From American Theravada Buddhist monk Bhikkhu Bodhi’s keynote address on climate change emergency at the United Nations’first official Vesak celebration on 15 May 2000:

The Buddha is often praised as a teacher of peace, tolerance, goodwill, and compassion. And while he certainly exemplifies and teaches these qualities, they in no way exhaust the full content of his message. The Buddha was not only a benevolent sage, but he was above all and astute analyst of the human condition, one perhaps unrivaled in the history of human thought. He was a physician who provides an acute diagnosis of the human condition and a surgeon who pulls out the dots of suffering that have pierced the human heart. The texts describe him as mula dasavi, the one who has seen into the deepest and the most obscure roots of human misery.