Each morning, I check out a number of Internet news reports
and commentaries on web sites ranging from the BBC to Truthout.
Reading about current events strongly reinforces for me the acuity
of the Buddha's words: "The world is grounded upon suffering."
Almost daily I am awed by the enormity of the suffering that
assails human beings on every continent, and even more by the
hard truth that so much of this suffering springs not from the
vicissitudes of impersonal nature but from the fires of greed,
hatred, and delusion raging in the human heart.¹

I

Tuco had quit reading the news online.
A dreary stream of difficulty filled the pages with bad news
and little cheery respite. Useless... jolly, yes... but little joy.

He'd turned to other sources
but still, no jolly laughter laced the news.

Tuco saddled up for a ride in the foothills.
He thinks about the fires of greed, hatred and delusion.
The wheel turns. The grain grinds ever finer.
But there be grit thrown in from the stone.

"The world is grounded upon suffering."
Tuco rolled the phrase around his mind,
circled it like a hawk circling a rabbit.
A coyotè poked its head up from the brush
and watched him ride by.

The desert rests quiet, weary.

Tuco thinks about the book he'd been reading,
"The Logic of Failure." Written some years back but still
sobering as it described the issues with not being able to sit with uncertainty.
Grabbing for certainty in complex times is grabbing for straws.

Seeing the immensity of the world's anguish has raised in my mind
questions about the future prospects for Buddhism in the West.
I've been struck by how seldom the theme of global suffering
the palpable suffering of real human beings - is thematically
explored in the Buddhist journals and teachings with which
I am acquainted. It seems to me that we Western Buddhists
tend to dwell in a cognitive space that defines
the first noble truth largely against the background
of our middle-class lifestyles: as the gnawing of discontent;
the ennui of over-satiation; the pain of unfulfilling relationships;
or, with a bow to Buddhist theory, as bondage to the round of rebirths.
Too often, I feel, our focus on these aspects of dukkha²
has made us oblivious to the vast, catastrophic suffering
that daily overwhelms three-fourths of the world's population. ¹

II

As Tuco rode up the slope, he considered the phrasing he'd read.
"the palpable suffering of real human beings" and the bit about how we
"tend to dwell in a cognitive space that defines..." everything
"against the background of our middle-class lifestyles...."
"um, well, yeah," Tuco thought, "surprise."

He turned toward the valley, the sun setting just beyond
and the water long gone from the stream the desert brush and trees
counted on. The water wells pull the deep, unseen lake up
and greens lawns, humidifies desert air - hot is hotter now.

And the ground settles, pipes crack, water flows
under foundations and floors. But not enough
for the deep lake thirsting to flow
where life can grow... far from this ennui...
over where the catastrophic suffering leads young and old
to trek  across this desert  to farm another's land
now that their own is too dry to grow what they used to eat.

Tuco remembered the song Jennifer Warnes sung, "The Well."
"Let's go to the well," she sang. "We can make it, I know we can."
"Let's go to the well. Let's go down to those hills, to the trees
that block the path.... My heart's so full."
"Sometimes my hearts feels like a dandilion,
feels like something is about to begin....
Let's build a bonfire for the stories we'll tell... of the wild years,
the wasted tears."
"We can make it, I know we can...."

They all feel that, each one travelling the road
to a new life. "Let's go to the well,
We can make it, I know we can...."