This story nicely illustrates how Buddhism takes a pragmatic approach to tackling the challenge immediately at hand: that in life, difficulties arise and we experience suffering, much as we would if shot by a poison arrow. The Buddha taught that the wise thing to do is not to spend time and energy focusing on irrelevant details but to remove the arrow. Rather than trying to answer these existential questions, Buddhism urges us to look inward and ask ourselves, “Why do I feel the need to know these things?” Because Buddhism is less concerned with big, unknowable, supernatural questions, we can
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