[The word dukkha] is often translated as suffering, but it means something deeper than pain and misery. It refers to a basic misunderstanding running through our lives, the lives of all but the enlightened. Sometimes this unsatisfactoriness erupts in to the open as sorrow, grief, disappointment, or despair; but usually it hovers at the edge of our awareness as a vague unlocalized sense that things are never quite perfect, never fully adequate to our expectations of what they should be. -Bhikkhu Bodi
An unsatisfactoriness? A vague unlocalized sense that things are never perfect? Can you relate to this?
It is really a blessing if you can be aware of these subtle nuances of the heart. Unless you are awake, unless you are attentive to experience, you may miss these subtleties. Or assume them to be dis-ease, depression, something that is not a natural part of life. Have you been awake enough to notice this hovering at the edge of awareness?
Are you willing to experience what is difficult, what is challenging? If so you can come to a new kind of happiness, a happiness that includes the whole of life, the good and the bad, the sweet, the sour, and the sorrow. A happiness that rises among and above the vicissitudes and cruises in its own space of peace - despite circumstances - in wisdom and integrity.
