Problems Bared, Essays on Buddhism

86
What is needed is not political science in Buddhism, but a scientific
attitude, i.e., the spirit of enquiry and investigation, instead of
a docile acceptance of dogmatism, as found in books or texts. It is
so easy to say that all things are sorrowful when we hear a baby cry.
It is so easy to console ourselves, when another of those fine chinaware
cups get broken, by saying that all things are impermanent.
It is so easy to postpone any serious thinking about problems and
conflicts by reminding ourselves that saṁsāra is long. But surely,
that is not the scientific, the intelligent attitude, which (we are never
slow to tell the world at large) is the most salient characteristic of
the Dhamma, so much so that some like to say that Buddhism is
not a religion at all.
One of the main reasons for our faithful acceptance of dogmatic
propositions is our lack of co-ordination in our perceptions, through
which lack we fail, to investigate, analyse, compare, synthesise and
understand. We know and we repeat, but, we do not understand, we
do not comprehend. We have knowledge, but no insight. We know
the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the formula of
Dependent Origination, also in reverse order and in a negative way:
“Dependent on ignorance arises karma, and with the cessation of
ignorance there is also the cessation of karma”. But nothing is done
to make ignorance cease, and thus karma accumulates and saṁsāra
continues, happily and in sorrow.
The Noble Eightfold Path said to be a path leading to the cessation
of conflict (dukkha-nirodha-gāmini-paṭipadā). Still, how many
have made serious enquiries about this path?
Let us do it now.
The Aṅguttara Nikāya, one of the five main divisions of the
collection of sayings of the Buddha, called the Sutta Pitaka, has an
arrangement of those discourses all its own. For, here the Suttas
are not grouped according to length, or to subject, or to place of
occasion, but according to number. Thus, a discourse on the five
aggregates of existence (pañcakkhandha) will be found in the Book