I was on vacation in Japan, sitting in a hot spring bath and thinking about something LP Thoon said in the sermon I was editing — he said we are reborn for the things that satisfy us, that we love and are enamored with. I realized that my own experiences clearly bear this out, that even in this life I can find the proof that this statement is true, that I really do keep coming back to/for the things I love, that I think will satisfy me. My relationship with San Francisco is the perfect example:

After I moved away to NY I longed for my old life back in San Francisco. I suffered miserably from my loss and plotted ways to get back.  First I took a job that allowed me to spend frequent time there. Then I pushed Eric to begin to interview with Bay Area companies to get a job that would allow us to move back again. I searched and worked, I leveraged knowledge and relationships, I allocated money and resources, all in an effort to be “reborn” back in SF –to return to a life that at one point I felt had satisfied me, that I had loved.

But when I look at the San Francisco example, the problems of craving particular ‘rebirths’ based on what once satisfied me, and what I am enamored with, quickly come into focus. The first problem is that just 3 short years after I left San Francisco, it is already clear that the city has changed drastically. Fires have become more frequent and ruined the air quality, costs have gone up, crime and homeless problems  have grown worse, many of my friends have gotten fed-up with it and have left. The thing that I long for, that I am enamored with, doesn’t even exist anymore: It isn’t San Francisco of today that I love, it is some idealized form –from my memory– of past San Francisco.  If I really were to start a new life in San Francisco now, it would be a different, and much more difficult, one than what I had left. So much so that frankly, I don’t even want it any more.

The second problem is that if I am being honest with myself, I left San Francisco originally because I wanted something more. I wanted new and different. I already saw the problems of cost and homelessness and crime and I thought I could do better elsewhere. The San Francisco I swear up and down satisfied  me, that I would be happy in if I could just get back there, really didn’t satisfy me, otherwise I never would have left in the first place. I am chasing, being reborn for, a fantasy –the false memory of satisfaction in a place that doesn’t even exist anymore.

As I sat in that hot tub, that 30 minutes ago had felt like heaven, I noticed I was starting to get uncomfortably warm. I realized that the seeds for my discomfort, getting too hot, were built into the experience of crawling into the tub seeking comfort in the first place. Any comfort I did find was inseparable from the discomfort I was now feeling, at issue was simply a question of when exactly that discomfort would show up. Any comfort I had had in my San Francisco life came with the discomfort I had when I left it, when I longed for it, when I compared NY to it and found NY so deeply disappointing. The comfort was the cause of my hard work, and squandering of hard earned resources and relationships, as I tried to orchestrate a return/rebirth. It was the reason I suffered when I was there again, caught in a fire during a work trip, and left struggling for months afterwards (even after returning to the North East) with out of control asthma and breathing issues. Any pleasure I got from my SF life is hopelessly intertwined with the suffering it caused; just like with the hot tub, all I had to do was wait and the suffering side inevitably showed-up.

What LP Thoon said is true, I am reborn for the things I think satisfy me, that I love. But that rebirth doesn’t guarantee I will be reunited with what I love, that thing has already changed and so have I. It doesn’t guarantee I will be satisfied, if SF had really been so satisfying, why did I leave in the first place? What it does guarantee however is suffering: The suffering to acquire that new life, the suffering that I find in it, the suffering to maintain it, the suffering worrying about loosing it, the suffering when I lose it, the suffering of the standards it sets –driving me to get it again in a new place, with a new life, that starts the cycle all over again. Any comfort I have must go hand-in-hand with suffering.

My problem is I discount the suffering, fixating instead on what I find enjoyable. Mae Yo once asked how I ignore the background noise (which in this case I take to mean the suffering) and it is a question I come back to over and over again. I suppose, I just ignore it. I tune it out because I am so used to it that the suffering has become  normal. The moments of pleasure (or extreme loss) are the things that stand out, they are the change in tune.

Now, years later, Feb 2022 (this original contemplation was end of 2019) I have spent months contemplating on the topic that everything is suffering. Not just that suffering goes hand-in-hand with pleasure, but that everything is really suffering. We live in a noisy world, there is constant noise, sometimes less and sometimes more. Tune, pitch, quality of sound may change, but there is , as Mae Yo says, always noise. We simply learn to tune it out much of the time. Just so, we live in a dukka world, there is constant suffering. There is change in type and intensity, but it is always there, even if we choose to ignore it, even if we come to think of it as normal.  No matter the satisfaction we imagine awaits us, birth into this world is birth into a world of suffering and so we suffering accordingly. This is the peril of birth for what I love.