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?
Do you ever LEAVE this world? When we die, what happens to our soul or consciousness? Does it just ... disappear? Maybe it's something like energy, it doesn't disappear. It's just passed on to other forms. So it is with human, when we die, there's a greater power up there or down somewhere that collects our souls and inserts it into another living being. Maybe there's a finite number of souls on earth - say 10 trillion. Earth was once roamed by 10 trillion animals. Then human comes along. It's common knowledge today that human population has been increasing centuries by centuries while great number species of animals are going into extinction. If it is ever possible to count the total number of living beings on earth, maybe we'll find that there're just 10 trillion of us - human and animal combined. Maybe that's how Reincarnation works.
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