Nibbana is Better than You Think (long extract)
"The Buddha said that he taught just suffering and the end of suffering. Suffering is the problem he focused on and he proposed to solve it. First he was able to solve that problem inside himself. Then he taught other people to solve it within themselves. It seems fairly simple. You look at all the suffering in the world, and it’s obvious that it’d be really good that people not have to suffer. You see war, famine, induced war, induced famine. The things that happen in even just the human world are pretty bad, and there are realms where it gets a lot worse. So, any teaching that offers an end to suffering would seem to be something that would appeal to everyone. Yet when the Buddha talks about the implications of what it means to put an end to suffering, when he talks about nibbāna, a lot of people say it doesn’t sound all that appealing. Years back, when I gave my first study weekend here in California, the topic was the four noble truths. You get to the third truth before you ge...