Buddha

According to the Buddha, all human existences are essentially suffering. What does that mean, exactly? How would coming to believe that all is suffering actually mitigate suffering? All human existence is essentially suffering because of how humans exist. Take this situation for example: tomorrow morning you wake up and decide that air is wrong, evil and shouldn’t exist, and that your need to breathe makes you sinful, shameful, evil. What happens next? You suffer. You suffer because no matter how much you want air to stop existing - air exists. You are continually faced with the wrongness of the existence of air, you constantly struggle with trying to exist in an air-filled reality that you see as fundamentally evil. You judge air, you hate air, you want to get rid of air, yet you can’t. That is a very hard way to live, that is a very painful way to live. Then you breathe air. No matter what, you breathe air. So you hate yourself, you judge yourself, you see yourself as sinful, shameful, weak, a loser, a failure, because no mater how much you try, you can’t stop breathing the evil air and, as a result, be evil yourself. How does this way to live sound like to you? Sounds pretty awful to me. Yet this is how humans live, and so they struggle. They suffer. Humans don’t believe that air is bad and wrong, but they believe that death is wrong. And yet there is death, and they are constantly faced with it. they can’t make it go away. When death happens, humans suffer. Humans believe that illness is bad and wrong, and yet there is illness and they are constantly faced with it. When illness happens, humans suffer. Humans believe that change is wrong, that loss is wrong, that pain is wrong, that fear is wrong, that being different is wrong. Humans believe that anything that’s different from their right, is wrong. Humans believe that a great many experiences are wrong, and yet those experiences exist and humans are forced to deal with them, all the time. That makes for a really painful life, full of strive, struggle, full of suffering. Believing that all is suffering doesn’t mitigate suffering. Becoming present to how one relates to reality, becoming present to how one denies reality, how one rejects reality, how one discriminates against reality, might make a difference. When one sees the roots of one’s own suffering, one might be able to take steps to change it.