The interesting thing is that at first he didn’t talk about the unconditional; he didn’t talk about basic goodness, clarity, space, bliss, wonder, or openness. In the first teaching of the Buddha—the teachings on the four noble truths—he talked about suffering. I’ve always experienced these teachings as a tremendous affirmation that there is no need to resist being fully alive in this world, that we are in fact part of the web. All of life is interconnected. If something lives, it has life force, the quality of which is energy, a sense of spiritedness.
