Gautama Buddha received enlightenment beneath the bodhi tree. His first sermon was on the Four Noble Truths. The very first of these truths, that life is suffering, has been made more of in western culture than any other. It has been interpreted to mean that life is inescapable misery and that is a commonly accepted perception of the statement.
Life is Suffering
Like most philosophical statements, this one has shades of meaning. At the most literal level, it does mean that human life is often, even mostly, an exercise in suffering. Human beings all over the world suffer from disease, famine, war, deprivation and depredations beyond the ability to accurately measure. It means more than that, though. It is also a metaphysical statement.
According to Buddhist philosophy, the belief in something called “I” is a gross error. What people believe is an “I” is rather an aggregate, or rather several aggregates, that encompass sensations, perception, memory, experience and so forth. When taken together on a linear timeline, an assumption is made that all of those experiences, perceptions and passions represent something separate from the rest of existence. It is from this false belief that true suffering arises.
The Self and Suffering
Buddhist philosophy acknowledges that the apparent existence of an “I” serves certain pragmatic functions in the world as it exists. However, it is this false “I” that is true root of suffering. Human beings want. They want more money. They want better entertainment. They want for food or shelter. They desire love or more love. They desire more physical intimacy. More specifically, it is the false “I” that wants more of these things. This want of more is a vast component of human suffering or causes it.
Physical suffering is the lot of all living things. As mortal and fragile beings, all living things are subject to decay, sickness, and death. However, it is the suffering of the false “I” in fear of death that makes physical suffering more painful than it would have been otherwise.
A being without self, which is the true condition of a human being according to Buddhism, does not crave more because it does not perceive itself as fundamentally separate from that which it desires. A being without self lacks a fear death because, in Western cultural terms, there is no “I” to fear the end of life. Such a person is freed from the compulsory wants and fears of the false “I.”
As such, it is not so much that life is suffering as it is that the life of the false “I” is a life of suffering. However, with the vast majority of human beings embracing the life of the false “I” it is a fair generalization to say that life, generally, is suffering.
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