ing for wisdom in the wilderness?

'And yet what would I have gained by wailing and lamenting either for
myself or for others? Would it have brought to me any solace from my
loneliness? Would it have been any help to those whom I had left? There
is nothing that can happen to us, however terrible, however miserable,
that can justify tears and lamentations and make them aught but a
weakness.'

And so, we are told, in this way the Buddha soothed the affliction of
Ananda, and filled his soul with consolation--the consolation of
resignation.

For there is no other consolation possible but this, resignation to the
inevitable, the conviction of the uselessness of sorrow, the vanity and
selfishness of grief.

There is no meeting again with the dead. Nowhere in the recurring
centuries shall we meet again those whom we have loved, whom we love,
who seem to us to be parts of our very soul. That which survives of us,
the part which is incarnated again and again, until it be fit for
heaven, has nothing to do with love and hate.

Even if in the whirlpool of life our paths should cross again the paths
of those whom we have loved, we are never told that we shall know them
again and love them.

A friend of mine has just lost his mother, and he is very much
distressed. He must have been very fond of her, for although he has a
wife and children, and is happy in his family, he is in great sorrow. He
proposes even to build a pagoda over her remains, a testimony of respect
which in strict Buddhism is reserved to saints. He has been telling me
about this, and how he is trying to get a sacred relic to put in the
pagoda, and I asked him if he never hoped again to meet the soul of his
mother on earth or in heaven, and he answered:

'No. It is very hard, but so are many things, and they have to be borne.
Far better it is to face the truth than to escape by a pleasant
falsehood. There is a Burmese proverb that tells us that all the world
is one vast burial-ground; there are dead men everywhere.'

'One of our great men has said the same,' I answered.

He was not surprised.

'As it is true,' he said, 'I suppose all great men would see it.'

Thus there is no escape, no loophole for a delusive hope, only the
cultivation of the courage of sorrow.

There are never any exceptions to the laws of the Buddha. If a law is a
law, that is the end of it. Just as we know of no exceptions to the law
of gravitation, so there are no exceptions to the