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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/18194-0.txt b/18194-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..99f3470 --- /dev/null +++ b/18194-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,823 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons, by H.S. Olcott + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons + +Author: H.S. Olcott + +Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18194] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF BUDDHA AND ITS LESSONS *** + + + + +Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar Viswanathan, +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + ADYAR PAMPHLETS + + No. 15 + + + The Life of Buddha and Its + Lessons + + + + BY + + H. S. OLCOTT + + + + + THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE + + ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA + + + + + _First Edition: May 1912_ + + _Second Edition: Sept. 1919_ + + + + +The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons + + +The thoughtful student, in scanning the religious history of the race, +has one fact continually forced upon his notice, _viz_., that there is +an invariable tendency to deify whomsoever shows himself superior to +the weakness of our common humanity. Look where we will, we find the +saint-like man exalted into a divine personage and worshipped for a +god. Though perhaps misunderstood, reviled and even persecuted while +living, the apotheosis is almost sure to come after death: and the +victim of yesterday's mob, raised to the state of an Intercessor in +Heaven, is besought with prayer and tears, and placatory penances, to +mediate with God for the pardon of human sin. This is a mean and vile +trait of human nature, the proof of ignorance, selfishness, brutal +cowardice, and a superstitious materialism. It shows the base instinct +to put down and destroy whatever or whoever makes men feel their own +imperfections; with the alternative of ignoring and denying these very +imperfections by turning into gods men who have merely spiritualised +their natures, so that it may be supposed that they were heavenly +incarnations and not mortal like other men. + +This process of euhemerisation, as it is called, or the making of men +into gods and gods into men, sometimes, though more rarely, begins +during the life of the hero, but usually after death. The true history +of his life is gradually amplified and decorated with fanciful +incidents, to fit it to the new character which has been posthumously +given him. Omens and portents are now made to attend his earthly +avaṭāra: his precocity is described as superhuman: as a babe or +lisping child he silences the wisest logicians by his divine +knowledge: miracles he produces as other boys do soap-bubbles: the +terrible energies of nature are his playthings: the gods, angels, and +demons are his habitual attendants: the sun, moon, and all the starry +host wheel around his cradle in joyful measures, and the earth thrills +with joy at having borne such a prodigy: and at his last hour of +mortal life the whole universe shakes with conflicting emotions. + +Why need I use the few moments at my disposal to marshal before you +the various personages of whom these fables have been written? Let it +suffice to recall the interesting fact to your notice, and invite you +to compare the respective biographies of the Brāhmaṇical +Kṛṣhṇa, the Persian Zoroaster, the Egyptian Hermes, the +Indian Gauṭama, and the canonical, especially the apocryphal, +Jesus. Taking Kṛṣhṇa or Zoroaster, as you please, as the most +ancient, and coming down the chronological line of descent, you will +find them all made after the same pattern. The real personage is all +covered up and concealed under the embroidered veils of the romancer +and the enthusiastic historiographer. What is surprising to me is that +this tendency to exaggeration and hyperbole is not more commonly +allowed for by those who in our days attempt to discuss and compare +religions. We are constantly and painfully reminded that the prejudice +of inimical critics, on the one hand, and the furious bigotry of +devotees, on the other, blind men to fact and probability, and lead to +gross injustice. Let me take as an example the mythical biographies of +Jesus. At the time when the Council of Nicea was convened for settling +the quarrels of certain bishops, and for the purpose of examining into +the canonicity of the three hundred more or less apocryphal gospels +that were being read in the Christian churches as inspired writings, +the history of the life of Christ had reached the height of absurd +myth. We may see some specimens in the extant books of the apocryphal +New Testament, but most of them are now lost. What have been retained +in the present Canon may doubtless be regarded as the least +objectionable. And yet we must not hastily adopt even this conclusion, +for you know that Sabina, Bishop of Heracha, himself speaking of the +Council of Nicea, affirms that "except Constantine and Sabinus, Bishop +of Pamphilus, these bishops were a set of illiterate, simple creatures +that understood nothing"; which is as though he had said they were a +pack of fools. And Pappus, in his _Synodicon_ to that Council of +Nicea, lets us into the secret that the Canon was not decided by a +careful comparison of several gospels before them, but by a _lottery_. +Having, he tells us, "promiscuously put all the books that were +referred to the Council for determination under a Communion table in a +church, they (the bishops) besought the Lord that the inspired +writings might get up on the table, while the spurious writings +remained underneath, and _it happened accordingly_". + +But letting all this pass and looking only to what is contained in the +present Canon, we see the same tendency to compel all nature to attest +the divinity of the writer's hero. At the nativity a star leaves its +orbit and leads the Persian astrologers to the divine child, and angels +come and converse with shepherds, and a whole train of like celestial +phenomena occurs at various stages of his earthly career, which closes +amid earthquakes, a pall of darkness over the whole scene, a +supernatural war of the elements, the opening of graves and the walking +about of their tenants, and other appalling wonders. Now, if the candid +Buḍḍhist concedes that the real history of Gauṭama is embellished by +like absurd exaggerations, and if we can find their duplicates in the +biographies of Zoroaster, Shaṅkarāchārya and other real personages of +antiquity, have we not the right to conclude that the true history of +the Founder of Christianity, if at this late date it were possible to +write it, would be very different from the narratives that pass current? +We must not forget that Jerusalem was at that time a Roman dependency, +just as Ceylon is now a British, and that the silence of contemporary +Roman historians about any such violent disturbances of the equilibrium +of nature is deeply significant. + +I have cited this example for the sole and simple purpose of bringing +home to the non-Buḍḍhistic portion of my present audience the +conviction that, in considering the life of Sākya Muni and the +lessons it teaches, they must not make his followers of to-day +responsible for any extravagant exuberances of past biographers. The +doctrine of Buḍḍha and its effects are to be judged quite apart +from the man, just as the doctrine ascribed to Jesus and its effects +are to be considered quite irrespectively of his personal history. +And--as I hope I have shown--the actual doings and sayings of every +founder of a Faith or a school of philosophy must be sought for under +a heap of tinsel and rubbish contributed by successive generations of +followers. + +Approaching the question of the hour in this spirit of precaution, +what do we find are the probabilities respecting the life of Sākya +Muni? Who was he? When did he live? How did he live? What did he +teach? A most careful comparison of authorities and analysis of +evidence establishes, I think, the following data: + +1. He was the son of a king. + +2. He lived between six and seven centuries before Christ. + +3. He resigned his royal state and went to live in the jungle, and +among the lowest and most unhappy classes, so as to learn the secret +of human pain and misery by personal experience: tested every known +austerity of the Hinḍū ascetics and excelled them all in his power +of endurance: sounded every depth of woe in search of the means to +alleviate it: and at last came out victorious, and showed the world +the way to salvation. + +4. What he taught may be summed up in a few words, as the perfume of +many roses may be distilled into a few drops of _attar_: Everything in +the world of Matter is unreal; the only reality is in the world of +Spirit. Emancipate yourselves from the tyranny of the former; strive +to attain the latter. The Rev. Samuel Beal, in his _Catena of +Buḍḍhist Scriptures from the Chinese_ puts it differently. "The +idea underlying the Buddhist religious system is," he says, "simply +this: 'all is vanity'. Earth is a show, and Heaven is a vain reward." +Primitive Buḍḍhism was engrossed, absorbed, by one thought--the +vanity of finite existence, the priceless value of the one condition +of Eternal Rest. + +If I have the temerity to prefer my own definition of the spirit of +Buḍḍha's doctrine, it is because I think that all the +misconceptions of it have arisen from a failure to understand his idea +of what is real and what is unreal, what worth longing and striving +for and what not. From this misconception have come all the unfounded +charges that Buḍḍhism is an "atheistical," that is to say, a +grossly materialistic, a nihilistic, a negative, a vice-breeding +religion. Buḍḍhism denies the existence of a personal +God--true: therefore--well, therefore, and notwithstanding all this, +its teaching is neither what may be called properly atheistical, +nihilistic, negative, nor provocative of vice. I will try to make my +meaning clear, and the advancement of modern scientific research helps +in this direction. Science divides the universe for us into two +elements--matter and force; accounting for their phenomena by their +combinations, and making both eternal and obedient to eternal and +immutable law. The speculations of men of science have carried them to +the outermost verge of the physical universe. Behind them lie not only +a thousand brilliant triumphs by which a part of Nature's secrets have +been wrung from her, but also more thousands of failures to fathom her +deep mysteries. They have proved thought material, since it is the +evolution of the gray tissue of the brain, and a recent German +experimentalist, Professor Dr. Jäger, claims to have proved that +man's soul is "a volatile odoriferous principle, capable of solution +in glycerine". Psychogen is the name he gives to it, and his +experiments show that it is present not merely in the body as a whole, +but in every individual cell, in the ovum, and even in the ultimate +elements of protoplasm. I need hardly say to so intelligent an +audience as this, that these highly interesting experiments of Dr. +Jäger are corroborated by many facts, both physiological and +psychological, that have been always noticed among all nations; facts +which are woven into popular proverbs, legends, folk-lore fables, +mythologies and theologies, the world over. Now, if thought is matter +and soul is matter, then Buḍḍha, in recognising the impermanence +of sensual enjoyment or experience of any kind, and the instability of +every material form, the human soul included, uttered a profound and +scientific truth, And since the