Buddha and Plato (though Buddha’s time on this earth is less precise) lived at approximately the same time. Plato said, through The First Law of Classical Knowledge, that A is equal to A. Why? Because we wanted it to be. We wanted a world we could control.

Buddha said, through The First Noble Truth of Buddhism, that nothing is permanent, nothing is eternal (or, that A is not equal to A), though we want it to be, badly, and so we suffer.

The question is, in the west, do we know why we  suffer? Is this why 1 in 5 Americans consume psychiatric “medicine,” in order not to know? Could the world we thought we could control be ceasing to exist?