Life on Life's Terms
Coming to terms with the tragic in our existence
One of my central spiritual aspirations is to learn to live life on its own terms.
But what does that actually mean?
I have come to understand that there is something fundamentally tragic about our human existence. Not because life is a mistake, or because suffering is all there is, but because the very things that make life so precious also make it unbearably vulnerable.
We love, and we lose. We inhabit bodies that age, grow sick, and eventually die. We build lives, families, communities, and civilizations that are all subject to forces beyond our control. We encounter suffering that we did not choose, and sometimes we cause suffering that we cannot undo.
There is no escaping these realities. And yet so much of our lives is organized around trying to do precisely that.
I have discovered how much of my own life has been spent trying to negotiate some kind of exemption. As though being good enough, meditating enough, helping enough people, or taking sufficiently good care of my body might somehow earn me a pass.
But there is no pass.
The Five Buddhist Remembrances
If we are to learn to live life on its own terms, we must first know what those terms are.
I have found no clearer articulation than the Five Remembrances from the Buddhist tradition:
I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape old age.
I am of the nature to become ill. I cannot escape illness.
I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are subject to change. I cannot escape being separated from them.
I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related to my actions, and supported by my actions. Whatever I do, for good or ill, I will inherit the result.
Sit with these for a moment.
These are not possibilities we should prepare for in case something goes wrong. These are the fundamental conditions of being human.
And notice how much of what we fear is contained within them. We spend enormous amounts of energy fearing things that will, in one form or another, inevitably happen.
Turning Toward the Tragic
Much of what I value in the great wisdom traditions is their capacity to help us turn toward the tragic rather than away from it.
Without that wisdom, we can spend our lives resenting reality. We become angry that life is not what we expected, terrified of what we might lose, or consumed by the need to control what cannot ultimately be controlled.
Even our spiritual practices can become part of this bargain. We can unconsciously approach healing, meditation, prayer, or personal growth as strategies for escaping the very conditions we are being called to accept.
But spiritual maturity cannot mean becoming invulnerable.
I have been deeply moved by the image of the crucifix as another expression of this teaching. Here is a good man, even God incarnate in the Christian telling, subjected to betrayal, humiliation, torture, and death.
No exemption. Not even for God.
And within that terrible image, I find a profound teaching about how we might meet the suffering and the tragic in our enfleshed human existence.
You open your arms. You forgive. And you love anyway.
The Heart Is Made to Break
I often say that the human heart is made to break.
There is something tragic to this existence, but the heart is also made to heal. It breaks, and if we can keep it open, it grows in the process.
This is not to romanticize suffering. There are wounds that leave lasting scars, losses from which we never fully recover, and injustices that must be confronted rather than accepted as inevitable.
But there is a difference between the suffering that belongs to life and the suffering we add through our refusal to accept its fundamental terms.
Coming to terms with the tragic does not require us to become cynical, detached, or resigned.
It asks something far more courageous of us.
Can we know that we will lose everything we love, and love wholeheartedly anyway? Can we accept our vulnerability without organizing our lives around fear? Can we encounter suffering without closing our hearts to the world?
Can we say yes to life, knowing what life actually entails?
Radical Responsibility
The fifth remembrance is especially important because it keeps this teaching from becoming a philosophy of resignation.
We are not in control of the fundamental terms of our existence. But we remain responsible for how we participate.
Our actions matter. How we treat others matters. What we cultivate in ourselves, what we contribute to our communities, what we do with the time we have been given—all of it matters.
Acceptance does not mean abandoning our efforts to heal, to grow, to protect what we love, or to transform the conditions that cause unnecessary suffering.
It means relinquishing the fantasy that we can make ourselves immune to life.
And perhaps that is what allows us to act with greater wisdom, courage, and love.
The Practice of Remembering
The Five Remembrances are not information we lack. We already know these things.
The problem is that we forget.
We live as though tomorrow were guaranteed, as though what we love could be held forever, as though the right combination of achievement, discipline, and virtue might somehow protect us from the tragic.
And so we practice remembering.
Not to become preoccupied with death or suffering, but to become more available to life.
To love the people in front of us. To cherish the extraordinary privilege of inhabiting this body. To take responsibility for our actions. To recognize the preciousness of this brief and mysterious existence.
To come to terms with the tragic is not to surrender our love of life. It is to learn to love life without demanding that it be something other than what it is.
And to love anyway.
The Five Remembrances are drawn from the Buddhist Upajjhatthana Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 5.57). The wording above follows a contemporary rendering of this ancient teaching.