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 Gotama Buddha :a bioaraphv based on the 
 
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GOTAMA BUDDHA 
 
lOl^.'i^--" " 
 
 :?^V 
 
 
 10 ■ l'-^ 
 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES 
 OF A NCIENT IN DIA 
 
 fngl/sh M/les _ 
 
 so 100 100 
 
 LIST OF CITIES INDICATED BY NUMERALS 
 
 L Amaravat: 5. Cravasti (Savattln) 9. Mathura 13. Prayaga 
 
 2. Ayodhya 6. Indraprastha 10. Mithila 14. Takshapila 
 
 3. Bhrigu-kaccha 7. Kanchi 11. Pataliputra 15. Ujjayini 
 
 4. Cakala 8. Kanyakubja 12. Pratishthana 16. Vaijayanti 
 
GOTAMA BUDDHA 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 (Based on the Canonical Books of the Theravadin) 
 
 KENNETH J. SAUNDERS 
 
 Literary Secretary , Y. M. C. A., India, Burma, and 
 
 Ceylon. Author of "The Story of Buddhism," 
 
 ' 'Buddhist Ideals. ' ' Editor of ' ' The Buddha's Way 
 
 of Virtue, " "The Heart of Buddhism' ' 
 
 ASSOCIATION PRESS 
 
 New York : 347 Madison Avenue 
 1920 
 
47ff31^f 
 
 Copyright, 1920, by 
 
 The Internationa!. Committee of 
 
 Young Men's Christian Associations 
 
 PRINTED IN the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
To 
 
 DR. JOHN R. MOTT 
 
 This Little Book Is Dedicated, 
 
 IN THE Hope that It May Prove One More Link 
 
 IN the Chain He Is Forging 
 
 BETWEEN East and West. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Buddhism is far from dead ; for while corrupt and quiescent 
 in many places it still has vitality enough to dominate the life 
 of hundreds of millions, and must he reckoned with for dec- 
 ades to come. Summoned out of the mists of 2,000 years 
 of myth and dogma, in Mr. Saunders's life of Gotama Bud- 
 dha the man Gotama stands and breathes again as in our 
 very presence. We feel his warm humanness, his magnetic 
 sympathy, his thirst after truth, and his p athetic fai lure,, 
 after all, to find the secret of life that is life indeed. As 
 Mr. Saunders has said elsewhere, "Here was a man who, 
 without setting up an elaborate organization, despising 
 wealth, and trusting only to the contagion of great ideas, 
 exerted an influence which is still potent in the hearts of half 
 the human race." 
 
 The volume is captivating in its combination of scholarly 
 accuracy with undisguised admiration for the majestic char- 
 acter of Gotama. And he must be an unresponsive reader 
 who is not enabled by this study to rise above prejudice and 
 recognize in Gotama one of the world's noblemen, a rare 
 lover of his kind, a hater of sham, a seeker after the un- 
 known God. The students of North America — and of other 
 lands — are fortunate indeed to have such a volume written 
 for them. It will grant them audience of one of the king- 
 liest spirits of all time. And if a liberal education be the ac- 
 quiring of capacity to hold fellowship with master spirits, then 
 persons who aspire to be liberally educated will welcome this 
 book. Gotama should be known also by those who wish to 
 understand one of the titanic forces of our own day as well as 
 of antiquity. In our pitiable provincialism we have been 
 content to label him a visionary ascetic or an unsocial atheist, 
 and to ignore the fact that he has been the chief artificer 
 of East Asian civilization and the contributor of some of its 
 finest features. 
 
 The analytical summary of contents and the footnotes add 
 to the value of the volume for the advanced student as well 
 
viii Foreword 
 
 as for the beginner. The style carries the thought with 
 limpid ease and at times ripples with genial humor. Atten- 
 tion is purposely focused upon the life of Gotama, with only 
 incidental references to the Teaching and the Order, but for- 
 tunately these subjects are fully set forth in Mr. Saunders's 
 earlier studies, "The Story of Buddhism" and "Buddhist 
 Ideals," as well as in many standard works. 
 
