..."Like Gotama (Pali), we are living in an age of political violence and have had terrifying glimpses of man's inhumanity to man. In our society too there are widespread malaise, urban despair and anomie, and we are sometimes fearful of the new world order that is emerging.
   Many aspects of the Buddha's quest will appeal to the modern ethos. His scrupulous empiricism is especially congenial to the pragmatic tenor of our own Western culture, together with his demand for intellectual and personal independence. Those who find the idea of a supernatural God alien will also warm to the Buddha's refusal to affirm a Supreme Being. He confined his researches to his own human nature and always insisted that his experiences -even the supreme truth of Nibbana (Nirwana) - were entirely natural to humanity. Those who have become weary of the intolerance of some forms of institutional religiosity will also welcome the Buddha's emphasis on compassion and loving-kindness.
   But the Buddha is also a challenge, because he is more radical than most of us. There is a creeping new orthodoxy in modern society that is sometimes called 'positive thinking.' At its worst, this habit of optimism allows us to bury our heads in the sand, deny the ubiquity of pain in ourselves and others, and to immure ourselves in a state of deliberate heartlessness to ensure our emotional survival. The Buddha would have had little time for this. In his view, the spiritual life cannot begin until people allow themselves to be invaded by the reality of suffering, realize how fully it permeates our whole experience, and feel the pain of all other beings, even those whom we do not find congenial. It is also true that most of us are not prepared for the degree of the Buddha's self-abandonment. We know that egotism is a bad thing; we know that all the great world traditions -not just Buddhism- urge us to transcend our selfishness. But when we seek liberation  -in either a religious or secular guise- we really want to enhance our own sence of self. A good deal of what passes for religion is often designed to prop up and endorse the ego that the founders of the faith told us to abondon. We assume that a person like the Buddha, who has, apparently, and after a great struggle, vanquished all selfishness, will become inhuman, humorless and grim.
   Yet that does not seem to have been true of the Buddha. He may have been impersonal, but the state he achieved inspired an extraordinary emotion in all who met him. The constant, even relentless degree of gentleness, fairness, equanimity, impartiality and serenity acquired by the Buddha touch a chord and resonate with some of our deepest yearnings. People were not repelled by his dispassionate calm, not daunted by his lack of preference for one thing, one person over another. Instead, they were drawn to the Buddha and flocked to him.
   When people committed themselves to the regimen that he prescribed for suffering humanity, they said that they 'took refuge' with the Buddha. He was a haven of peace in a violent world of clamorous egotism."...

Uit: 'Buddha' by Karen Armstrong. A paperback edition published in 2002 by Phoenix, an imprint of Orion Books Ltd, Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9EA. An Hachette UK Company.