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<\/a>A monk at Yingshen Pagoda \u61c9\u8eab\u5854, Southern Wutai Mountain \u5357\u4e94\u53f0\u5c71 (August 5, 2009)\nFor all that I love about Missoula, it is very much a place of cycles for me. It is very much a land of plenty: plenty of wonderful people, plenty of entertaining things to do: in the city, in nature, and in nearby wilderness, plenty of opportunities to live fairly easily for those such as myself blessed with a decent upbringing and education. \u201cPeter Pan Land\u201d is how one of my professors, Albert Borgmann, once described it as we discussed the pros and cons of this wonderful community<\/span>.<\/p>\n The quality of life here is very high. But when one digs under the surface, one finds the same truth of dukkha <\/span>experienced here as everywhere else. But who digs under the surface? Not most people, I\u2019m afraid<\/span>. Most are content in the cycles of entertainment and toil, excitement and let-down, daydreams and drunkenness.<\/p>\n Think of the story of the Buddha\u2019s own life. Missoula is, in many ways, the palace his father constructed for young Siddhartha, brilliantly hiding old age, disease and death; filling it with beautiful people, pleasing fragrances and entertainers<\/span>. I imagine that most places and most people spend their lives striving to build such palaces. And yet Siddhartha did catch a glimpse of these three things, and a fourth: the wandering ascetic. And he left. A newborn child, a wife, friends, all the sensual pleasures and comforts one could imagine, all left behind.<\/p>\n None could understand why<\/span> he would leave all of this behind. Even he wasn\u2019t completely sure, only knowing that all of this<\/span> was still not enough when one knows that it still ends in old age, sickness, and death. The intuition that there is <\/span>something more<\/span> out there drew him forth from the palace walls<\/span>.<\/p>\n \u201cOf this sa\u1e43s\u0101ra, a single lifetime constitutes only a tiny and fleeting fraction; hence to be able to comprehend the first noble truth of universal suffering, one must let one\u2019s gaze rest upon the sa\u1e43s\u0101ra, upon this frightful chain of rebirths, and not merely upon one single life-time, which, of course, may be sometimes less painful.\u201d (Nyanatiloka\u2019s Buddhist Dictionary<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n