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There is no such thing as perfect, unalloyed happiness or pleasure. Even the most beautiful experience has a melancholy undertone simply because we know that it can't last. We have learned to doggedly pursue worldly satisfactions even though discouragements continually keep us from reaching that goal. 'Good' times do come to us in the course of events and should be accepted and enjoyed while they last, but we tend to want ONLY the good and, resisting all else, pursue it exclusively and cling to it desperately if we do get it.
The beginning of the road to wisdom begins with a realistic (not pessimistic) recognition that no matter how hard we try, or how stubbornly we believe in propositions or 'the good', we will never remove or conquer that which we want to avoid. When we face up to the undesirable side of life, we begin to appreciate the full grandeur and challenge of human existence. It's in this 'turning around' [repentance] that we come to recognize reality, as it truly is, instead of the simplistic and biased view we've learned from and clung to in desperation from childhood.
Paraphrased from 'The Buddhist Handbook', pgs 43-44, John Snelling
There is no such thing as perfect, unalloyed happiness or pleasure. Even the most beautiful experience has a melancholy undertone simply because we know that it can't last. We have learned to doggedly pursue worldly satisfactions even though discouragements continually keep us from reaching that goal. 'Good' times do come to us in the course of events and should be accepted and enjoyed while they last, but we tend to want ONLY the good and, resisting all else, pursue it exclusively and cling to it desperately if we do get it.
The beginning of the road to wisdom begins with a realistic (not pessimistic) recognition that no matter how hard we try, or how stubbornly we believe in propositions or 'the good', we will never remove or conquer that which we want to avoid. When we face up to the undesirable side of life, we begin to appreciate the full grandeur and challenge of human existence. It's in this 'turning around' [repentance] that we come to recognize reality, as it truly is, instead of the simplistic and biased view we've learned from and clung to in desperation from childhood.
Paraphrased from 'The Buddhist Handbook', pgs 43-44, John Snelling
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