Buddhism

♦ The Story of India ♦ Beyond other lands the great land of India has borne the burden of the havoc which has been wrought in this world of ours, and through it in the fair universe of God; and she has realized deeply that man has had some awful share in the tragedy. Her religious teaching is the expression of her sense of this fact, and of her yearning after the re-uniting of each several severed part with the original Oneness. To this end the appalling panorama presented to the view in such a city as Benares—the washings, the offerings and acts of worship, the pilgrim processions from temple to temple. To this end the fastings and austerities, the renunciations, the so-to-speak experiments in ways of salvation. And to this end the long thoughts and dreams of the centuries, and the missions of men like Gautama. The history of the Passion of India is, rightly understood, the most noble which the world has known, with one exception only. The huge blunders into which she has fallen take nothing from the grandeur of the story, they add much to its pathos. She has dreamed that man must seek God, and has never had the vision of God seeking man. She has failed to evolve the idea of a personal God, a living, speaking, loving God; and the pantheism into which she has drifted seems to us at best a poor thing, and at worst a bad thing. Life has failed of any moral significance. But the great heart of India is fundamentally right. Her mistakes are not, as has been so often affirmed, of the essence of her nature; they are only the best solution which her unaided mind and heart could discover, of the problem of the sorrow of the world. The greatest of her Masters was Gautama the Buddha, who proved, in one aspect of his teaching, too great for her acceptance, in another, too narrow; and he was rejected, not, however, before he made an ineffaceable mark upon her thought, and not before she had sent his influence far over the world.

♦ Gautama ♦ Gautama, known as the Buddha, was born at Kapila Wastu, on the river Rohini, about a hundred miles from Benares, some 550 years before Christ. He came of a noble family. Wonderful tales, most of them legends of a comparatively recent date, are told of his birth, childhood, and youth; little is really known. He was chivalrous and noble in character, and revealed very early a peculiarly sensitive temperament; the sight of suffering overwhelmed him; and his father, whose only child he was, brought him up in strictest seclusion, sheltering him, so far as might be, from contact with the darker aspects of life.

♦ His Story ♦ The Seeker ♦ He was married early and happily, and ten years later a son was born to him. It was about this time that the knowledge of the world’s sorrow reached him. The story is told of his driving out beyond the palace gates, and meeting examples of suffering, old age, and death. He insisted upon an explanation, and the charioteer explained to his master how that these were the common lot of humanity. Gautama returned to the palace; but from that day was unable to settle into the old life. Unrest grew upon him, and at length he determined to leave his home, don the garb of the Seeker, and learn from those who had studied the problems of evil in human life, the lesson of their meaning and their remedy.

♦ The Way of Religion ♦ He went, as was natural, in the first place, to the religious teachers, the Brahmans, in order to learn from them how by religious service and ritual, evil had been mastered. It is significant that the time spent in this study was short, and that very little is told of it. The cruelty of the sacrifices repelled him, and he could discover no relation whatever between the elaborate symbolism of the worship, and the deeper needs of his awakened nature.

♦ The Way of the ascetic Student ♦ He left the sacred city, and retired with five companions of like mind with himself, that in the quiet of a forest retreat they might meditate together. The only way known to them was the way of severest self-discipline. Great thinkers of India had taught that the universe is one great Soul from which all other souls had broken away. These, separate from their true home, wander in misery, finding bodies as they may, according to their nature, and having no rest until they return to the original Soul. This is the doctrine of transmigration or re-incarnation. The soul is incarnated again and again, suffering in each new body the true recompense of the previous life. This process is repeated until the soul is purified from all evil, when it returns to the Mother Soul. The fewer the deeds, good or evil, the fewer the re-incarnations; and for those who would cut short the painful history, the life of the ascetic is the only true life. By austerity the power of the body may be vanquished, the selfish life (cause of all deeds, good or evil) may be subdued, and the soul may be set free.

To this life Gautama gave himself for six years, adding ever severer and severer tests; until he was regarded as the greatest of living saints. But for himself was no satisfaction; the answer to his problem was not yet found. At length he owned sorrowfully that the way of asceticism was not the way of release. He had not yet discovered the cause of life’s suffering, and although the body seemed vanquished, Self lived, and temptation and sorrow were still possible. With superb courage he confessed to his companions that for him the experiment was a failure, and withdrew.

♦ Solitary Study ♦ Enlightenment ♦ He retreated deeper into the forest, and spent the following year in profound meditation. Seated under the tree ever after known as the Bo tree (tree of wisdom) the light dawned upon him. He saw that earthly desire, the yielding to selfish aims, was the true cause of human misery. If men were free from these, suffering must cease. Not then in religious ceremonial, which is not even symbolic of the truth; nor in self-torture or bodily discipline; but in the strenuous and constant denial of the Self-life until the dominion of self is broken, and also, in the tenderest pity for the great world of suffering men and women, is salvation to be found.

Towards self, discipline,
Towards others, love,—

this is the path of emancipation.

♦ Temptation ♦ It was while Gautama, now the Buddha, or Enlightened One, rested from the mental strain through which he had passed, and meditated upon his new-found Gospel, that the tempter came to him with subtle temptation. All earthly desires came before him, and he mastered them one by one, until at length he lay under the tree exhausted, but triumphant.

♦ Service♦ Peace had been obtained for himself, and now the thought of the suffering world possessed him. It was not in the nature of Gautama to desire publicity; but he could not rest with this new-found gospel of release from misery through the conquest of Desire. He went in search of his old Brahman teachers; but they were dead. He then found the five companions of his ascetic life, who received him at first with doubt; but when he made plain to them in a wonderful sermon, the experience through which he had passed, they gladly received the new gospel. The rest of his busy life was spent in telling his gospel, and in sending out his disciples on preaching tours. Before many months had passed, he was able to send out sixty disciples; and in the course of a very few years his followers numbered many thousands. From the high and the low, and especially from the troubled, they gathered around him, and many entered upon the Way. For forty years he carried on his gentle and loving ministry; travelling from place to place, eating the food which the rich and the poor vied with each other in providing for his own and his followers’ need, and then teaching those who gathered around him. When the Rainy Season came round, he retired with his disciples to some quiet retreat, and talked with them of the great things of the “Kingdom of righteousness.”

♦ Death ♦ His long life was spent thus in the open air, a simple and sweet and unselfish life; and when he died, at Kusi-Nagar, his body was burned and the ashes were divided, and carried for reverent burial to those parts of the land where there were the largest number of his followers. Gautama died in the year 480 B.C.