very idea of gratification or +suffering is inseparable from that of material being--absolute SPIRIT +alone being regarded by common consent as perfect, changeless and +Eternal--therefore, in teaching the doctrine that conquest of the +material self, with all its lusts, desires, loves, hopes, ambitions +and hates, frees one from pain, and leads to Nirvāṇa, the state +of Perfect Rest, he preached the rest of an untinged, untainted +existence in the Spirit. Though the soul be composed of the finest +conceivable substance, yet if substance at all--as Dr. Jäger seems +able to prove, and ages of human intercourse with the weird phantoms +of the shadow world imply--it must in time perish. What remains is +that changeless part of man, which most philosophers call Spirit, and +Nirvāṇa is its necessary condition of existence. The only +dispute between Buḍḍhist authorities is whether this +Nirvāṇic existence is attended with individual consciousness, or +whether the individual is merged in the whole, as the extinguished +flame is lost in the air. But there are those who say that the flame +has not been annihilated by the blowing out. It has only passed out of +the visible world of matter into the invisible world of Spirit, where +it still exists and will ever exist, as a bright reality. Such +thinkers can understand Buḍḍha's doctrine and, while agreeing +with him that soul is not immortal, would spurn the charge of +materialistic nihilism, if brought against either that sublime teacher +or themselves. + +The history of Sākya Muni's life is the strongest bulwark of his +religion. As long as the human heart is capable of being touched by +tales of heroic self-sacrifice, accompanied by purity and celestial +benevolence of motive, it will cherish his memory. Why should I go +into the particulars of that noble life? You will remember that he was +the son of the king of Kapilavasṭu--a mighty sovereign whose +opulence enabled him to give the heir of his house every luxury that a +voluptuous imagination could desire: and that the future Buḍḍha +was not allowed even to know, much less observe, the miseries of +ordinary existence. How beautifully Edwin Arnold has painted for us in +_The Light of Asia_ the luxury and languor of that Indian Court, +"where love was gaoler and delights its bars". We are told that: + + The king commanded that within those walls + No mention should be made of age or death + Sorrow or pain, or sickness ... + And every dawn the dying rose was plucked, + The dead leaves hid, all evil sights removed: + For said the king, "If he shall pass his youth + Far from such things as move to wistfulness + And brooding on the empty eggs of thought, + The shadow of this fate, too vast for man, + May fade, belike, and I shall see him grow + To that great stature of fair sovereignty, + When he shall rule all lands--if he _will rule_-- + The king of kings and glory of his time." + +You know how vain were all the precautions taken by the father to +prevent the fulfilment of the prophecy that his beloved son would be +the coming Buḍḍha. Though all suggestions of death were banished +from the royal palace, though the city was bedecked with flowers and +gay flags, and every painful object removed from sight when the young +Prince Siḍḍārtha visited it, yet the decrees of destiny were +not to be baffled, the "voices of the spirits," the "wandering winds" +and the ḍevas, whispered the truth of human sorrows into his +listening ear, and when the appointed hour arrived, the Suḍḍha +Ḍevas threw the spell of slumber over the household, steeped in +profound lethargy the sentinels (as we are told was done by an angel +to the gaolers of Peter's prison), rolled back the triple gates of +bronze, strewed the sweet moghra-flowers thickly beneath his horse's +feet to muffle every sound, and he was free. Free? Yes--to resign +every earthly comfort, every sensuous enjoyment, the sweets of royal +power, the homage of a Court, the delights of domestic life: gems, the +glitter of gold: rich stuffs, rich food, soft beds: the songs of +trained musicians, and of birds kept prisoners in gay cages, the +murmur of perfumed waters plashing in marble basins, the delicious +shade of trees in gardens where art had contrived to make nature even +lovelier than herself. He leaps from his saddle when at a safe +distance from the palace, flings the jewelled rein to his faithful +groom, Channa, cuts off his flowing locks, gives his rich costume to a +hunter in exchange for his own, plunges into the jungle, and is free: + + To tread its paths with patient, stainless feet, + Making its dusty bed, its loneliest wastes + My dwelling, and its meanest things my mates: + Clad in no prouder garb than outcasts wear, + Fed with no meals save what the charitable + Give of their will, sheltered by no more pomp, + Than the dim cave lends or the jungle-bush. + This will I do because the woeful cry + Of life and all flesh living cometh up + Into my ears, and all my soul is full + Of pity for the sickness of this world: + Which I will heal, if healing may be found + By uttermost renouncing and strong strife. + +Thus masterfully does Sir Edwin Arnold depict the sentiment which +provoked this Great Renunciator. The testimony of thousands of +millions who, during the last twenty-five centuries, have professed +the Buḍḍhistic religion, proves that the secret of human misery +was at last solved by this divine self-sacrifice, and the true path to +Nirvāṇa opened. + +The joy that he brought to the hearts of others, Buḍḍha first +tasted himself. He found that the pleasures of the eye, the ear, the +taste, touch and smell are fleeting and deceptive: he who gives value +to them brings only disappointment and bitter sorrow upon himself. The +social differences between men he found were equally arbitrary and +illusive; caste bred hatred and selfishness; riches strife, envy and +malice. So in founding his Faith he laid the bottom of its +foundation-stones upon all this worldly dirt, and its dome in the +clear serene of the world of Spirit. He who can mount to a clear +conception of Nirvāṇa will find his thought far away above the +common joys and sorrows of petty men. As to one who ascends to the +top of Chimborazo or the Himālayan crags, and sees men on the +earth's surface crawling to and fro like ants, so equally small do +bigots and sectarians appear to him. The mountain climber has under +his feet the very clouds from whose sun-painted shapes the poet has +figured to himself the golden streets and glittering domes of the +materialistic Heaven of a personal God. Below him are all the various +objects out of which the world's pantheons have been manufactured: +around, above--Immensity. And so also, far down the ascending plane of +thought that leads from the earth towards the Infinite, the +philosophic Buḍḍhist describes, at different plateaux, the +heavens and hells, the gods and demons, of the materialistic +creed-builders. + +What are the lessons to be derived from the life and teachings of this +heroic prince of Kapilavasṭu? Lessons of gratitude and benevolence. +Lessons of tolerance for the clashing opinions of men who live, move +and have their being, think and aspire, only in the material world. +The lesson of a common tie of brotherhood among all men. Lessons of +manly self-reliance, of equanimity in breasting whatsoever of good or +ill may happen. Lessons of the meanness of the rewards, the pettiness +of the misfortunes of a shifting world of illusions. Lessons of the +necessity for avoiding every species of evil thought and word, and for +doing, speaking and thinking everything that is good, and for the +bringing of the mind into subjection so that these may be accomplished +without selfish motive or vanity. Lessons of self-purification and +communion, by which the illusiveness of externals and the value of +internals are understood. + +Well might St. Hilaire burst into the panegyric that Buḍḍha "is +the perfect model of all the virtues he preaches ... his life has not +a stain upon it". Well might the sober critic Max Müller pronounce his +moral code "one of the most perfect which the world has ever known". +No wonder that in contemplating that gentle life Edwin Arnold should +have found his personality "the highest, gentlest, holiest and most +beneficent ... in the history of thought," and been moved to write his +splendid verses. It is twenty-five hundred years since humanity put +forth such a flower: who knows when it did before? + +Gauṭama Buḍḍha, Sākya Muni, has ennobled the whole human +race. His fame is our common inheritance. His Law is the law of +Justice, providing for every good thought, word and deed its fair +reward, for every evil one its proper punishment. His law is in +harmony with the voices of Nature, and the evident equilibrium of the +universe. It yields nothing to importunities or threats, can be +neither coaxed nor bribed by offerings to abate or alter one jot or +tittle of its inexorable course. Am I told that Buḍḍhist laymen +display vanity in their worship and ostentation in their almsgiving; +that they are fostering sects as bitterly as Hinḍūs? So much the +worse for the laymen: there is the example of Buḍḍha and his +Law. Am I told that Buḍḍhist priests are ignorant, idle +fosterers of superstitions grafted on their religion by foreign kings? +So much the worse for the priests: the life of their Divine Master +shames them and shows their unworthiness to wear his yellow robe or +carry his beggar's bowl. There is the Law--immutable--menacing; it +will find them out and punish. + +And what shall we say to those of another caste of character--the +humble-minded, charitable, tolerant, religiously aspiring hearts among +the laity, and the unselfish, pure and learned of the priests who know +the Precepts and keep them? The Law will find them out also; and when +the book of each life is written up and the balance struck, every good +thought or deed will be found entered in its proper place. Not one +blessing that ever followed them from grateful lips throughout their +earthly pilgrimage will be found to have been lost; but each will help +to ease their way as they move from stage to stage of Being + + UNTO NIRVĀṆA WHERE THE SILENCE LIVES. + + * * * * * + + + + +THE ADYAR PAMPHLETS + +Vol. IX. + + +97. Occultism. Annie Besant + +98. Brotherhood. Dr. Th. Pascal + +99. Life After Death. Annie Besant + +100. Difficulties in Clairvoyance. C. W. Leadbeater + +101. Is Belief in the Masters Superstitious + or Harmful? Annie Besant + +102. The Case for Reincarnation. B. Douglas Fawcett + +103. Memory. Annie Besant + +104. Spiritualism and Theosophy. H. S. Olcott + +105. The Kabalah and the Kabalists. H. P. Blavatsky + + * * * * * + +Annual Subscription: Re. 1-8 or 2s. or 50c. _Postage Free_. + +Single Copy: As. 2 or 2d, or 4c. _Postage Extra_. + + +Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons, by H.S. