Ask A Venerable

There is suffering because we have the expectation that there shouldn't be suffering. But if you look around, everything that begins has an ending and it could be said that everything goes through the cycle of birth and death. Your phone is new until it becomes obsolete. Your car, your health, all these things start fresh and slowly wear out through time and I think our expectation that life shouldn't be this way because it's things that we claim possesion over is what causes our own personal suffering. Because life is just as it is, but because we have desires, attachments and delusions, we wish for it to be otherwise and this is where we experience pain and suffering.