Suffering, as usually experienced,
is the feeling that arises
when expectations meet reality —
and reality does not comply.
What is desired did not happen.
What is undesired keeps happening.
The beauty did not last.
The good did not last.
The dread did not end.
The mindless work did not stop.
Suffering is not merely pain.
It is the instability of things.
The constant change we face —
stirring emotional and mental unrest,
spinning us out of control.
We anticipate.
We become excited.
We prepare defences.
We plan continuation.
We live in the past.
All in an attempt
to secure what cannot be secured.
We hold tightly to the external world
so that we may hold tightly
to our internal world —
feelings,
the deeper mental constructs,
and all that defines a “me”.
Perhaps suffering is not only that things change.
Perhaps it is that we expect them not to.
If what we cling to must shift,
what then is truly stable?
Reflection
When something pleasant ends,
is there a subtle tightening?
When something unpleasant continues,
is there a quiet resistance?
When plans fall apart,
does the mind quickly begin to rewrite the world?
Suffering often does not announce itself as tragedy.
It appears as restlessness.
As irritation.
As a faint dissatisfaction
that hums beneath the day.
We say we want happiness.
But what we often want
is for things to remain as we prefer.
Yet nothing remains.
Not the joy.
Not the ache.
Not the body.
Not the mood.
If this is so,
what exactly are we struggling against?
And if everything shifts,
what is it that insists it should not?
Let's sit quietly with that.
Not to answer it.
But to see it.
Perhaps suffering is not something happening to us.
Perhaps it is something we are holding on to.
BodhiOcean
We are not here to accumulate ideas.
We are here to loosen what is unnecessary.
The ocean is already vast.
We are only learning not to cling to the shore.