Reading about Buddhism again and am again struck by its basic negativity. It's related to Catholicism. In Catholicism you have guilt. In Buddhism you have suffering (if you're alive which means you're caught on the wheel of life which means suffering).

I cried yesterday. I 'suffered'. The locals are burning again as they do every year. The ridge behind our property was burned. I thought of all the baby birds who lost their lives, the skinks and lizards, and the insects and I cried. In the afternoon I watched Felicity and Suki, the two freed greenies, canoodling on the poinciana branch above my head and I smiled. There can be no suffering if there is nothing to compare it to.

We walked the dogs in the afternoon. It was 30o and coming out of winter we all were feeling the heat. We walked into the dip and coolness. Richard said wouldn't it be lovely if it was this temperature all the time. Personally I would quickly become bored with no contrast in temperature. How can we welcome summer if we haven't endured winter? Or winter after sweltering through a summer? Suffering comes because we've known its opposite; joy.

It seems, as in Catholicism, it is a basic 'sin' to have been born, as though rather than finding the joy in the basic wonder of being alive, we have been condemned through ignorance, or Original Sin, to endure this hell because we're too sinful, ignorant, lazy, vain to earn Heaven or Nirvana. It seems a poor way to acknowledge the basic miracle of Life, of the life giving qualities of breath.