One of the fundamental tenants of Buddhism is the inevitable nature of suffering.  Every time I face it, I am astounded by it’s power to completely overwhelm any and all measures I’ve taken to avoid it.  I know that those very measures themselves are the seeds of suffering, but my aversion to suffering has created a strong habit of avoidance.  Every time I face it I see it more clearly and I am awestruck, both by it’s poetry and my ignorance.

The story of human suffering is the same story with every stroke of it’s devastating brush.  In Hinduism, the Goddess Kali dances her way through the universe, fulfilling the law of impermanence.  It is not canon, but my heart imagines a story in which a suffering spirit was granted one wish.  Thinking she would find peace in immortality, she wished to be the only being in the universe allowed to exist forever.  Her wish came with a curse, to bear the strength of immortality, she is cursed to fulfill the universal law of entropy.  To any who dare make the same wish, Kali invites their blade into her exposed chest.  However her willingness to surrender her immortality is all the hint we need that it comes with her curse.  The warning is lost on no one, and she is doomed to her fate and having seen it I cannot write off her destructive disposition as one of evil or darkness.

This story connects a second truth of Buddhism, the impermanence of all things, although it so closely intertwined with the first that I find them to be inseparable.  We suffer, we find a way to cope, our coping mechanism is impermanent, and when it is taken from us, we suffer.  We need, we find a way to fulfill the need, the way we find fulfillment is impermanent, and when we lose it, we suffer.  With this reality in mind, it becomes devastatingly clear that there is no way not to suffer, with one exception, to rid ourselves of need, including the need not to suffer.

Not only is there nothing that can’t be taken away.  There is nothing that won’t be taken away.  The pain of this reality is amplified by our propensity for complacence.  “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”  You never realize how much joy something brought you; you never realize how much you allowed yourself to thoughtlessly depend on something and when it’s taken from us, the reality of our dependence is laid bare and our hurt is the only true indicator of worth we ever encounter.