Living in Harmony with the Truth of Life

Is there anybody reading this who thinks that a human life is easy? Even if we have a fairly blessed life, being born a human in the kind of universe we live in is a challenging endeavor! One way we can think about the Buddhist teachings is that basically the Buddha is offering strategies to deal with some of the basic challenges of being human. Challenges such as not being able to make pleasant experiences stay, and not being able to avoid unpleasant experiences, and that as humans we can't ultimately control the environment around us, what we experience. These are super existential dilemmas! However, the Buddha also taught that there is a way that we can find deep peace and relief from this stress in exploring our relationship to our experience, in exploring our deeply conditioned patterning in relationship to these ever-changing experiences of life. With mindfulness, we can engage creatively with our hearts and minds entangled in an attempt to control life, and we can open to the natural spaciousness of the heart/mind that is at ease with things as they are. This is the existential offering of the Buddhist teachings.