....with regards to the First Noble Truth, All Life Is Suffering.
As I ate breakfast today, it occurred to me that the First Noble Truth could also address/describe the Garden of Eden situation.
How's that??
Well, let's look at this. There's Adam and Eve. They were created/born. They lived in a world of blissfulness and creativity and loveliness...until they, of their own choice, did something to ruin that. They wound up "defying God" and as a result, could no longer live in that blissful state.
They experienced suffering, because they thought they could control that which was out of their control. But the suffering wasn't really imposed from outside of them; they created that situation. They made certain choices that led to the suffering.
What would that thing be, that is out of their control?
The fact that life is subject to change, life is subject to suffering. They thought they could step into God's shoes and make the world different.
That didn't work.
If we accept the First Noble Truth, that life is suffering, we are actually FREED from a lot of painful bullshit that we bring onto ourselves, especially the idea that any one of us in in any kind of meaningful "control" of life. The only thing we're in any kind of control of is ourselves.
This is not the most ideal way to describe this insight I had, but I had to get this out.