 Buddhism has well-nigh died out in Gotama's own coun- 
 try and the forms which prevail in Tibet, China, Korea, and 
 Japan would hardly be recognized by the founder himself. 
 Yet his example and teaching, however distorted, are the 
 nucleus around which all the later encrustations have formed. 
 Just as the Christian Church has dug down through the layers 
 of scholastic dialectic and replanted its pillars on Christ, so it 
 is not inconceivable that even Northern Buddhism may re- 
 discover its founder and cry, "Back to Gotama Buddha." 
 
 It was a Japanese disciple of Gotama who called him "a 
 king of the spiritual in the mask of beggary," and it is to 
 be hoped that this volume will find readers also in Japan, for 
 although there are several lives of Buddha written in Jap- 
 anese, no one of them so happily as this combines a popular 
 presentation with the results of recent historical criticism. 
 
 Although Mr. Saunders discloses warm admiration for 
 ' Gotama's character, as a faithful friend he points out his 
 ('shortcomings and his fatal inability to rise above the limita- 
 tions of his age. It would seem that Gotama himself realized 
 to some degree his own limitations. Like other prophetic 
 souls, he looked for the coming of a Buddha greater than 
 himself, who should be called Maitri. Mr. Saunders's fine 
 poem, "St. Francis and Gotama," shows true insight when it 
 represents Gotama as joyfully recognizing that in Christ his 
 highest hopes regarding Maitri had been fully realized. 
 
 Mr. Saunders might well have called his work, "The 
 Gotama of History," for it is not an unworthy companion 
 to Doctor Glover's notable volume on One greater than 
 Gotama. Christian readers will not be surprised to find that 
 Mr. Saunders's exhaustive and appreciative study of Gotama 
 seems to have heightened his supreme devotion to Jesus Christ. 
 
 Galen M. Fisher. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword ........ vii 
 
 Introduction ........ 1 
 
 Still much confusion as to the biography of 
 Gotama : 
 
 (a) No authentic chronology. 
 
 (b) Much literary criticism still to be done. 
 The sources : 
 
 (a) Scriptures. 
 
 (b) Monuments. 
 
 I. The Early Life of Gotama .... 6 
 
 The early civilization of Buddhist India: 
 
 (a) Political divisions. 
 
 (b) Social life. 
 
 The birth of Gotama; his childhood; formative in- 
 fluences; education in religion and in politics. His 
 marriage and heritage. His desire to serve his peo- 
 ple; the great adventure. 
 
 II. Quest and Conquest ..... 17 
 
 The spirit of his quest. The method of its accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 (a) Visit to Rajagaha. 
 
 (b) Solitary vigil at Uruvela and ascetic practices. 
 
 (c) The return to more normal life. 
 
 (d) The dawn of enlightenment at Budhgaya. 
 
 Its meaning and the doctrine of Nihhana, which 
 Gotama based upon it : 
 
 (a) As understood by the masses. 
 
 (b) As interpreted by the initiated. 
 
X Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Gotatna's doctrine of the "self," and his agnosticism 
 as to certain great metaphysical problems. 
 
 Gotama's mission ; he meets the Jain monk Upaka ; 
 he visits his five pupils and preaches a sermon to 
 them. The "Golden Mean," and the "Noble Eight- 
 Fold Path." His second discourse, and manner of 
 preaching: the meagerness of the records. His third 
 sermon more like real preaching. Sending out of 
 the first disciples. 
 
 III. GOTAMA AT THE HEIGHT OF HiS PoWER . . 34 
 
 The success of their mission and some reasons for 
 it. Conversion of the two leaders, Moggallana and 
 Sariputta; Kassapa, another notable convert, and 
 some humbler folk. 
 
 Gotama visits his home and converts his family. 
 Ananda and other relatives join him. 
 
 Some notable lay adherents. Gotama as peace- 
 maker. Admission of women to the Sangha. 
 
 Some flies in the ointment: 
 
 (a) Criticism of the people of Magadha. 
 
 (b) Temptations to skepticism and to worldly 
 power. 
 
 (c) Disloyalty within the Order, and some attacks 
 from without; the rival sects. 
 
 The ruling princes of Magadha and Kosala; 
 Gotama's dealings with them and his method with 
 lay people. 
 
 The dubious chronology of the records. 
 
 IV. The Daily Life of Gotama and His Disciples . 49 
 
 The organization of the Sangha, a gradual growth : 
 
 (a) The institution of Vassa: 
 
 (b) The daily routine. 
 
