Life sucks. Why?: The Buddhist view on why we experience life as unsatisfactory

Listed on Mindfulness & MBCT Key Resources of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre of the University of Oxford, this book is a must-read for mindfulness teachers, mindfulness practitioners and all interested in Buddhism.

"Life is suffering" is the first noble truth in Buddhism. Why life sucks is explained by the Buddha through the khandhā, which some call the Buddhist psychology.

The khandhā is the perceptual and cognitive process through which we deal with what happens to us in life. Clinging to the khandhā creates behaviour patterns, similar to how road tracks are created by the wheels of a cart deepening the track in the road by following it over and over again. Once you see the process, you can start to overcome the suffering and live happily, even if painful events happen.

The teachings provided by Buddhism are key to mindfulness teachers to enable understanding the fundaments of mindfulness. The many practical exercises, meditations and short summaries help practitioners in their day to day life. If you want to learn and live the Buddha's teachings, you will rejoice in the many quotations and references from the Pali canon sources and Buddhist scholars.

Willem Kuyken, Ritblat Professor of Mindfulness and Psychological Science, University of Oxford:
"A beautiful work, distilling ancient ideas so they are very real and useable to us all in leading our lives. What a masterful piece of applied scholarship!"