The Storms Can't Hurt the Sky: The Buddhist Path through Divorce

by Gabriel Cohen

If we don’t know how to be content in our mind, we can’t even be content with our food. Eating at the best restaurants in the world won’t make any difference. There is someone in a village in India eating curry out of a clay bowl, more content than we are. When we find the pair of shoes we want, for a brief moment we feel content. But when that moment passes, we’re on the move again: food doesn’t taste good, clothes don’t fit, the sheets are too rough, the bath’s not hot enough. We need better movies, more exciting books, a new relationship. We need to live on a different planet. Desire is a creature with an endless appetite. Like a spark put to dry grass, it just consumes. By its very nature, it can never be satisfied, because it is rooted in the aggression of looking outside ourselves for relief. That expectation always results in disappointment, self-generated pain. It’s the mind giving itself a hard time.