 The Sangha a strange democracy ; the higher truths 
 confined to them. The method of ordination. 
 
Contents xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Gotama's versatility in dealing with men, e.g. King 
 Agnidatta, the farmer Bharadvaja, a bereft mother, 
 and a sorrowing grandmother. 
 
 A moonlight idyll of the monastic life. The ap- 
 pointment of Ananda as personal attendant. The un- 
 ruly monks. 
 
 V. The Old Age and Death of Gotama . . 63 
 
 Gotama and the parricide, Ajatasattu. Devadatta's 
 "black magic" and schism. The sorrows of Gotama 
 the Aged. His meeting with a contemporary. The 
 tribute of a modem Indian and of a modern Japanese 
 disciple. 
 
 The last days and passing of Gotama; his relics; 
 the date of his death. 
 
 VI. The Secret of Gotama 75 
 
 His profound and far-reaching influence due to 
 
 (a) His personal magnetism. 
 
 (b) His sane and strong moral teaching. 
 
 (c) His position as a warrior-chief. 
 
 (d) The essential democracy of the Sangha. 
 
 (e) Their earnestness and joyous conviction. 
 
 The estimate of the early disciples; growing devo- 
 tion to his person. Did he encourage it? Yes and 
 no; he put loyalty to his teaching first. 
 
 Gotama as both surgeon and physician; some ex- 
 amples of dry humor. 
 
 VII. Gotama as Teacher 86 
 
 Gotama primarily a teacher of morals; his diagno- 
 sis of the world's illness ; his method of cure : 
 
 (a) Clear thinking and right analysis. 
 
 (b) Moral zeal. 
 
 Discussion of this method; appreciation of the ends 
 to which he used it: 
 
 (a) To cast out anger. 
 
 (b) To cure lust. 
 
xii Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The method of analysis psychologically studied. 
 The Four Noble Truths. 
 
 The higher ranges of his teaching. A radical de- 
 fect: no true conception of God. Gotama and Free 
 Will. 
 
 Summary: Gotama partially mistaken, yet himself 
 an embodiment of the divine quality of love. 
 
 Aependix I. St. Francis and Gotama . . . 103 
 
 A dialogue in which the Christian and the Buddhist 
 ways are compared and contrasted. 
 
 Appendix II. Notes on Nibhana .... 108 
 Appendix III. Two Ideals in the Pali Books . Ill 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 After the lapse of twenty-five centuries Gotama Buddha's 
 influence is still a mighty power in the world. That an 
 Indian monk, embracing poverty and the celibate life, writ- 
 ing no book, and setting up no hierarchy, should so pro- 
 foundly sway the destinies of a continent is one of the most 
 impressive facts of history. And the modem world, with its 
 passionate belief in organization and in wealth, may learn 
 much from Gotama. Yet he is still strangely misunderstood. 
 
 "There is perhaps no person in history in regard to whom 
 have arisen so many opinions that are either wholly or partly 
 false," says Dr. Hopkins.^ 
 
 "In Buddhism," says de la Vallee Poussin, "it is possible 
 to make but few statements of which the opposite may not be 
 affirmed and proved."^ 
 
 These sayings express very truly the confusion which still 
 exists both as to the person of Gotama, and as to his essential 
 teachings — a confusion due partly to the fact that there exists 
 no early biography of him, and partly to the still more 
 remarkable fact that literary criticism of Buddhist books 
 has made very little progress, and that it is very difficult today 
 to determine what are the authentic teachings of the Founder 
 of Buddhism. 
 
 In a sense it is very remarkable that no early biography 
 exists; for circumstances were ideal for the production of 
 a lifelike record of Gotama's words and ways. What the 
 "faithful hound" Boswell was to Dr. Johnson, that Ananda, 
 "the sage of the tireless ministry," might have been to 
 Gotama; for he followed him, as he claims, "like a shadow," 
 and had daily opportunities throughout a long life of service 
 
 » Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 299. 
 
 ' "Bouddhisme : Opinions/' p. 189. 
 
2 Gotama Buddha 
 
 to study his master. Why did Ananda fail to do this price- 
 less service to humanity? 
 
