ffering, but an
adequate literary equivalent which can be used consistently in
translating is not forthcoming. The opposite state, sukha, is fairly
rendered by well-being, satisfaction and happiness. Dukkha is the
contrary of this: uneasiness, discomfort, difficulty. Pain or suffering
are too strong as renderings, but no better are to hand. When the Buddha
enlarges on the evils of the world it will be found that the point most
emphasized as vitiating life is its transitoriness.

"Is that which is impermanent sorrow or joy?" he asks of his disciples.
"Sorrow, Lord," is the answer, and this oft-repeated proposition is
always accepted as self-evident. The evils most frequently mentioned are
the great incurable weaknesses of humanity, old age, sickness and death,
and also the weariness of being tied to what we hate, the sadness of
parting from what we love. Another obvious evil is that we cannot get
what we want or achieve our ambitions. Thus the temper which prompts the
Buddha's utterances is not that of Ecclesiastes--the melancholy of
satiety which, having enjoyed all, finds that all is vanity--but rather
the regretful verdict of one who while sympathizing with the nobler
passions--love, ambition, the quest of knowledge--is forced to pronounce
them unsatisfactory. The human mind craves after something which is
permanent, something of which it can say This is mine. It longs to be
something or to produce something which is not transitory and which has
an absolute value in and for itself. But neither in this world nor in
any other world are such states and actions possible. Only in Nirvana do
we find a state which rises above the transitory because it rises above
desire. Not merely human life but all possible existences in all
imaginable heavens must be unsatisfactory, for such existences are
merely human life under favourable conditions. Some great evils, such as
sickness, may be absent but life in heaven must come to an end: it is
not eternal, it is not even permanent, it does not, any more than this
life, contain anything that god or man can call his own. And it may be
observed that when Christian writers attempt to describe the joys of a
heaven which is eternally satisfying, they have mostly to fall back on
negative phrases such as "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard."

The European view of life differs from the Asiatic chiefly in
attributing a value to actions in themselves, and in not being disturbed
by the fact that the