all this even as any other of you; was I not alone when I was seeking wisdom in the wilderness?

"And yet what would I have gained by wailing and lamenting either for myself or for others? Would it have brought to me any solace from my loneliness? Would it have been any help to those whom I had lelt? There is nothing that can happen to us, however terrible, however miserable, that can justify tears and lamentations and make them aught but a weakness."

It is indeed true that the Buddha recognises the existence of suffering and misery as honestly and fully as the deepest pessimist. It is also true that he insists strongly on the necessity of renouncing all sensuality, worldly ambitions, and feverish cravings, and the longing for mere life as such here or in another world. If he condemns as worthless what men generally consider natural and valuable, he does so because he finds them to be defilements (acrava) which stand as obstacles in the way of attaining perfect bliss. Worldly ambitions arise from a cleaving to things changeable, and as such cannot but prove dangerous. Life for its own sake is not worth living. If mere existence satisfied us, we should want for nothing. On the other hand, man finds delight only when he is struggling for the satisfaction of some want. When he has nothing to struggle for, man feels the emptiness of life in the form of boredom. Man's hankering for the strange and unusual proves beyond doubt how much he feels the tedium of ordinary life. Mere quantity of life, without quality, stands self-condemned. A life worth living is one that is full of active aspiration for something higher and nobler, a life full of culture and refinement, philosophic enthusiasm and earnest devotion to the good of others. And of such life the Dharma can never say we have enough. Often and often the Buddhistic books impress upon us the necessity of such life. Here is what the Sutra of four perfections says about the life worthy of an aspirant after bodhi

"What is the fruit of the thought of the bodhisatva? Answer:-Higher morality, higher perception of truth, great love, great pity. A spirit exempt from anger; a spirit of compassion for the erring; a spirit which forbids falling away from wisdom: a spirit of perseverance to the end."

"What is his rule of duty?—To attach himself with high desire to all laws of virtue; not to despise the ignorant ; to be a friend to all men ; to expect no more from new births." "What his bliss?—The joy of having seen a Buddha, of having heard the Dharma; of not repenting in giving; of having procured the good of all creatures."

"What his health?—The sound body, the mind not drawn to perishing things; bringing all beings into right and equal condition; freedom from doubt on every point relating to the Dharma."

"To what should he adhere ?-To meditation; to beneficence; to compassionative love; to the discipline of wisdom."

"Since consciousness, body, life, self are impermanent, therefore, is there pefection in morality, in tranquillity, in wisdom, in release."

The Blessed One has nowhere condemned all life, because it results, and must inevitably result, in more pain than bliss. No doubt all life is a struggle of some sort, and struggle we must to live. Were this struggle, as Christianity teaches, the result of sin, and the misery accompanying it a punishment from heaven, this world would be the worst possible and we should be driven to pessimism. But the Dharma teaches that the painfulness of this struggle arises from our point of view. Life is so miserable, because we struggle in the interest of self, and not in the interest of truth and righteousness. How can he be happy gles in life with envy, hatred, and lust, so that may be great or powerful, rich or famous? anxious about his personal happiness must full of fear. He may be indifferent to the fellow-beings, he may have his fill of the the world, but he cannot be blind to the fact that the same end awaits us all. He alone can be truly happy who has realised that life and death are one. He who resigns to death that which belongs to death will be calm and self-possessed, whatever be his fate. Man may try to console himself with all sorts of chimeras and falsehoods, but experience shows how reluctant men are to die, whether they be pessimists or devout believers in a future life in a

who strughe himself He that is necessarily be misery of his good things of

happy world. Just four days before his death, Charles Renouvier, a famous French philosopher, wrote:-"I have no illusions regarding my condition. I know that I am soon to die, in a week or, perhaps, two, and yet I have so many things to say about our doctrine. At my age one has no right to hope. One's days or one's hours are numbered. I must be resigned...... I cannot die without regret that I can in no way foresee what will become of my ideas. Besides I am going before I have said my last word. One always has to leave before terminating one's task. This is one of the saddest of the sadnesses of life...... This is not all. When one is old, very old, habituated to life, it is very difficult to die. I readily believe that young people accept the idea of death more easily than the old. When one is beyond eighty years, he becomes cowardly and does not wish to die, and when one knows beyond question that death is near, a feeling of melancholy pervades the soul......I have studied the question in all its aspects. I know that I am going to die. It is not the philosopher in me that protests. The philosopher in me does not believe in death, it is the old man who has not the courage to face the inevitable. However, one must be resigned." These words illustrate how men are blindly athirst for life. This thirst cannot be got rid of except by the complete liberation from the illusion of self. Hence, according to the Dharma, what we should strive for is not life but peace, the Great Peace of Nirvāņa.

