“There’s a myth that if you could just get it all together, you could have permanent pleasure. That’s a complete myth, but everybody kind of buys into it emotionally and psychologically. So it’s said that the human realm is the very best place to spend time. And why is that? It’s because in the lower realms—particularly the hungry ghost and hell realms—the suffering is so intense and so seamless, there don’t appear to be any gaps.
With the human realm, you have just enough pleasure that you have some relaxation and just enough pain that it spurs you on. So it’s a sort of balance that is the fertile ground for spiritual awakening, for becoming a sane, whole, loving, compassionate, and wise person.”
Pema Chodron
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