Unfulfilled

Not to long ago, I tried to describe the First Noble Truth of Buddhism as pain, but I was thinking about it a bit more, and I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that. Buddhism describes the nature of existence as samsara, which in the past I’ve described as a kind of cosmic rat race, or described elsewhere as “aimless wandering”. And yet, while playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses, this dialogue by Claude (arguably the “bro” we all need in life¹) got me thinking:

We never really get to cherish the good moments in life as long as we’d like, and there’s always just a bit too few of them anyway. Many Buddhist cultures romanticize this through things like cherry blossoms, poetry, and such, but it’s a sentiment that all people everywhere across history have felt. Even futuristic cyberpunk.

Further, we are thrust into life with being given any clear guide. Sure, we might find religion (or religion is thrust upon us in our youth), but this is not always guaranteed to be satisfying, and for us spiritually-inquisitive types, it’s not hard to scratch the surface and find issues here too. On the other hand, I think it’s wrong that there are no answers either. The world does function according to some kind of principle, just as it follows the laws of physics, even if we don’t fully understand it, and it behooves us to figure out what the principle is.

I think Claude is onto something here when he says that life is probably about living and experiencing and learning from it.

Or this quote from the classic science-fiction novel Dune Messiah:

“If you need something to worship, then worship life – all life, every last crawling bit of it! We’re all in this beauty together!”

Frank Herbert

The tragedy though comes from the fact that we’re not given so little time to do it well, and life often gets in our way. If we don’t find the answer we’re looking for in 40 years or even 400 years, then was any of it worth it? It’s hard to say. Further, in whatever life to come, we have to pay for our choices we made here, regardless of what happens next.

So, Claude is right: we really do need to cherish these moments. There are simply too few.

Namu Amida Butsu

P.S. more wisdom from Claude.

P.P.S. Not related to anything Buddhist, but Petra trying on glasses for the first time was a great gag. Sometimes you just have to enjoy the “small happinesses” in life.

P.P.P.S. The title of this post was inspired by the soundtrack song of the same name:

¹ Big kudos to Joe Zieja for his amazing voice acting, by the way.