Editor’s Note: Absence of Light is a project created in collaboration with incarcerated people at Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York.

It is the natural right of every human to be happy, to escape all the miseries of life. Happiness is the normal condition, as natural as the landscapes and the seasons. 

It is unnatural to suffer, and it is only because of our ignorance that we do suffer. Happiness is the product of wisdom. To attain perfect wisdom, to comprehend fully the purpose of life, to realize completely the relationship of human beings to each other, is to put an end to all suffering, to escape the ill and evil that afflicts us.

Why do we suffer? Because in the scheme of nature we are being forced forward in evolution, and we lack the spiritual illumination that can light the way and enable us to move safely among the obstacles that lie before us. Usually we do not even see or suspect the presence of trouble until it suddenly leaps upon us like a concealed tiger.

Once our family circle is complete and happy, a week later, death has come and gone, and joy is replaced with agony. Today we have a friend. Tomorrow he will be an enemy, and we do not know why. 

A little while ago, we had wealth and all material luxuries. There was a sudden change, and now we have only poverty and misery, and yet we seek in vain for a reason why this should be. These are times when health and strength are present. But they have both departed, and no trace of a reason appears. 

Aside from these greater tragedies of life, innumerable things of lesser consequence continually bring to us little miseries and minor heartaches. We must earnestly desire to avoid them, but we never see them until they strike us, until in the darkness of our ignorance we blunder upon them. The thing we lack is spiritual illumination that will enable us to look far and wide, finding the hidden causes of human suffering and revealing the method by which they may be avoided.

It’s like passing through a long, dark room filled with furniture promiscuously scattered about. In the darkness, our progress would be slow and painful, and our bruises many. But once the electrical light is flicked on, we could then make that same journey quickly and with perfect safety and comfort.

Published on November 8, 2020 at 10:50 pm