Short Assignment: love and loss

Every human will experience sorrow and suffering. This is the first of the Four Noble Truths presented by the Buddha. Notice it in yourself. More or less perhaps you are all right, but there is a little ache. And outside of yourself, notice the suffering of others. Don't ever deny someone's pain. The war and injustice of the past have come to be part of this experience in the present. Hurts often reverberate throughout time. Just listening to blues chords and harmonicas can usually remind me that at the core of each of us is an emptiness that we can tap into. It has surprising manifestations once the mind is allowed to wrap around it. In our mind suffering can be multiplied. Notice how complaining about a pain makes it worse? It's the attachment of the mind to a sensation that makes us remember the pain and obsess.

Now try to fill up that hole. People are always looking for a way of relieving the hurt by replacing it with something, anything. Some of us overwork, overeat, over analyze and still can't really deal with the pain. We want freedom from this pain, not distraction. We look to others to complete us: another person, a religion, an ideal. But who has mastered the human life? Who is able to end all suffering through further attachment to another?