The word stress in English is rather imprecise word that can have different meanings to different people. Typically, when people refer to stressful experiences, they generally mean experiences which they don’t like. The Buddhist perspective sees things a little bit differently.
The Buddha described a concept called Dukkha in the Pali language. This concept can be roughly translated as the unsatisfactory nature of all phenomena. For Buddhists, all arisen phenomena are subject to suffering not just the ones we don’t like because we get attached to good feelings and they can’t last forever. In that understanding, all aspects of life are stressful. I am sure many of you have or are living that experience.
It can be comforting to try and disclaim the validity of this truth because nobody wants to think about how bad everything is. However, denial is not an effective way to overcome a problem. If we don’t want to suffer any longer, we first need to accept that it’s happening. The second step is to look towards ultimate truth for our source of happiness rather than grasping for arisen phenomena.
This last point begs for a bit more explanation. We experience stress when we are either lamenting the past or worrying about the future. This is what we call grasping because the mind is attempting to reach forward or backwards in time to alter something. This is of course impossible. We can only take action in the here and now.
If we have an understanding of ultimate truth, i.e., cause and effect, then we can be productive in the present moment. That is where insight meditation comes in. If we gain insight from our spiritual practice, then we know what actions will lead to happiness and what actions will lead to more suffering. Our lives can then become a lot simpler: do good, receive good.