Suffering arises not from life's inherent difficulties, but from our resistance, clinging, and the illusion of a separate self. True peace is found in accepting life's fluid, dualistic nature and recognizing our interconnectedness with the universe.
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The meaning of life is just to be alive.
It is so plain and so obvious and so
simple. Yet everybody rushes around in a
great panic as if it were necessary to
achieve something beyond themselves.
Have you ever noticed that suffering is
not so much in the pain itself, but in
the way we cling to it, resist it, and
try to escape from it? It's curious,
isn't it? The moment you resist a thing,
you magnify it. The moment you push
against a thought, you give it strength.
And so much of what we call suffering
isn't in the rain that falls upon us,
but in the way we curse the storm.
Now, I'm not suggesting that life is
free of difficulty. Far from it. Life
has always been a dance of opposites.
Pain and pleasure, gain and loss, birth
and death. They are as inseparable as
the front and the back of a coin.
But here is the trick. You see,
suffering is not the same as pain. Pain
is simply what is the sting of loss, the
ache of the body, the tears of parting.
These are natural as the tides. But
suffering, suffering is the story we
weave around it. It is the why me. It is
the clinging, the holding on, the
desperate attempt to control what was
never in our control. There is an old
saying in Zen, let go or be dragged. And
this is precisely the matter at hand.
When you stop clutching, when you let
the river flow, you find that the water
carries you. But when you stiffen, when
you insist on paddling against the
current, you exhaust yourself. And then
of course you call that exhaustion
suffering. Now imagine this for a
moment. Suppose you are sitting in a
concert hall listening to the most
marvelous symphony. The violins rise,
the horns call, the drums thunder, and
then there are those soft silences
between notes. If you tried to cling to
one particular note, one particular
moment, you would miss the music
entirely. And yet that is what so many
of us do with life. We clutch to the
past. We resist the present. And we
demand that the future turn out just so.
And in this struggle we suffer. Muddy
water is best cleared by leaving it
alone. Isn't that delightful? You stir
up the pond and then you panic wondering
why you cannot see. But if you would
only stop meddling, if you would let the
water settle on its own, it becomes
clear again. This is the essence of
ending suffering. To stop trying to
force clarity, to stop grasping for
control, to let life be. And yet
here comes the paradox. The very moment
you try to let go, you will find
yourself grasping at letting go, you
will say, "I must stop suffering. I must
drop it. I must let it go." And suddenly
suffering is right back in the room
laughing at you. So what do you do? You
don't do. You notice. You watch. You
become aware of this game you are
playing. And in that very awareness, a
kind of miracle happens. The grasping
begins to loosen on its own. This is why
I often say man suffers only because he
takes seriously what the gods made for
fun. Life is a game, a play, a cosmic
hideand seek. You are it pretending not
to be it. You are the universe playing
at being a person. And the moment you
recognize that this whole drama isn't
meant to be taken with such deadly
seriousness, you begin to laugh at your
suffering. And what happens when you
laugh? You loosen. You breathe. You
live. Think of a child. A child falls,
scrapes its knee, and within moments
they are up again, laughing, running.
The pain is there, yes, but it has not
yet solidified into suffering. Why?
Because the child has not learned to
weave long stories about it. They
haven't yet learned to cling. But we as
adults become very good at storytelling.
We carry our wounds like treasures,
retelling them, protecting them,
building identities around them. And in
this endless narration, we suffer far
more than the original wound ever required.
required.
So, let me tell you a story, one you may
have heard before, but it bears repeating.
repeating.
There was once a Chinese farmer. One day
his horse ran away, and the neighbors
came and said, "Oh, that's too bad." And
the farmer simply replied, "Maybe." The
next day, the horse returned, bringing
with it seven wild horses. And the
neighbors came again and said, "Why, how
wonderful." And the farmer said,
"Maybe." The day after his son tried to
ride one of the wild horses, and he was
thrown off, breaking his leg. The
neighbors rushed in. Oh, that's
terrible. And again, the farmer said,
"Maybe." The very next day, conscription
officers came looking for young men to
draft into the army. But because the son
had a broken leg, they passed him by.
And the neighbors cried, "How
fortunate." And the farmer has always
replied, "Maybe."
Now, the point of this story is not
about being clever or detached. It's
about seeing that life is endlessly
unfolding, and our judgments of good and
bad, fortunate and unfortunate, are
terribly short-sighted. When you see
this, you begin to loosen your grip on
things. You stop suffering over each
twist of the plot because you realize
you are not meant to judge the story.
You are meant to experience it. Man is a
little bit afraid. He wonders what will
happen next. But that is precisely the
adventure. The attempt to escape
suffering is often the very root of it.
You fear the unknown. You fear loss. You
fear death. But all of these are part of
the adventure. The trick, you see, is
not to get rid of the storm, but to
learn to dance in the rain, not to
abolish the silence, but to hear the
music within it. not to conquer death
but to realize that death is what makes
life so exquisitly alive. And so if you
wish to stop suffering now
don't begin with the attempt to
rearrange life. Begin with the way you
see it. Look at the river. Look at the
sky. Look at your own thoughts rising
and falling like clouds and see they
were never under your control anyway.
