The world is, in a sense, a place of exile. We are never fully at home here, and in my tradition, we are taught by St. Paul that we really "don't have a lasting city here." As the Buddha taught in his first noble truth, life is suffering, or as Buddhist psychologist Mark Epstein more accurately translates it, life has "pervasive unsatisfactoriness." We are transients, pilgrims on our way, passing through this vale of tears, snatching a bit of joy where we can from the mouth of death before it devours our dreams.
— Wayne Teasdale, A Monk in the World