LIFE IS SUFFERING
"Life Is Suffering," said the Great Buddha. Many may relate well to this statement, yet, many can be skeptical of putting the entirety of life into such a fixed corner. Life can surely be called suffering for almost every individual is ensured a good dose of pain and suffering in his/her life.
We are mortal beings, we don't know enough of ourselves let alone of the world around us We are very vulnerable. There's a whole lot of diseases and disorders that define the domain of life, not to mention the loss of loved ones almost everyone has to endure. Despite all this, life has more to it than just suffering. There are instances of happiness ever recurring through-out the entirety of our lives.
When a lover is united with his beloved, when an employee gets a promotion or even when a parent buys his kid's favorite toy, it is in ways like these happiness seems to manifest itself in our lives.
There are also instances of minute losses, if not big. For example, someone may stumble on a bumpy road receiving a measly scratch or two which he may find amusing and may make a good story out of. The loss is not damaging here per se, yet, somehow quite amusing.
The point here is that we can't ascertain the existence of life in a single dimension because life is more than just its one dimensional criticism. Life is a spectrum of many arbitrary existential experiences that interplay with our emotions and thought-processes.
But then what made the enlightened Buddha say, "Life is Suffering"? What makes Buddha so ignorant of other aspects of life? Or was he ever ignorant of them?
It's not just Buddha that focuses on such a surmise. Most of the religious structures are designed in a way that suggest that the reality of life is very harsh.
The followers are to be cautious in every step of life, as if we were walking a thin line and should we be careless, we would fall into the depths of Life's painful existence.
The actual question here is -"Are we really walking a thin line?"
The reality and purpose of life always seem questionable when we seek answers from a narrow evidence-solid" perspective. There are existential elements of truth about our emotions and experiences. No! everything 'evident' will be material. When we assert that our emotions and experiences are significant in terms of the reality of life, only then we can better make sense of our existence.
These are the principles that wise people, across history like Buddha have followed.
When Buddha said "Life is Suffering". The point is not to tenaciously put forward the reality of life as just suffering but it relates to a much more profound level of analysis which is suffering is the baseline condition of life and it is what gives meaning to life.
Suffering is thk locus of all things including happiness Itself to suffer is, to know in your bones, this is real and you are very real.
That's when you realize that this is the lowest, the most basic and fundamental point of your existence. Pain is what makes a soul broken enough to be more profound, submissive and thus perceptive of truth itself.
As the Sufi Mystic Rumi Says, "You have to keep breaking your heart until light enters you!'"
When that happens, when you are vigilant and perceptive of truth itself, then there is meaning to be found in the apparently so 'meaningless world' and it is only then that you will be meeting the one thing, in its true form, that everyone wants -happiness.
That's how you find happiness, by pursuing meaning, not by pursuing mere 'pleasure'.
As Jordan B. Peterson, the author of 12 Rules for Life' says in his book, "Perhaps contentment is always to be found in the trip uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak.
Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived".
The call for meaning comes from suffering and the by-product of one's Pursuit of Meaning Is happiness.
"The deeper that sorrow carves in your heart, the more joy it can contain." - Khalil Gibran
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