Whilst it is true that we are not the victims of a hostile or violent environment we are victims nevertheless. We are victims of events that we have crated through fears and self-pity.

It is very difficult to observe the suffering of a five-year old and believe that the child's fears and negativity have attracted suffering. If one can grasp the truth that the 'child' has existed in one form or another since beginningless time and that the preset conditions is the aggregate of many past experiences, not meant as a punishment but as a part of many lives' learnings, then maybe, just maybe, we might be less angry with our concept of God.

Also, it must be understood that the condition is not an isolated learning, for it is indeed a learning for all to whom the child's condition is manifested. Some braver ad more advanced souls test whether love can still operate in the most seemingly unlovable situations. This does not mean that we should not be filled with compassion. That which St. Augustine calls "holy indifference" does not imply that he does not care. Knowing that the child is immortal, he can see beyond the sometimes terrible illusion of the physical and temporal. To most of us, trapped in a prison of our own making, it is easy to get entangled in the web of suffering we feel that there is no escape. We feel powerless, and we are frightened and angry.

The dying Buddha said in a summary of his teaching: "In all the visible and invisible worlds there exists one singe power without beginning or end, without any laws but its own, without preference or aversion... But do not try to measure the immeasurable with words, nor try to plumb the depths of the impenetrable with the rope of though. It is wrong to question: it is wrong to reply... Do not forget that Man creates for himself his own prison. So may he also acquire a power superior to that of the gods."

A power superior to that of the gods?

"These things I do, you can do... Yea, works even greater than mine..." Jesus of Nazareth.

Most people would vehemently deny this, but such a denial would be calling Jesus a liar.

How can we acquire this power? By enlightenment. By God realisation.

This is how the monk, Dogen (1200 - 1253 AD) describes it:

"Our attainment of enlightenment is something like the reflection of the moon in water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water cleft apart. Though the light of the moon is vast, immense, it finds a home in water only a foot long and a finger wide. The whole moon and the whole sky find room enough in a single dewdrop, a single drop of water. And just as the moon does not cleave the water apart, so enlightenment does not tear man apart. Just as a dewdrop or drop of water offers no resistance to the moon in heaven, so man offers no obstacle to the full penetration of enlightenment."