How Things Are…

This is the nature of things. This is how things are. Nobody has the perfect life.

How things are - the inbuilt design flaw

We all struggle and strive to attain health, wealth and personal happiness. Yet these three big areas: our health, our wealth and our relationships are where we all get "hung out to dry" – sooner or later.

I say "sooner or later" because there have been many people I have known and whose lives I have been able to observe, from within the context of normal social interaction, and who really did seem to "have it all".

In some cases I went through periods of feeling quite envious of these folk who led – or appeared to lead – such charmed lives. Yet over a period of time – usually five to ten years but sometimes quite a lot longer - what I have noticed is that even those seemingly special ones who lead such apparent charmed lives were in fact nursing secret and private difficulties and unexpected tragedies – fractured family relationships, deaths, serious illness, sudden illness, business failure, redundancy, money problems etc.

I too have been severely tested in some of these areas.

It is as though there is an inbuilt design flaw that ensures that we all suffer at some point - one way or another.

How things are - the Buddhist perspective

In the Buddhist perspective, "seeing things as they are" (Sanskrit yatha-bhutam darshanam) basically means to see that all human experience is stamped by three characteristics:

* Impermanence (anitya)

* No-self (anatman)

* Suffering (duhkha)

This is how things are.

As we become aware of these characteristics our point of focus shifts away from the content of our experiences and toward their structure.

To see how things are is to become conscious of our unconscious assumptions about ourselves and our world, and to bring them into the light of full consciousness, and to notice how, on close inspection, these assumptions often contradict our actual experience.

Suffering is an integral part of the human condition

It is how things are.

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