..續本文上一頁t irritations, boredom, frusrtations, to actual ganger mental and physical pain. To be able to comprehend dukkha fully, one must be able to take into consideration the entire process of perpetual wandering in Sansara, the long chain of rebirths, and not merely one single-life-time which may sometimes not be very painful. On the other hand, no right thinking man who who sees the vast process of suffering around him in this world can be happy and unmoved by it even though he may not be having a bad quota of suffering due to his good kamma in the past.

　　The problem of suffering is universally recognised. It has grappled the attention of thinkers, theologicians and religionists in all climes and ages. In the words of a Hebrew prophet, "Man is born to trouble as sparks fly upwards." It was the celebrated Greek poet Homer who said, "For men on earth it”s better not to be born at all, or being born to pass through the gates of Hades with all speed." Socrates the sage of Greece, remarked that, if the troubles of men were to be reshuffled and distributed, each man would be content with his own quota, and would not like to share that of another. So much steeped and ingrained in suffering is the world.

　　Let us look at the forests and the ocean depth. Here the stronger preys upon the weaker. Amongst men too, the economically stronger preys upon the weaker by exploitation of labour. The whole of creation can be summed by in the words "eating and avoiding being eaten". Sir Edwin Arnold remarks of in his "Light of Asia".

　　"Beauteous is the earth,

　　but all its forest-broods, Plot mutual slaughter, hungering to live,

　　Of sapphire are the skies,

　　but when men cry Famished, no drops they give".

　　It was Tennyson the son of a Clergyman, who wrote, "Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break." Instances can be multiplied from the world”s literature to show that the keynote that underlines existence is suffering. It is on this central theme that the Buddha built up his doctrine. He too was concerned with the same problem which confronted all thinkers. "One thing do I teach," declared the Buddha, "and that is suffering and how to get rid of it." Elsewhere the Buddha has said, that just as there is one flavour in the ocean, and that the taste of salt, there is one flavour in my doctrine, and that the flavour of deliverence from suffering. The Four Noble Truths are the heart-core and corner stone of the Buddha·Dharma. Of these truths, the first is the recognition of the universality of suffering.

　　Thus we see that the Buddha-Dharma is founded on facts which can be verified by our own experience, and not on any sort of dogma, or speculative assumption, and not to be accepted of faith alone, e.g. "In the beginning God created heaven and earth", The truth of suffering can be verified by each inpidual for himself, because life is one big picture dominated by suffering. Those natural and reared on the obsession that life was created and is maintained by a merciful God, would find this truth distasteful, because it exposes the imperfection of the Creator and his handwork. The five solutions offered in Christian Theology to the problem of suffering and its compatibility with the concept of a merciful Creator have been found to be unsatisfactory and founded on logic as has been explained and admitted by Alstair M. Maclntyre* in his book "Problems of Christian Belief".

　　The beliver in God fights shy of the truth of suffering because, it furnishes damning evidence against the all-merciful, and all-powerful concept attributed to the Creator. In this connection the words of Sir Charles Bradlaught are worth quoting:

　　"The existence of evil (suffering) is a terrible stumbling block to the theist.

　　Pain, misery, crime, poverty confronts the advocates of e…

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