| Buddha is nearer to us |
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“You see clearly a man, simple, devout, lonely, battling for light, a vivid human personality, not a myth. Beneath a mass of miraculous fable I feel that there also was a man. He too, gave a message to mankind universal in its character. Many of our best modern ideas are in closest harmony with it. All the miseries and discontents of life are due, he taught, to selfishness. Selfishness takes three forms - one, the desire to satisfy the senses; second, the craving for immortality; and the third the desire for prosperity and worldliness. Before a man can become serene he must cease to live for his senses or himself. Then
he merges into a great being. Buddha in a different language
called men to self-forgetfulness five hundred years before Christ.
In some ways he was near to us and our needs. Buddha was more
lucid upon our individual importance in service than Christ, and less
ambiguous upon the question of personal immortality.”
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H. G. Wells
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