INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

COMPLETE WORKS OF DR K.C.VARADACHARI – VOL10
the modern Buddhist, but it would surely be a
translation rather than an exposition of Buddhism.
II
BUDDHISM ABROAD
Buddhism had a wonderful reception at the
beginning. It was a religion of the common man who
has hardly the capacity for deep speculations or
metaphysics. It was a religion with tears in the sense of
a long practice of reading and thinking and believing
and doing activity. Yet it was by far the most epoch
making religion of thought or reason. Practical reason
dictated the discernment of the causes of man’s state,
his misery. But to know that all is misery is surely the
beginning and this required thinking over all the
instances of one’s life and Buddha’s own experience of
the world of fading youth, failing health, fitful fate and
collapse of life were not arguments or proofs for the
existence of evil or misery of the entire world. The
misery of the whole process of man’s life and
environment became recognised as one of the cardinal
tenets of maya-vada or illusory theory. The sermon on
36