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Vâsettha then puts the question: "It has been told me,
Gautama, that Śramana Gautama knows the way to the state of union
with Brahma?"
"Brahma I know, Vâsettha!" says Buddha in reply,
"and the world of Brahma, and the path leading to it!"
The humbled Brahmins, learned in the three Vedas, then ask Buddha
to "show them the way to a state of union with Brahma."
Buddha replies at considerable length, drawing a sharp contrast
between the lower Brahminism and the higher Brahminism, the
"householder," and the "houseless one." The
householder Brahmins are gross, sensual, avaricious, insincere. They
practise for lucre, black magic, fortune-telling, cozenage. They gain
the ear of kings, breed wars, predict victories, sacrifice life, spoil
the poor. As a foil to this he paints the recluse, who has renounced
all worldly things and is pure, self-possessed and happy.
To teach this "higher life," a Tathâgatha, "from
time to time is born into the world, blessed and worthy, abounding in
wisdom, a guide to erring mortals." He sees the universe face to
face, the spirit world of Brahma and that of Mâra, the tempter. He
makes his knowledge known to others.
The houseless one, instructed by him, "lets his mind pervade
one quarter of the world with thoughts of pity,
The houseless one, instructed by him, "lets his mind pervade
one quarter of the world with thoughts of pity, sympathy, and
equanimity; and so the second, and so the third, and so the fourth.
And thus the whole wide world, above, below, around, and everywhere,
does he continue to pervade with heart of pity, sympathy and
equanimity, far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure." *
"Verily this, Vâsettha, is the way to a state of union with
Brahma," and he proceeds to announce that the Bhikshu, or Buddhist
beggar, "who is free from anger, free from malice, pure in mind,
master of himself, will after death, when the body is dissolved,
become united with Brahma." The Brahmins at once see the full
force of this teaching. It is as a conservative in their eyes that
Buddha figures, and not an innovator. He takes the side of the ancient
spiritual religion of the country against rapacious innovators.
"Thou hast set up what was thrown down," they say to him.
In the Burmese life he is described more than once as one who has set
the overturned chalice once more upon its base.
The word Dharma means much in Buddhism.
Obey the eternal law of the heavens. Who keeps this law lives
happily in this world and in the next.
"For the enfranchised soul human suffering no longer
exists." †
"In the darkness of this world few men see clearly. Very few
soar heavenwards like a bird freed from a net." ‡
No doubt the discipline of extasia was expected to give vitality to
this inner
quickening. When actual visions of the Buddhas of the ten
regions were before the eyes of the fasting visionary, it was judged
that he would have a more practical belief in their lapis-lazuli
domains. The heart of the eastern nations has been truer to its great
teacher than their learned metaphysicians have been. The epoch of
Buddha is called the "Era when the Milken Race (immortality) came
into the world." *
This certainty of a heavenly kingdom was not to be confined, as in the
orthodox Brahminism, to a priestly caste. A king had become a beggar
that he might preach to beggars. In the Chinese Dhammapada there is a
pretty story of a very beautiful Magdalen, who heard of Buddha, and
who started off to hear him preach. On the way, however, she saw her
beautiful face in a fountain near which she stopped to drink, and she
was unable to carry out her good resolution.
As she was returning she was overtaken by a courtesan still more
beautiful than herself, and they journeyed together. Resting for a
while at another fountain. the beautiful stranger was overcome with
sleep, and placed her head on her fellow-traveller's lap. Suddenly the
beautiful face became livid as a corpse, loathsome, a prey to hateful
insects. The stranger was the great Buddha himself, who had put on
this appearance to redeem poor Pundarî. †
"There is a loveliness that is like a beautiful jar full of
filth, a beauty that belongs to eyes, nose, mouth, body. It is this
womanly beauty that causes sorrow, divides families, kills
children."
The penitent thief, too, is to be heard of in Buddhism. Buddha
confronts a cruel bandit in his mountain retreat and converts him. ‡
All great movements, said St. Simon, must begin by working on the
emotion of the masses.
Another originality of the teaching of Buddha was the necessity of
individual effort.
Ceremonial, sacrifice, the exertions of others, could have no
possible effect on any but themselves. Against the bloody sacrifice of
the Brahmins he was specially remorseless.
"How can the system which requires the infliction of misery on
others be called a religious system? . . How having a body defiled
with blood will the shedding of blood restore it to purity? To seek a
good by doing an evil is surely no safe plan!" *
Even a Buddha could only show the sinner the right path. "Tathâgatas
are only preachers. You yourself must make the effort." †
Buddha's theology made another great advance on other creeds, a
step which our century is only now attempting to overtake. He strongly
emphasised the remorseless logic of cause and effect in the
deteriorating influences of evil actions on the individual character.
