Introduction
A Handbook for the Relief of Suffering consists of three short essays that were meant to be given to hospital patients as food for thought for them to ponder while undergoing treatment. Although the presentation is ecumenical, the basic points are straight Buddhism. The explanation of the two types of disease in the first essay follows one of the central insights of the Buddha’s awakening: the realization that events in the present are conditioned both by past kamma (intentional actions) and by present kamma. The four principles of human values presented in the second essay correspond to the four agatis, or types of prejudice that the Buddha warned against: prejudice based on (1) likes and desires, (2) dislikes and anger, (3) delusion, and (4) fear.
The third essay, “The Buddhist Way,” is a brief outline of the Buddha’s teachings based on the synopsis of the Ovāda Paṭimokkha, a discourse the Buddha gave toward the beginning of his career to 1,250 arahant disciples before sending them out to spread the teaching; and on an analysis of one of the basic Buddhist concepts, that of saṅkhāra, which means fabrication, force, fashioning, or compounded thing. In its form, the analysis of two types of saṅkhāras—those on the level of the world and those on the level of the Dhamma—is original with Ajaan Lee and is based on a Thai reading of two Pali compounds: saṅkhāra-loka and saṅkhāra-dhamma. From the point of view of Pali grammar, saṅkhāra- functions as the adjective in both of these compounds. The first compound denotes the world of compounded things; the second, compounded things as phenomena in and of themselves. The two compounds were taken over straight into Thai, but because Thai places its adjectives after the nouns they modify, Ajaan Lee has interpreted loka (world) and dhamma (phenomena) as adjectives modifying saṅkhāra, and thus he arrives at his own novel interpretation of the terms. His understanding of the aggregate of consciousness, the fifth aggregate, is also interesting in that it differs from most scholarly interpretations. Otherwise, the content of his analysis is standard, and the points he makes form a convenient synopsis of Theravāda Buddhist teachings.