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/18194-0.zip b/18194-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1b60447 --- /dev/null +++ b/18194-0.zip diff --git a/18194-8.txt b/18194-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..24e5148 --- /dev/null +++ b/18194-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,820 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons, by H.S. Olcott + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons + +Author: H.S. Olcott + +Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18194] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF BUDDHA AND ITS LESSONS *** + + + + +Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar Viswanathan, +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + ADYAR PAMPHLETS + + No. 15 + + + The Life of Buddha and Its + Lessons + + + + BY + + H. S. OLCOTT + + + + + THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE + + ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA + + + + + _First Edition: May 1912_ + + _Second Edition: Sept. 1919_ + + + + +The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons + + +The thoughtful student, in scanning the religious history of the race, +has one fact continually forced upon his notice, _viz_., that there is +an invariable tendency to deify whomsoever shows himself superior to +the weakness of our common humanity. Look where we will, we find the +saint-like man exalted into a divine personage and worshipped for a +god. Though perhaps misunderstood, reviled and even persecuted while +living, the apotheosis is almost sure to come after death: and the +victim of yesterday's mob, raised to the state of an Intercessor in +Heaven, is besought with prayer and tears, and placatory penances, to +mediate with God for the pardon of human sin. This is a mean and vile +trait of human nature, the proof of ignorance, selfishness, brutal +cowardice, and a superstitious materialism. It shows the base instinct +to put down and destroy whatever or whoever makes men feel their own +imperfections; with the alternative of ignoring and denying these very +imperfections by turning into gods men who have merely spiritualised +their natures, so that it may be supposed that they were heavenly +incarnations and not mortal like other men. + +This process of euhemerisation, as it is called, or the making of men +into gods and gods into men, sometimes, though more rarely, begins +during the life of the hero, but usually after death. The true history +of his life is gradually amplified and decorated with fanciful +incidents, to fit it to the new character which has been posthumously +given him. Omens and portents are now made to attend his earthly +avatara: his precocity is described as superhuman: as a babe or +lisping child he silences the wisest logicians by his divine +knowledge: miracles he produces as other boys do soap-bubbles: the +terrible energies of nature are his playthings: the gods, angels, and +demons are his habitual attendants: the sun, moon, and all the starry +host wheel around his cradle in joyful measures, and the earth thrills +with joy at having borne such a prodigy: and at his last hour of +mortal life the whole universe shakes with conflicting emotions. + +Why need I use the few moments at my disposal to marshal before you +the various personages of whom these fables have been written? Let it +suffice to recall the interesting fact to your notice, and invite you +to compare the respective biographies of the Brahmanical +Krshna, the Persian Zoroaster, the Egyptian Hermes, the +Indian Gautama, and the canonical, especially the apocryphal, +Jesus. Taking Krshna or Zoroaster, as you please, as the most +ancient, and coming down the chronological line of descent, you will +find them all made after the same pattern. The real personage is all +covered up and concealed under the embroidered veils of the romancer +and the enthusiastic historiographer. What is surprising to me is that +this tendency to exaggeration and hyperbole is not more commonly +allowed for by those who in our days attempt to discuss and compare +religions. We are constantly and painfully reminded that the prejudice +of inimical critics, on the one hand, and the furious bigotry of +devotees, on the other, blind men to fact and probability, and lead to +gross injustice. Let me take as an example the mythical biographies of +Jesus. At the time when the Council of Nicea was convened for settling +the quarrels of certain bishops, and for the purpose of examining into +the canonicity of the three hundred more or less apocryphal gospels +that were being read in the Christian churches as inspired writings, +the history of the life of Christ had reached the height of absurd +myth. We may see some specimens in the extant books of the apocryphal +New Testament, but most of them are now lost. What have been retained +in the present Canon may doubtless be regarded as the least +objectionable. And yet we must not hastily adopt even this conclusion, +for you know that Sabina, Bishop of Heracha, himself speaking of the +Council of Nicea, affirms that "except Constantine and Sabinus, Bishop +of Pamphilus, these bishops were a set of illiterate, simple creatures +that understood nothing"; which is as though he had said they were a +pack of fools. And Pappus, in his _Synodicon_ to that Council of +Nicea, lets us into the secret that the Canon was not decided by a +careful comparison of several gospels before them, but by a _lottery_. +Having, he tells us, "promiscuously put all the books that were +referred to the Council for determination under a Communion table in a +church, they (the bishops) besought the Lord that the inspired +writings might get up on the table, while the spurious writings +remained underneath, and _it happened accordingly_". + +But letting all this pass and looking only to what is contained in the +present Canon, we see the same tendency to compel all nature to attest +the divinity of the writer's hero. At the nativity a star leaves its +orbit and leads the Persian astrologers to the divine child, and angels +come and converse with shepherds, and a whole train of like celestial +phenomena occurs at various stages of his earthly career, which closes +amid earthquakes, a pall of darkness over the whole scene, a +supernatural war of the elements, the opening of graves and the walking +about of their tenants, and other appalling wonders. Now, if the candid +Buddhist concedes that the real history of Gautama is embellished by +like absurd exaggerations, and if we can find their duplicates in the +biographies of Zoroaster, Shankaracharya and other real personages of +antiquity, have we not the right to conclude that the true history of +the Founder of Christianity, if at this late date it were possible to +write it, would be very different from the narratives that pass current? +We must not forget that Jerusalem was at that time a Roman dependency, +just as Ceylon is now a British, and that the silence of contemporary +Roman historians about any such violent disturbances of the equilibrium +of nature is deeply significant. + +I have cited this example for the sole and simple purpose of bringing +home to the non-Buddhistic portion of my present audience the +conviction that, in considering the life of Sakya Muni and the +lessons it teaches, they must not make his followers of to-day +responsible for any extravagant exuberances of past biographers. The +doctrine of Buddha and its effects are to be judged quite apart +from the man, just as the doctrine ascribed to Jesus and its effects +are to be considered quite irrespectively of his personal history. +And--as I hope I have shown--the actual doings and sayings of every +founder of a Faith or a school of philosophy must be sought for under +a heap of tinsel and rubbish contributed by successive generations of +followers. + +Approaching the question of the hour in this spirit of precaution, +what do we find are the probabilities respecting the life of Sakya +Muni? Who was he? When did he live? How did he live? What did he +teach? A most careful comparison of authorities and analysis of +evidence establishes, I think, the following data: + +1. He was the son of a king. + +2. He lived between six and seven centuries before Christ. + +3. He resigned his royal state and went to live in the jungle, and +among the lowest and most unhappy classes, so as to learn the secret +of human pain and misery by personal experience: tested every known +austerity of the Hindu ascetics and excelled them all in his power +of endurance: sounded every depth of woe in search of the means to +alleviate it: and at last came out victorious, and showed the world +the way to salvation. + +4. What he taught may be summed up in a few words, as the perfume of +many roses may be distilled into a few drops of _attar_: Everything in +the world of Matter is unreal; the only reality is in the world of +Spirit. Emancipate yourselves from the tyranny of the former; strive +to attain the latter. The Rev. Samuel Beal, in his _Catena of +Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese_ puts it differently. "The +idea underlying the Buddhist religious system is," he says, "simply +this: 'all is vanity'. Earth is a show, and Heaven is a vain reward." +Primitive Buddhism was engrossed, absorbed, by one thought--the +vanity of finite existence, the priceless value of the one condition +of Eternal Rest. + +If I have the temerity to prefer my own definition of the spirit of +Buddha's doctrine, it is because I think that all the misconceptions of +it have arisen from a failure to understand his idea of what is real and +what is unreal, what worth longing and striving for and what not. From +this misconception have come all the unfounded charges that Buddhism is +an "atheistical," that is to say, a grossly materialistic, a nihilistic, +a negative, a vice-breeding religion. Buddhism denies the existence of a +personal God--true: therefore--well, therefore, and notwithstanding all +this, its teaching is neither what may be called properly atheistical, +nihilistic, negative, nor provocative of vice. I will try to make my +meaning clear, and the advancement of modern scientific research helps +in this direction. Science divides the universe for us into two +elements--matter and force; accounting for their phenomena by their +combinations, and making both eternal and obedient to eternal and +immutable law. The speculations of men of science have carried them to +the outermost verge of the physical universe. Behind them lie not only a +thousand brilliant triumphs by which a part of Nature's secrets have +been wrung from her, but also more thousands of failures to fathom her +deep mysteries. They have proved thought material, since it is the +evolution of the gray tissue of the brain, and a recent German +experimentalist, Professor Dr. Jger, claims to have proved that man's +soul is "a volatile odoriferous principle, capable of solution in +glycerine". Psychogen is the name he gives to it, and his experiments +show that it is present not merely in the body as a whole, but in every +individual cell, in the ovum, and even in the ultimate elements of +protoplasm. I need hardly say to so intelligent an audience as this, +that these highly interesting experiments of Dr. Jger are corroborated +by many facts, both physiological and psychological, that have been +always noticed among all nations; facts which are woven into popular +proverbs, legends, folk-lore fables, mythologies and theologies, the +world over. Now, if thought is matter and soul is matter, then Buddha, +in recognising the impermanence of sensual enjoyment or experience of +any kind, and the instability of every material form, the human soul +included, uttered a profound and scientific truth, And since the very +idea of gratification or suffering is inseparable from that of material +being--absolute SPIRIT alone being regarded by common consent as +perfect, changeless and Eternal--therefore, in teaching the doctrine +that conquest of the material self, with all its lusts, desires, loves, +hopes, ambitions and hates, frees one from pain, and leads to Nirvana, +the state of Perfect Rest, he preached the rest of an untinged, +untainted existence in the Spirit. Though the soul be composed of the +finest conceivable substance, yet if substance at all--as Dr. Jger +seems able to prove, and ages of human intercourse with the weird +phantoms of the shadow world imply--it must in time perish. What remains +is that changeless part of man, which most philosophers