The Judas of Buddhism, Devadetta, repents and is forgiven. But Buddha
cannot annul the causation of his evil deeds. These will have to be
dealt with by slow degrees in the purgatorial stages of the hereafter.
He knows no theory of a dull bigot on his deathbed suddenly waking up
with all the broad sympathies and large knowledge of the angel
Gabriel. Unless in the next life a being takes up his intellectual and
moral condition exactly at the stage he left it in this, it is plain
that logically his individuality is lost. This teaching of Buddha has
been whimsically enforced by some of his followers. His own words are
trenchant and clear: "A fault once committed is like milk, which
grows not sour all at once. Patiently and silently, like a smothered
ember, shall it inch by inch devour the fool." ‡
"Both a good action and an evil action must ripen and bear their
inevitable fruit." §
This teaching has been powerfully inculcated in one or two fine
parables in which the consequences of sin are imaged as an iron city
of torment and the sins themselves figure as beautiful women luring
man to his ruin. On the surface all is as bewitching as a scene of the
"Arabian Nights." The palm trees of a soft island rustle
gently and in a delicious palace the mean seeker of gold, the bad son,
is fanned by women of a beauty unknown to earth. He has sought the
unworthy prizes of the Kâmaloca, and he enjoys them for a time,
because with Buddha the full basket and store of the Brahmin and the
old Jew are not deemed the rewards of heaven, but of quite another
region. From island to island the wanderer goes, each island being
more delicious than the preceding one, but each being nearer to the
iron-walled city of expiation. But the furies are cause and effect,
and not an eternal Ahriman. There is no devil that Buddha cannot
soften. *
This suggests another great advance made by Buddha. In his day the
beneficent God was deemed the god of a nation, a tribe; and all the
gods of other nations were deemed evil demons. This creed is the real
"agnosticism" and "atheism," because its main
postulate implies that the reason and conscience of humanity for
thousands and thousands of years have been unable to discover God, and
that if He has been found at all, it is to accident alone that the
discovery is due; even if the discovered god should not upon
examination be found to be composed of very poor clay. But the
missionaries of Tathâgata were sent to every nation, and he
proclaimed that even in the hell Avîchi was no recess sheltered from
Tathâgata's all-pervading love.
But the crowning legacy to humanity of this priceless benefactor
was his boundless compassion. "Buddha," says his disciples,
"was God revealed in the form of Mercy." The theory that
Buddha was a myth seems to break down here, for some such character
must have existed, that ideas so far in advance even of modern days
could have been conceived. His majestic gentleness never varies. He
converts the Very Wicked One. He speaks gently to the Daughters of
Sin. He clears out even the lowest of hells when he visits earth, and
makes devils as well as good men happy. A fool outrages and insults
him. "My son," he replies, "outrage addressed to heaven
is like spittle aimed into the skies: it returns upon the author of
the outrage." * And
he explained to his disciples that Tathâgata could never be made
angry by foul actions and invectives. Such can only make him redouble
his mercy and love. †
When we reflect that the principle of retaliation was the rude policy
of the day in which he lived, and that aggregations of men were
obliged to foster a love of revenge, war, plunder, and bloodshed in
their midst, prompted by the mere instinct of self-preservation, such
great sentences as the following of Buddha are indeed noteworthy:—
"By love alone can we conquer wrath. By good alone can we
conquer evil. The whole world dreads violence. All men tremble in the
presence of death. Do to others that which ye would have them do to
you. Kill not. Cause no death." ‡
"Say no harsh words to thy neighbour. He will reply to thee in
the same tone." §
"I am injured and provoked, I have been beaten and plundered!
They who speak thus will never cease to hate."
"That which can cause hate to cease in the world is not hate,
but the absence of hate." *
"If, like a trumpet trodden on in battle, thou corn-plainest
not, thou hast attained Nirvâna."
"Silently shall I endure abuse, as the war-elephant receives
the shaft of the bowman."
"The awakened man goes not on revenge, but rewards with
kindness the very being who has injured him, as the sandal-tree scents
the axe of the woodman who fells it." †
I will now copy down a few miscellaneous sayings of Buddha:—
"The swans go on the path of the sun. They go through the air
by means of their miraculous power. The wise are led out of this world
when they have conquered Mara and his train."
"A man is not a Śramana by outward acts." ‡
"Not by tonsure does an undisciplined man became a Śramana."
"There is no satisfying of lusts with a shower of gold
pieces."
"A man is not a Bhikshu simply because he asks others for
alms. A man is not a Muni because he observes silence. Not by
discipline and vows, not by much spiritual knowledge, not by sleeping
alone, not by the gift of holy inspiration, can I earn that release
which no worldling can know. The real Śramana is he who has
quieted all evil."
"If one man conquer in battle a thousand thousand men,
and another conquer himself, the last is the greatest conqueror."
"Few are there amongst men who arrive at the other shore. Many
run up and down the shore."
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