Hello Samy,

I do not know if I can give you the answers you are looking for. “Isn’t wishing something was one way and not another the root of sadness.” It is not the wishing for something to be one way and not another way. It is more the clinging or attachment to wishing for something to be one way and not the other. My mother passed away recently. And, I was filled with sadness. This is normal. I have feelings and so I felt sadness. The suffering comes if I dwell in the sadness or cling to the hope she would not be dead. If one has a toothache then that is pain. Suffering is having a mindset of only wanting the pain to go away or stop. Of course, we wish for the pain to stop. To live only in that moment, that is suffering.

There is a story of a woman who came to the monk saying her baby had died and wanted the monk to help her. She wanted her baby alive. There was no consoling her. The monk said he could help. But, she would have to go get three grains of rice from three houses that had no deaths. After she had gone thru every house in town, she went back to the monk. She learned that every house has had a death. She wept and buried her baby. Later, she became a follower of this monk. His name was Dogen.

From my perspective, I live in my thoughts. They give me meaning to who I am. Man, husband, father, worker. They give me interests and desires. I sense and feel and think. All linked to this body. When the body dies, there will be no thoughts, no hunger, no pain, no feelings. No me as I think of myself. Like to think of it as a child who splashes water, each drop has its own trajectory and path. Some blend with others and some pass thru. Each has it own time in space. But, it all returns to where it came. To realize one’s true nature is to break the bonds of the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Sorry, rambling.