[Buddha-l] Re: {Buddha-l] Being in Love ... "& its only end is loss"

[Franz Metcalf]

Robert et al.,

Thank you Robert Leverant for the moving and terrible words of the  
Buddha Judah Halevi or Emanuel of Rome. There's no hiding from his  
wisdom. And yet, I cannot help myself. Aware of this I intuit why  
others cry out, as Martin Luther may have done, "Hier stehe ich, ich  
kann nichts anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen!"

Let me in turn add the words of another Buddha, Kohelet the Preacher,  
also known as Ecclesiastes, as found in the Tanakh.

Franz

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The truth of impermanence haunted me,
and I soured on life.
the suffering of life overwhelmed me,
and I sought refuge in depression.

But I could not escape the truth of what I had seen:
all our doing is in quest of sanctuary from impermanence.
We seek to think our way to certainty;
to buy our way to security;
to pleasure ourselves to eternity.
But nothing brings us the permanence we crave.
Thought is only opinion;
wealth is only a burden;
pleasure is only a prelude to pain.
and in this there is no joy.
We desire not what we have but what does not exist:
permanence, an eternity of self in a world designed by selfishness.
It is not wisdom, wealth, or pleasure that brings us pain,
but the mistaking of these for something they are not.
Our quest for permanence is the root of our suffering.
      (The Book of Kohelet, 2:17, in the translation of Rami Shapiro)