Volume 60. February 14, 2025
American rock duo The Everly Brothers once sang:
Bye-bye love. Bye-bye happiness.
Hello loneliness. I think I’m gonna cry.
Bye-bye love. Bye-bye sweet caress.
Hello emptiness. I feel like I could die.
If you did not receive a Valentine this year, if you felt a twinge of anguish by not reading the words Be Mine, please take heart.
You have experienced the Buddha’s First Truth: All life is suffering.
Heartbreak is an especially painful form of suffering. No one knew that pain worse than the Tang emperor of China, Hsuan Tsung.
During his later years, he fell in love with a very beautiful woman. He was first smitten on seeing her emerge from a warm bath.
The dramatic tale of their moving romance is related in the poem “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow.” A verse:
The emperor neglected the world from that moment.
He lavished his time on her in endless enjoyment.
She was his springtime mistress, and his midnight tyrant.
He could never stop himself from gazing at her.
During the An Lushan Rebellion, however, the emperor and his court were forced to flee from the capital. The emperor’s guards demanded that he put his consort, Lady Yang, to death because they blamed the rebellion on her family.
The emperor capitulated and reluctantly ordered his attendant to supervise her forced suicide. Hsuan Tsung was devastated.
The last line of poem sings poignantly:
Earth fades, Heaven fades, at the end of days.
But Everlasting Sorrow endures always.
Weep not, oh lonely potato! Lament no longer!
Your black dog’s barking. You’re singing the blues. The light of love has gone out. But there is hope in this cruel world. Darkness is not your friend. Take consolation in Buddhist philosophy.
Lady Yang’s bewitching face emerging from a hot bath is no different from your face or my face.
We are all imaginary flowers in the air, for we all are empty.
Your life is my life for all life is the Dharmakaya.
The Dharmakaya is the only reality. All else is dream-puffs.
Behold the empty ocean. Gulp it greedily like a fish!
Life is an only dream. Come now, Dreamer, awake!
Nothing compares with the mighty sweetness of the Buddha’s big blank mind.
When we want, we lose. When we lose, we suffer.
Cease selfish wanting! Live in the freedom of egoless-ness.
Join your voice with The Everly Brothers. Sing, “Hello, emptiness!”
Embrace this core Buddhist concept. End your dreamlike sorrow.
And — awake — begin your true life as a Buddha.
The Buddha Times 
“Everlasting, sorrow endures forever”, ouch, that is a poignant line of poetry. May we all not fall into the pit of bathos too often. The way is far too easy sometimes.
Even always having Paris is suffering.
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