..續本文上一頁ternal goodness, and challenge with unanswerable potency his declaration of Diety as all-good, and ail-powerful"

　　Robert Blatchford in his "God and My Neighbour" wrote:

　　"The world is full of sorrow, pain, hatred, crime and war. If God is a tender, loving, all knowing, and all-powerful heavenly father, why did he build a world on such cruel lines

　　 Why does he not give the world, peace, health, and happiness

　　"

　　Thomas Huxely presented the truth of suffering with devastating effect on the Creator-God concept, when he said:

　　"Since thousands of times a minute, were our ears only sharp enough, we should hear the sighs and groans, and pains like those heard by Dante at the gate of Hell, the world cannot be governed by a benevolent God."

　　Professor Leuba, of Brian Maw College has questioned the scientists of America in a circular, and discovered that more than half of them did not believe in a personal God, nor in a personal immortality. Therefore, it is no wonder that Bishop Ayer of New York lamented in his book, "God Answers Man”s Doubts":- "Higher education is becoming viciously antagonistic to Christianity ... One must admit that there are times when atheism seems logical even if a cold and heartless answer to the problem in this sense."

　　"Thus we will have to agree with Professor W. T. Stace of Princeton University, U.SA the author of "Buddha or Christ" that "while modern science makes a shipwreck of Christianity, it does not touch Buddhism". Indeed, it is this scientific and rational approach so fateful to Christianity that is favourable to the spread of Buddhism in the West.

　　Therefore, the Buddha exhorts us to follow the Noble Eightfold Path and make an end of the sufferings in Sansara. The delusion called attachment to existence has to be abandoned by under standing the true nature of life in the light of the knowledge of the First Noble Truth-viz. Suffering (in Pali, Dukkha). This understanding is conducive to progress on the Noble Eightfold Path.

　　Therefore it is said in verse 288 of the Dhammapada:-

　　"When with wisdom one does see, that in all things there”s no felicity. Disgusted with ill, he will be Treading the path to purity"

　　In Pali:Sabbe sankahara dukka ti

　　Yada Pannaya pasati Atha nibbhindai dukkhe Esa maggo visudhiya"

　　Anatma:

　　The third feature of all forms of existence is Anatma, or the absence of anything, enduring, or an Ego. This is the most difficult of the Buddha”s teaching. All, other religious systems including the six systems of Hindu philosophy, teach that there is something enduring permanently in man, and that they call the "soul". The Buddha was the only teacher who was able to overcome this universal illusion. Plato ard the Greek philosophers spoke of the immortality of the soul. They have mistaken the impermanent stream of consciousness that exists in a flux and manifests itself from one life to another, for an immortal soul.

　　The Buddha rejected the all theories regarding the immortality of the soul, and said that the mind of man undergoes change even more rapidly than the body, and there is no place for a soul in either the mind or the body. The mind-flux that persists during one”s life and remanifests itself in a new life after death is not to be mistaken for an unchanging, eternal soul. According to the Buddha, the illusion that this mind-flux is an eternal soul, imutable and changeless is the greatest of all delusions. The fallacy is the cause of all trammells, and unrest in the world.

　　"The Ego-illusion is the cause of all passions and defilements" worte Santideva in his classic "Bodhichariyavatara". As Santideva is a Mahayanist teacher, this is sufficient proof that the Anatma doctrine is accepted by the Mahayana Buddhists. The ego-illusion is a deep-seated fallacy in the human mind, and …

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