It’s Worse Than You Think
Buddhism is too honest to be as popular as it might be. Lots of people are happy with the Christian fairy tale of eternal life in this mythical heaven place, even after a lifetime of suffering, apparently, but they do not want to hear about how to escape the suffering right now.
Maybe that’s because Buddhism reminds them that they are suffering, or at least that human life is a series of disappointments. Even those of us on the Buddhist path may resist admitting the full horror that is human life. The Buddha taught us that even pleasure is ultimately painful because all is impermanent, so it will not last forever and after the pleasure ends, you will be right back to neutral at best, in pain at worst.
We spend too much time like the Bride in Kill Bill, desperately hanging from the ceiling, waiting for our moment to attack. In the movie, she eventually wins her personal war, but at the cost of the huge amount of bad karma from having killed a lot of people.
This is not a viable option for most of us. Better to just let go and face the inevitable, which is what we do with our consistent…
