Engaged in life at the turn of a civilization, we must confront all crucial conflicts due to the chaos of differing ideologies mankind has been entangled in from the very beginning of civilization. The more we struggle and our efforts increase, the more exhausted and further down pressed into hopelessness and misdirection, and the heavier the loss of confidence in oneself. The social cataclysm has left its imprint on every man's face, the most deeply in the mind and heart of those in their twenties
At this particular impasse of history, it is the intelligentsia who is expected to lead us on the way to the final deliverance from human bondage.
To bring light a life of significance and faith, it is essential to reform our knowledge-and-understanding, which is deformed by shortsighted historians and the negative influence of their one-way credo that there is only one right way of history. That men have also been governed to insane, collective massacres motivated by the ill will of a minority makes the situation even more serious.  Toward their own interests, they have indifferently bartered men's blood and life in struggles for political power.  Human lives have been sacrificed for private interests of individual, of class, or of race.
It is not until man is enlightened and is deprived of every insane craving that he will be freed from this continuous pathos of life, social inequality and historical misdirection.
Enlightenment is much more heard of nowadays than ever before but mostly from those who are abused. They typically misunderstood enlightenment as meaning awareness of individual or class rights or other things of similar earthily meaning. These are only bare words just spoken or written in publication. Nothing of enlightenment well-meant and well-realized except selfish privilege, power and pride.
 Noble enlightenment, as Tagore expresses it, is when you are awakened by the spiritual call:
              "Atmānam viddhi"
               Know thyself
               (R. Tagore 1917)

Prior to any possible freedom, let one first rid himself of prejudice, pride and selfishness. It is also true that one's self-liberation must depend for its full realization upon the common cause of humanity like the twin "shadow-and-image". Without this grand vision, we can only go halfway at most or be lost at last.
Self-indulgence naturally means one's excessive attention to his self, that shell indifferently shutting out all problems of common life. Individualistic to selfishness or self-indulgent to aloofness is not much of an enlightened state of being. Of perfect knowledge, kindness and wisdom, he is to do all and everything for the common cause of life, for a world of harmony founded upon self-understanding.  The life of Buddha reveals to us, “His was the right path, right speech, right thought and right conduct".
His immense sacrifice, his great renunciation and the immaculate purity of his life left an indelible imprint upon the mind and heart of generation after generation of Asia. It has become a message to the whole world, as suggests Gandhi,
" For Asia to be not for Asia but the whole world, it has to relearn the message of the Buddha and deliver it to the whole world"
(Gandhi's speech Harijan, 24-12-1938)
As long as we are Buddhists, whose life owes a great deal to the inspiration derived from his teaching, we cannot keep silent and motionless in the face of suffering.
"By their fruits shall ye know them"
By this spirit of realistic compassion, wisdom, equality and altruism we have conferred many and great benefits upon society and are to recover our inner peace, resettle social order and move forward to prosperity.
History is proceeding on to the threshold of the Great Synthesis. All kinds of current problems are overwhelming national boundaries into international development. Modern solutions are required to have sufficient insight to get rid of religious, racial and class prejudices and to look forward to a possible society where in justice will by no means be harmful to any free personality.  This life impulse, whose natural destiny is to find right expression, whose spiritual force beyond one's I-NESS permits the universe, this universal stratum simultaneously manifested within every individual. Everyone has his own rights, on what he thinks, ponders and chooses, and on how he lives, serves and creates. This concept, might, somehow, seem to pave the way for an excess of individualism should it not be confirmed that we really mean a willing acceptance of every obligation we owe to men as social beings, of which Tagore said in a letter to Gandhi in 1919:
"Give me the supreme courage of love, this is my prayer, the courage to speak, to do, to suffer as they will, to leave all things or to be left alone".
The message was revived through Radhakrishna's inaugural address to the "UNESCO Tagore's Centenary Celebration in Paris".
We must assume our responsibility to help the coming generations build a new life by destroying the springs of man's actions, which lie deep in Ignorance, Hatred and Selfishness.
What we are longing for is supreme compassion in action.
Upon such a basic conception, we can maintain firm and lasting justice, social equilibrium.  Let the social order be upset and freedom will thus be violated, or vice versa:
Let this be, and so will that be.
