Why (the) black (pill) is (can be)(the) white (pill)

The black pill can be the white pill.

In theism, god is said to turn evil into good. In non-theistic traditions, the truth is similar, but you have to do the work. There is not a god, hidden or otherwise, to lead you from the bramble-choked path to the walkable easy street. This is a major sticking point between the Buddha and Christ. It's not surpassable; it's not solved by ecumenical dialogue and conferences.

We here at the Tangle ruminate on dukkha as we find it, and so our reflections have a decidedly blackish cast. There are no positive upbeat stories about young children fighting valiantly against cancer and winning. Nope. Here, we look at dukkha as it shows itself to us. Cancer kills the kids. Maybe not always, but death always triumphs. Rebirth always triumphs as well.

Students of dukkha acquire a spirit of dispassion and disenchantment, or they become embittered, angry, and frustrated because things do not go the way they are supposed to go. Your version of dukkha will be custom tailored to you. My dukkha is not yours. Existence is boutique-designed plans of suffering and disappointment built around your karma. You could not ask for a more personal touch. Think of your form, your temperament, your current condition as more finely tailored than any Italian-made suit. The Italians are a wonderful people, incredibly devoted to fine craftsmanship, so I like to think of my situation as being even more personalized than anything one of them could do for me.

Your strengths as a concocted personality inhabiting this form at this time and place are also weaknesses. I like technical challenges and problem solving, and this has been helpful in life. At times, however, it's very unhelpful. The person who wants to fix something, understand it, or solve a problem also develops a heightened sensitivity to the brute fact that many, many things in life, from the trivial to the most macro, don't work as they should. They are slow, inefficient, and plagued by human greed, delusion, and ego.

If only the processes at my job were better, better designed, etc., then work would be more fulfilling, more productive. When I am more productive, I will be happier and less stressed out...

You can see all this snowball into disappointment, for when an improvement is made, it just exposes another hole in the wall that you missed or created while patching another. This is the maze of samsara, where one section is mastered only to bring you into another section of unknown twists and turns. Your strength exhausts itself in solving problems, and you become numb to the prevalence of disappointing facts about reality. It's a vast ocean that you can never traverse, never contain, never calm. There are so many of them that they overload us. Modern technology brings the macro into our field of vision nonstop via smartphones and similar devices.

If you could see disappointment as it really is, in everything you do, you would do what? Despair? Give up? Take your own life? This is such a bleak thought, to want to experience the inadequacy, the falling short of everything.

I complain a lot. I've gotten better at managing it through practice. My personality can be a bit sour, even dour at times. It's something I didn't notice about myself until much later in adulthood, but it's always been there. Even as I write these words, I feel a special ownership of these qualities. In my work, if I run into something that is painful, frustrating, or makes life difficult for me or others, I create something to fix it. That's what I do. My temperament is to be dissatisfied with certain things and then overcome them with a solution. Maybe elegant, maybe mid-tier, maybe primitive but effective.

I'm talking about myself, but I'm asking you, the reader, to do the same honest kind of self-assessment about yourself. Realize your predicament is just that – a predicament - but know it has a reason that leads right back to you.

So I look at dukkha and dwell on it. What has been the point of it? For many people, it could lead them to alcoholism or drug use. If you stare into the void, remember, the void is staring back into you. This is attributed to Nietzsche, but the point I make here is that, in the absence of a spiritual practice, dukkha becomes something to ignore, pave over, or blot out with noise, chemicals, or distractions. It doesn't go away. Stare at it too much, and it stops making sense, causing despair. Depression and suicide are understandable reactions to existence. They are not skillful reactions, however, since, in the case of suicide, it overlooks that there is no escape from samsara. Nihilism is not part of the path. Depression can weigh one down and produce a desire for temporary obliteration.

I preach dukkha and the end of dukkha! These are the words of the Buddha. Was he a buzzkill? Was he a black dog coming upon a party of revelers having a good time, casting a shadow on their joy with his dark visage and unsettling utterances?

Heedlessness is the default state of the human mind, unaware of its real situation. Concentration is the opposite of heedlessness, for it is the cultivation of a way of being that we, as humans, naturally oppose. Concentration places demands on our ego, forces a kind of discipline on a mind, a body, and feelings which like to blow wherever they will.

Back to what I said: dukkha leads to disenchantment and disillusionment with the world. When you stop looking for some future delectable, some future reward, some tiny morsel that makes existence all worth it, then you can sit back and look more closely at things as they are here in front of you right now.