 Dr. Oldenberg, to whom students of Buddhism owe so 
 much, argues that "the idea of biography was foreign to the 
 mind of that age" and that "in those times the interest of 
 the Hfe of the Master receded entirely behind the interest 
 attached to his teaching" ;' he shows, too, that neither in the 
 case of Jesus of Nazareth nor in that of Socrates was a 
 biography in the ordinary sense handed down. 
 
 Yet, even if we could not expect Ananda to write biography 
 as Boswell wrote it, it would have been an enormous gain 
 if he had written "Memorabilia" like Xenophon, or better 
 still, a gospel "like Luke the physician" ! 
 
 Instead of that, he and the brethren seem to have handed 
 on oral accounts of their Master's teaching, more or less 
 stereotyped, but containing biographical material from which 
 the modern editor must select. And this has been faithfully 
 recorded in the Pali Books. In studying them the modern 
 editor at once becomes aware that he is debtor to a long 
 series of others who have attempted the task, and though 
 none of them can be called biographies in the ordinary sense, 
 they have preserved much that is of supreme value to all 
 who seek to know what manner of man Gotama was, and 
 what was the secret of his amazing succ.ess. 
 
 The material at our disposal is as follows: 
 
 1. The Introduction to the Jataka, known as the Nidd- 
 nakatha: this was written down in Pali in the monasteries 
 of Ceylon about the middle of the fifth century A. D. It 
 contains references to other biographies now lost, and gives 
 us the narrative from Gotama's birth to the visit he made 
 to his family after attaining Enlightenment. It has been 
 translated into English under the editorship of E. B. Cowell, 
 and parts of it are also in H. C. Warren's "Buddhism in 
 Translation." 
 
 2. The Mahavagga, a very old part of the Vinaya, car- 
 ries the narrative on, giving a number of instances following 
 the Enlightenment, and dealing especially with the founda- 
 tion of the Sangha. 
 
 s Oldenberg, "Buddha," E. T., p. 79. 
 
Introduction 3 
 
 3. Anecdotes contained in the Dialogues or Suttas, in 
 some of which Gotama tells of his early search, and in others 
 of which are given details of his dealings with men. The 
 most valuable are those of the Majjhima Nikaya, where we 
 find Gotama portrayed, as Dr. Anesaki has said, as "a vivid 
 human personality." 
 
 With these we may class such gnomic utterances as the 
 Dhammapada and the Ittivuttaka, which no doubt contain 
 many authentic "Logia" of Gotama. 
 
 The above are early canonical works, though probably 
 several hundred years had elapsed before they were written 
 down. They contain evidence of the process of deification of 
 Gotama, yet there is much in them which may be regarded 
 as real history. 
 
 4. Later and less reliable are the poetical Bitddha Carita, 
 composed probably in the reign of Kanishka by Asvaghosa, as 
 late as 100 A. D. It is written in Sanskrit, and seems to aim 
 at filling up the details of the story of Gotama's life until the 
 Enlightenment. 
 
 Later still is the Lalita Vistara, which is also written in 
 Sanskrit and carries us down to his first sermon at Benares. 
 On this is based Sir Edwin Arnold's poem "The Light of 
 Asia," and scholars are agreed that it is about as historical as 
 Milton's Paradise poems. 
 
 5. Still later is the Jina Carita, a Pali poem written in 
 the twelfth century A. D. by Buddhadatta in Ceylon. 
 
 6. Lastly, belonging to a literary period two thousand 
 years after the death of Gotama is the -Malalankara Watthu, 
 known best in Bishop Bigandet's translation, "The Life or 
 Legend of Gaudama Buddha." 
 
 In these later works the process of deification is almost 
 complete, and I have preferred not to use them in compiling 
 this work. 
 
 In addition to these literary sources we have the great 
 sculptured monuments of Buddhism, some of which are as 
 early as the second century B. C. and contain a great deal 
 of material for reconstructing the India of Gotama's day. 
 Strangely enough, they record many of the incidents in his 
 life which the modem biographer must regard as legendary. 
 
 These earlier monuments, however, whilst they sprang up to 
 satisfy "the commemorative instinct," and whilst they es- 
 tablish the historicity of Gotama, contain no figure of him, 
 
4 Gotama Buddha 
 
 but content themselves with symbols illustrating the great 
 events of his life. Portraits and statues of him were made 
 only after the beginning of the Christian era. 
 