This non-being  makes that nothing.
Let this be born,  so will that  be.
That this does end makes that ending.
The Buddhist teachings assert as such, the life is as such, and the nature's law of universal mutation as such. And such is the supreme criterion which the Buddhist must always keep in mind, and moreover, bring up to life for the sake of a modern society where in all present conflicts, liberal ownership and family rules be in tune with national common schemes, then nationalism come to terms with international livelihood and humanism! Only whence can we find war come to an end, living conditions over the world be leveled, and no more class rivalries, nor aversion among social communities. Once enmity is annulled, cravings gradually becalmed, the way to freedom will be revealed to all, true religion flowers in full bloom, the glory of Man's transcendental becoming.
Buddhism has been known for its universal compassion human love, its self-perfection and self-understanding, and especially its emphasis upon individual experience, human energy and free will for his self-realization. As far as concerning its grand vision of ideo-cultural synthesis, its living adaptability, peace loving, earthy and practical as well as imaginative and speculative spirit, Buddhism can therefore bring forth to the modern world a life of greater significance and happiness.
By the way, who is the man to lead us people to the blissful state?
The first and foremost are Buddhists or "Buddhas-to-be". Whether or not could Buddhism be fruitful today depends not upon some canonical scriptures or sutras, but mainly upon those intelligent intercessors who preach the LAW to the time and adapt themselves to today’s social circumstances and, moreover, to emphasize how to make this perennial religion be up-to-date, help it be enriched and enlivened, convey it to men of all levels, intellectually and socially speaking.
Buddhism today can only persist its lasting existence if its adaptability works harmoniously with all essential exigencies of the modern time. Such is the way to peace and happiness.

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We have heard it contended by men of ideological bias or laymen who interpret Buddhism as sympathyless and atheistic.  They interpret Buddhism as standing aloof from secular society, therefore, reactionary and anti-humanistic. According to them it is the right to question and doubt and criticize and choose. But in fact, Buddhism is never so arrogant or arbitrary a dogma as to enjoy such an attempt as inducing people to believe in it as the only belief.  Buddhism, on the other hand, must be understood as the guide that leads man from his blindness and desire towards the blissful state of supreme liberation. “Man is to be the master of his own desire". This truly emphasizes one's individual efforts for his self-salvation.
Its all-pervasive survival and spread over Asia for more than two millenniums, its lively adapting thereto and reconciliation with the Western World of modern technology, all provide conclusive evidence against the shallow criticism based on lay observations. Endowed with a deeper insight in Buddhism, we believe we can reveal the truth to all, do our best to make the noble teachings well-understood, and inspire the rest of the world with a right-view and right-understanding of the religion in relation to, and in harmony with, all aspects of secular life.
Sentiment, should it mean extreme self-indulgence, would certainly be rejected by Buddhist thought and practice.  Buddhism discovers in our Saha-world that terrific realm of desires where men are constantly disturbed from within and without by bodily inevitabilities and social influences. This is, as the Buddha called it, the "world of sensual desire" namely Kāmadhātu, which brings forth to the growth of birth, existence, decay, and death and ultimately all sufferings. Superior to ours is the "world of pure form" namely Rūpadhātu of deities whose life rises above all desires to the sphere of interplaying motives of Form. A higher "world of no-form or Arūpadhātu excludes all and every sensual desire and form save the mind of interrelation and inter-communication which is still subject to redemption within that sorrowful cycle of re-birth.
It is not until being delivered from this triple world that one would attain the blissful state of nothingness, that of the fully Enlightened which is thoroughly transparent, beyond the trap of transmigration.
It is right in this "world of sensual desire" that the Buddha lived his life as we do ours.  The difference is in that He had carried out an ultimate struggle against desirous inclination for the sake of self-purification in order to evoke the brightness of mind realized in the Great Wisdom and Universal Tolerance.
His love was not that enslaved by an attractive woman, nor meant for self-loving, ownership, filial relationship, unequalled wealth and splendor. His love was meant for all and was one with every sorrowful being. His compassionate love emerged of his transcendental self. Be it not so piteous, he might have not renounced the worldly life, nor have he been so pensively engaged in the world of suffering in which men would pursue their lust for life in sanguinary contention so indulgently that they couldn't pay any attention to their near coming imminent.  There we are with true love as highly elevated in the very Buddhist meaning, and right there can we find the true love of a mind free from defilement.
