|
Noble Truths The First Noble Truth of the Buddha is that being alive involves suffering because everything is transient and nothing is forever. You could call it a truth of life. But everything has two sides, or an opposite force keeping things in balance. Suffering exists because love exists. Without love there can be no suffering. And without suffering there can be no love. They are two sides of the same coin. Would you take a life without love, or the desire for it, to avoid suffering? I remember when my daughter was a small baby, I would wake up with her at night when she cried and comfort her as best as I could until she went back to sleep. Most often, I would actually wake my husband up and make him do it:). These nights, as exhausted and worried as I was, were a rare moment where I would be experiencing suffering and profound love all at once. The two went hand in hand. I felt the same way when my mother died. Lying down next to her and holding her soft hands on her last few nights, I experienced so much love for her and felt all her suffering, as well as my own, all at once. The word Buddha means ‘one who is awake’. Awake to the truth of life so that you can see clearly and live wisely. Contrary to what many people may think, this does not mean that you feel less or are attempting a Zen’d out way of life to not have to feel too much. Quite the contrary, you feel it all so much because you are awake to the truth: That suffering and love go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. You lean into both and hopefully you can get a lot of support from your friends, family and colleagues when you are suffering (and often this means being vulnerable enough to actually ask for it), and celebrate the good times and turn to joy whenever you can. As the Buddha said, liberation within our own bodies and minds, in the midst of this very world, is indeed possible for all of us. We practice together so that we can learn to be awake for our own lives and not try to avoid what we know to be true.
|
