Why, oh why, didn't I take the blue pill?

Why is life hard sometimes?

I think partly it is because we have choices to make and desires which long to be fulfilled.

The Budda would say that suffering comes into our lives because of our desires.  If we had no desires then we wouldn't suffer.  The idea is that when we suffer it is then that we desire not to suffer.  Suffering with a hungry tummy? Buddhist philosophy says it's because you desire food. Get rid of the desire and you'll have no suffering. Suffering from grief? It is because you desire what has already bee lost.  That's the basic idea as I understand it from the Buddhist perspective.

Christ's view of the matter is different.  Christ is God and sees the truth of things; how they really are.  

I think (this is just me though) that we suffer because we don't see the truth of things.  We don't see the real world and don't always live in reality.  Our desires are good oftentimes but we don't see how to properly fulfill them according to how God sees things (a.k.a. according to reality.)  So we suffer in ways that we wouldn't have to if we just lived according to the light God offers on our situation (faith is a real illumination of our intellect.) 

The Buddha wanted to remove suffering so as to enter into bliss.

But the Christ is different.  He's always different.  He's utterly unique.  God is wholly "other."

Christ wanted to enter into our sufferings (not avoid them or get rid of them) so that He might lead us out of our narrow existence (read "self-seeking") into the broad vision that God has of things.  Christ takes us from where we are (suffering in our selfishness) to where He is (perfectly free in the Father's love.)

All we want is to be in the Father's love.  It's not that we just want to be suffering-less.  We want love.  In this life the only way to learn love, to become love, is to sacrifice your whole self for Love's sake.  That is a suffering.

But for the Christian suffering isn't a waste.  It's the pathway to exactly what our hearts crave, namely, not us.  We want God but we're so acquainted with ourselves.

May we suffer His coming into our lives and suffer the death of our selfishness so as to experience the bliss of selflessness.  Love forgets itself and sees it's beloved.  

I'd much rather gaze at God for all eternity than myself.  

Satan chose the latter.  That's why hell is so terrible.  That's why it's such suffering.

It's all about you.

-MM