hism, why men are unhappy is that they are alive.
Life and sorrow are inseparable--nay, they are one and the same thing.
The mere fact of being alive is a misery. When you have clear eyes and
discern the truth, you shall see this without a doubt, says the
Buddhist. For consider, What man has ever sat down and said: 'Now am I
in perfect happiness; just as I now am would I like to remain for ever
and for ever without change'? No man has ever done so. What men desire
is change. They weary of the present, and desire the future; and when
the future comes they find it no better than the past. Happiness lies in
yesterday and in to-morrow, but never in to-day. In youth we look
forward, in age we look back. What is change but the death of the
present? Life is change, and change is death, so says the Buddhist. Men
shudder at and fear death, and yet death and life are the same
thing--inseparable, indistinguishable, and one with sorrow. We men who
desire life are as men athirst and drinking of the sea. Every drop we
drink of the poisoned sea of existence urges on men surely to greater
thirst still. Yet we drink on blindly, and say that we are athirst.

This is the explanation of Buddhism. The world is unhappy because it is
alive, because it does not see that what it should strive for is not
life, not change and hurry and discontent and death, but peace--the
Great Peace. There is the goal to which a man should strive.

See now how different it is from the Christian theory. In Christianity
there are two lives--this and the next. The present is evil, because it
is under the empire of the devil--the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The next will be beautiful, because it is under the reign of God, and
the devil cannot intrude.

But Buddhism acknowledges only one life--an existence that has come from
the forever, that may extend to the forever. If this life is evil, then
is all life evil, and happiness can live but in peace, in surcease from
the troubles of this weary world. If, then, a man desire happiness--and
in all faiths that is the desired end--he must strive to attain peace.
This, again, is not a difficult idea to understand. It seems to me so
simple that, when once it has been listened to, it may be understood by
a child. I do not say believed and followed, but understood. Belief is a
different matter. 'The law is deep; it is difficult to know and to
believe it. It is very sublime, and can be comprehended only by means of
earne