=Nirvana.=--To live is to be unhappy, taught Buddha. Every man suffers
because he desires the goods of this world, youth, health, life, and
cannot keep them. All life is a suffering; all suffering is born of
desire. To suppress suffering, it is necessary to root out desire; to
destroy it one must cease from wishing to live, "emancipate one's self
from the thirst of being." The wise man is he who casts aside
everything that attaches to this life and makes it unhappy. One must
cease successively from feeling, wishing, thinking. Then, freed from
passion, volition, even from reflection, he no longer suffers, and
can, after his death, come to the supreme good, which consists in
being delivered from all life and from all suffering. The aim of the
wise man is the annihilation of personality: the Buddhists call it
Nirvana.
=Charity.=--The Brahmans also considered life as a place of suffering
and annihilation as felicity. Buddha came not with a new doctrine, but
with new sentiments.
The religion of the Brahmans was egoistic. Buddha had compassion on
men, he loved them, and preached love to his disciples.
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