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 whoever 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.
Sun Myung Moon
Sorrow Is Everywhere
The Noble Truth of Suffering (Dukkha) is this: Birth is suffering; aging is suffering; sick- ness is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering; association with the unpleasant is suffering; dissociation from the pleasant is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering—in brief, the five aggregates of attachment are suffering. Samyutta Nikaya 56.11 (Buddhism)
Affliction does not come from the dust, nor does trouble sprout from the ground; but man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. Job 5.6-7
This world, become ablaze, by touch of sense afflicted, utters its own lament. Whatever conceit one has, therein is instability. Becoming other, bound to becoming, yet in becoming it rejoices. Delight therein is fear, and what it fears is Ill. Udana 32 (Buddhism)
Brothers, all is burning. And what is all that is burning? Brothers, the eye is burning, visible forms are burning, visual consciousness is burn- ing, visual impression is burning, also whatever sensation, pleasant or painful or neither painful nor pleasant, arises on account of the visual impression, that too is burning.
Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion; I say it is burning with birth, aging, and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs. The ear is burning, sounds are burning, auditory consciousness is burning… Burning with what?
Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion; I say it is burning with birth, aging, and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs. The nose is burning, odors are burning… The tongue is burning, flavors are burning… The body is burning, tangible things are burning, tactile consciousness is burning…
The mind is burning, thoughts are burning… Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion; I say it is burning with birth, aging, and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs. Samyutta Nikaya 35.28: The Fire Sermon (Buddhism)
Farid, I thought I alone had sorrow; Sorrow is spread all over the whole world. From my rooftop, I saw Every home engulfed in sorrow’s flames. Adi Granth, Shalok, Farid, p. 1382 (Sikhism)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
Humanity lost the original garden and fell into the world of death. There, we struggle against the darkness.
We live in the midst of lamentation and hopelessness, entrapped in the power of the enemy. Still, in our conscience, the remnant of the original mind, we long for the original homeland. (6:291, June 14, 1959)
The world we live in is not a joyful world but a miserable world; it is not a world of delight but a world of sorrow; it is not a world where people live with gratitude but a world where people live with grudges. If you cannot overcome this unfortunate world, then you will never find the path to happiness.
How can you know that you are unhappy? You can understand it through your mind. In your mind, is there a grieving heart that you cannot get rid of? This is proof that Satan is our ancestor.
Do you have hatred and resentment toward other people?
This is like Satan entangling our minds in steel nets to prevent us from going toward the original Garden of Eden. Human beings are living in the world of death where there is no life, the world of despair and pitch darkness.
Although human beings should be singing of the preciousness of life and living in harmony with God’s eternal ideal, people today are living in despair. They are cut off from the hope of standing before the ideal of God. (2:246, June 9, 1957)
We are surrounded by evil elements. The way to evil does not need to be taught. Everyone can go that way without education because history started from an evil foundation. Does anyone need to be taught how to be bad?
Because humans fell by their own decision, society educates people to act according to their conscience based on the prevailing morality.
Even so, how many people can live in accordance with that education?
Evil things can be done without education; anyone can score 100 points. The conscience always tells us to be good people, but have we actually become good? Unable to solve this problem, our life is one of continual lamentation.
Today is lamentation, tomorrow is lamentation, and the whole year is lamentation. Youth is lamentation, middle age is lamentation, old age is lamentation, and we die with lamentation. Evil marks our whole life. (36:57, November 15, 1970)
Due to the Human Fall, history started from a point of sadness. The saddest thing about the starting point was that we had to leave God. God was to be the source of our happiness and the center of our life, His grace pervading everything. Due to the Fall, however, humankind lost happiness, life and all things.
People fell into deep despair, darkness, and unhappiness. Having lost any vision or hope, tears filled their eyes. With those tears came despair and utter darkness. (52:36, December 12, 1971)
Sun Myung Moon
The Futility of Human Life
Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? Ecclesiastes 1.2-3
Parable of those who reject their Lord: their works are as ashes on which the wind blows furiously on a stormy day. No power have they over aught that they have earned. That is straying far, far from the goal. Qur’an 14.18
Men think much of their own advancement and of many other worldly things; but there is no improvement in this decaying world, which is as a tempting dish, sweet-coated, yet full of deadly gall within… It is as intangible as a mist; try to lay hold of it, and it proves to be nothing! Yoga Vasishtha (Hinduism)
Not by a shower of gold coins does contentment arise in sensual pleasures. Dhammapada 186 (Buddhism)
Desire never rests by the enjoyment of lusts, as fire surely increases the more butter is offered to it. Laws of Manu 2.94 (Hinduism)
The benighted one is incompetent to assuage sufferings, because he is attached to desires and is lecherous. Oppressed by physical and mental pain, he keeps rotating in a whirlpool of agony. I say so. Acarangasutra 2.74 (Jainism)
Intoxicated by the wine of illusion, like one intoxicated by wine; rushing about, like one possessed of an evil spirit; bitten by the world, like one bitten by a great serpent; darkened by passion, like the night; illusory, like magic; false, like a dream; pithless, like the inside of a banana-tree; changing its dress in a moment, like an actor; fair in appearance, like a painted wall—thus they call him. Maitri Upanishad 4.2 (Hinduism)
I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered. I said to myself, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.”
