under delusion, prejudice, narrow-mindedness, bigotry, and superstition, there must be some in the world who are open to conviction, seeking the light of Dharma, Good Law, and those must be saved by all means. If they become enlightened, they will be able to perpetuate my teaching, posterity will learn through them of wisdom and enlightenment, and the truth will not be lost among sentient beings." Thus resolved, the Buddha came out into the world and made Deer Park in Central India the place of his first missionary activity. In describing this event, the Buddhists say that the Wheel of the Good Law, Dharmachakra, has been caused to revolve in this place for the first time in the history of mankind, marking the formal establishment of Buddhism.

The Buddha's long life of near ninety years consisted in never-tiring peregrinations along the banks of the Ganges and over the plains of Central India. He died while thus traveling, and there were present at the time only a few of his disciples surrounding his death-bed. His body was cremated and distributed among eight principal Buddhist kings of India who wished to honor their spiritual benefactor, each by erecting a splendid stupa or pagoda over his earthly remains.

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Having thus roughly sketched the life of the founder of Buddhism, we ask now what is the

[paragraph continues] Wheel of the Good Law caused by him to revolve more than twenty-four centuries ago.

The most powerful motive that influenced Buddha, who was a royal prince, to abandon all his claims to the earthly advantages and to live a monkish, retiring, contemplative life, was his deep insight into the nature of life. He knew that life as it is lived by most of sentient beings was no more than a series of sufferings, for in trying to escape one misery they invariably fall into another misery which is perhaps greater and heavier to endure. He asked himself whether this misery could be exterminated. To ascertain this it was necessary to find out the real fundamental cause of it all. The removal of the cause was the removal of the effect.

In Ignorance he found the cause of misery that surrounds and oppresses us, sentient beings.

People are ignorant as to the real significance of existence; they blindly crave for it and its continuance merely for its own enjoyment; they do not know what destiny is awaiting them at the end of their earthly career; they do not know how pregnant of meaning is their every act, their every thought, their every feeling; they do not know under what conditions a phenomenon called life is possible, and finally they have a very confused notion concerning the true nature of the soul which they identify with the ego, simple, permanent, and absolute. On account of this ignorance, they suffer; on account

of this ignorance, they keep on augmenting the causes of misery, and are unable to see the light of wisdom.