The Sea of Suffering is Boundless, Swim, Swim! (Part 1)

One of the most painful things in the world is when someone important to you dies before your eyes and you can do nothing; second, when you cannot receive love while alive and can only lament in vain after death; third, when you are alive, I am dead, and when I am alive, you are dead—when all is said and done, this vast world simply cannot accommodate both of us at once; fourth, when you think death will finally free you from everything, only to discover that sometimes even death is a luxury; fifth, when you are doing a good deed but are mistaken for evil and cast into the abyss; sixth, when you are sentenced to life imprisonment in a cage made by someone you do not know; seventh, when you are different from everyone else and are isolated, mocked, even treated as an enemy; eighth, when I have always been by your side, yet you never knew I was there; ninth... tenth... eleventh...

Bitter! Bitter! Bitter!

There was far, far too much suffering in this world. Endless suffering gathered together, becoming an ocean of suffering.

Whether turtles, fish, great lobsters, or tiny, helpless beings, all could only swim and swim and swim through this endless sea of suffering... seeking a patch of land where they could settle. Yet no matter how long they swam, so long as they lived, it seemed they could never escape that storm-tossed sea of misery.

And how many could be carefree "little children," laughing without a care in the world?

Perhaps that was the deeper meaning contained in the opening of Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons.

That was why little Changsheng's father said, "Don't get too close to the water. The 'monsters' will eat you." But Changsheng's father did not know