A common misunderstanding of [[Buddhism]] is that it says that all life is suffering. People find it quite dark, and I'll name this the Buddhism Bummer Fallacy.

What is meant, though, is that there will be suffering in life. If you are alive, you will encounter suffering. Suffering is an inherent part of life.

Not that all life is all suffering all the time (although, we don't realise it, many of the stimuli we can perceive as… stimulating are more painful than pleasurable if you start analyzing them).

Add to this that the word "suffering" itself is an inaccurate translation. "Stress" would be more appropriate. So that gives us something like:

Stress is part of being a living being.

Or a further, personal interpretation: Physical, biological beings by necessity are constructed such that there will be experiences of heightened, arousal due to external, environmental stressors. The marks left by these on the internal experience of these beings through pressures of evolution and the will to survive will induce negatively felt emotions with or without actual external threats.

It's a very evolutionary psychological view I am expressing here, but I do beleive that most of our waking conscious experience is predicated on the biological substrate from which it emerges.

"Pure" consciousness, or that which observes, might be of a different ilk, but I leave that one open. Colour me agnostic, leaning towards hope of possible transcendence.

Sparked by https://notes.reganmian.net/about?stackedPages=%2Fawakening-from-the-meaning-crisis where I read "- Buddhism, with this idea that life is suffering"

I also remember a discussion in religion class when I was… 15ish that the concept of NIbbana seemed… let's just say that one of my classmates thought it seemed a bit nihilistic and empty.

original file:: [[tickler-2021-03]]