If the Buddha has taught us the vanity of grief and the selfishness of sorrow, if he has taught us to be resigned before the inevitable, he has also shown us the means of attaining true happiness. The Blessed One has fully recognised the fact that the world runs desperately after happiness in some form or other. But he has at the same time pointed out that happiness will not be found if it is directly sought, just as one aiming at the bull's eye of a target inevitably misses it. Nay more; the Dharma teaches that life would not be worth living, if its goal were the mere satisfaction of egoistic desires. If happiness in the eudomonistic sense were the ideal of human life, it were better to return to the savage, if not the animal, state. Can it be denied that the

animal and the savage are more happy than the civilized man of culture? No doubt civilization and culture have removed many evils and created many new comforts, but with them also have come into existence many new previously unknown sufferings, which are becoming keener and more intense with advancing refinement and increasing sensibility. While the animal suffers from actually existing pain, man's reason makes him multiply his afflictions by anticipation and rumination. As Kant has said, if the special purpose of a being endowed with reason and will were only its self-preservation and prosperity, or, in a word, its happiness as ordinarily understood, the creature has been badly equipped to secure the end in view. A pig with its instincts is perfectly happy, while a Socrates highly endowed with reason is always unhappy. Accordingly, the goal set before man by the Dharma is not happiness but perfection. "And who have perfection? Is it the pleasure-loving, or the painstaking? The right answer is: The painstaking, not the easy-going." But he who attains perfection also enjoys the bliss arising from the complete realization of his being. In one place the Buddha says: "Of those that live happily in this world am I also one." As the Dhammapada says, he who attaches himself to the teaching of the Buddha lives happily free from ailments among the careworn, free from repining among men sick at heart, free from greed among men overpowered by greed, free from ill-will among the hating. He who has overcome all hindrances brightens the world like the moon free from clouds, and like the celestials feeds upon changeless bliss.

"Happily then let us live,

Joyously our service give,

Quench all pining, hate and greed:

Happy is the life we lead."-Dhammapada,

197-200.

A tree is judged by its fruit. Were Buddhism, as some writers try to make out, a dark and dreary creed characterised by a feeling of melancholy which bemoans the unreality of being, what should have been its effect upon the peoples professing it? They should be gloomy, cheerless, and entirely apathetic to all that interests man in life. But what is the reality? Has there been any people on the face of the earth more cheerful and happy than the Buddhists of Burma. Says Mr. Scott O'Connor in The Silken East: "Yet of all peoples of the earth the Burmese are probably the happiest. Most of the requisites of the modern Utopias they already possess: leisure, independence, absolute equality, the nearest approach to a perfect distribution of wealth; in addition a happy temper cheerful in all adversities. Who is there in the world who would not wish for some at least of these things for himself? And many, struggling with all the problems of modern life, of pauperism, of congestion in great cities, with social hatreds. and the deep antagonism of classes, look in vain as for an unattainable thing for what the Burmese race, as a whole, has attained." Much the same can be said of the Siamese and the Japanese. There is nothing in the life of any people professing Buddhism which can give any room for characterising the faith which they profess as a 'religion of despair.' How dreary, on the contrary, must be a religion which makes its adherents bow down in submissive awe before a terrible monster who revels in preying over the weak? True religion is not that which turns man into a cur, but that which makes him more of a man and removes from him the feeling of dependence. The Dharma makes man free by raising him, through self-culture and self-control, to the supreme heights of perfection.

Man has furthered evolution unconsciously and for personal ends, but the Dharma teaches that it is his duty to do so deliberately and systematically for the attainment of