You were the one who wanted to be born as a human being in the first place. We wanted to get into this world, and then we found out that it wasn’t quite what we thought it would be. We didn’t look at the fine print.

"We live in a world where there are lots of influences around us: people, places. Of course, we were the ones who wanted to come here.

I think I’ve told you the story about the nurse who was a victim of a lot of gossip in her workplace. One day when she was feeling especially oppressed by all this, she came to meditate with Ajaan Fuang. She had a vision in her meditation of being in a hall of mirrors: looking in one direction and seeing herself reflected back, back, back, back, back; looking in the other direction and seeing herself reflected back, back, back, back. The vision hinted that she’d probably been the victim of this sort of suffering many, many lifetimes. It made her feel even more oppressed. So she left meditation and talked to Ajaan Fuang about this, hoping that she’d get some comfort from him. Instead, he said, “Well, you were the one who wanted to be born as a human being in the first place.” It was like a slap in the face.

But that’s the case. Each of us wanted to be here, whether we knew it or not. We created the causes, the opportunity came, and here we are. We wanted to get into this world, and then we found out that it wasn’t quite what we thought it would be. We didn’t look at the fine print.

So what are you going to do? You can think of better worlds where you’d like to go, and if you create the causes, you go there. But there are going to be problems in those worlds, too."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Bigger than the World"