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Home Up
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Buddhism
is sometimes accused of being pessimistic because it speaks so much
about suffering, but it shrugs off such criticism with a smile, and
asks: "What do you say?"
Around
1880, Sir Edwin Arnold wrote an account of the Buddha’s life in
poem-form, entitled, The Light of Asia. Here is a verse from
it:
Ask of the sick, the mourners, ask of him
Who tottereth on his staff, lone and forlorn:
"Liketh thee life?"—these say the babe is wise
That weepeth, being born.
Who
can say there is more happiness and enjoyment in life than pain and
sorrow—or even as much? We have only to
look around us, at the overflowing hospitals, Homes for the Aged,
Asylums for the insane, deformed, mentally-retarded, at the unspeakable
horrors of war, and man’s inhumanity to man, etc., to realize that
Hell is not a myth.
In
spite of the suffering that always accompanies life, however, human
beings—unlike other animals, which live by
instinct—have developed and made progress.
Indeed, had it not been for the suffering to impel and motivate us,
coupled with our ability to criticize, visualize, imagine and assess, we
might still be living in caves!
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Life is suffering,
it is true,
but it also
provides us with
opportunities to
learn.
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