And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. I said to myself, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.”…
Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind…
So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a man who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by a man who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and strain with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of pain, and his work is a vexation; even in the night his mind does not rest. This also is vanity.
Ecclesiastes 1.12-2.23
How vast is God, The ruler of men below! How arrayed in terrors is God, With many things irregular in his ordinations. Heaven gave birth to the multitudes of the people, But the nature it confers is not to be depended upon.
All are good at first, But few prove themselves to be so at the last. Book of Songs, Ode 255 (Confucianism)
When men get together to pit their strength in games of skill, they start off in a light and friendly mood, but usually end up in a dark and angry one, and if they go on too long they start resorting to various underhanded tricks.
When men meet at some ceremony to drink, they start off in an orderly manner, but usually end up in disorder, and if they go on too long they start indulging in various irregular amusements. It is the same with all things. What starts out being sincere usually ends up being deceitful. What was simple in the beginning acquires monstrous proportions in the end. Chuang Tzu 4 (Taoism)
Sun Myung Moon
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
People think, “Let us seek our pleasure during this life of less than 100 years. We have only one chance at adolescence. So, let’s eat as we wish, play as we wish, and do as we wish while we are young.”
Most people who live on this earth think this way. However, even if they do everything their physical bodies desire, eventually all will come to naught. In a matter of a few years they will be bored with it all. Their life will have been in vain. (41:143, February 14, 1971)
Religions have made strenuous efforts to deny life in this world in their quest for eternal life. They have despised the pleasures of the body for the sake of spiritual bliss.
Yet, however hard they may try, people cannot cut themselves off from the reality of this world or annihilate the desire for physical pleasures, which follows them like a shadow and cannot be shaken off.
This world and its desires tenaciously grab hold of religious people, driving them into the depths of agony. Such is the contradiction that plagues their devotional lives.
Even many enlightened spiritual leaders, still torn by this contradiction, have met a sad end. (Exposition of the Divine Principle, Introduction)
Suppose a man devotes his life to earning money and becomes a millionaire. It requires strenuous effort; he must labor through his 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s to become a millionaire in his 60s.
However, at age 60, the day of his death is not distant. Having worked hard to earn money all his life, the age of retirement draws near. When he looks at all the money he has accumulated, does he feel hope or despair?
As he thinks about the past, he might feel a heaviness in his spirit. As he reviews all the efforts he made to earn money, he might feel an emptiness in his heart.
When it dawns on him that he lived his whole life for money, wouldn’t he feel extremely miserable?… Suppose a man goes to a university and earns a Ph.D. He might think it a great accomplishment. To obtain that degree he studied day and night without eating, playing or taking rest.
Maybe he even becomes a world-famous Nobel laureate. However, if we look closely at his life, we find many miserable things. Although he knows a Nobel laureate, it is all within a small field of specialization.
His research in his field is like digging a small cave in the wide world. Staying within the limits of his specialization, he realizes that compared with the whole world, he is extremely small. Even though he boasts that he knows something, it is an extremely small thing.
Does knowledge give human beings happiness and peace? No. Knowledge is such that we realize that the more we study, the more we do not know. Suppose he becomes a famous professor at the university.
Every day he holds a chalk and writes on the blackboard. He writes books and takes on various academic responsibilities. Yet while he inhales chalk powder and becomes a leading voice in his field, he has no idea what kind of influence he has in the world.
He does not know what will happen to the world in the future. Lacking the mind to comprehend God’s Will, he does not think about what perspective he should take in viewing the world. He is more ignorant than ordinary ignorant people, because he is so caught up in his own studies.
Even with all his knowledge, he spends his entire life as a mere bookworm. He lacks the self-confidence to assert his own ideas; mostly he just represents and compares the ideas of others in his field. His life commitment consists of little more.
Hence, even if he becomes a famous professor, what is the point? Life is too precious to invest it all for something like that. Another man covets power; he dreams of becoming a big shot, like the President of the United States.
Yet even if he attains that power, does it last forever?
