With tremendous deception, we create samsara — pain and misery for the whole world, including ourselves – but we still come off as if we were innocent. We call ourselves ladies and gentlemen, and we say, “I never commit any sins or create any problems. I’m just a regular old person, blah blah blah.” That snowballing of deception and the type of existence our deception creates are shocking.
You might ask, “If everybody is involved with that particular scheme or project, then who sees the problem at all? Couldn’t everybody just join in so that we don’t have to see each other that way? Then we could just appreciate ourselves and our snowballing neuroses, and there would be no reference point whatsoever outside of that.” Fortunately — or maybe unfortunately — we have one person who saw that there was a problem. That person was known as Buddha.
(From “Introduction” to The Truth Of Suffering And The Path Of Liberation, edited by Judith Lief, Shambhala Publications 2009.)
Trungpa Rinpoche
