What I lazily group under the general label bourgeois are attempts to deal with the problem of suffering by avoiding it. Nowadays such avoidance usually involves spending money on comforts, distractions, titillation, holidays. In contrast, a spiritual life struggles to understand suffering by facing it, embracing it and burrowing beneath it to an empty ground where pleasure and pain are of little consequence. This is exactly what happens during meditation: after some time every session becomes difficult – painful, physically and psychologically – but you persevere and sink into a broader deeper space, which we call peace, and compassionately watch over the self struggling with trivialities.