Evading suffering is _itself_ a form of suffering

This could probably be thought of as "fear and anxiety are forms of suffering." Though it might be a bit more nuanced than that.

It's all about getting sucked into dreams. Once you're sucked into a dream, win or lose, you're still in the dream.

This is where Vipassana comes in.

Isn't that the basic Buddhist / stoic idea? Avoiding suffering entirely isn't possible, and obsessing about evading it is itself a heavy burden, instead choose to accept and be at peace with the suffering that is beyond your control.

I don't believe that "be[ing] at peace with suffering" is core to Buddhism. The ending of suffering is.
"In order to heighten his pleasure, man deliberately increases his needs, which were originally only a little more difficult to satisfy than those of the animal; hence luxury, delicacies, tobacco, opium, alcohol, pomp, display, and all that goes with this."
Arthur Schopenhauer
I’ve heard it put as “all life is suffering”. It can be a bit dark, depending on one’s headspace, but liberating if simply accepted.
- Like St. Vincent said: We're all born screaming
- I can't see it as anything other than a logical fact. If you are alive, you will ineveitably face loss, disease, countless other things outside of your control. The phrasing I read was "to live is to suffer" which is the same in the end.
- i always read it a bit different
  all life is suffering means literally that. suffering is just another term for the process of being alive. suffering is the experience of all our emotions and everything that we can do in the world. this is suffering, contrasting it to the coldness and stoicism of death.
- as a buddhist i think this refers to the inherent struggle that is life itself. every organism is born hungry and needs to fight that constant hunger or die. life IS suffering, because only the living need to fight for every minute to just exist., All of our existential suffering falls from that.
  What buddha taught is that it's our gift to be able to be present in the moment and observe the sensations that arise from all this suffering without suffering directly.
As someone who is cautious on stairs, and has fallen on stairs, i can tell you that every second of worrying is worth avoiding the fall.

Evading work takes a lot of work.

Always have something in your hand, a slightly irritated but thoughtful expression on your face, and call in a bomb threat if you get stuck napping under your desk while your boss is in your office waiting for you

I’ve come to the conclusion that suffering is really just anything that invades your focus without your desire for it to happen.

Thinking about anything you would rather not think about is suffering. You get cut and your brain constantly reminds you of it because evolution is a bitch. Hatred, envy, anger, intrusive thoughts, headaches, itchy clothes, annoying noises in your environment, etc. Anything that steals your attention without your consent is suffering.

So if you’re so focused on avoiding suffering you aren’t able to focus on doing what you want then yep, suffering.

I'd mostly agree that suffering invades your mind without your desire for it to happen.
But so does pleasure, surprise, beauty. Those too can't be forced to happen, they're discovered.
- True, but in those cases you don’t want them to stop, unless of course, you are getting distracted by them and would like to stop in which case: suffering. Context is more important than raw qualia.
anything that invades your focus without your desire for it to happen.
i guess some call that "harassment"
and i guess it's that much of a problem in today's time because people are simply exposed to too many signals. that makes signals too much and unfavorable, which we call harassment.
so, in a certain way, the fact that we perceive things as "harassment" is due to the internet, since that's where the majority of signals come from these days.

I mean, I think you may be overselling the word "suffering." I wouldn't put "working so I don't starve" in the same category as "starving to death."

If "suffering" just means "anything I don't 100% love," then it's effectively meaningless, no?

I meant it more in the context of mental health