The President of the United States holds power for only four years. Compared with the expanse of history, it is like the blink of an eye. Though he enjoys his power—eating the finest food, drinking the finest wine, dancing—once the power is gone, he is nothing. He no longer matters to anyone. People with ordinary aspirations are better off than he is. (98:82-85, April 30, 1978)
The Path of Tears
Kisa Gotami had an only son, and he died. In her grief she carried the dead child to all her neighbors, asking them for medicine, and the people said, “She has lost her senses. The boy is dead.” At length Kisa Gotami met a man who replied to her request, “I cannot give you medicine for your child, but I know a physician who can. Go to Sakyamuni, the Buddha.”
Kisa Gotami repaired to the Buddha and cried, “Lord and Master, give me the medicine that will cure my boy.” The Buddha answered, “I want a handful of mustard seed.” And when the girl in her joy promised to procure it, the Buddha added, “The mustard seed must be taken from a house where no one has lost a child, husband, parent, or friend.”
Poor Kisa Gotami now went from house to house, and the people pitied her and said, “Here is the mustard seed, take it!” But when she asked, “Did a son or daughter, a father or mother, die in your family?” they answered her, “Alas! the living are few, but the dead are many. Do not remind us of our deepest grief.” And there was no house but some beloved one had died in it.
Kisa Gotami became weary and hopeless, and sat down at the wayside, watching the lights of the city as they flickered up and were extinguished again. At last the darkness of night reigned everywhere.
And she considered the fate of men, that their lives flicker up and are extinguished. And she thought to herself, “How selfish am I in my grief! Death is common to all; yet in this valley of desolation, there is a path that leads him to immortality who has surrendered all selfishness.”
Putting away the selfishness of her affection for her child, Kisa Gotami had the dead body buried in the forest. Returning to the Buddha, she took refuge in him and found comfort in the Dharma. Buddhaghosa, Parable of the Mustard Seed (Buddhism)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
Adam and Eve, and certainly God, shed tears over their fall. Adam and Eve wept for themselves. God also shed tears, but for whom?
The Father of mankind shed tears for His children, who faced expulsion from the Garden of Eden due to their violation of the heavenly law. God wept not for Himself, but for His children.
Those tears themselves were tragic. Human history began in tears, and for God also, history began with tears. Human beings live in misery, but so does God.
Humans truly deserve to shed tears for their sins, but God does not deserve to shed tears. The history of tears that began with the first human ancestors has expanded down through the generations to all mankind throughout the world.
Human history is stained with repeated tears, of suffering and struggle and broken-heartedness. People hurt each other and suffer oppression by those above them. No one has been able to put a stop to the tears of history. People ordinarily grieve for their own misfortunes.
Nevertheless, more than for ourselves, or for our family’s misfortunes, or our nation’s misfortunes, we should grieve for the world’s pain…
Everyone has been grieving over his or her own misery, or at best over their family’s sorrows or their nation’s suffering, but what they should focus on is the sorrow of the world. For this, we have to change and reverse the purpose of tears. We still grieve but for a different purpose.
We need a reorientation to the other kind of tears—the tears that God sheds when He weeps in sorrow over the situation of humankind. God’s eyes are always filled with tears, but His tears are for others, never for Himself.
Where can we truly find happiness?
First, we should find a way to overcome our own tears; then we should overcome the conditions over which God sheds tears.
Then we can find happiness. Why? The history of tears for both God and humans began as a result of the Human Fall; therefore, we should return to the time before the Fall when there were no tears… It is our destiny to go over these two hills of sorrowful tears—human tears and God’s tears.
Those who are traveling the road of truth should climb these two hills of tears. We should shed tears over the misery of humanity and taste many situations of human suffering.
While others may live in blissful ignorance, we should grieve over the problems of human life, from fundamental questions down to the prevailing conditions of society.
Some young people, in particular, agonize about such things; those who do not have such experiences cannot live a true life. While we overcome our own sorrows, we should also seek ways to alleviate the suffering of the world.
Nevertheless, grappling with the suffering and misery of human life is not sufficient to bring a lasting solution. We must go deeper and uproot the fundamental cause of tears. This means reversing the initial tragedy that caused God and human beings to shed tears. Yet no one could comprehend a method for doing this.
The tears we shed for ourselves or for our nation, on the human level alone, cannot help reach the ideal world. They are still within the realm of selfishness, being merely the continuation of the tears that fallen Adam and Eve shed for themselves. What, then, should we do?
We should discover another realm of tears, the tears of God’s sorrow. We should deeply experience their taste, then surmount them.
Otherwise, we cannot establish the basis for human happiness. This means learning how to shed tears that transcend our own suffering.
First, we should discover God and experience His tears; then we should willingly walk the path to alleviate God’s suffering. (94:306-10, October 16, 1977)
Sun Myung Moon