The Buddha ' s Attitude Towards Worldly Knowledge Worldly knowledge can never help one to lead a pure religious life for gaining peace and emancipation.
Worldly knowledge is useful for worldly ends.
With such knowledge, mankind learns how to use the earth ' s resources to improve the standard of living, grow more food, generate power to run factories and to light up streets and houses, manage factories and businesses, cure sickness, build flats and bridges, cook exotic dishes, and so on. Worldly knowledge can also be used for harmful purposes such as building missiles with nuclear warheads, manipulating the stock market, cheating ' legally ' , and inflaming political anxiety and hatred. Despite the rapid expansion of worldly knowledge, especially in the twentieth century, mankind has been brought no nearer to the solution of his spiritual problems and pervasive unsatisfactoriness. In all likelihood, it never will solve mankind ' s universal problems and bring peace and happiness because of the premises on which such knowledge, discoveries and inventions are built. While Buddhism can bring greater understanding on how to lead a good, worldly life, its main focus is how to gain spiritual liberation through the development of wisdom and mental culture.