Breath of Life; Breath of Death

Buddha teaches that all life is suffering. We most suffer in order to live. “Enlightenment” is not an escape from suffering, it is an understanding and acceptance of it. We “end suffering” by becoming (or being) one with it.

Of course, that is all a bunch of cryptic gobbledygook that essentially means nothing to most people. But what if we put it like this:

Nature learns by making mistakes; lots and lots of mistakes. This process is sometimes called evolution. But it is much more than a way for genetic information to be manipulated for some survival benefit. It is the fundamental method of all intelligence, genetic information being just one form of intelligent “thought”.

But every mistake results in “death”, and hense a loss of “information”, which causes the being that experiences this loss to suffer. Thus, we have a system in order to live. Or, more correctly, a system of life that is itself a process of suffering.

Every thought you have and every experience is only possible because of a continues cycle of birth and death that occures on all levels of life and in all forms; genetic, physiological, psychological, mystical and others we have yet to even intellectualize.

This is the suffering we must embrace to have peace. It is the suffering that Christ spoke of as well as the Buddha. To seek pleasure is an attempt to escape the suffering of life (but so is seeking suffering). The object is to accept, by not seeking pain or pleasure. In this way, pleasure and pain both become infinitely enjoyable gifts, not something ever to be gained (born) or lost (die).

Birth and death become like breathing for us, on all levels. And likewise, we come to see breathing as a form of birth and death.