gatha, or hymn of the northern Buddhists tells us how the Buddha meets, full of his newly-discovered mission, an acquaintance on the way, who, struck with his appearance, asks him what religion it is that makes him so glad and yet so calm. Gautama tells him that he has now become free from all desires, &c. But his acquaintance, apparently not caring much about these details, further asks him where he is going. The reply is striking. " I am now going," says Buddha, " to the city of Benares to establish the kingdom of righteousness, to give light to those en shrouded in darkness, and open the gate of immortality to men." His acquaintance only sneers at his high-flown pretensions, asking what he means by all this. The Buddha adds, " I have completely conquered all evil passions, and am no longer tied down to material existence; and I now only live to be the prophet of perfect truth." His acquaint ance replies, "In that cas3, venerable Gautama, your way
lies yonder," and turns away in the opposite direction.[1]Nothing daunted, the new prophet walked on to Benares, and in the cool of the evening went on to the Deer-forest where the five ascetics were living. Seeing him coming, they resolved not to recognize as a superior one who had broken his vows ; to address him by his name, and not as "master" or "teacher;" only, he being a Kshatriya, to offer him a seat. He understands their change of manner, calmly tells them not to mock him by calling him " the venerable Gautama;" that they are still in the way of death, where they must reap sorrow and disappointment, whereas he has found the way to salvation and can lead them to it. They object, naturally enough, from a Hindu point of view, that he had failed before while he was keep ing his body under, and how can his mind have won the victory now, when he serves and yields to his body. Buddha replies by explaining to them the principles of his new gospel ; and it will be necessary here to anticipate somewhat, and explain very briefly what this was, as the narrative will otherwise be difficult to follow.
The Buddhist Way of Salvation.—Everything corporeal is material, and therefore impermanent, for it contains within itself the germs of dissolution. So long as man is bound up by bodily existence with the material world he is liable to sorrow, decay, and death. So long as he allows unholy desires to reign within him, there will be unsatisfied longings, useless weariness, and care. To attempt to purify himself by oppressing his body would be only wasted effort ; it is the moral evil of a man s heart which keeps him chained down in the degraded state of bodily life, of union with the material world. It is of little avail to add virtue to his badness, for so long as there is evil, his goodness will only ensure him for a time, and in another birth, a higher form of material life; only the complete eradication of all evil will set him free from the chains of existence, and carry him to the " other side," where he will be no longer tossed about on the waves of the ocean of transmi gration. But Christian ideas must not be put into these Buddhist expressions. Of any immaterial existence Buddhism knows nothing. The foundations of its creed have been summed up in the very ancient formula pro bably invented by its founder, which is called the Four great Truths. These are 1, That misery always accom panies existence ; 2, That all modes of existence (of men or animals, in earth and heaven) result from passion or desire (tanha) ; 3, That there is no escape from existence except by destruction of desire ; 4, That this may be accomplished by following the fourfold way to Nirvana. Of these four stages, called " the Paths" the first is an awakening of the heart. There are few that do not acknowledge that no man can be really called happy, and that men are born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards, but the majority glide through life filling up their time with business or with pleasure, buoyed up with ever-changing hopes in their mad pursuit of some fancied good. When the scales fall from their eyes, when they begin to realize the great mystery of Sorroiv, that pain is inseparable from existence, and that all earthly good leads to vexation of spirit, when they turn for comfort and for guidance to the Enlightened One, then they may be said to be awake, and to have entered the first stage of the Buddhist way of salvation. When the awakened believer has gone further, and got rid, firstly, of till impure desires, and then of all revengeful feelings, he has reached the second stage ; in the third he successively be comes free (1) from all evil desires, (2) from ignorance, (3) from doubt, (4) from heresy, and (5) from tmkindliness and vexation. "As even at the risk of her own life a mother watches over her child, her only child, so let him (the Buddhist saint) exert good-will without measure towards all beings."[2]
The order here observed is very remarkable. The way to be freed from doubt and heresy lies through freedom from impurity and revenge and evil longings of all kinds ; or, in other words, if a man awakened to a deep sense of the mystery of sorrow wishes to understand the real facts of existence, wishes to believe not the false or the partly false, but the true altogether, Buddha tells him not to set to work and study, not to torture himself with asceticism or privation, but to purify his mind from all unholy desires and passions ; right actions spring from a pure mind, and to the pure in heart all things are open. Again, the first enemy which the awakened believer has to fight against is sensuality, and the last is unkindliness ; it is impossible to build anything on a foundation of mire ; and the topstonc of all that one can build, the highest point he can reach, the point above purity, above justice, above even faith is, according to Buddha, Universal charity. Till he has gained that the believer is still bound, he is not free, his mind is still dark ; true enlightenment, true freedom are complete only in Love.
The believer who has gone thus far has reached the last stage ; he has cut the meshes of ignorance, passion, and sin, and has thus escaped from the net of transmigration ; Nirvana is already within his grasp ; he has risen above the laws of material existence ; the secrets of the future and the past lie open before him ; and when this one short life is over, he will be free for ever from birth with its inevitable consequences, decay, and death. No Buddhist now hopes to reach this stage on earth ; but he who has once entered the " paths " cannot leave them ; the final perseverance of the saints is sure ; and sooner or later, under easier conditions in some less material world, he will win the great prize, and, entering Nirvana, be at rest for ever.[3]
be specified here, it is nearly certain that Buddha had a
commanding presence, and one of those deep, rich, thrilling- ↑ Beal, p. 245. Mr Beal translates the first clause, "to turn the wheel of the excellent law ; " but the chakra is no ordinary wheel, it is the royal chariot wheel, and the expression rendered "turn," from the root vrit, is more exactly "to set rolling onward." A chakra- varti is a universal monarch, the wheels of whose chariot roll on un- resisted over the known world, and the figure employed in the gatha undoubtedly means that Buddha was about to set rolling the royal chariot wheel of a universal kingdom of right, or, in other words, to start or found such a kingdom. Compare Beal, p. 244, note, and p. 142 ; and Childera s P&li Dictionary, s.v., Dhammacakkam.
- ↑ Metta Sutta, as translated by Sir Coomara Swiimy. Sv.tta Nipata, p. 39, verse 7.
- ↑ For the four Truths and the four Paths see Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 496 ; Eastern Monachism, p. 288 ; Csoma Ko rosi, Asiatic Researches, vol. xx. p. 294 ; Burnouf, Introduction, p. 629, and Lotus de la Bonne Loi, p. 517 ; Fausboll, Dhamniapada, pp. 35, 195, 346 ; Childers, Pali Dictionary, p. 269, s.v. JXibbana ; Gogerly in the J.R.A.S., Ceylon Br., 1845, pp. 24, 25.
