Struggle is part of life

From: Sutra Session 35
Full transcript
Audioclip

There's going to be struggle with life in whatever you do. And if you read the life of Buddha you see that he struggled with life all the way through it. Even after he was enlightened he struggled with kings, he struggled with divisions in his community; he struggled with people trying to assassinate him periodically and so forth. And so what do we do about that? And the really important piece here is the fact that struggle is part of life is the basis of compassion. And all of you know this. How many of you have children here? Okay. Now when you see your child struggling to learn something, or struggling with something, what do you feel? Your heart just goes out to them. And so compassion is a way that brings us into connection with this aspect of life in a way that we aren’t regarding it as an enemy or something to be destroyed or negated or whatever, but as an aspect of life which we have to learn.