The Tricycle Book Club is discussing Lin Jensen’s Deep Down Things: The Earth in Celebration and Dismay! Look for daily excerpts from the book on the Tricycle Blog to inspire the conversation, which is happening here. 
From Deep Down Things:
“ What the Buddha intends in his statement of the first noble truth is not that suffering is something gone wrong with the world, a problem to be fixed, but that suffering is rather a universal circumstance of planetary life. For me this was good news, confirmation of my own observation and experience of the life around me. I reasoned that, if some degree of suffering was inevitable, then my suffering was not necessarily a problem. I could accept things as they were and thereby quit arguing with circumstance and fall into harmony with life around me. I saw my own conditions reflected in the passing of the seasons, the sprouting of spring grasses, the blossoming of summer flowers, the fall of autumn leaves, the dark rest of winter. Things all about me came and went—birth, growth, maturation, procreation, aging, and death. The natural rhythms of the world matched my own passage through life. When I was able to recognize these conditions as a universal harmony of earthly existence, I was left without regret or grasping of the sort I’d once felt and was more content to be as I was among all the other nameless beings with which I share the earth. “Suffering exists,” the Buddha said, and I knew from those reassuring words that I needn’t resist.”
Have something to say? Visit the Tricycle Community Book Club to discuss Deep Down Things!
Tricycle and Wisdom Publications have joined together to offer Lin Jensen’s new book, Deep Down Things, to all Tricycle Community members during the month of December at a 20% discount with free shipping in the US*, plus free e-book for instant download.
Here’s how:
• Join the Tricycle Community at any member level. If you are already a Tricycle Community Member, you are pre-qualified for this special offer.
• Purchase Deep Down Things online, and receive a 20% discount plus free shipping. *Shipping charges apply to Canadian and international orders.
• Download your free e-book and start reading immediately.
• Join Lin Jensen here in the Tricycle Book Club to discuss the book from December 6 through January 2.
Already a member?
Click here to take advantage of this special offer.
Image: from the Flickr photostream of JarrkoS