 One of the instructions which he seems to have given to 
 Ananda as he lay dying is that the pious worshiper should 
 visit four sacred spots connected with his life: the place of 
 his birth— Kapilavatthu; the place of his Enlightenment— 
 Budh-Gaya; the place of his first sermon — ^the Gazelle Park 
 near Benares; and the place of his passing away— Kusi- 
 nagara.* 
 
 These great events are indicated in Buddhist art by the 
 following symbols: The Elephant typifi.es his birth, com- 
 memorating Queen Maya's dream; the Bo Tree commemo- 
 rates his Enlightenment ; the Wheel symbolizes the beginning 
 of his public ministry; and the "stupa" or burial mound his 
 passing into Nibbana. 
 
 When we seek for early portraits of Gotama then, we 
 find only symbols in their place. Yet tradition assigns to 
 him well-known features, and we find here and there in the 
 books, e.g., in the "Song of Kassapa" quoted below, indica- 
 tions of his personal characteristics which are consistent with 
 the traditional statues of him, and which help to strengthen 
 our conception of him as a serene and gracious figure, lofty 
 of brow, majestic of mien, with eyes at once loving and 
 searching — a man who conceived his task, above all, as that 
 of a teacher of morals. It is this majestic man whom 
 India recognizes as her greatest son, and who has still les- 
 sons of vital significance to the world, whose story we are 
 to tell. 
 
 It is the story of a singularly gracious and noble life, and 
 of a character which reminds us (albeit in fitful glimpses 
 which we get through the stiff and stilted passages of the 
 scholastic nairative) now of Socrates, now of Francis of 
 Assisi, now, though less vividly, of some Hebrew prophet; 
 for Gotama combined in his person a passion for moral 
 and intellectual truth with a gracious compassion and sim- 
 plicity which endear him to our hearts. 
 
 ^ Mahapari-nibbana Sutta, V. 16:22. 
 
Introduction 5 
 
 To Dr. Oldenberg, Professor de la Vallee Poussin, Dr. 
 Rhys Davids, the Bhikkhu Sitacara, and other Western 
 scholars who have made available so much material for this 
 study, I am glad to acknowledge my indebtedness: as also 
 to the long succession of Eastern disciples, known and un- 
 known, who have kept his memory green. To Mrs. Rhys 
 Davids I owe special thanks for permission to quote so 
 freely from her books. 
 
 Lastly, I am indebted to the Cambridge University Press, 
 and to Professor Rapson for permission to use the map con- 
 tained in his "Ancient India." 
 
 The verses in Appendix I first appeared in the International 
 Review of Missions. 
 
 I hope that this little book will help students in the East 
 and West to a more detailed study of their works. 
 
 K. J. S. 
 
 Kyoto, Japan, July, 1920. 
 
 Note — ^The Pali rather than the Sanskrit spelling is used 
 throughout — Gotama, not Gautama; Kapilavatthu, not Kapi- 
 lavastu. It was probably the common dialect of Magadha 
 and parts of Kosala, where the bulk of Gotama's teachings 
 were given, and whence for many generations the Bhikkhus 
 mainly came. Only in cases where the word is primarily of 
 Hindu rather than of Buddhist origin and significance, e.g.. 
 Brahmin, Kshatriya, is it retained in its Sanskrit form. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF GOTAMA 
 
 Neither mother nor father nor any kinsfolk can do thee 
 service like a well-directed mind. — Dhammapada 43. 
 
 By the sixth century B. C, the Aryan and Mongolian in- 
 vaders of India had established themselves along the lower 
 slopes of the Himalayas, and had poured into the Ganges 
 valley. It was along this valley that early Buddhism was to 
 spread, and to understand it aright we must know some- 
 thing of the mingled civilization which they established. 
 Politically it was like that of early Greece, and the systems 
 of government varied from autocratic monarchies to self- 
 governing communities. Of the former type we learn from 
 Brahmin, Jain, and Buddhist literature that there were six- 
 teen,* and there were many smaller states, some of which 
 were more or less feudatory to their larger neighbors, some 
 independent. 
 
