Dhammanusari

The Buddha lived at a time when the economy of India was such that the rich were getting richer and the poor, poorer. There was a conspicuous contrast between the luxury and wasteful extravagance of the leisurely classes and the utter abject poverty and squalor of the peasant and worker, who in fact did all the spade work to keep the granaries of their masters full to the brim. In Benares, in particular, this contrast was most evident. The ingenious craftmen who produced the gorgeous textiles, which dazzled the eyes of the word, were themselves clad in rags which were of the coarsest texture not unlike the dusty gravel roads thy have to traverse to bring wares to town and part with them for a trifle to crafty middlemen. It was the lot of the Buddha, who was in search of a solution to this problem of poverty, disease and misery, to move about in this environment and discover the causes which contributed to these conditions. It was this first hand knowledge of life outside the charmed circle of the high society of his time which helped him to understand and appreciate the many human problems which beset him from time to time.