The Three Basic Facts of Existence II: Suffering (Dukkha) - Buddhist ...

entertainers and the hysterics of the juvenile crowds in the balls are only equalled by theirparents in the clubs or around the sports arenas.It is told of the Buddha that he likened mankind to fish in a fast drying pool, whose franticstruggles to escape only churned up the mud and choked them. “What he would have thoughtof modern society is beyond words! Where in this picture can you find “faith and virtue,wisdom, generosity and lore?”In her introduction to the Sigâlovâda Sutta, Mrs. C.A.F. Rhys-Davids intersperses her comment withquotations from Buddhaghosa, who wrote in the 5 th century AD, and has this to say of the code ofethics for the layman as therein set out:“The Buddha’s doctrine of love and goodwill between man and man is here set forth in asystem of domestic and social ethics with more comprehensive detail than elsewhere.Nothing in the duties of housemen is left unmentioned. So fundamental are the humaninterests involved, so sane and wide is the wisdom that envisages them, that the utterancesare as fresh and practically as binding today and here as they were then at Râjagaha. Happywould have been the village or the clan on the banks of the Ganges, where the people were full ofthe kindly spirit of fellow feeling, the noble spirit of justice, which breathes through these naive andsimple sayings. Not less happy would be the village or family on the banks of the Thames ofwhich this could be said.”And to up-date Mrs. Rhys-Davids, the same applies to any city, town or village on river, shore,or hinterland in 1967.To find a solution to any problem it is first necessary to understand the problem itself. Whythen, or how, has man so degenerated “spiritually” (for want of a better word) when he hasmade such phenomenal strides scientifically?Until two centuries ago, much of the world beyond the Euro-Asian continents and theMediterranean fringe of Africa was comparatively unknown territory, and the aboriginalpopulation of the Americas, Australia, Oceania, and most of Africa, were primitive peoplesfinding food, clothing, and shelter by local hunting or agriculture. Today every last mile of thecontinents, and island of the oceans, has been brought within the ambit of so-called civilization,and willy-nilly tied to the “wheels of progress” with their accompanying evils.“How can progress be evil?” you may ask, and the fact that the question is raised indicatesthat “lopsided thinking” to which we have referred.The Indians of South, Central, and North America today are less happy as “second-classcitizens” than were their ancestors. The aborigines of Australia are struggling for recognition as“people,” and still lack the amenities of full citizenship. The inhabitants of the South Seas havelittle to thank the white man for when compared with the introduced epidemics and disease hebrought them. Africa is in turmoil as the natives strive to emulate the “processes of civilization,”and determine right by might. Tibet is being “liberated” from feudalism and “civilised” bybloodshed and oppression. This is the “progress” of which we are so proud!The great incentive in life is the search for happiness at whatever level of development manmay stand. All religions, all political ideologies, all avenues of sensual pleasures, are based onsatisfying that search. The hope of Heaven, Paradise, Sukhavati or Nibbâna is to escape fromsuffering and find final happiness with its cessation.In politics, one ideology sees happiness in freedom from want under state ownership, andcontrol of the distribution of commodities. Another sees happiness in free enterprise, and agovernment of the people, by the people, for the people. Unfortunately, both fail in two ways.First, it is impossible to regiment personal thinking as apart from action, with the result that in37