On Sorrow and Suffering

It is an inescapable truth of life that sometimes things don’t go as planned. Even when things go exactly as planned, we still find novel ways to suffer. I was thinking about this during one of my walks and I had an interesting realization.

My eyesight is weak and it was dark. So I wasn’t able to see the trail clearly. I got worried that some venomous snake/insect was going to bite me and I was going to die slowly and painfully alone in the forest. I wished for sunlight. If the sun was shining, the trail would have been clearly visible and I could have avoided the possibility of dying from a snake bite!

Unfortunately, it was night time. At this moment, I realized that it was completely unreasonable for me to expect sunshine in the darkness of night. I implicitly accepted darkness as a natural phenomenon. If I died of a snake bite at night, neither me nor the society would even think about blaming the lack of sunshine! Everyone unquestioningly accepts natural phenomenon as they are, consequently they don’t serve a causal purpose in our lives.

This made me realize that the source of sorrow maybe our unwillingness to accept life’s circumstances as they are and clinging to a perception about how we think things SHOULD be. Maybe we need to accept that most events and things are contingent upon factors that are beyond our control, just like natural phenomenon.

The Buddha’s last words seems to make more sense now All things are transient. Find peace within yourself. We may need to stop projecting our own perceptions and desires upon the world and start accepting things as they are.