The Reason We Suffer (or We’re Born Naked and the Rest is a Pain in the Butt)

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart…
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable. — the Buddha

When I teach meditation I often touch on three realms of how to relate with and work through suffering:

• the individual realm
• the inter-personal realm
• the societal realm

As we sit down to meditate we start with the reality of our personal situation — we have a mind that is sometimes wild and stressed out, and we have to give it space to settle in order to properly address our own suffering. Yet when we get up off the meditation seat we have these people we like, people we dislike, and those individuals we don’t know all around us. They too are suffering and if we’re not careful we bring our suffering into conversation with their suffering and everyone suffers worse. Society, meanwhile, is just a fancy…