The Buddha-Dhamma is not a fiction to be read and forgotten. It deals with life — with real life, the life that you and I lead every day, the value and worth of which is greatly enhanced when the Dhamma is translated into action and built into our character by constant effort and practice.

The ultimate aim of the Buddha-Dhamma is Nibbana — emancipation from suffering. The immediate objective is to help us to understand and solve the problems that confront us in our daily life, to make us well-rounded, happy, and balanced men and women, able to live in harmony with our environment and our fellow beings. Balance, however, though it is an aim worth striving for, is not easily struck in the contemporary world, with its false ideologies and illusory values.

In contrast to the relative, often false values of our age, the Buddha’s teaching is a revelation of true and absolute values. Its truth can be tested and tried in one’s own experience. Buddhism teaches clear thinking, self-control, and mental culture as means to these ends. One who builds his daily life upon this firm foundation of appropriate knowledge and clear-sighted ideals is assured of progress and success even as a layman. ~Robert Bogoda