This was my introduction to Buddhism. I had heard that Buddhists believe that life IS suffering but that's not the whole story, thankfully! The four truths as I understand them are
1. There is suffering in life and it is impossible to avoid it. It is not an anomaly, it is a feature of life. Everyone's life.
2. The root of our suffering is our inability to accept that nothing in life is permanent, our attachment to things that are not permanent and our craving for control and for things that will not bring us what we actually need.
3. There is a way of transforming our suffering.
4. The way to transform our suffering is through the eightfold path.
Already that's a lot to take in. So let's start with the first noble truth. There is suffering in life. For me, I actually found that useful to sit with. What I was going through was not an indication that my life was going 'wrong' , that my family was 'wrong' or that I was doing something 'wrong' In society now we are bombarded with social media posts of perfect families having perfect days, people living their best lives and it is easy to think you are the only one whose life is falling apart. We don't share the dark the side of life. So knowing that suffering is actually a normal part of life made what I was going through more bearable and I felt less lonely with it.
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