Coomaraswamy argued that the Occidental culture is based on greed and it has no future. On the other hand, under the guidance of sages, who preached the principles of duty, justice and morality, governments in the Orient have been based on benevolence, and securing welfare and happiness of the people. To quote from Dhammapada, part of Pali Buddhist canon, dealing with happiness, pleasure, anger, thirst, the Bhikshu (mendicant), and the Brahmana (Arhat) (Max Muller, 1965a, 200):
Let us live happily then, though we call nothing our own! We shall be like the bright gods, feeding on happiness.
To quote from Sangharakshita (1967, 105-106):
…it is obvious that corresponding to the term ‘man’ (pudgala), or to such terms as ‘being’ (sattva), ‘living being’ (jiva), and ‘self’ (atman), there exists no unchanging substantial entity but only an ever-changing stream of physical and psychical (including mental and spiritual) events outside which no such entity can be discerned. Hence, there can be no such thing, either, as human nature in the sense of a fixed and determinate quality or condition holding good of such an entity at all times and places and under all possible circumstances. Human nature is in reality a no-nature. Though capable of unspeakable wickedness man is not, for that reason, essentially and by very definition a miserable sinner, as some believe; neither is he ‘in reality’ a stainless immortal spirit, as supposed by others. Man is in fact indefinable. |
One may therefore infer that the goal of life is liberation and to attain the state of Great Emptiness. In reality there is no difference between an ordinary person and a Buddha. By losing the biases towards sensuous desires, desire for continued existence and attaining spiritual wisdom a person attains generalized love (maitri) and compassion (karuna).
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