‘There are times in spiritual life when it feels as if all the barriers we have erected to shield ourselves from the pains of the world have crumbled. Our hearts become tender and raw and we feel a natural kinship with all that lives. The cries of street children echo in our mind, images of terrorism and racism, ecological destruction, poverty, and slavery fill our consciousness. It is as if our consciousness has broken open to the struggles of humanity and the earth itself. We may feel that we are in a charnel ground, we may see the suffering of countless generations. And we recognize that there is no escape from this.
Yet only by opening our eyes and heart to the suffering of the world can we find freedom or peace. In our own way, each of us as a Buddha-to-be, must look into this great question: What is the truth about suffering in human life and what is the cause of this suffering?
In the Fire Sermon, the Buddha addressed the genesis of the sorrows of the world:
Everything is burning. The eye is burning and visible sights are burning. The ears and the sounds they hear are burning, the nose, the tongue, the body and mind. With what fires are they burning? With the fires of greed, of hate, of ignorance, burning with anxiety, jealousy, loss, decay and grief. Considering this suffering, a follower of the way becomes weary of the fires, weary of greed and hate that fuel the grasping at sights, sounds, smells, tastes, body or mind. Being weary, one divests oneself of this grasping and by the absence of grasping one becomes free.
To see the truth of suffering completely is to come to freedom through the gate of suffering. We can never successfully grasp or control the changing conditions of life. We cannot possess our lover, our spouse, our homes, our work. We cannot even possess our children. Yes we can love and care for them, but if we try to control them, we only create suffering. Pleasure and pain, praise and blame, success and failure alternate day after day. The world itself has pain and pleasure woven into it as night is woven together with day. If we resist this truth, we will inevitably suffer.’
- Jack Kornfield, After The Ecstasy The Laundry, How The Heart Grows Wise On The Spiritual Path.