This can be related to playing Monopoly, which I have talked about before. Just like Monopoly has its rules, life has its rules. Dukkha is one of the rules. It just is! The Buddha couldn't change the world. There has been a lot of people along the way who have tried to change the world, and they can't change it! Dukkha is part of the rules. We have to accept that Dukkha exists. That's the first Noble Truth. It's just there, whether we like it or not, whether we want it to be there or not, that doesn't matter, it's still part of the rules. Your body is going to have Dukkha, your friends and relatives are going to have Dukkha, the buildings fall apart, everything has inherently the quality of Dukkha. It's part of the rules. So to accept that Dukkha exists is very important.
On the side of compassion though we would like to alleviate Dukkha as much as possible, but we have to guard against having the thought in our mind that we can alleviate everything. It's quite true, that if money and food were distributed in an intelligent way, there would be no starving on the planet, there would be no little kids dying of diarrhea every five minutes in Africa. There would be people with shelter, people with enough clothing. There would not be so many problems on the planet if money and food were distributed equally. But it won't be, because of the greed, because of the desires of unwise people. And these unwise people end up running countries, creating wars and all sorts of things. And it is because that is part of the rules, we can't make this world a perfect place.
So to accept Dukkha and yet continue on, yes continue on trying to help, but not to be too idealistic thinking we can fix the world on a material level. Because according to what we can see, and what we can see through history, it can't be done. And according to Buddhist teachings, the human realm is designed to be a realm that has Dukkha and what they call Sukkha, pleasant times as well. It's just designed that way, it's part of the rules.