call Spirit, and +Nirvana is its necessary condition of existence. The only dispute +between Buddhist authorities is whether this Nirvanic existence is +attended with individual consciousness, or whether the individual is +merged in the whole, as the extinguished flame is lost in the air. But +there are those who say that the flame has not been annihilated by the +blowing out. It has only passed out of the visible world of matter into +the invisible world of Spirit, where it still exists and will ever +exist, as a bright reality. Such thinkers can understand Buddha's +doctrine and, while agreeing with him that soul is not immortal, would +spurn the charge of materialistic nihilism, if brought against either +that sublime teacher or themselves. + +The history of Sakya Muni's life is the strongest bulwark of his +religion. As long as the human heart is capable of being touched by +tales of heroic self-sacrifice, accompanied by purity and celestial +benevolence of motive, it will cherish his memory. Why should I go +into the particulars of that noble life? You will remember that he was +the son of the king of Kapilavastu--a mighty sovereign whose +opulence enabled him to give the heir of his house every luxury that a +voluptuous imagination could desire: and that the future Buddha +was not allowed even to know, much less observe, the miseries of +ordinary existence. How beautifully Edwin Arnold has painted for us in +_The Light of Asia_ the luxury and languor of that Indian Court, +"where love was gaoler and delights its bars". We are told that: + + The king commanded that within those walls + No mention should be made of age or death + Sorrow or pain, or sickness ... + And every dawn the dying rose was plucked, + The dead leaves hid, all evil sights removed: + For said the king, "If he shall pass his youth + Far from such things as move to wistfulness + And brooding on the empty eggs of thought, + The shadow of this fate, too vast for man, + May fade, belike, and I shall see him grow + To that great stature of fair sovereignty, + When he shall rule all lands--if he _will rule_-- + The king of kings and glory of his time." + +You know how vain were all the precautions taken by the father to +prevent the fulfilment of the prophecy that his beloved son would be +the coming Buddha. Though all suggestions of death were banished +from the royal palace, though the city was bedecked with flowers and +gay flags, and every painful object removed from sight when the young +Prince Siddartha visited it, yet the decrees of destiny were +not to be baffled, the "voices of the spirits," the "wandering winds" +and the devas, whispered the truth of human sorrows into his +listening ear, and when the appointed hour arrived, the Suddha +Devas threw the spell of slumber over the household, steeped in +profound lethargy the sentinels (as we are told was done by an angel +to the gaolers of Peter's prison), rolled back the triple gates of +bronze, strewed the sweet moghra-flowers thickly beneath his horse's +feet to muffle every sound, and he was free. Free? Yes--to resign +every earthly comfort, every sensuous enjoyment, the sweets of royal +power, the homage of a Court, the delights of domestic life: gems, the +glitter of gold: rich stuffs, rich food, soft beds: the songs of +trained musicians, and of birds kept prisoners in gay cages, the +murmur of perfumed waters plashing in marble basins, the delicious +shade of trees in gardens where art had contrived to make nature even +lovelier than herself. He leaps from his saddle when at a safe +distance from the palace, flings the jewelled rein to his faithful +groom, Channa, cuts off his flowing locks, gives his rich costume to a +hunter in exchange for his own, plunges into the jungle, and is free: + + To tread its paths with patient, stainless feet, + Making its dusty bed, its loneliest wastes + My dwelling, and its meanest things my mates: + Clad in no prouder garb than outcasts wear, + Fed with no meals save what the charitable + Give of their will, sheltered by no more pomp, + Than the dim cave lends or the jungle-bush. + This will I do because the woeful cry + Of life and all flesh living cometh up + Into my ears, and all my soul is full + Of pity for the sickness of this world: + Which I will heal, if healing may be found + By uttermost renouncing and strong strife. + +Thus masterfully does Sir Edwin Arnold depict the sentiment which +provoked this Great Renunciator. The testimony of thousands of +millions who, during the last twenty-five centuries, have professed +the Buddhistic religion, proves that the secret of human misery +was at last solved by this divine self-sacrifice, and the true path to +Nirvana opened. + +The joy that he brought to the hearts of others, Buddha first +tasted himself. He found that the pleasures of the eye, the ear, the +taste, touch and smell are fleeting and deceptive: he who gives value +to them brings only disappointment and bitter sorrow upon himself. The +social differences between men he found were equally arbitrary and +illusive; caste bred hatred and selfishness; riches strife, envy and +malice. So in founding his Faith he laid the bottom of its +foundation-stones upon all this worldly dirt, and its dome in the +clear serene of the world of Spirit. He who can mount to a clear +conception of Nirvana will find his thought far away above the +common joys and sorrows of petty men. As to one who ascends to the +top of Chimborazo or the Himalayan crags, and sees men on the +earth's surface crawling to and fro like ants, so equally small do +bigots and sectarians appear to him. The mountain climber has under +his feet the very clouds from whose sun-painted shapes the poet has +figured to himself the golden streets and glittering domes of the +materialistic Heaven of a personal God. Below him are all the various +objects out of which the world's pantheons have been manufactured: +around, above--Immensity. And so also, far down the ascending plane of +thought that leads from the earth towards the Infinite, the +philosophic Buddhist describes, at different plateaux, the +heavens and hells, the gods and demons, of the materialistic +creed-builders. + +What are the lessons to be derived from the life and teachings of this +heroic prince of Kapilavastu? Lessons of gratitude and benevolence. +Lessons of tolerance for the clashing opinions of men who live, move +and have their being, think and aspire, only in the material world. +The lesson of a common tie of brotherhood among all men. Lessons of +manly self-reliance, of equanimity in breasting whatsoever of good or +ill may happen. Lessons of the meanness of the rewards, the pettiness +of the misfortunes of a shifting world of illusions. Lessons of the +necessity for avoiding every species of evil thought and word, and for +doing, speaking and thinking everything that is good, and for the +bringing of the mind into subjection so that these may be accomplished +without selfish motive or vanity. Lessons of self-purification and +communion, by which the illusiveness of externals and the value of +internals are understood. + +Well might St. Hilaire burst into the panegyric that Buddha "is +the perfect model of all the virtues he preaches ... his life has not +a stain upon it". Well might the sober critic Max Mller pronounce his +moral code "one of the most perfect which the world has ever known". +No wonder that in contemplating that gentle life Edwin Arnold should +have found his personality "the highest, gentlest, holiest and most +beneficent ... in the history of thought," and been moved to write his +splendid verses. It is twenty-five hundred years since humanity put +forth such a flower: who knows when it did before? + +Gautama Buddha, Sakya Muni, has ennobled the whole human +race. His fame is our common inheritance. His Law is the law of +Justice, providing for every good thought, word and deed its fair +reward, for every evil one its proper punishment. His law is in +harmony with the voices of Nature, and the evident equilibrium of the +universe. It yields nothing to importunities or threats, can be +neither coaxed nor bribed by offerings to abate or alter one jot or +tittle of its inexorable course. Am I told that Buddhist laymen +display vanity in their worship and ostentation in their almsgiving; +that they are fostering sects as bitterly as Hindus? So much the +worse for the laymen: there is the example of Buddha and his +Law. Am I told that Buddhist priests are ignorant, idle +fosterers of superstitions grafted on their religion by foreign kings? +So much the worse for the priests: the life of their Divine Master +shames them and shows their unworthiness to wear his yellow robe or +carry his beggar's bowl. There is the Law--immutable--menacing; it +will find them out and punish. + +And what shall we say to those of another caste of character--the +humble-minded, charitable, tolerant, religiously aspiring hearts among +the laity, and the unselfish, pure and learned of the priests who know +the Precepts and keep them? The Law will find them out also; and when +the book of each life is written up and the balance struck, every good +thought or deed will be found entered in its proper place. Not one +blessing that ever followed them from grateful lips throughout their +earthly pilgrimage will be found to have been lost; but each will help +to ease their way as they move from stage to stage of Being + + UNTO NIRVANA WHERE THE SILENCE LIVES. + + * * * * * + + + + +THE ADYAR PAMPHLETS + +Vol. IX. + + +97. Occultism. Annie Besant + +98. Brotherhood. Dr. Th. Pascal + +99. Life After Death. Annie Besant + +100. Difficulties in Clairvoyance. C. W. Leadbeater + +101. Is Belief in the Masters Superstitious + or Harmful? Annie Besant + +102. The Case for Reincarnation. B. Douglas Fawcett + +103. Memory. Annie Besant + +104. Spiritualism and Theosophy. H. S. Olcott + +105. The Kabalah and the Kabalists. H. P. Blavatsky + + * * * * * + +Annual Subscription: Re. 1-8 or 2s. or 50c. _Postage Free_. + +Single Copy: As. 2 or 2d, or 4c. _Postage Extra_. + + +Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons, by H.S. 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Olcott + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons + +Author: H.S. Olcott + +Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18194] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF BUDDHA AND ITS LESSONS *** + + + + +Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar Viswanathan, +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + + + + +<h4>ADYAR PAMPHLETS</h4> +<h4 >No. 15</h4> +<p> </p> +<h1 >The Life of Buddha and Its<br /> + + Lessons</h1> + <p> </p> + <p> </p> +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>H. S. OLCOTT</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h3 >THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE</h3> +<h3 ><span class="smcap">Adyar, Madras, India</span></h3> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>First Edition: May 1912</i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Second Edition: Sept. 1919</i> +</p> +<hr style="width:65%" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> +<h2>The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons</h2> +<hr style="width:65%" /> + +<p>The thoughtful student, in scanning the religious history of the race, +has one fact continually forced upon his notice, <i>viz</i>., that there is +an invariable tendency to deify whomsoever shows himself superior to +the weakness of our common humanity. Look where we will, we find the +saint-like man exalted into a divine personage and worshipped for a +god. Though perhaps misunderstood, reviled and even persecuted while +living, the apotheosis is almost sure to come after death: and the +victim of yesterday's mob, raised to the state of an Intercessor in +Heaven, is besought with prayer and tears, and placatory penances, to +mediate with God for the pardon of human sin. This is a mean and vile +trait of human nature, the proof of ignorance, selfishness, brutal +cowardice, and a superstitious materialism. It shows the base instinct +to put down and destroy whatever or whoever makes men feel their own +imperfections; with the alternative of ignoring and denying these very +imperfections by turning into gods men who have merely spiritualised<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> +their natures, so that it may be supposed that they were heavenly +incarnations and not mortal like other men.