So even good action, action in no way evil, sinful, unwholesome, does not by any means bring freedom from the unsatisfactory condition. Just as an evil man suffers the torment due to an evil-doer, so a good man too is bound to experience his own particular type of suffering. A good man experiences the subtle inconspicuous type of suffering that comes whenever one clings to one's own goodness. So when we examine it as a phenomenon of nature, we find that it is not only the evil man experiencing the fruits of his evil deeds who is whirling around in the cycle of compounding: the good man too, experiencing the fruits of his good deeds, is likewise involved in compounding. Both of them are involved in compounding. There is no end to this process. It goes on and on incessantly. Thought is followed by action, and when the fruits of the action have been got, thinking follows once again. This is the wheel of Samsara, the cycle of wandering on. Samsara is simply this cycle of compounding.
         As soon as a person has managed to comprehend this process, he is bound to start taking an interest in the opposite condition. He comes to realize that money, name and fame, and the like are of no help at all and that what is needed is something better than all these. He then starts looking around for something better and higher, some other way. He continues his search until such time as he meets some spiritually advanced person, sits at his feet, and learns from him the Truth, the Dharma. In this way he comes to know about that state which is the very opposite of all that he has so far had and been and done. He comes to know about Nirvana and the way to attain it. He arrives at the certitude that this is the goal that each and every man ought to attain. He realizes: "This is why I was born!" Anything other than this is involvement, entangiement, compounding. This alone is the putting out of the flame, coolness, stillness. His interest in Nirvana prompts him to seek the means of attaining it, and he is convinced that the treading of this path to Nirvana is the purpose for which he was born.
         There is one more small question to think over in this connectlon: "Am I glad I was born? Am I happy about it or not ?" Of course noone ever has any choice in the matter of birth. It never happens that a person is in a position to decide that he will be born. He simply is born. But no sooner is he born than he comes into contact with sense objects by way of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. He becomes engrossed in these objects, and finds satisfaction in them. This means that he is glad of having been born and wishes to continue existing in order that he may continue experiencing these sense objects. And when people speak of making a lot of merit in order to have sense objects again after death, at a better, more refined, higher level than at present, this indicates an even greater desire to be born for the sake of these pleasant things.
         The important point here is this: a person having been born, enjoys the forms, sounds, odours, tastes, tactile sensations, and mental images which his mind encounters. As a result he grasps at them and clings to them with egoism and possessiveness. He has been born and he finds satisfaction and delight in having been born. He dreads death because death would mean no more of all these things. The essence of this is that no man is over born of his own free will, as a result of some decision on his own part; birth just happens as a natural process characterising all living reproducing things. No sooner is a man born than a liking for this birth arises in him in the manner described. In the completely natural situation, that is, among the lower animals, the desire for birth is very slight and does not pose the great problem it does for man.
         A man should question himself and verify two things: "I am glad I was born." and "I was born for some purpose." Now if a man concludes that he is glad of having been born to carry out the highest task possible for a man, then his position is rather paradoxical. If the real goal of life is freedom from rebirth, then he was born in order not to be reborn, and so ought never to have been born in the first place! Why should he be glad he was born and so given the opportunity to walk the path to Nirvana? If freedom from birth is such a good thing, why then is there birth in the first place?
         These are some of the questions that constitute ignorance, or at least that arise out of ignorance. "Was I born of my own free will or was thirth forced upon me?" "Having been born, what ought I to be doing?" The average person doesn't delve so deeply into these questions. Accepting his birth as an accomplished fact, he simply asks himself the immediate question "What to do now?" Believing he was born to accumulate wealth, he goes right on accumulating wealth. Or if he believes he was born to eat, or to build up name and fame, then he works towards those ends. He feels that is enough. To get name and fame and be materially well off is all the average person wants. For him that is the ideal; and there are not a few people who take this sort of shallow view.
