Shoulds & Desires
May 24, 2022
I was leading a retreat on the brahmaviharas one time, and the question came up, “Given that the Buddha assumes that we’re all basically good, how does he explain the evil in the world?” And I had to say, “Wait a minute. The Buddha never said anything about people being basically good. What he assumes about people is something else: that we all want happiness.” Of course, it’s easy to explain why there’s evil in the world, because people operating out of ignorance have some very strange ideas about how to find happiness
