3. Facing challenges of the global village.

Often, when we face a challenge, we rise up to ride it; we learn to improve our knowledge and to better ourselves.
Challenges can be just solving problems, winning games, or passing exams. They can be more serious like getting a job, marrying a lover or overcoming life-and-death situations that may last for a long time.

We may see challenges in the same light as "dukkha" (ทุกขะ). Everyday of our life, there are always, some challenges to face and to overcome. And we should not be surprised, to hear that we can use one same principle to overcome challenges and dukkha. The principle is wellknown among buddhists as the '4 aariya-sacca'.

We may restate this principle in modern terms:
 
    1) What is X? Where X is a challenge, a problem, a task or dukkha or ... for us.
    2) What are the precursors of (or factors causing) X?
    3) What is not-X or overcoming-X? We need to set our 'goal', so that we know when we achieve it.
    4) What is the course-of-actions leading to not-X?  

[It may have been a serious waste of intellectual resources, to have our kids commit to memory the aariya-sacca in Thai and Pali, when a few word changes can make our kids see the world differently and become challenge winners. Current scientific research approaches are similiar to this many-thousands years old principle. Learning and using this principle will benefit us from school to university, from administration to legislation, from life to death.]


For those who seek another challenge, I ask

Why in Thai we read จร [Pali: cara จะระ = going] as 'jon' [จอน] and จราจร [Pali: caracara = going here and there] as ...?
And why we read จล [Pali: cala จะละ = moving] as 'jone' [โจน] and จลาจล [Pali: calacala = moving left and right] as ...?

Wouldn't our kids have less to memorize if we adopt reading of Pali words as they are read in Pali? How did we come to read Pali words as they are today? For example 'dukkha' ทุกข์ instead of ดุกขะ; 'buddha' พุทธ์ instead of บุดธะ; and so on. Wouldn't we better use the same Pali pronunciation and reduce misunderstanding?

<NB> We should say 'ปา ลี' and (using Velthius convention) spell 'Paalii' instead of 'Pali' which has become common spelling.