All human beings are looking for happiness in life and trying hard to avoid misfortune (anything that’s opposite to happiness).

From our daily life to the large public events that shape the course of history, we can notice many expressions of the human aspiration for ever greater happiness.

Why would pursuing happiness be so difficult? Aren’t happiness suppose to come naturally to everyone?

The First of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths is that human existence is suffering, or ill (Pali dukkha), which connotes the idea of an illness generated by the self through its false attachments. Often this condition is described by the metaphor of a universal fire engulfing the world.

In Hinduism, the human lot of samsara is to go through an endless cycle of death and rebirth, conditioned by nature (the gunas) and rooted in the results of past actions. This is likened to a universal tree, turned upside-down, whose roots and branches trace the sequences of actions (karma) back to the beginning of time: the whole of it is suffering.

In Christianity, the doctrine of Original Sin conveys a similar idea: Humans are, by their fallen condition, cut off from God and hence unable to fulfill the true purpose of life. We may try to be good, but in spite of our best efforts, we miss the mark. Original Sin, like the Hindu notion of samsara, is understood to be a condition perpetuated throughout the generations of humankind.

“The Noble Truth of Suffering is this: Birth is suffering; aging is suffering; sickness is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering; association with the unpleasant is suffering; dissociation from the pleasant is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering–in brief, the five aggregates of attachment are suffering.”

(Buddhism. Samyutta Nikaya lvi.11: Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth)

“I look at what ordinary people find happiness in, what they all make a mad dash for, racing around as though they couldn’t stop–they all say they’re happy with it. I’m not happy with it and I’m not unhappy with it. In the end, is there really happiness or isn’t there?”

(Taoism. Chuang Tzu 18)

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

(Christianity. 1 John 1.8)

Source: from the book of Andrew Wilson “World Scripture”

Read more: World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts