Life Is Like This

On my last birthday, as a birthday present, a friend of mine gave me a book called "Dancing With Life" subtitled Buddhist Insights Into Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering (thank you Crystal).. At the time I didn't especially feel like I was "suffering", so I didn't immediately pick it up. But as usual the universe had other ideas and gave me a motivation to start reading it in the form of my developing a severe case of Plantar Fasciitis, a foot condition that makes it especially painful to walk. I figured it counted as suffering. So I started reading.

From my readings this simple phrase in particular spoke to me: "life is like this". It encompasses the Buddhist insight that all suffering stems, not from the negative circumstances that we encounter in our lives, but from our resistance to those circumstances; our wanting things to be different than what they actually are. Resisting rather than accepting and embracing the reality that my "life is like this" right now in present moment.

Intellectually, it seems relatively easy concept to understand. Putting it into practice, not so easy. But to me  it seems important to delve more deeply into this in the hopes of grasping this insight on a deeper level.