We come to this world to suffer
According to Buddhism, human come to earth to suffer. I didn't make this up, the monk who performed the rites at my mum's funeral said this to me.
We have to suffer at birth. We have to suffer while growing up. We have to suffer a bit to feed ourselves. We have to suffer in order to experience happiness. We have to suffer before we get that girl we like. We suffer some more after getting the girl. We have to suffer before we can be rich. We have to suffer when we grow old. Finally, we have to suffer the pain of death.
Seems to me, all roads lead to suffering in the end. By default, we suffer. In the end, we suffer. Happiness, satisfaction, joy - these are only temporary.
So why are we doing whatever is it we're doing now? What for?
The monk said that with my mum's passing, her suffering has ended. People with terminal diseases, why should others insist that they fight and go through painful and uncomfortable treatment that doesn't guarantee recovery then? Feels kind of selfish on our part. Just because we cannot bear the thoughts of them leaving us, we want them to suffer some more? Just because they get to end their suffering earlier, are we so jealous to the extend of holding them back as long as we could? If her suffering has ended, why do we feel sad and mourn?
Norway in a kuaci shell
A few years ago I watched a program on Norway. I can’t remember whether was it National Geographic or Discovery or some other TV programs, but images shown from various landscape of that country have been etched in my memory ever since. When BMW launched the latest model of my favorite motorcycle, they shot its promotional video amidst the beautiful landscape too. Now that wife and I are in Scandinavia, we thought we should visit Norway and see the country for ourselves. We skipped our honeymoon when we first got married in early 2007, so this trip makes up for it. We figured that if we fly there, we will miss a lot of the countryside. If we take the train, we will not see as much as well. So we decided to rent a car, buy a road map and have a little adventure finding our way and driving to places we want to go. It's exciting because any place we end up at is new to us. And we can stop anywhere we want or when we want to see something up close. On the day we went to Hertz...
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