The Second Noble Truth: You Suffer Because You Want Different Shit To Happen

You may recall that the First Noble Truth: Shit Happens, and thus, Life Sucks. 

The Second Noble Truth delves into this a little deeper. Personally, I have a grudge against the Buddha for this -- I would have preferred a Truth Structure that was more like:

Truth 1: A
Truth 2: B

as opposed to

Truth 1: A, thus B
Truth 2: Here's more about why A, thus B

but he's pretty dead now, or in Nirvana, or some shit, so there's not much I can do about it. Still . . . it'd be nice if the Dalai Lama could get on this and issue a correction. Seriously, it pisses me off.

And so, I suffer. To whit:

Shit happened: The very Foundation of the philosophy I am using to guide my life is really poorly structured. Talk about some lousy bullet points.
And then, Suffering happened: I desire for things to be different -- for this Foundation to be a little clearer, streamlined, efficient -- and so I feel unease, confusion, and bowel discomfort.

If I wasn't clinging to the idea that someone forming a philosophy that eventually more than billion people would follow should have some general idea of the best way to structure an argument -- no suffering! Wanting things to be different than they are -- or wanting things to stay exactly as they are, right now -- that leads to suffering, and that's the Second Noble Truth.

Sadly, it's pretty damned difficult to escape any form of clinging, attachment, or wanting. And we want a lot -- some of it crazy, some of it not so much. For example . . .

Extremely Unreasonable Wants:

• To have Jessica Alba or (and?) Ryan Reynolds massaging your thighs as you read this
• To travel back in time and throwing $1000 into Microsoft in 1986
• A solid gold apple

Now, while most of us have given up on these dreams, many more of us struggle with

Fairly Unreasonable Wants:

• To be liked by everybody
• To never be disappointed by your loved ones (and vice-versa)
• To never be unhappy with your job

and find it extremely difficult to jettison

Fairly Reasonable Wants:

• To not die
• To love someone and be loved by someone (preferably the same person)
• To produce something that is valued by others

Finally, almost everyone would agree that anyone who can completely jettison most (or any) of the following desires should be classified as mentally ill.

Extraordinarily Reasonable wants:

• To not have your children die before you do
• To find people who can tolerate your presence
• To live most of your life without severe physical pain
• To not live your life in fear
• A solid gold banana

Well . . . sucks to be you, sir/ma'am, because clinging to what must change, and wanting something to change that will not (at least, not as much as you want) . . . that's what causes suffering.

Still, there's some hope here -- or so the Buddha tells us! Now that we know what causes suffering, then by addressing the cause, perhaps we can eliminate it -- or, a little more practically, at least reduce it greatly. 

I smell a Third Noble Truth coming . . .