Chapters Five and Six Summary and Analysis

We must not turn the words of Buddha into doctrine or ideology, like some who have tried to prove suffering on earth. We suffer from suffering; we suffer when composite things fall apart, and we suffer from change. Many have embraced suffering for two thousand years as the primary principle of Buddhism, but Buddha taught us to recognize joy and suffering. To place suffering at the same level as impermanence and non-self is an error, since suffering is not a mark of all things in the same way. It is our attachment to things that are impermanent that causes suffering; the thing itself is not suffering. Buddha taught of nirvana, where our ideas and concepts are extinguished; Hahn hopes scholars and practitioners will "not make too great an effort to prove that everything is suffering...