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THE IDEAL.
Theology steps in to point out that beyond the grave there is the land of the paradise where sickness and death and pain and misery are unknown, and where people pass their days in the fun and frolic of childhood, or in the voluptuous embraces of the heavenly nymphs, the houris of Islam. But it also points out that there is another region exactly the reverse of the Land of Happiness where wicked people have to go and spend their lives in awful agonies of pain. The path to the former, it is said, is hidden from the atheist, but is revealed to the worshipper of the Almighty God. He who would aspire to the attainment of heaven must follow the path of virtue, be poor in spirit, inoffensive, meek, charitable, non-injuring, and so forth. 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the needle's eye than for a rich person to tread the narrow path of bliss.'
Then comes the teaching about Nirvana after death. Buddha exhorted his hearers to aspire to the attainment of emancipation in Nirvana. But one wants to be happy here and now. There is no pleasure in postponing the realisation of the ideal to a future moment of time. Why can it not be had at once ?
Let us philosophize a bit. When pain comes to us we say, 'O, what have I done to deserve this suffering ?' But we make no such observation when happiness falls to our lot. Why? The reason is obvious; we look on happiness as ours by right, but on pain as something foreign and outside ourselves. Therefore it is that every one seeks his happiness first and foremost and above all other things.
But the fact that search is to be made for it indicates.
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