         But we are now in a position to consider this question rather more deeply. We have come to see that no amount of this kind of action or this kind of condition is by any means satisfactory. There is still something dissatisfying about it. Something is lacking. No matter how successfully we may pursue these worldly ends we are always left dissatisfied. We are forced to recognize that something more is needed, and in the end we find ourselves drawn to the Dharma. We come to realize that we were born to study this highest and most precious piece of human knowledge and come to understand it, in order to attain Freedom, the highest and most precious thing accessible to a human being. There is nothing higher than this. This is the summum bonum, the best thing attainable by a human being.
         Suppose we accept that we have been born, and that having been born we have a certain task to do, a task so important that to carry it through to completion ought to be man's highest aim. There can be no aim higher than this attainment of complete freedom from the misery of the unsatisfactory condition. And by following the Buddha's directions this complete freedom can be attained. The Buddhist teaching came into the world in order to inform people about the highest thing attainable by human beings. All the other religions existing prior to Buddhism had had this same objective, to answer the question: "Why was I born?" They had all been fully occupied with this same question: "What is that highest good for the sake of which man was born?"
         Some of these religions considered sensual satisfaction to be the ultimate, the highest good. Some considered the summum bonum to be the pure non-sensual bliss of the brahmaloka. Then there was a sact which maintained that man's purpose in life was to seek bliss in the knowledge that nothing at all exists! There even existed the view that the highest thing attainable by man is the death-like condition of complete unconsciousness in which there is no awareness of anything whatsoever! These were the highest doctrines in existence at the time when the Buddha-to-be started his seeking. When he searched and studied in the various ashrams, the highest teaching he was able to find was this. Being sufficiently wise to see that this was by no means the summum bonum, he set about investigating on his own amount. Thus he arrived at the perfect insight which puts a final end to the unsatisfactory condition, and as we say, he attained Nirvana.
         Even though people had been talking about nirvana long before the time of the Buddha, the meaning of the word as used by him differs from the meanings it had for those sects. More words connot be relied on; it is the meanings that count. When we say we were born in order to allain Nirvana, we mean nirvana as that word was used by the Buddha. We don't mean the Nirvana of other sects, such as abundance of sensual pleasures, or the highest stage of mental concentration. When we say Nirvana is our goal, we must have in mind Nirvana as understood in the Buddha's teaching. And in the Buddha's teaching Nirvana is generally to be taken as the opposite of the compounded condition, This is expressed in the Pali saying we have already quoted:
Sankhara parama dukkha
Nibbanam paramam sukham.
         Nirvana is simply freedom from sankharas, compounds. We must understand then that we were born in order to attain freedom from compounding. Some people may laugh at this statement that our objective in life is to attain "freedom from compounding," Compounding, this spinning on in the wheel of Samsara, is unsatisfactory. Freedom from compounding consists in having such a degree of insight that this vicious cirde is cut through and got rid of completely. When there is freedom from compounding, there is no more spinning on, no more wheel of Samsara. Our purpose in life is to bring to a standstill the cycle of Samsara, to put a complete end to the unsatisfactory condition. This complete freedom from unsatisfactonness is called Nirvana.
         Now Nirvana is not something occult and mysterious. It is not some sort of miracle, something supernatural. Further more, Nirvana is not something to be attained only after death. This is a point that must be understood. Nirvana is attained at any moment that the mind becomes free from compounding. Freedom from compounding, at any moment, is Nirvana. Permanent cessation of compounding is full Nirvana; temporary cessation is just a momentary Nirvana, which is the kind we have been discussing. The experiencing of temporary Nirvana serves as an incentive to get further, to head for permanent Nirvana, the full Nirvana that makes a man an Arahant. This state arises with the knowledge that sankharas, that is compounds and compounding, are misery, while Nirvana, freedom from compounding, is peace, bliss. Every man's purpose in life ought to be to tread the path to full Nirvana.
         So the answer to the question "Why were we born?" is provided by this saying:
Compounding is utter misery,
Nirvana is highest bliss.