I'm nearing the end of Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist. A large portion of the book is Batchelor's physical journey through the places significant to the history of Siddhatta Gotama. It got a little dry for me for a while and I sort of had to plow through that part, but it might be more interesting to other people. Parts of it interest me too, don't get me wrong, but it's a VERY detailed account of Gotoma's life as a man. However, it does show just how hard the author must have worked at dredging out all this information from the Pali Canon and ancient Buddhist texts.
Listen to Only if you can promise me you'll never die. from Team America: World Police
So, the first of the Four Noble Truths is "Suffering." I've seen it written a couple different ways in different books. "The truth of suffering" as compared to "Life is suffering," or "Embrace suffering." The point of realizing or embracing suffering is that EVERYTHING suffers. One thing for me---and maybe lots of westerners?---is that the word "suffering" brings up images of torture or horrible pain. If you try to realize that everything suffers in that way, you're kind of stretching it. Suffer doesn't necessarily mean that though. Lets say you bake a cake. Certainly the cake isn't suffering right? Well...in a way it is. It doesn't experience pain or suffering, but it is impermanent. It will eventually rot or be eaten. And, have you never seen a kid cry over not getting his/her cake? ;) "I've met this girl, and she is da bomb! I think I'm in love!" Now this...this can not be suffering right? Even love will change. One of the partners will die before the other. The relationship might dissolve. Even if both partners live their entire lives together in total bliss and they up and die on the same day at the same time, their love for each other will not be the same on that day as it was early in their relationship. So even a strong positive emotion such as love still suffers.
There's also traditional suffering where I have a pain in the neck or a toothache that causes me to suffer. That won't last either though! Good news! Either your tooth will become abscessed, (I knew I should have flossed more often) cause you a nasty infection that leads to your death...and the end of your suffering. OR You get to a dentist and have it fixed somehow. Either way, that toothache won't last forever. It's a fact.
I don't think this is totally pessimistic. It's just the way things are. Things come up, they do their thing, then they die, change, or go away somehow. The reason that equates to suffering is that we humans expect the world to behave differently. My totally awesome new camera for instance, shouldn't it last for a while? My savings in the bank, shouldn't they be there when I check next time? What do we mean by "should"? According to who? According to what? Why, in the grand scheme of things should my camera be okay or my money be safe? It's because we expect them to be safe that causes problems for us. Didn't we just agree that nothing lasts? What determines the appropriate time that something should last? There isn't an appropriate time for anything to last. That's hard to swallow.
This all makes sense on paper, but it is so hard to realize in life. Though I realize this principle in an academic way, I go through life expecting certain things to last a certain amount of time before it's "okay" for them to change. That's what meditation is for. Or, one thing it's for at least. To try to change that perception to a more realistic one. It is clinging to this notion that things will go on as we expect them to that causes so many problems for us. That leads into the Second Noble Truth...the cause of suffering. Dum dum daaaaaaa.
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