Mae Yo’s homework always sounds so simple, “go and see the two sides of comfort and suffering.” But seriously, what does that even mean? I understood that I was supposed to be having some deep penetrating insight into the relationship between Sukka (happiness) and Dukka (suffering) but I was stuck. It was time for a tool, not just any tool either, but the big guns…I needed an Ubai. For days and days I racked my brain and then I remembered an old optical illusion I saw as a kid — the women and the wine glass…

So what do you see? Women or a wine glass? The picture is both, it is women and a wine glass —  they define each other, without the women there would be no glass and without the glass there would be no women. Without happiness there would be no suffering and without suffering there would be no happiness.

I want vacations, periods of fun, to relax, hang on the beach, take mule rides in the jungle. But is there a vacation without work? How could I define relaxing – escaping lists and emails and meetings – without stuff in my life that is not relaxing? Where is the relief of a headache being gone, or a fever breaking, if I am never sick? Would I ever have that rush of coming home, to my beloved, after being gone for weeks, if I had never left?

Even the great Dharma Lord could not separate Sukka and Dukka, because only together do they create the full picture, together they create the world. All my little zones of comfort, that I think I can escape to, by just crossing over the suffering line for good, exist only because of the suffering. So how can I really expect to get to my 100% suffering free life?  Especially — as we will start exploring in the next blog – when I need to preserve, when $100 bucks is awesome until I have $1,000 and then I need to make sure I always have at least $1,000 stored up in the bank…