Where shall one begin in his endeavour to grasp the essential teachings of Buddhism? No one can fully understand Buddhism without studying Hinduism as a background and starting point. The student can go far, however, by starting from the fact of universal human suffering, and its relief. "One thing only do I teach," said Buddha, "sorrow and the uprooting of sorrow." He was never weary of bringing home to his disciples the horror of the world's pain, in order that he might lead them on to what he believed to be the only way of salvation. "What think ye, O monks, which is vaster, the flood of tears that, weeping and lamenting, ye in your past lives have shed, or the waters of the four great oceans? Long time, O monks, have ye suffered the death of father, mother, brothers, and sisters. Long time have ye undergone the loss of your goods; long time have ye been afflicted with sickness, old age, and death." "Where is the joy, where is the laughter, when all is in flames about us?" Buddhism is often labelled pessimistic, because its writings are full of attempts, such as these, to make men realise the suffering and the worthlessness of the life to which they cling. The critics, however, do not realise the hopes which it holds out to a suffering world, which are just as characteristic of Buddhistic teaching. The Buddhist replies, "If medical science is pessimistic then Buddhism is also pessimistic." It diagnoses the disease in order to cure it. Like other religions it is a "Way out." It first states the problem: then offers a solution. 3. It affords a Way of Escape from Sorrow. In India Gotama had an easier task than he would have faced in the full-blooded and less thoughtful West. We Westerners do not need to be convinced of the pain of life, we are now wide awake to it; but to the Hindu of the sixth century before Christ a conviction of the emptiness of life was something in the nature of an obsession. The bright, naïve optimism of earlier ages, revealed, for example, in the _Rig-Veda_,[9] had passed away; a combination of circumstances, climate, speculative activities, disappointments and other causes, had combined to make India pessimistic. Chief of these causes was undoubtedly the belief in transmigration which has come more and more to occupy a central position in Hinduism. It represents man as doomed to wander from birth to birth, and to expiate every deed of his past. It is impossible for us in the West to realise how firm a hold this thought has upon India, or how great is the longing for a way of escape. Gotama's resolute attempt to find such a way of escape, his assurance that he had discovered it, and his enthusiastic preaching of "the Way" brought Buddhism into the world as a new religion, and became a veritable "gospel" to weary and jaded hearts. 4. It is a Practical Creed: Its Founder called Himself "A Physician of Sick Souls."