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The depression was not incapacitating. It made it hard to take a lot of my suburban life seriously, but that was inextricably mingled with a growing consciousness of the larger brutalities of the world. Ethiopian children were starving on the evening news and genocide was mushrooming in Cambodia. Was I truly depressed or just awakening to the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, the insight that samsaric life is misery? My melancholy seemed like simple realism; if you weren't depressed, you obviously didn't know what was going on.

The depression was not incapacitating. It made it hard to take a lot of my suburban life seriously, but that was inextricably mingled with a growing consciousness of the larger brutalities of the world. Ethiopian children were starving on the evening news and genocide was mushrooming in Cambodia. Was I truly depressed or just awakening to the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, the insight that samsaric life is misery? My melancholy seemed like simple realism; if you weren't depressed, you obviously didn't know what was going on.

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Tim Farrington
Attribution: attributed
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Not established
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Historical period not yet established
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 170099; supplied attribution, independently unverified

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