Suffering

The First of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths is that human existence is suffering (Pali dukkha). Suffering is the pervasive human condition, a sort of illness generated by the self through its false attachments.

Buddhist texts—echoed in other scriptures—describe it by the metaphor of a universal fire engulfing the world. In Hinduism, the human lot is to go through an endless cycle of death and rebirth, conditioned by the results of past actions.

Ecclesiastes is in many ways the most Buddhist of books in the Bible in its theme of the vanity of human works. Few are those who ever fulfill all their desires, yet even those who do are not satisfied, ever wanting more. Akin to this is the observation in Chinese texts that even when people begin with the best of intentions, their behavior usually degenerates and ends in acrimony, betrayal, or violence.

In Christianity, the doctrine of Original Sin conveys a similar idea: by their fallen condition people are unable to fulfill their life’s purpose. Father Moon often laments about the interminable misery of the human condition and explains how the Human Fall brought this about.