The Buddha, who lived some 600 years BCE, taught that life, as we live it, is necessarily unharmonious because of the selfish, possessive attitude we adopt towards it. In Sanskrit this attitude is called trishna (often mistranslated “desire”), and though there is no one word for it in English, it may be understood as the craving to resist change, to “save our own skins” at all costs, to possess those whom we love; in fact, to hold on to life “like grim death.”
