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　　Even the satisfaction bears in itself the seed of fear and discontent, fear owing to its uncertainty, discontent over its impermanence, which is even hidden in the folds of smiling lips, while it leaves one afterwards emptier than ever before.

　　The satisfaction of a want is not a final satisfaction; it seems only to create a new want instead.

　　Modern civilization has made much progress and given to man many comforts. But those very comforts have only made life more complicated; easier communications have made the problems and quarrels of families those of nations. It is like an attempt to reach the horizon; the harder one strives, the greater is the disappointment for not getting nearer the goal.

　　But why then is the goal unattainable

　　It is because the goal exists not in reality but only the mind”s fiction. Not by striving, but by bringing the mind at peace, by giving up even the idea of self, is it possible to attain that rest and equilibrium which form the foun­dation and essence of happiness.

　　But the striving, which is involved even in the attain­ment of states of spiritual absorption (jhaana), is attended with great difficulties and is known as the distressful path (dukkha-pa.tipadaa). It would be interesting to draw a com­parison here with what mediaeval spiritual authors have called “the dark night of the soul.”

　　Thus “dukkha” is not only bodily pain (kaayika dukkha) and mental distress (cetasika dukkha), that is physical and psychological suffering—it is also the ethical, religious experience as opposed to bliss and even the difficulty encoun­tered in the process of attaining that bliss. Nay, even joy and delight itself is called sorrow-fraught: “nandi pi dukkhaa”: not merely because joy and delight are not lasting, but far more because delight is a fetter (nandi-sa.myojana) which will prevent the attainment of perfect freedom.

　　Though delight is thus shown as a source of sorrow, yet sorrow, well understood, can become a source of happiness. Here especially lies the greatness of the Buddha”s teaching—that it shows the deliverance from sorrow and also from pleasure, which leads to sorrow.

　　Like the knowledge of an illness, though painful in itself, may be the reason why one consults a doctor, who finally cures the disease—similarly the understanding of all life as suffering will be the driving force to seek a remedy. And as of all religious teachers only the Buddha has pointed out all life as sorrow-fraught, it is natural that to him we turn in confidence.

　　Confidence is not the same as Faith. For Faith is in things that cannot be known; knowledge destroys faith and faith destroys itself, for it is based on that which it cannot know. Faith is defined (by Pope Pius X) as a real assent of the intellect, thus condemning those Modernists holding that faith is merely a blind feeling about religion in the sub-consciousness.

　　Voltaire said: “The proof of faith is that it is unin­telligible.” “Faith is to believe in something which your reason tells you cannot be true, for if your reason approved of it, there could be no question of blind faith.” (Edwin Montagu).

　　Confidence, however, is not a mental acceptance of that which cannot be known; it is an assured expectation, not of an unknown beyond, but of what can he tested and experienced and understood by every one for oneself (paccatta.m veditabbo vi.t.tuuhi). It is the confidence a student has in his teacher who explains in the classroom the inverse square law of gravitation as stated by Newton. But if the student has heard something of the relativity-theory of Einstein, he will not implicitly believe his teacher and his textbook, but reserve his judgment till the time that he will be able to investigate for himself.

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