All of us have a deep-seated belief that life should be free of suffering. Think about how often these kinds of thoughts have entered your mind: My marriage should be a happy and fulfilling one. My children should know or be doing better. My supervisor is insensitive. My friend let me down. How could he do that to me? She should have known better. Why is this happening to me? What was he thinking when he said that to me? Life should not be this hard. Life isn't fair.
Psychiatrists and psychologists actually have a name for this condition Those who refuse to let go of resentments and hurts are engaging in "narcissistic entitlement." Left unchallenged, narcissistic entitlement can result in a person becoming bitter, angry, hostile, resentful, unwilling to forgive and unable to move on.
Oddly, the illusion that life should be free of suffering is often heightened in those who pursue spiritual practices, because they erroneously believe that all problems will disappear if one is "spiritual" enough. Thinking the right way, speaking the right way, acting the right way--none of these can provide immunity to problems, although these practices can prevent many issues and minimize the fallout.
What spiritual practices can do is help us deal with those matters in a calmer, more balanced way. The Buddha is right: Because we live in an imperfect, messy world, we will always have "eighty-three" problems. Expecting not to have problems is one of the great illusions about life. If he were here today, the Buddha might very well say: "Get real. Wake up. Abandon the illusion about how life should be and face life as it really is."
-Victor M Parachin, Eastern Wisdom for Western Minds
Psychiatrists and psychologists actually have a name for this condition Those who refuse to let go of resentments and hurts are engaging in "narcissistic entitlement." Left unchallenged, narcissistic entitlement can result in a person becoming bitter, angry, hostile, resentful, unwilling to forgive and unable to move on.
Oddly, the illusion that life should be free of suffering is often heightened in those who pursue spiritual practices, because they erroneously believe that all problems will disappear if one is "spiritual" enough. Thinking the right way, speaking the right way, acting the right way--none of these can provide immunity to problems, although these practices can prevent many issues and minimize the fallout.
What spiritual practices can do is help us deal with those matters in a calmer, more balanced way. The Buddha is right: Because we live in an imperfect, messy world, we will always have "eighty-three" problems. Expecting not to have problems is one of the great illusions about life. If he were here today, the Buddha might very well say: "Get real. Wake up. Abandon the illusion about how life should be and face life as it really is."
-Victor M Parachin, Eastern Wisdom for Western Minds
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