Depressing Buddhism
From the unawakened perspective, the core message of Buddhism looks pretty depressing. We have seen that a common translation of “dukkha,” the term the Buddha used for the human condition, is “suffering.” I think “disappointment” might be better. Especially in the modern United States, while we have people who are suffering, we have not nearly as many as a lot of other places on the earth and the common complaint here and now seems to be more disappointment than suffering, insofar as the two are distinct. We are the richest nation humans have ever known and it’s not all it was cracked up to be. Huh.
But disappointment is relative to expectations. If you expect nothing, you cannot suffer disappointment. The Buddha’s message, in some sense, was, it’s not going to get any better, so don’t expect it to and you won’t suffer any more disappointment.
Of course, this (sagacious?) advice rests on the core empirical predicate that all is impermanence and the implicit corollary that it makes no sense to hang your happiness on anything that you know is going to change, sooner or later.
Again, before you awaken, this seems like a really depressing conclusion. Life sucks and it is not going to get better, so deal.
But the Dalai Lama talks about how everyone wants to be happy, and the implicit corollary here is that Buddhism is a good way to be…
