Tuesday Thought: Suffering

"The First Truth is the fact of suffering. All desire happiness. . . . Yet all find that life brings . . . frustration, dissatisfaction, incompleteness. . . . Life is change, and change can never satisfy desire. Therefore everything that changes brings suffering."

"The Second Truth is the cause of suffering. It is not life that brings sorrow, but the demands we make on life. . . . Thinking life can make them happy by bringing what they want, people run after satisfaction of their desires . . . [demanding] what experience cannot give: permanent pleasure unmixed with anything unpleasant. But there is no end to such desire; that is the nature of the mind. Suffering because life cannot satisfy selfish desire is like suffering because a banana tree will not bear mangoes."

--Easwaran, The Dhammapada