Hell is not other people... Hell is the human condition.
Just some rambling...
The cruelty of human consciousness is this duality between the absolute need for isolation and independence, and this raw aching need for dependence, to be loved, to be needed. The realization that no one will ever truly understand what it's like to be you, and you will never fully understand what it's like to be another. And yet if we could we would lose that which makes us most uniquely human, our individuality. That would be an Orwellian prison of the mind. So we seem to be relegated to a life of infinite loneliness of a depth that's hard to even describe, a longing to be understood and loved that is so deep it's hard to imagine every being quenched. And yet what we long for would seem to be as much prison as cure.
= new reply since forum marked as read
he didn't say that "Life is great." His first teaching was that the condition of life is suffering. Welcome to Samsara. He also taught the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path that leads to the cessation of suffering.
