Is Nature Unfair

A lot of our suffering, of dukkha, comes from a feeling of dissatisfaction or discontent because we think: ‘It shouldn’t be this way,’ ‘Life is unfair,’ ‘Why is this happening to me?’ or ‘Not this again – I don’t deserve this!’ Our discontent can easily be caused by a feeling that somehow the universe is out of balance, the world is out of order, and we feel this is unfair; it shouldn’t be like that. But if we expand our vision and see that the laws of cause and effect are operating, that all these different aspects of reality are contributing to our life, then how could what we are experiencing be fundamentally outside the laws of nature? How could it genuinely be unfair? It might be unfair according to our preferences, or your nation’s laws; it might also be unwanted or not what we expected.

But when we expand our view and take the whole range of different influences that are at play into its scope, we are able to let go of that feeling of wrongness or that it shouldn’t be this way. There’s a recognition that nature is fair: it’s a non-personal and ultimately balanced system, and once we drop our self-centred habits and are able to see things in this way, we are much more able to find the quality of ‘rightness’. Even though we might be experiencing an illness, or something painful or difficult which we wouldn’t choose or we don’t like, that feeling of wrongness or that it shouldn’t be this way dissolves.

This reflection by Ajahn Amaro is from Who Is Pulling the Strings, pp.29, 30.