..續本文上一頁 be liberated from matter; soul must be delivered from the bonds of the body. The passions of the body must be subdued even by force; body becomes the eternal enemy of the spirit which can only be overcome “by prayer and fasting” (Mt. 17: 21).
This kind of idealism will easily lead to pretension, simulation, deceit, hypocrisy; it is much more dangerous than materialism; for materialism may make a man bad and that is the end of it; but idealism will sublimate the evil and call it good; egoism becomes an eternal soul; killing becomes justice; nations are suppressed for the sake of freedom, and God in heaven is thanked for a victory here on earth.
Thus idealism becomes fanaticism. Surely, that is “painful, ignoble, leading to no good.” Between the two, not as a meeting-place, not as a compromise of the two extremes of materialistic self-indulgence and idealistic self-denial but “avoiding both” the Blessed One has found the Middle Path, a path not of mediocrity, but of the highest truth and attainment, “giving knowledge and wisdom,” not in the wavering of speculation, not in the excitement of discussion, but “in tranquillity of mind and penetrative insight, leading to Enlightenment and Deliverance,” enlightenment with regard to the real nature of things, deliverance from all suffering and its cause.
Thus the Noble Eightfold Path, though a path of earnest striving, unremitting endeavour, and perseverance till the end, can only be entered upon by right understanding of the Truth.
With this we arrive again at the old question, which remained unanswered 1900 years ago: “What is truth
” (John 18:38).
Truth is usually defined as the correspondence between the intellect and the object. The intellect, however, being the act of understanding, can increase. But increase and growth involve change. Thus even truth is subject to change. This is called subjective truth.
Of a purely objective truth we can know nothing, because any experience of it would make it subjective. Truth, therefore, is not something existing in itself, but is a mental experience. Now, that experience will not be the same in all.
No one expects a child of four to have the same religious notions as a college-student; and an adult”s experience will be quite different again. There is growth in truth, and for that very reason it cannot be proved, but only be experienced. Proved can only be that which is static, has the nature of an entity.
Therefore, to understand that truth is a process, that truth is actuality, that is Right Understanding.
And what is actual
That all component things are sorrow-fraught. This is the First Noble Truth.
Birth is called Suffering, because becoming itself is the manifestation of the aggregates, the condition sine qua non of all misery, and also the evil result of past dissatisfaction.
Decay is called suffering as the dwindling of vitality.
Death is called suffering as the dissolution of the aggregates.
Thus the arising as well as the passing away of the aggregates is a source of woe, the first as potential, the later as actual.
Sorrow is called suffering which results from loss of relations, wealth, health, virtue or right understanding.
Lamentation is the suffering that finds expression in weeping and crying.
Pain is the suffering of bodily discomfort.
Grief is the suffering of mental disagreement.
Despair is the suffering of worry and mental unrest.
“To be associated with things one dislikes, to be separated from things one likes, not to get what one wishes—that also is suffering.”
This together with the last two, viz. grief and despair represent the mental characteristic of suffering.
Finally and summarily “the five aggregates of clinging (pa.tcupadaanakkhandhaa) are suffering,” by …
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