</p> + +<p>This process of euhemerisation, as it is called, or the making of men +into gods and gods into men, sometimes, though more rarely, begins +during the life of the hero, but usually after death. The true history +of his life is gradually amplified and decorated with fanciful +incidents, to fit it to the new character which has been posthumously +given him. Omens and portents are now made to attend his earthly +avaṭāra: his precocity is described as superhuman: as a babe or +lisping child he silences the wisest logicians by his divine +knowledge: miracles he produces as other boys do soap-bubbles: the +terrible energies of nature are his playthings: the gods, angels, and +demons are his habitual attendants: the sun, moon, and all the starry +host wheel around his cradle in joyful measures, and the earth thrills +with joy at having borne such a prodigy: and at his last hour of +mortal life the whole universe shakes with conflicting emotions.</p> + +<p>Why need I use the few moments at my disposal to marshal before you +the various personages of whom these fables have been written? Let it +suffice to recall the interesting fact to your notice, and invite you +to compare the respective biographies of the Brāhmaṇical +Kṛṣhṇa, the Persian Zoroaster, the Egyptian Hermes, the +Indian Gauṭama, and the canonical, especially the apocryphal, +Jesus. Taking Kṛṣhṇa or Zoroaster, as you please, as the most +ancient, and coming down the chronological line of descent, you will +find them all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> made after the same pattern. The real personage is all +covered up and concealed under the embroidered veils of the romancer +and the enthusiastic historiographer. What is surprising to me is that +this tendency to exaggeration and hyperbole is not more commonly +allowed for by those who in our days attempt to discuss and compare +religions. We are constantly and painfully reminded that the prejudice +of inimical critics, on the one hand, and the furious bigotry of +devotees, on the other, blind men to fact and probability, and lead to +gross injustice. Let me take as an example the mythical biographies of +Jesus. At the time when the Council of Nicea was convened for settling +the quarrels of certain bishops, and for the purpose of examining into +the canonicity of the three hundred more or less apocryphal gospels +that were being read in the Christian churches as inspired writings, +the history of the life of Christ had reached the height of absurd +myth. We may see some specimens in the extant books of the apocryphal +New Testament, but most of them are now lost. What have been retained +in the present Canon may doubtless be regarded as the least +objectionable. And yet we must not hastily adopt even this conclusion, +for you know that Sabina, Bishop of Heracha, himself speaking of the +Council of Nicea, affirms that "except Constantine and Sabinus, Bishop +of Pamphilus, these bishops were a set of illiterate, simple creatures +that understood nothing"; which is as though he had said they were a +pack of fools. And Pappus, in his <i>Synodicon</i> to that Council of +Nicea, lets us into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> secret that the Canon was not decided by a +careful comparison of several gospels before them, but by a <i>lottery</i>. +Having, he tells us, "promiscuously put all the books that were +referred to the Council for determination under a Communion table in a +church, they (the bishops) besought the Lord that the inspired +writings might get up on the table, while the spurious writings +remained underneath, and <i>it happened accordingly</i>".</p> + +<p>But letting all this pass and looking only to what is contained in the +present Canon, we see the same tendency to compel all nature to attest +the divinity of the writer's hero. At the nativity a star leaves its +orbit and leads the Persian astrologers to the divine child, and +angels come and converse with shepherds, and a whole train of like +celestial phenomena occurs at various stages of his earthly career, +which closes amid earthquakes, a pall of darkness over the whole +scene, a supernatural war of the elements, the opening of graves and +the walking about of their tenants, and other appalling wonders. Now, +if the candid Buḍḍhist concedes that the real history of +Gauṭama is embellished by like absurd exaggerations, and if we can +find their duplicates in the biographies of Zoroaster, +Shaṅkarāchārya and other real personages of antiquity, have +we not the right to conclude that the true history of the Founder of +Christianity, if at this late date it were possible to write it, would +be very different from the narratives that pass current? We must not +forget that Jerusalem was at that time a Roman dependency,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> just as +Ceylon is now a British, and that the silence of contemporary Roman +historians about any such violent disturbances of the equilibrium of +nature is deeply significant.</p> + +<p>I have cited this example for the sole and simple purpose of bringing +home to the non-Buḍḍhistic portion of my present audience the +conviction that, in considering the life of Sākya Muni and the +lessons it teaches, they must not make his followers of to-day +responsible for any extravagant exuberances of past biographers. The +doctrine of Buḍḍha and its effects are to be judged quite apart +from the man, just as the doctrine ascribed to Jesus and its effects +are to be considered quite irrespectively of his personal history. +And—as I hope I have shown—the actual doings and sayings of every +founder of a Faith or a school of philosophy must be sought for under +a heap of tinsel and rubbish contributed by successive generations of +followers.</p> + +<p>Approaching the question of the hour in this spirit of precaution, +what do we find are the probabilities respecting the life of Sākya +Muni? Who was he? When did he live? How did he live? What did he +teach? A most careful comparison of authorities and analysis of +evidence establishes, I think, the following data:</p> + +<p>1. He was the son of a king.</p> + +<p>2. He lived between six and seven centuries before Christ.</p> + +<p>3. He resigned his royal state and went to live in the jungle, and +among the lowest and most unhappy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> classes, so as to learn the secret +of human pain and misery by personal experience: tested every known +austerity of the Hinḍū ascetics and excelled them all in his power +of endurance: sounded every depth of woe in search of the means to +alleviate it: and at last came out victorious, and showed the world +the way to salvation.</p> + +<p>4. What he taught may be summed up in a few words, as the perfume of +many roses may be distilled into a few drops of <i>attar</i>: Everything in +the world of Matter is unreal; the only reality is in the world of +Spirit. Emancipate yourselves from the tyranny of the former; strive +to attain the latter. The Rev. Samuel Beal, in his <i>Catena of +Buḍḍhist Scriptures from the Chinese</i> puts it differently. "The +idea underlying the Buddhist religious system is," he says, "simply +this: 'all is vanity'. Earth is a show, and Heaven is a vain reward." +Primitive Buḍḍhism was engrossed, absorbed, by one thought—the +vanity of finite existence, the priceless value of the one condition +of Eternal Rest.</p> + +<p>If I have the temerity to prefer my own definition of the spirit of +Buḍḍha's doctrine, it is because I think that all the +misconceptions of it have arisen from a failure to understand his idea +of what is real and what is unreal, what worth longing and striving +for and what not. From this misconception have come all the unfounded +charges that Buḍḍhism is an "atheistical," that is to say, a +grossly materialistic, a nihilistic, a negative, a vice-breeding +religion. Buḍḍhism denies the existence of a personal +God<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>—true: therefore—well, therefore, and notwithstanding all this, +its teaching is neither what may be called properly atheistical, +nihilistic, negative, nor provocative of vice. I will try to make my +meaning clear, and the advancement of modern scientific research helps +in this direction. Science divides the universe for us into two +elements—matter and force; accounting for their phenomena by their +combinations, and making both eternal and obedient to eternal and +immutable law. The speculations of men of science have carried them to +the outermost verge of the physical universe. Behind them lie not only +a thousand brilliant triumphs by which a part of Nature's secrets have +been wrung from her, but also more thousands of failures to fathom her +deep mysteries. They have proved thought material, since it is the +evolution of the gray tissue of the brain, and a recent German +experimentalist, Professor Dr. Jäger, claims to have proved that +man's soul is "a volatile odoriferous principle, capable of solution +in glycerine". Psychogen is the name he gives to it, and his +experiments show that it is present not merely in the body as a whole, +but in every individual cell, in the ovum, and even in the ultimate +elements of protoplasm. I need hardly say to so intelligent an +audience as this, that these highly interesting experiments of Dr. +Jäger are corroborated by many facts, both physiological and +psychological, that have been always noticed among all nations; facts +which are woven into popular proverbs, legends, folk-lore fables, +mythologies and theologies, the world over. Now,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> if thought is matter +and soul is matter, then Buḍḍha, in recognising the impermanence +of sensual enjoyment or experience of any kind, and the instability of +every material form, the human soul included, uttered a profound and +scientific truth, And since the very idea of gratification or +suffering is inseparable from that of material being—absolute <span class="smcap">Spirit</span> +alone being regarded by common consent as perfect, changeless and +Eternal—therefore, in teaching the doctrine that conquest of the +material self, with all its lusts, desires, loves, hopes, ambitions +and hates, frees one from pain, and leads to Nirvāṇa, the state +of Perfect Rest, he preached the rest of an untinged, untainted +existence in the Spirit. Though the soul be composed of the finest +conceivable substance, yet if substance at all—as Dr. Jäger seems +able to prove, and ages of human intercourse with the weird phantoms +of the shadow world imply—it must in time perish. What remains is +that changeless part of man, which most philosophers call Spirit, and +Nirvāṇa is its necessary condition of existence. The only +dispute between Buḍḍhist authorities is whether this +Nirvāṇic existence is attended with individual consciousness, or +whether the individual is merged in the whole, as the extinguished +flame is lost in the air. But there are those who say that the flame +has not been annihilated by the blowing out. It has only passed out of +the visible world of matter into the invisible world of Spirit, where +it still exists and will ever exist, as a bright reality. Such +thinkers can understand Buḍḍha's doctrine and, while agreeing +with him that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> soul is not immortal, would spurn the charge of +materialistic nihilism, if brought against either that sublime teacher +or themselves.