How I Learned the Buddha's Second Noble Truth

I was twelve years old the first time life taught me the Second Noble Truth. My parents had taken me shopping, and I saw a bicycle in a store window that looked so fantastic it took my breath away. My step-father saw my reaction, and he remarked, "Your old rust-heap used to looked that good!"

But that wasn't true -- nothing I had ever seen had ever looked that good. It was sleek and racy, unlike my old heap, and it was named after an Olympic champion. I wanted that bicycle more than I had ever wanted anything. Soon I could think of nothing else, and I could not contemplate living without it.

So I got a second job after school, but I kept that a secret. I worked hard and saved everything I earned, and each day on the way home I would stop by the bicycle shop and visit the object of my desire. The bicycle provided me with many glorifying fantasies, and soon my entire future and even my very identity became designed around it.

One day when I had saved almost enough money I went for my usual visit, but the bicycle was gone. The shopkeeper said a man had come in that morning and bought it for his son. Another one could not be ordered because the model had been discontinued.

My world was shattered. My grief overwhelmed me. I suffered every waking hour, day after agonizing day, week after endless week. My future had been ruined. I suffered right up until Christmas morning, when there beneath the Christmas tree was that bicycle.

Suddenly it seemed that all my suffering had been worth it. Ecstatic beyond words, I took the bicycle for a ride. But all too quickly I realized this bike was poorly designed. It did not ride as well as my old one. That was obviously why the model had been discontinued. I felt betrayed, crushed and defeated. I wondered, bitterly, if there really was a loving God.

As soon as I got home my bitterness was replaced by horror. My stepfather had a new regime: "Now that you don't need that secret job any more, you can put your time into some chores around here. And I want that bike kept polished!" From that time on, every Sunday my suffering unfolded like clockwork. While my friends were heading off to the beach, I would have to get out that bike and spend an excruciating stretch of time waxing and polishing it, even though my old bike was the one I rode every day.

These tedious sessions gave me time to reflect, and I realized that if I had not wanted that bike quite so much, life would definitely be more to my liking now. In all I endured two years of this Sunday drudge before I felt I could unload the bike onto my cousin without causing any offense. I got rid of the thing without even trying to sell it.

My stepfather was quite amused by what I had put myself through. He was like Yama, Lord of the Hell Realm, holding out a mirror to his guests to indicate, "Look what you have created: your own cravings and aversions have put you here."