Sin & suffering and World Peace

Buddha taught that life is full of suffering because our craving accompanied by delight and lust won’t stop. Only when that craving in us stops and by the following of Eightfold path one is saved, that is by right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration salvation is achieved. Most Hindu authorities believe that evil and suffering is a result of spiritual ignorance.

One way of understanding the problem of sin and suffering in Christianity is accepting that it is a misuse of God’s good resources and by following a wrong decision. It is the illness of beings that are no longer in communion with God. The Gospel today does not just talk about causing others to sin while we being sinful all the time, it also talks about another most important thing: causing others to do good. These attempts to do away with sin or doing good depends on the quality of our faith. That is what the Apostles prayed today: ‘Lord! increase our faith’.

Great contemporary mind like Carl Jung, a psychologist says that all the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insolvable. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. Scott Peck talks about handling the problems of life. He says that Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. Though these arguments deal with personal character buildings, society character building is also as important an issue in our present time.

Dalai Lama talks about a sense of universal responsibility, a feeling of universal brotherhood and an understanding and belief that we really are part of one big human family. On world peace he says, “One nation's problems can no longer be satisfactorily solved by itself alone; too much depends on the interest, attitude, and cooperation of other nations. A universal humanitarian approach to world problems seems the only sound basis for world peace.” Let us pray that our doing good transcends boundaries so that our love reaches to all. Amen.