</p> + +<p>The history of Sākya Muni's life is the strongest bulwark of his +religion. As long as the human heart is capable of being touched by +tales of heroic self-sacrifice, accompanied by purity and celestial +benevolence of motive, it will cherish his memory. Why should I go +into the particulars of that noble life? You will remember that he was +the son of the king of Kapilavasṭu—a mighty sovereign whose +opulence enabled him to give the heir of his house every luxury that a +voluptuous imagination could desire: and that the future Buḍḍha +was not allowed even to know, much less observe, the miseries of +ordinary existence. How beautifully Edwin Arnold has painted for us in +<i>The Light of Asia</i> the luxury and languor of that Indian Court, +"where love was gaoler and delights its bars". We are told that:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The king commanded that within those walls<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No mention should be made of age or death<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sorrow or pain, or sickness ...<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And every dawn the dying rose was plucked,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dead leaves hid, all evil sights removed:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For said the king, "If he shall pass his youth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Far from such things as move to wistfulness<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And brooding on the empty eggs of thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The shadow of this fate, too vast for man,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">May fade, belike, and I shall see him grow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To that great stature of fair sovereignty,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When he shall rule all lands—if he <i>will rule</i>—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The king of kings and glory of his time."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p> + +<p>You know how vain were all the precautions taken by the father to +prevent the fulfilment of the prophecy that his beloved son would be +the coming Buḍḍha. Though all suggestions of death were banished +from the royal palace, though the city was bedecked with flowers and +gay flags, and every painful object removed from sight when the young +Prince Siḍḍārtha visited it, yet the decrees of destiny were +not to be baffled, the "voices of the spirits," the "wandering winds" +and the ḍevas, whispered the truth of human sorrows into his +listening ear, and when the appointed hour arrived, the Suḍḍha +Ḍevas threw the spell of slumber over the household, steeped in +profound lethargy the sentinels (as we are told was done by an angel +to the gaolers of Peter's prison), rolled back the triple gates of +bronze, strewed the sweet moghra-flowers thickly beneath his horse's +feet to muffle every sound, and he was free. Free? Yes—to resign +every earthly comfort, every sensuous enjoyment, the sweets of royal +power, the homage of a Court, the delights of domestic life: gems, the +glitter of gold: rich stuffs, rich food, soft beds: the songs of +trained musicians, and of birds kept prisoners in gay cages, the +murmur of perfumed waters plashing in marble basins, the delicious +shade of trees in gardens where art had contrived to make nature even +lovelier than herself. He leaps from his saddle when at a safe +distance from the palace, flings the jewelled rein to his faithful +groom, Channa, cuts off his flowing locks, gives his rich costume to a +hunter in exchange for his own, plunges into the jungle, and is free:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To tread its paths with patient, stainless feet,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Making its dusty bed, its loneliest wastes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My dwelling, and its meanest things my mates:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Clad in no prouder garb than outcasts wear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fed with no meals save what the charitable<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Give of their will, sheltered by no more pomp,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than the dim cave lends or the jungle-bush.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">This will I do because the woeful cry<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of life and all flesh living cometh up<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Into my ears, and all my soul is full<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of pity for the sickness of this world:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Which I will heal, if healing may be found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By uttermost renouncing and strong strife.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Thus masterfully does Sir Edwin Arnold depict the sentiment which +provoked this Great Renunciator. The testimony of thousands of +millions who, during the last twenty-five centuries, have professed +the Buḍḍhistic religion, proves that the secret of human misery +was at last solved by this divine self-sacrifice, and the true path to +Nirvāṇa opened.</p> + +<p>The joy that he brought to the hearts of others, Buḍḍha first +tasted himself. He found that the pleasures of the eye, the ear, the +taste, touch and smell are fleeting and deceptive: he who gives value +to them brings only disappointment and bitter sorrow upon himself. The +social differences between men he found were equally arbitrary and +illusive; caste bred hatred and selfishness; riches strife, envy and +malice. So in founding his Faith he laid the bottom of its +foundation-stones upon all this worldly dirt, and its dome in the +clear serene of the world of Spirit. He who can mount to a clear +conception of Nirvāṇa will find his thought far away above the +common<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> joys and sorrows of petty men. As to one who ascends to the +top of Chimborazo or the Himālayan crags, and sees men on the +earth's surface crawling to and fro like ants, so equally small do +bigots and sectarians appear to him. The mountain climber has under +his feet the very clouds from whose sun-painted shapes the poet has +figured to himself the golden streets and glittering domes of the +materialistic Heaven of a personal God. Below him are all the various +objects out of which the world's pantheons have been manufactured: +around, above—Immensity. And so also, far down the ascending plane of +thought that leads from the earth towards the Infinite, the +philosophic Buḍḍhist describes, at different plateaux, the +heavens and hells, the gods and demons, of the materialistic +creed-builders.</p> + +<p>What are the lessons to be derived from the life and teachings of this +heroic prince of Kapilavasṭu? Lessons of gratitude and benevolence. +Lessons of tolerance for the clashing opinions of men who live, move +and have their being, think and aspire, only in the material world. +The lesson of a common tie of brotherhood among all men. Lessons of +manly self-reliance, of equanimity in breasting whatsoever of good or +ill may happen. Lessons of the meanness of the rewards, the pettiness +of the misfortunes of a shifting world of illusions. Lessons of the +necessity for avoiding every species of evil thought and word, and for +doing, speaking and thinking everything that is good, and for the +bringing of the mind into subjection so that these may be accomplished +without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> selfish motive or vanity. Lessons of self-purification and +communion, by which the illusiveness of externals and the value of +internals are understood.</p> + +<p>Well might St. Hilaire burst into the panegyric that Buḍḍha "is +the perfect model of all the virtues he preaches ... his life has not +a stain upon it". Well might the sober critic Max Müller pronounce his +moral code "one of the most perfect which the world has ever known". +No wonder that in contemplating that gentle life Edwin Arnold should +have found his personality "the highest, gentlest, holiest and most +beneficent ... in the history of thought," and been moved to write his +splendid verses. It is twenty-five hundred years since humanity put +forth such a flower: who knows when it did before?</p> + +<p>Gauṭama Buḍḍha, Sākya Muni, has ennobled the whole human +race. His fame is our common inheritance. His Law is the law of +Justice, providing for every good thought, word and deed its fair +reward, for every evil one its proper punishment. His law is in +harmony with the voices of Nature, and the evident equilibrium of the +universe. It yields nothing to importunities or threats, can be +neither coaxed nor bribed by offerings to abate or alter one jot or +tittle of its inexorable course. Am I told that Buḍḍhist laymen +display vanity in their worship and ostentation in their almsgiving; +that they are fostering sects as bitterly as Hinḍūs? So much the +worse for the laymen: there is the example of Buḍḍha and his +Law. Am I told that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> Buḍḍhist priests are ignorant, idle +fosterers of superstitions grafted on their religion by foreign kings? +So much the worse for the priests: the life of their Divine Master +shames them and shows their unworthiness to wear his yellow robe or +carry his beggar's bowl. There is the Law—immutable—menacing; it +will find them out and punish.</p> + +<p>And what shall we say to those of another caste of character—the +humble-minded, charitable, tolerant, religiously aspiring hearts among +the laity, and the unselfish, pure and learned of the priests who know +the Precepts and keep them? The Law will find them out also; and when +the book of each life is written up and the balance struck, every good +thought or deed will be found entered in its proper place. Not one +blessing that ever followed them from grateful lips throughout their +earthly pilgrimage will be found to have been lost; but each will help +to ease their way as they move from stage to stage of Being</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Unto Nirvāṇa where the Silence Lives.</span></p></div> + + + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE ADYAR PAMPHLETS</h2> + +<h2>Vol. IX.</h2> + +<table width="100%" border="0"> + <tr> + <td class="tocch">97.</td> + <td> </td> + <td>Occultism.</td> + <td class="tocpg">Annie Besant</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tocch">98.</td> + <td> </td> + <td>Brotherhood.</td> + <td class="tocpg">Dr. Th. Pascal</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tocch">99.</td> + <td> </td> + <td>Life After Death.</td> + <td class="tocpg">Annie Besant</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tocch">100.</td> + <td> </td> + <td>Difficulties in Clairvoyance.</td> + <td class="tocpg">C. W. Leadbeater</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tocch">101.</td> + <td> </td> + <td>Is Belief in the Masters Superstitious or Harmful?