Human beings try to avoid pain by setting up permanent zones of pleasure.
The mind is always seeking to create permanent territories of pleasure to avoid pain.
But these zones, what we might call 'zones of safety' don't last.
They always fall apart, and because they are fleeting,
then we scramble to find another zone of pleasure to help us forget our pain.
This going round and round is what we mean by samsara.
Hell is just resistance to life. It's counter-intuitive, but if we stop,
become curious about the pain, learn to befriend it
and work with it, actually learn how to be genuine friends
of ourselves, then the pleasures of life become authentic pleasures
as opposed to numbing agents, anesthetizing us from our genuine experience.
~ Pema Chodron,
Dharma talk, Karma Dzong, Boulder, Colorado, 1999
art by Edvard Munch
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