what we want them to do and is totally satisfying to us in every way, we would be perfectly happy. This is very telling.
We’re like hamsters in a wheel. We’re constantly running on this treadmill, working hard and exhausting ourselves but getting absolutely nowhere, because no matter what we have, there’s always something else more. The majority of the world goes for it: we believe that if we only had whatever it is that we desire, we would finally be satisfied.
In the Buddhist tradition, we regard as a refuge the Buddha, his teachings, and the community of those who have realized those teachings. Why? The Buddha was a prince who had everything he wanted. He had three palaces for the three seasons of the year, he had doting parents, a beautiful wife, and he even had a son. He was very handsome, athletic, and intelligent. He had lots of wealth, slaves and servants, concubines, silks, gold and jewels, and everything else a prince could possibly want. Outwardly he had everything. So why did he leave home searching for the cause of his dissatisfaction?
During outings when he had left the palace, he beheld the spectacle of a very old man, a sick man, and finally, a corpse. This was a great revelation for him, because these things had been hidden from him during his life of indulgence. Maybe they were not physically hidden from him, but he had not really thought about these things.
While we are young we usually don’t think of old age, sickness, and death. Those things happen to those old fogies elsewhere. We don’t think that inevitably they will happen to us. The Buddha left home because he had experienced that life is not the way it always appears to be. The Buddha started from where we are.
We think of life as something pretty static, fairly secure. We’re always trying to keep what we have, keep our relationships the way they are, stay looking much the way we did when we were in our prime. We deny the very real facts of change and impermanence, that everything changes moment to moment—the cells in our body, the thoughts in our mind. Everything everywhere in every moment is in a state of flux. But we try to hold on. We continually deny the fact that everything is changing, everything is flowing, and that meetings end in partings.
When the Buddha was enlightened in northern India 2500 years ago, he realized his full human potential, a potential that we all possess but which is normally closed to us. It wasn’t that he was a god—he was a human being. After his enlightenment, he set off on foot and traveled to Benares, now called Varanasi. Outside Varanasi there is a small park, Deer Park, and here he met with his five erstwhile companions who had left him after he had given up extreme austerity and had begun to eat again. He taught what is called “The First Sermon,” or in Buddhist terms, he first turned the Wheel of the Dharma. And what did he teach as the quintessence of his understanding of his enlightenment? He didn’t talk about joy and love and light. He talked about suffering. He talked about the basic unsatisfactory nature of our existence as we normally lead it. The Buddha started right where we are, and said that the ordinary life of an ordinary person is in a state of dis-ease. Somehow, it’s never quite right. Sometimes it’s extremely wrong, and sometimes it’s almost right, but it’s never exactly right.
Basic dissatisfaction runs through all our lives, and the Buddha called this dukkha . It comes in many forms, of course, from gross physical suffering to emotional and mental pain, to spiritual suffering. There are so many forms of this sense of unease because we have been on this planet for thousands of years. Almost everyone wants to be happy, not just human beings: animals, insects, all sentient life basically wants to be happy. When most people open their eyes in the morning, they don’t wake up and think, “How can I be as miserable as possible today and make everybody else
We’re like hamsters in a wheel. We’re constantly running on this treadmill, working hard and exhausting ourselves but getting absolutely nowhere, because no matter what we have, there’s always something else more. The majority of the world goes for it: we believe that if we only had whatever it is that we desire, we would finally be satisfied.
In the Buddhist tradition, we regard as a refuge the Buddha, his teachings, and the community of those who have realized those teachings. Why? The Buddha was a prince who had everything he wanted. He had three palaces for the three seasons of the year, he had doting parents, a beautiful wife, and he even had a son. He was very handsome, athletic, and intelligent. He had lots of wealth, slaves and servants, concubines, silks, gold and jewels, and everything else a prince could possibly want. Outwardly he had everything. So why did he leave home searching for the cause of his dissatisfaction?
During outings when he had left the palace, he beheld the spectacle of a very old man, a sick man, and finally, a corpse. This was a great revelation for him, because these things had been hidden from him during his life of indulgence. Maybe they were not physically hidden from him, but he had not really thought about these things.
While we are young we usually don’t think of old age, sickness, and death. Those things happen to those old fogies elsewhere. We don’t think that inevitably they will happen to us. The Buddha left home because he had experienced that life is not the way it always appears to be. The Buddha started from where we are.
We think of life as something pretty static, fairly secure. We’re always trying to keep what we have, keep our relationships the way they are, stay looking much the way we did when we were in our prime. We deny the very real facts of change and impermanence, that everything changes moment to moment—the cells in our body, the thoughts in our mind. Everything everywhere in every moment is in a state of flux. But we try to hold on. We continually deny the fact that everything is changing, everything is flowing, and that meetings end in partings.
When the Buddha was enlightened in northern India 2500 years ago, he realized his full human potential, a potential that we all possess but which is normally closed to us. It wasn’t that he was a god—he was a human being. After his enlightenment, he set off on foot and traveled to Benares, now called Varanasi. Outside Varanasi there is a small park, Deer Park, and here he met with his five erstwhile companions who had left him after he had given up extreme austerity and had begun to eat again. He taught what is called “The First Sermon,” or in Buddhist terms, he first turned the Wheel of the Dharma. And what did he teach as the quintessence of his understanding of his enlightenment? He didn’t talk about joy and love and light. He talked about suffering. He talked about the basic unsatisfactory nature of our existence as we normally lead it. The Buddha started right where we are, and said that the ordinary life of an ordinary person is in a state of dis-ease. Somehow, it’s never quite right. Sometimes it’s extremely wrong, and sometimes it’s almost right, but it’s never exactly right.
Basic dissatisfaction runs through all our lives, and the Buddha called this dukkha . It comes in many forms, of course, from gross physical suffering to emotional and mental pain, to spiritual suffering. There are so many forms of this sense of unease because we have been on this planet for thousands of years. Almost everyone wants to be happy, not just human beings: animals, insects, all sentient life basically wants to be happy. When most people open their eyes in the morning, they don’t wake up and think, “How can I be as miserable as possible today and make everybody else
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