Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c8.s2.2.2

c8.s2.2.2

The essence of impermanence is misery, and the doctrine is held so strongly that it is impossible to ignore its intellectual antecedent in the doctrine of the Upaniṣads, which finds in the immutable one absolute the completeness of bliss, and contrasts with it, and therefore casts a pessimistic atmosphere over, the changing manifold of the world of experience. But the doctrine is not a conclusion on metaphysical grounds; it is supported as an observation of fact³ made by the omniscient. The waters of the four great oceans are less than the tears shed by man in the interminable course of existence for the loss of father, mother, brother, sister, children, relatives, and goods. The mother who at the burning place calls in sorrow to her daughter Jīvā, is answered that eighty-four thousand maidens of this name have been burned at the spot. The pains of birth, of old age, of death, of disease, and decay are omnipresent; the merchant strives hard amid difficulties of climate to win wealth, which he then must anxiously guard against the greed of the sovereign and the danger of fire and water. To gain their desires men commit theft and murder; they pay penalties of cruel torture on earth, and even more horrible is their fate in hells to come. The gods share in the common lack of permanence; doubtless they possess length of life, like the gods of Empedokles, but they like men must bow to the law of the act;