To criticize Buddhism as atheistic is hasty and subjective, knowing nothing about it.  You cannot find in any Buddhist realms an omnipotent God with caprice of love and hate, that is, a mere personification by human imagination. Now, if you set on a search for God as Mind-Being in the eternally pure essence of Reality, the highest Truth, that the mortal ever tend to reach and to get at that condition of purity, yes there he is as evidence.
Mind-Being is the essence of reality and, though not openly expressed, is latent in everything and every sentient being, expressed or not extant. It transcends all categories and limitations; however, it will only be revealed to those being free from the veil of illusory phenomena, those who fight and already win pure Love and bright Wisdom over earthily Desire, his inner-self be one with that of the universal Suchness. Buddhism as such may somehow be conceived as a theism whose Deities (or divas) are not far from man but as nucleus latent in every living creature. They only come into being and in sight of those who have possessed a universal vision. All such Buddhist terms as "Buddhahood" (the nature of Buddha) or "Suchness" or " Blissful state" or "Nibbana" are various names of the One Mind. Mind is inherent in all. Accordingly, every sentient being can practice the way and develop it to the full realization of the illuminating reality in its essence.
Owing to its conception of Mind as the innermost nature of everybody, Buddhism thus gives way to higher human status but nothing debasing human dignity. Although Buddhism uses the word «sentient being»in a general way, there is, however, the difference among «spheres of existence» due to the force of karma.
Man is one of the most elevated in the spheres of "Samsara", and possesses the best faculty which enables him to get out of this infinite cycle of re-birth and redemption.  Buddhism conveys the true meaning of Man-hood or "humanism", to use a term in vogue today.
It is Buddhism that puts consciousness forth into practical life.  Even in opposition to the tragic conditions of life, the Buddhist has never given way to defeatism, neither praying for external assistance, leaning upon another before trying his best to get rid of his self-bondage. Let us imagine a child sleeping by its mother, who dreams a powerful lion, is attacking her child.  Can the mother save her child from danger or kill the lion in her dream? No, she can't.  She cannot enter into the dream nor do anything but wake up from dreaming. To be awakened, the child will be freed naturally.
«In the same way, one who realizes that his own Mind is Dukkha frees himself instantly from the sufferings arising from (the ignorance of the law of) ceaseless change within the Six Realms. »1
Without self-realization, one cannot understand such things as these. Should he not try to save himself, neither a Buddha nor a Patriarch would be to save him at all. It is up to him paying his dues and completing self-perfection out of his own effort. Outside help, if any, must not outrun the limit of an expedient governed by inter motive of liberation of the self-liberator. It is this emphasis upon the subjective, which, socially speaking has unjustly been charged with selfishness, individualism or irresponsible aloofness.
As long as Buddhism keeps promoting the initiative of self-mastery then it should not be viewed as pessimism, nor a set of abstract intellect far removed from the concerns of the society. Buddhism has its own way of serving and there is, for each one, an individual way to self-realization that is not devoid of the great compassionate heart. However, its adaptability-and-tolerance too has subjected Buddhism to misunderstanding and criticism at the expense of its loving-kindness, all-embracing and all-forgiving practices.  The only thing he can and must do in response is to do good for the sake of all men. A Buddhist, in spite of his being trapped in the sphere of sensual desire, is supposed to make great effort to time himself and do right, to reject wealth and pride, to remove far from lust and discrimination and be ready to serve humanity as doing whatever a man has to do for others.
To criticize Buddhism as an obstacle in the course of historical evolution is to say at the expense of the Buddhist vanguard ideals which were first preached over two millenniums ago, and still; are promoted since the Buddha's first sermon as the earliest call of liberation for personal values and self-realization, especially for intellection to be freed from those socio-theocratic bounds of early India.  There in Buddhism lies deeply the nucleus of all recent revolutions of modern societies.

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1 Footnote (the three Pillars of zen, p. 161 – A Weathermarh edition).

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