Essays in Zen Buddhism : $b First seriesSuzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
Religion
Essays in Zen Buddhism : $b First series
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
Zen Buddhism
Life, as most of us live it, is suffering. There is no denying the
fact. As long as life is a form of struggle, it cannot be anything but
pain. Does not a struggle mean the impact of two conflicting forces,
each trying to get the upperhand of the other? If the battle is lost,
the outcome is death, and death is the fearsomest thing in the world.
Even when death is conquered, one is left alone, and the loneliness
is sometimes more unbearable than the struggle itself. One may not
be conscious of all this, and may go on indulging in those momentary
pleasures that are afforded by the senses. But this being unconscious
does not in the least alter the facts of life. However insistently the
blind may deny the existence of the sun, they cannot annihilate it.
The tropical heat will mercilessly scorch them, and if they do not
take proper care, they will all be wiped away from the surface of the
earth. The Buddha was perfectly right when he propounded his “Fourfold
Noble Truth” the first of which is that life is pain. Did not everyone
of us come to this world screaming and in a way protesting? To come
out into cold and prohibitive surroundings after a soft, warm motherly
womb was surely a painful incident to say the least. Growth is always
attended with pain. Teething is more or less a painful process. Puberty
is usually accompanied with a mental as well as a physical disturbance.
The growth of the organism called society is also marked with painful
cataclysms, and we are at present witnessing one of its birth-throes.
We may calmly reason and say that this is all inevitable, that inasmuch
as every reconstruction means the destruction of the old regime,
we cannot help going through a painful operation. But this cold
intellectual analysis does not alleviate whatever harrowing feelings
we have to undergo. The pain heartlessly inflicted on our nerves is
ineradicable. Life is, after all arguing, a painful struggle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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