</td> + <td class="tocpg">Annie Besant</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tocch">102.</td> + <td> </td> + <td>The Case for Reincarnation.</td> + <td class="tocpg">B. Douglas Fawcett</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tocch">103.</td> + <td> </td> + <td>Memory. </td> + <td class="tocpg">Annie Besant</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tocch">104.</td> + <td> </td> + <td>Spiritualism and Theosophy. </td> + <td class="tocpg">H. S. Olcott</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tocch">105.</td> + <td> </td> + <td> The Kabalah and the Kabalists. </td> + <td class="tocpg">H. P. Blavatsky</td> + </tr> +</table> + + + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + <p><b>Annual Subscription: Re. 1-8 or 2s. or 50c.</b> <i>Postage Free</i>.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Single Copy: As. 2 or 2d, or 4c.</b> <i>Postage Extra</i>.<br /> +</p> +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> + +<h3>Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras</h3> + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons, by H.S. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons + +Author: H.S. Olcott + +Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18194] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF BUDDHA AND ITS LESSONS *** + + + + +Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar Viswanathan, +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + ADYAR PAMPHLETS + + No. 15 + + + The Life of Buddha and Its + Lessons + + + + BY + + H. S. OLCOTT + + + + + THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE + + ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA + + + + + _First Edition: May 1912_ + + _Second Edition: Sept. 1919_ + + + + +The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons + + +The thoughtful student, in scanning the religious history of the race, +has one fact continually forced upon his notice, _viz_., that there is +an invariable tendency to deify whomsoever shows himself superior to +the weakness of our common humanity. Look where we will, we find the +saint-like man exalted into a divine personage and worshipped for a +god. Though perhaps misunderstood, reviled and even persecuted while +living, the apotheosis is almost sure to come after death: and the +victim of yesterday's mob, raised to the state of an Intercessor in +Heaven, is besought with prayer and tears, and placatory penances, to +mediate with God for the pardon of human sin. This is a mean and vile +trait of human nature, the proof of ignorance, selfishness, brutal +cowardice, and a superstitious materialism. It shows the base instinct +to put down and destroy whatever or whoever makes men feel their own +imperfections; with the alternative of ignoring and denying these very +imperfections by turning into gods men who have merely spiritualised +their natures, so that it may be supposed that they were heavenly +incarnations and not mortal like other men. + +This process of euhemerisation, as it is called, or the making of men +into gods and gods into men, sometimes, though more rarely, begins +during the life of the hero, but usually after death. The true history +of his life is gradually amplified and decorated with fanciful +incidents, to fit it to the new character which has been posthumously +given him. Omens and portents are now made to attend his earthly +avatara: his precocity is described as superhuman: as a babe or +lisping child he silences the wisest logicians by his divine +knowledge: miracles he produces as other boys do soap-bubbles: the +terrible energies of nature are his playthings: the gods, angels, and +demons are his habitual attendants: the sun, moon, and all the starry +host wheel around his cradle in joyful measures, and the earth thrills +with joy at having borne such a prodigy: and at his last hour of +mortal life the whole universe shakes with conflicting emotions. + +Why need I use the few moments at my disposal to marshal before you +the various personages of whom these fables have been written? Let it +suffice to recall the interesting fact to your notice, and invite you +to compare the respective biographies of the Brahmanical +Krshna, the Persian Zoroaster, the Egyptian Hermes, the +Indian Gautama, and the canonical, especially the apocryphal, +Jesus. Taking Krshna or Zoroaster, as you please, as the most +ancient, and coming down the chronological line of descent, you will +find them all made after the same pattern. The real personage is all +covered up and concealed under the embroidered veils of the romancer +and the enthusiastic historiographer. What is surprising to me is that +this tendency to exaggeration and hyperbole is not more commonly +allowed for by those who in our days attempt to discuss and compare +religions. We are constantly and painfully reminded that the prejudice +of inimical critics, on the one hand, and the furious bigotry of +devotees, on the other, blind men to fact and probability, and lead to +gross injustice. Let me take as an example the mythical biographies of +Jesus. At the time when the Council of Nicea was convened for settling +the quarrels of certain bishops, and for the purpose of examining into +the canonicity of the three hundred more or less apocryphal gospels +that were being read in the Christian churches as inspired writings, +the history of the life of Christ had reached the height of absurd +myth. We may see some specimens in the extant books of the apocryphal +New Testament, but most of them are now lost. What have been retained +in the present Canon may doubtless be regarded as the least +objectionable. And yet we must not hastily adopt even this conclusion, +for you know that Sabina, Bishop of Heracha, himself speaking of the +Council of Nicea, affirms that "except Constantine and Sabinus, Bishop +of Pamphilus, these bishops were a set of illiterate, simple creatures +that understood nothing"; which is as though he had said they were a +pack of fools. And Pappus, in his _Synodicon_ to that Council of +Nicea, lets us into the secret that the Canon was not decided by a +careful comparison of several gospels before them, but by a _lottery_. +Having, he tells us, "promiscuously put all the books that were +referred to the Council for determination under a Communion table in a +church, they (the bishops) besought the Lord that the inspired +writings might get up on the table, while the spurious writings +remained underneath, and _it happened accordingly_". + +But letting all this pass and looking only to what is contained in the +present Canon, we see the same tendency to compel all nature to attest +the divinity of the writer's hero. At the nativity a star leaves its +orbit and leads the Persian astrologers to the divine child, and angels +come and converse with shepherds, and a whole train of like celestial +phenomena occurs at various stages of his earthly career, which closes +amid earthquakes, a pall of darkness over the whole scene, a +supernatural war of the elements, the opening of graves and the walking +about of their tenants, and other appalling wonders. Now, if the candid +Buddhist concedes that the real history of Gautama is embellished by +like absurd exaggerations, and if we can find their duplicates in the +biographies of Zoroaster, Shankaracharya and other real personages of +antiquity, have we not the right to conclude that the true history of +the Founder of Christianity, if at this late date it were possible to +write it, would be very different from the narratives that pass current? +We must not forget that Jerusalem was at that time a Roman dependency, +just as Ceylon is now a British, and that the silence of contemporary +Roman historians about any such violent disturbances of the equilibrium +of nature is deeply significant. + +I have cited this example for the sole and simple purpose of bringing +home to the non-Buddhistic portion of my present audience the +conviction that, in considering the life of Sakya Muni and the +lessons it teaches, they must not make his followers of to-day +responsible for any extravagant exuberances of past biographers. The +doctrine of Buddha and its effects are to be judged quite apart +from the man, just as the doctrine ascribed to Jesus and its effects +are to be considered quite irrespectively of his personal history. +And--as I hope I have shown--the actual doings and sayings of every +founder of a Faith or a school of philosophy must be sought for under +a heap of tinsel and rubbish contributed by successive generations of +followers. + +Approaching the question of the hour in this spirit of precaution, +what do we find are the probabilities respecting the life of Sakya +Muni? Who was he? When did he live? How did he live? What did he +teach? A most careful comparison of authorities and analysis of +evidence establishes, I think, the following data: + +1. He was the son of a king. + +2. He lived between six and seven centuries before Christ. + +3. He resigned his royal state and went to live in the jungle, and +among the lowest and most unhappy classes, so as to learn the secret +of human pain and misery by personal experience: tested every known +austerity of the Hindu ascetics and excelled them all in his power +of endurance: sounded every depth of woe in search of the means to +alleviate it: and at last came out victorious, and showed the world +the way to salvation. + +4. What he taught may be summed up in a few words, as the perfume of +many roses may be distilled into a few drops of _attar_: Everything in +the world of Matter is unreal; the only reality is in the world of +Spirit. Emancipate yourselves from the tyranny of the former; strive +to attain the latter. The Rev. Samuel Beal, in his _Catena of +Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese_ puts it differently. "The +idea underlying the Buddhist religious system is," he says, "simply +this: 'all is vanity'. Earth is a show, and Heaven is a vain reward." +Primitive Buddhism was engrossed, absorbed, by one thought--the +vanity of finite existence, the priceless value of the one condition +of Eternal Rest. + +If I have the temerity to prefer my own definition of the spirit of +Buddha's doctrine, it is because I think that all the misconceptions of +it have arisen from a failure to understand his idea of what is real and +what is unreal, what worth longing and striving for and what not. From +this misconception have come all the unfounded charges that Buddhism is +an "atheistical," that is to say, a grossly materialistic, a nihilistic, +a negative, a vice-breeding religion. Buddhism denies the existence of a +personal God--true: therefore--well, therefore, and notwithstanding all +this, its teaching is neither what may be called properly atheistical, +nihilistic, negative, nor provocative of vice. I will try to make my +meaning clear, and the advancement of modern scientific research helps +in this direction. Science divides the universe for us into two +elements--matter and force; accounting for their phenomena by their +combinations, and making both eternal and obedient to eternal and +immutable law. The speculations of men of science have carried them to +the outermost verge of the physical universe. Behind them lie not only a +thousand brilliant triumphs by which a part of Nature's secrets have +been wrung from her, but also more thousands of failures to fathom her +deep mysteries. They have proved thought material, since it is the +evolution of the gray tissue of the brain, and a recent German +experimentalist, Professor Dr. Jaeger, claims to have proved that man's +soul is "a volatile odoriferous principle, capable of solution in +glycerine". Psychogen is the name he gives to