When you allow them to flow, you
discover a strange thing. suffering
evaporates and in its place there is a
kind of deep wordless peace. It is not
the peace of having solved everything
but the peace of no longer needing to.
The more a thing tends to be permanent,
the more it tends to be lifeless.
Suffering comes from our desperate
attempt to make the impermanent
permanent. We want the joy without the
loss, the life without the death, the
gain without the risk. But this is to
want a one-sided coin. and a one-sided
coin does not exist. When you see this,
when you truly see it, you stop fighting
the rhythm of life. And in that moment,
suffering dissolves. So perhaps the
invitation is not to escape suffering,
but to see through it, to recognize it
as a trick of the mind, a tightening
where loosening is possible. And in this
recognition, right here, right now, you
are free. So we have this feeling of
being a lonely little me inside a bag of
skin looking out at a world that is
foreign and often threatening.
We feel that we came into this world.
But did you or did you come out of it
like an apple comes out of an apple
tree? Have you noticed this peculiar
illusion we carry? the sense that we are
strangers in the universe, accidental
visitors, isolated egos inside these
fragile shells of flesh. We imagine
ourselves tossed into a world that does
not belong to us, that is indifferent or
hostile. And because of this illusion,
we feel lonely. We feel afraid. We feel
the weight of being a separate self, a
drift in a vast, uncaring cosmos. But
pause for a moment. Ask yourself
honestly, did you really come into this
world? Or did you come out of it? Just
as a leaf comes out of a branch, just as
the wave rises out of the sea, the
universe has been unfolding for billions
of years. And here you are, a
blossoming, an expression, a ripple in
its eternal dance. You are not a
visitor. You are the happening itself.
Consider the wave. A wave curls upon the
ocean surface. It rises, takes form,
gathers strength, and if it could think,
it might say, "Look at me. I am a wave.
I am important, separate, special." But
the wave also fears. It sees its own end
approaching as it tumbles toward the
shore. It trembles at the crash,
thinking it will vanish forever. And so
it suffers. But what the wave forgets,
what we forget, is that it is never
separate from the ocean. Its water is
the ocean's water. Its motion is the
ocean's motion.
The crash upon the shore is not the end
of the wave, but a transformation. It
returns to the sea just as it always was
the sea. You are that wave. You may call
yourself by a name, John or Jane, but
your true identity is oceanic. You are
the universe itself playing at being a
temporary ripple. And when you see this,
fear dissolves. Loneliness fades because
you realize you cannot fall out of the
ocean. You cannot be lost. You are the
ocean forever folding into new forms.
Now let's deepen this. The universe is
not merely ocean but a great play of
opposites. Light and dark, sound and
silence, life and death. We live in a
system of polarity. The crest of the
wave cannot exist without the trough.
The heartbeat itself systol and diastol
contraction and expansion. If the heart
stopped alternating, you would not be
alive. Yet what do we do? We try to
cling to one side and reject the other.
We worship the light but curse the
darkness. We chase pleasure but resist
pain. We want to live but we fear death.
And here is the trick. You cannot have
one without the other. It's like trying
to play a game of chess with only white
pieces. Or trying to listen to music
with only sound and no silence. The
opposites define one another. Without
the background of night, the stars would
not shine. Without silence, music would
be meaningless. Without death, life
would lose its urgency, its beauty. But
suffering arises when we forget this is
a game. When we treat one side as an
enemy to be conquered rather than a
partner in the dance. The yin-yang
symbol, you see, is not static. It's
always turning, always flowing. The
black contains the seed of white, and
the white contains the seed of black.
They chase one another like lovers, like
dancers. The universe is not at war with
itself. It is in love with itself. It is
playing. It is dancing. And you, you are
one of its graceful movements.
Now, let's take another metaphor.
Imagine life as a grand theater. The
curtain rises, the actors step onto the
stage, and the play begins. To be a good
actor, you must believe in your role. If
you are playing the tragic hero, you
must weep real tears. If you are playing
the clown, you must laugh with all your
heart. But the great actor never
forgets. This is a role. The tears are
real. Yet they are also play. When the
curtain falls, the actor steps off
stage, removes the costume, and goes
home. Now, here is the human
predicament. We have forgotten we are
actors. We are stuck on the stage,
utterly convinced the play is reality
itself. We take our role as John or Mary
with such seriousness, such gravity that
we suffer as if the play were eternal.
But what happens when you remember, when
you see that the role is temporary, that
the curtain will fall. You do not stop
acting. In fact, you act even better
because you can give yourself fully to
the role knowing it is not the whole of
you. You are not just the actor. You are
the audience watching the play unfold.
You are the playwright weaving the
story. You are the stage itself upon
which the drama appears. And when you
realize this, the tragedy loses its
sting. The comedy sparkles and even the
sorrows of life become part of the
magnificent performance. But perhaps the
deepest illusion of all is the sense of separation.
