught there are 3 main categories of dukkha. These are: Suffering or pain (This includes physical, emotional and mental pain - the causes of which are innumerable), Impermanence or change (Anything that is not permanent - happiness, success, money, etc), and Conditioned states (dependent on or affected by something or someone else). It is not that you should not be happy, etc., just don't hold onto these things. The meaning of dukkha should just unfold for you (in meditation perhaps), without other words getting in the way. I have been trying for years.....It can take years of dedicated practice just to understand the first noble truth (dukkha). By the way once I heard the Dalai Lama speak about self-blame and self-hatred. It was inconceivable to him. Self-blame and self-hatred he said comes from a deluded mind - not from our budda nature.