We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for

Host: The monastery courtyard shimmered beneath the morning mist. The air was cool, fragrant with wet bamboo and the distant smoke of incense curling into pale sky. A small bell sounded, its note soft but infinite, rippling across the still pond where lotus blossoms floated like patient souls.

Jack sat on the worn stone steps, shoes off, elbows on his knees, watching his breath condense in the chill air. Silence clung to him like a second skin. Across from him, Jeeny knelt in the grass, her palms resting on her thighs, her eyes steady but kind.

Host: Around them, monks moved slowly, deliberately — each gesture a sentence of calm, each step an act of faith in the present moment.

Jeeny: “Thich Nhat Hanh once said, ‘We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.’”

Jack: (softly) “He always makes suffering sound so… sacred.”

Jeeny: “Because it is. It’s the ground that joy grows from. Without it, happiness is just decoration.”

Jack: “That’s hard to hear. We spend our whole lives avoiding pain — numbing it, distracting from it, calling it failure.”

Jeeny: “And in doing so, we forget that pain isn’t punishment. It’s transformation.”

Host: The breeze stirred, rustling through the prayer flags strung between two trees. The colored cloths fluttered like quiet flames, each one whispering a message the wind carried onward.

Jack: “You really believe that? That we need suffering to be happy?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Not because pain is good, but because it’s honest. It strips away illusion. It teaches you what happiness actually costs.”

Jack: “And what’s that?”

Jeeny: “Presence. Gratitude. The ability to see beauty even when your heart’s still bruised.”

Jack: “So happiness isn’t the opposite of suffering — it’s the other side of it.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. One gives birth to the other.”

Host: The sun broke through the fog then — not fully, but enough to turn the mist gold. The sound of a bamboo flute drifted from somewhere unseen, the melody simple, ancient, perfectly human.

Jack: “You know, we live in a world that markets happiness like it’s a product. Quick. Polished. Pain-free. No one tells you that joy and sorrow come from the same well.”

Jeeny: “That’s why we’re exhausted — because we keep trying to drink from one and deny the other.”

Jack: “So you’re saying we have to let ourselves suffer?”

Jeeny: “Not seek it, but welcome it when it comes. To stop running long enough to listen to what it’s trying to teach.”

Host: A leaf fell between them, soft as breath, landing on the stone. Neither moved to pick it up. The moment was whole in its simplicity.

Jack: “It’s strange, though — the idea that joy doesn’t come from escape, but from endurance.”

Jeeny: “Endurance and awareness. When you stop fighting suffering, it loses its power to define you. It becomes the doorway to understanding.”

Jack: “Understanding of what?”

Jeeny: “Of yourself. Of others. Of the impermanence of everything you cling to.”

Host: She paused, her voice low, like water running over smooth stones.

Jeeny: “You know, Thich Nhat Hanh used to tell his students that suffering is not a punishment — it’s compost. Without it, no flower can bloom.”

Jack: (smiling faintly) “So happiness is just the blossom of well-tended pain.”

Jeeny: “Yes. Pain accepted, not avoided.”

Host: The flute fell silent, replaced by the sound of monks chanting somewhere deeper in the temple. The words — foreign, fluid, tender — folded into the morning air like prayer returning home.

Jack: “You know, when I was younger, I thought happiness meant freedom from pain. I thought peace meant silence — no conflict, no ache, no reminder.”

Jeeny: “And now?”

Jack: “Now I think peace might be the opposite — not silence, but harmony. Not the absence of pain, but the acceptance of it.”

Jeeny: “That’s it. The heart that knows suffering and still opens — that’s real happiness.”

Host: The sound of water dripped rhythmically from the temple’s eaves — each drop falling into the pond below, rippling, vanishing, and yet somehow returning.

Jack: “I’ve lost people, Jeeny. And for a long time, I kept asking, ‘Why?’ Why them, why me, why this?’ But maybe that question isn’t supposed to be answered.”

Jeeny: “Maybe it’s supposed to be lived. Pain doesn’t need explanation. It just asks for awareness — for you to sit with it long enough to see what remains after it passes.”

Jack: “And what remains?”

Jeeny: “Tenderness. Gratitude. The understanding that joy isn’t found beyond suffering, but within it — like a light under water.”

Host: Her voice trembled slightly, but not from fear. From truth. The kind of truth that feels both heavy and freeing at once.

Jack: “You sound like you’ve practiced this.”

Jeeny: “I’ve survived things that left me no choice.”

Jack: “And did it work? Did pain become joy?”

Jeeny: “Not joy, exactly. But peace. And peace is enough.”

Host: The sun climbed higher, scattering the last of the mist. The courtyard came alive with color — the monks’ robes, the green of moss, the gold of morning light reflected in water.

Jack: “You know, it’s almost ironic — suffering teaches you what’s real, but only when you stop trying to fix it.”

Jeeny: “Because the moment you stop resisting, suffering turns from enemy to teacher.”

Jack: “And happiness stops being an escape, and becomes understanding.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: The wind shifted again, this time warmer, carrying the faint sound of laughter from somewhere deep within the temple — monks laughing, light, genuine, unburdened.

Jack: “That’s what amazes me. They’ve seen death, sickness, loss — yet they laugh like the world is new every morning.”

Jeeny: “Because it is. Every moment you choose to stay present — even in pain — you’re reborn.”

Jack: “So maybe Thich Nhat Hanh wasn’t telling us to chase happiness at all.”

Jeeny: “No. He was teaching us to sit with suffering until it becomes tenderness. Until what once hurt becomes what makes you human.”

Host: The bell rang again, deep and resonant, echoing through the mountains. For a moment, everything stopped — the wind, the breath, even thought — as if the world itself bowed.

Jeeny: “He used to say, ‘No mud, no lotus.’ It’s simple, but it’s everything.”

Jack: “No suffering, no joy.”

Jeeny: “No heartbreak, no compassion.”

Jack: “No loss, no love.”

Host: The stillness returned. The pond reflected both sky and earth — the infinite and the ordinary bound together in one perfect, trembling image.

Host: And as the bell’s echo faded, Thich Nhat Hanh’s words seemed to live again in the quiet air — not as philosophy, but as experience, soft and luminous as the morning itself:

Host: that suffering is not the opposite of happiness, but its root,
that to flee pain is to flee wisdom,
and that the heart that embraces sorrow without resistance finds, within it, the seed of true peace.

Host: For when we stop running, when we breathe into the ache and allow it to unfold —
we discover that every tear, every loss, every wound
was not meant to destroy us,
but to teach us how to bloom.