Suffering plainly is real, and in this world, the pains of this world cannot be avoided. You can be born in the lap of luxury to loving parents, and live a fulfilling life doing useful work. You can see the world, fall deeply in love, bring up a happy family, and live in health to an old age, and then everything you built and knew will fall away. You will have to begin again, in some way. This cannot be avoided.
But suffering can be processed. It can be digested, like food, like drink. The task is to become stronger, more able to do this; to become larger and in becoming larger to become wiser, and thus more useful.
In a true spiritual path I believe you are lost most of the time. The sense of being lost, too, is a suffering, and that, too, can be transcended. I increasingly believe that what the modern world most needs is a recovery of the sense of the magic of time and place, of the moment, of the world. You can live forever in every moment you truly feel flowing through. We are surrounded by rivers, and choose to stay on the shore.
It feels to me like the authentic spirit of Buddhism passed away with the growth of the monasteries, with the growth of barriers to life, to the wilderness, to the wild beasts, randomness, and to most forms of unplanned loss.
This is what I feel today.