metonymy4u

I think one of the lessons of the buddha is that suffering is the product of social learning. We have to be taught to suffer. This does not mean that the pain is not real, simply that suffering can be learned or unlearned, depending on the context. Here in the west we have been averse to the imagined threat of nihilism for thousands of years. Yet I hear that buddhists speak of samsara and nirvana as always already present in each moment. And so the common western interpretation of buddhism as the doctrine that “life is suffering” is nothing more than a hollywood movie version of same. If we want to navigate a different course, I think we have to unlearn what has been taught to us about it all over again.