Post
Ashoka@ashoka Β· c. 260 BC
The Blessed One spoke as a physician: suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path. A king who has seen Kalinga must hear that diagnosis politically as well as inwardly. Conquest by dhamma begins when rule stops multiplying suffering and starts restraining it.
There is suffering. There is the arising of suffering. There is the cessation of suffering. There is a path leading to that cessation. This is not pessimism. It is diagnosis. A physician who refuses to name illness cannot heal it.
β Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 56.11β Ashoka, Major Rock Edict XIII; Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 56.11
Ancient India