it, and his experiments +show that it is present not merely in the body as a whole, but in every +individual cell, in the ovum, and even in the ultimate elements of +protoplasm. I need hardly say to so intelligent an audience as this, +that these highly interesting experiments of Dr. Jaeger are corroborated +by many facts, both physiological and psychological, that have been +always noticed among all nations; facts which are woven into popular +proverbs, legends, folk-lore fables, mythologies and theologies, the +world over. Now, if thought is matter and soul is matter, then Buddha, +in recognising the impermanence of sensual enjoyment or experience of +any kind, and the instability of every material form, the human soul +included, uttered a profound and scientific truth, And since the very +idea of gratification or suffering is inseparable from that of material +being--absolute SPIRIT alone being regarded by common consent as +perfect, changeless and Eternal--therefore, in teaching the doctrine +that conquest of the material self, with all its lusts, desires, loves, +hopes, ambitions and hates, frees one from pain, and leads to Nirvana, +the state of Perfect Rest, he preached the rest of an untinged, +untainted existence in the Spirit. Though the soul be composed of the +finest conceivable substance, yet if substance at all--as Dr. Jaeger +seems able to prove, and ages of human intercourse with the weird +phantoms of the shadow world imply--it must in time perish. What remains +is that changeless part of man, which most philosophers call Spirit, and +Nirvana is its necessary condition of existence. The only dispute +between Buddhist authorities is whether this Nirvanic existence is +attended with individual consciousness, or whether the individual is +merged in the whole, as the extinguished flame is lost in the air. But +there are those who say that the flame has not been annihilated by the +blowing out. It has only passed out of the visible world of matter into +the invisible world of Spirit, where it still exists and will ever +exist, as a bright reality. Such thinkers can understand Buddha's +doctrine and, while agreeing with him that soul is not immortal, would +spurn the charge of materialistic nihilism, if brought against either +that sublime teacher or themselves. + +The history of Sakya Muni's life is the strongest bulwark of his +religion. As long as the human heart is capable of being touched by +tales of heroic self-sacrifice, accompanied by purity and celestial +benevolence of motive, it will cherish his memory. Why should I go +into the particulars of that noble life? You will remember that he was +the son of the king of Kapilavastu--a mighty sovereign whose +opulence enabled him to give the heir of his house every luxury that a +voluptuous imagination could desire: and that the future Buddha +was not allowed even to know, much less observe, the miseries of +ordinary existence. How beautifully Edwin Arnold has painted for us in +_The Light of Asia_ the luxury and languor of that Indian Court, +"where love was gaoler and delights its bars". We are told that: + + The king commanded that within those walls + No mention should be made of age or death + Sorrow or pain, or sickness ... + And every dawn the dying rose was plucked, + The dead leaves hid, all evil sights removed: + For said the king, "If he shall pass his youth + Far from such things as move to wistfulness + And brooding on the empty eggs of thought, + The shadow of this fate, too vast for man, + May fade, belike, and I shall see him grow + To that great stature of fair sovereignty, + When he shall rule all lands--if he _will rule_-- + The king of kings and glory of his time." + +You know how vain were all the precautions taken by the father to +prevent the fulfilment of the prophecy that his beloved son would be +the coming Buddha. Though all suggestions of death were banished +from the royal palace, though the city was bedecked with flowers and +gay flags, and every painful object removed from sight when the young +Prince Siddartha visited it, yet the decrees of destiny were +not to be baffled, the "voices of the spirits," the "wandering winds" +and the devas, whispered the truth of human sorrows into his +listening ear, and when the appointed hour arrived, the Suddha +Devas threw the spell of slumber over the household, steeped in +profound lethargy the sentinels (as we are told was done by an angel +to the gaolers of Peter's prison), rolled back the triple gates of +bronze, strewed the sweet moghra-flowers thickly beneath his horse's +feet to muffle every sound, and he was free. Free? Yes--to resign +every earthly comfort, every sensuous enjoyment, the sweets of royal +power, the homage of a Court, the delights of domestic life: gems, the +glitter of gold: rich stuffs, rich food, soft beds: the songs of +trained musicians, and of birds kept prisoners in gay cages, the +murmur of perfumed waters plashing in marble basins, the delicious +shade of trees in gardens where art had contrived to make nature even +lovelier than herself. He leaps from his saddle when at a safe +distance from the palace, flings the jewelled rein to his faithful +groom, Channa, cuts off his flowing locks, gives his rich costume to a +hunter in exchange for his own, plunges into the jungle, and is free: + + To tread its paths with patient, stainless feet, + Making its dusty bed, its loneliest wastes + My dwelling, and its meanest things my mates: + Clad in no prouder garb than outcasts wear, + Fed with no meals save what the charitable + Give of their will, sheltered by no more pomp, + Than the dim cave lends or the jungle-bush. + This will I do because the woeful cry + Of life and all flesh living cometh up + Into my ears, and all my soul is full + Of pity for the sickness of this world: + Which I will heal, if healing may be found + By uttermost renouncing and strong strife. + +Thus masterfully does Sir Edwin Arnold depict the sentiment which +provoked this Great Renunciator. The testimony of thousands of +millions who, during the last twenty-five centuries, have professed +the Buddhistic religion, proves that the secret of human misery +was at last solved by this divine self-sacrifice, and the true path to +Nirvana opened. + +The joy that he brought to the hearts of others, Buddha first +tasted himself. He found that the pleasures of the eye, the ear, the +taste, touch and smell are fleeting and deceptive: he who gives value +to them brings only disappointment and bitter sorrow upon himself. The +social differences between men he found were equally arbitrary and +illusive; caste bred hatred and selfishness; riches strife, envy and +malice. So in founding his Faith he laid the bottom of its +foundation-stones upon all this worldly dirt, and its dome in the +clear serene of the world of Spirit. He who can mount to a clear +conception of Nirvana will find his thought far away above the +common joys and sorrows of petty men. As to one who ascends to the +top of Chimborazo or the Himalayan crags, and sees men on the +earth's surface crawling to and fro like ants, so equally small do +bigots and sectarians appear to him. The mountain climber has under +his feet the very clouds from whose sun-painted shapes the poet has +figured to himself the golden streets and glittering domes of the +materialistic Heaven of a personal God. Below him are all the various +objects out of which the world's pantheons have been manufactured: +around, above--Immensity. And so also, far down the ascending plane of +thought that leads from the earth towards the Infinite, the +philosophic Buddhist describes, at different plateaux, the +heavens and hells, the gods and demons, of the materialistic +creed-builders. + +What are the lessons to be derived from the life and teachings of this +heroic prince of Kapilavastu? Lessons of gratitude and benevolence. +Lessons of tolerance for the clashing opinions of men who live, move +and have their being, think and aspire, only in the material world. +The lesson of a common tie of brotherhood among all men. Lessons of +manly self-reliance, of equanimity in breasting whatsoever of good or +ill may happen. Lessons of the meanness of the rewards, the pettiness +of the misfortunes of a shifting world of illusions. Lessons of the +necessity for avoiding every species of evil thought and word, and for +doing, speaking and thinking everything that is good, and for the +bringing of the mind into subjection so that these may be accomplished +without selfish motive or vanity. Lessons of self-purification and +communion, by which the illusiveness of externals and the value of +internals are understood. + +Well might St. Hilaire burst into the panegyric that Buddha "is +the perfect model of all the virtues he preaches ... his life has not +a stain upon it". Well might the sober critic Max Mueller pronounce his +moral code "one of the most perfect which the world has ever known". +No wonder that in contemplating that gentle life Edwin Arnold should +have found his personality "the highest, gentlest, holiest and most +beneficent ... in the history of thought," and been moved to write his +splendid verses. It is twenty-five hundred years since humanity put +forth such a flower: who knows when it did before? + +Gautama Buddha, Sakya Muni, has ennobled the whole human +race. His fame is our common inheritance. His Law is the law of +Justice, providing for every good thought, word and deed its fair +reward, for every evil one its proper punishment. His law is in +harmony with the voices of Nature, and the evident equilibrium of the +universe. It yields nothing to importunities or threats, can be +neither coaxed nor bribed by offerings to abate or alter one jot or +tittle of its inexorable course. Am I told that Buddhist laymen +display vanity in their worship and ostentation in their almsgiving; +that they are fostering sects as bitterly as Hindus? So much the +worse for the laymen: there is the example of Buddha and his +Law. Am I told that Buddhist priests are ignorant, idle +fosterers of superstitions grafted on their religion by foreign kings? +So much the worse for the priests: the life of their Divine Master +shames them and shows their unworthiness to wear his yellow robe or +carry his beggar's bowl. There is the Law--immutable--menacing; it +will find them out and punish. + +And what shall we say to those of another caste of character--the +humble-minded, charitable, tolerant, religiously aspiring hearts among +the laity, and the unselfish, pure and learned of the priests who know +the Precepts and keep them? The Law will find them out also; and when +the book of each life is written up and the balance struck, every good +thought or deed will be found entered in its proper place. Not one +blessing that ever followed them from grateful lips throughout their +earthly pilgrimage will be found to have been lost; but each will help +to ease their way as they move from stage to stage of Being + + UNTO NIRVANA WHERE THE SILENCE LIVES. + + * * * * * + + + + +THE ADYAR PAMPHLETS + +Vol. IX. + + +97. Occultism. Annie Besant + +98. Brotherhood. Dr. Th. Pascal + +99. Life After Death. Annie Besant + +100. Difficulties in Clairvoyance. C. W. Leadbeater + +101. Is Belief in the Masters Superstitious + or Harmful? Annie Besant + +102. The Case for Reincarnation. B. Douglas Fawcett + +103. Memory. Annie Besant + +104. Spiritualism and Theosophy. H. S. Olcott + +105. The Kabalah and the Kabalists. H. P. Blavatsky + + * * * * * + +Annual Subscription: Re. 1-8 or 2s. or 50c. _Postage Free_. + +Single Copy: As. 2 or 2d, or 4c. _Postage Extra_. + + +Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons, by H.S. 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