 The chief of the larger kingdoms were those with which 
 early Buddhism was most concerned: Kosala, correspond- 
 ing to the modem Oudh, with its capital either at Savatthi^ 
 or at Ayodhya; Magadha, corresponding to South Bihar,* 
 with its capital at Rajagaha,* and Videha, corresponding to 
 North Bihar, with its capital at Mithila. These kingdoms 
 were separated from one another by rivers, the Ganges di- 
 viding Videha from Magadha, and the Sandanira dividing 
 it from Kosala. The kings of these countries were often 
 related to one another by marriage; thus we find that Bim- 
 
 iFor example, Vmaya Texts, 2. 146. Anguttara Nikaya, I. 213; cf. 
 Rhys Davids, ''Buddhist India," p. 23. 
 
 " Now Sahet Mahet on the river Kapti. 
 
 ' Bihar gets its name from the many Viharas or Buddhist monasteries 
 which it at one time boasted. 
 
 *Now Rajgir, on whose five hills religious teachers still gather their 
 bands of disciples. 
 
The Early Life of Gotama 7 
 
 bisara of Magadha had amongst his wives the sister of Ag- 
 nidatta Pasenadi of Kosala and also "the Lady of Mithila." 
 
 Amongst the self-governing communities was that of the 
 Licchavi nobles, living in and around Vesali, who, after 
 Gotama's death, came under the suzerainty of Ajatasattu; 
 but the Sakyas, Gotama's own people, were already tributary 
 to the kings of Kosala. Their chief town was Kapilavatthu, 
 and their total territory probably covered some nine hundred 
 square miles, partly on the slopes of the Himalayas, and 
 partly in the rich rice fields which stretched out like a great 
 carpet below, irrigated by abundant streams pouring down 
 from the mountain-side, and bordered on the east by the 
 Rohini, and on the west and south by the Achiravati.^ It is 
 probable that both Licchavis and Sakyas, like the modern 
 inhabitants of the Tarai of Nepal, were Mongolians and 
 that Gotama was not of Aryan stock.' 
 
 This rich and fertile land was the early home of Gotama 
 Buddha, a land of great beauty, with the mighty snow ram- 
 part of Himalaya towering above it, and below it the rich 
 green of sandal (sal) trees and young oaks, and the still more 
 wonderful green of rice fields. 
 
 His father's name, Suddhodana, which means "Pure Rice," 
 suggests that they were an agricultural people; but they be- 
 longed to the Kshatriya or warrior caste, and the early 
 legends tell of ambitious plans which the Chieftain had for 
 his son. At the least, we may imagine that he desired the 
 boy to succeed him in the leadership of the clan; for the 
 Sakyas seem to have been led by a hereditary chief, not like 
 their neighbors, the Licchavis, by a Nayaka, elected to the 
 post. But from the leadership of a clan to the position of 
 "Universal Monarch," Chakkavatti, is a far cry; and the 
 legend that this was the destiny marked out for the young 
 Gotama may be dismissed as unlikely. Yet it is not impossi- 
 ble; for less than three centuries later Chandragupta and 
 his house, starting from smaller beginnings and with far less 
 
 ^ The Achiravati is now the Rapti; the Rohini retains its ancient name. 
 These rivers meet near Goruckpur, 100 miles north of Benares. 
 
 • See Vincent Smith, "Oxford History of India," p. 49. Dr. D. B. 
 Spooner maintains that Gotama was of Iranian descent. Perhaps both these 
 views are right, for there was much intermarriage. 
 
8 Gotama Buddha 
 
 of genius than Gotama, achieved this position and during his 
 lifetime the foundations of this mighty empire were laid 
 by the kings of Magadha. However that may be, Suddho- 
 dana was not a king as the legends claim : in some passages 
 in the early Buddhist books he is called Raja, but so are 
 all the Licchavi and Sakya nobles; and only in the Thera- 
 gathS commentary is he called Maharaja. It is agreed 
 amongst scholars that he was one of numerous petty chief- 
 tains. That he had a pride of race worthy of a Scottish laird 
 seems clear, and even if he had no higher ambition than that 
 his son should succeed him, we may be sure that he regarded 
 this as no mean destiny. The very name Sakya means "the 
 mighty" ! 
 
 To illustrate the pride of these border clans we may quote 
 an early legend, probably apocryphal, which describes how, 
 when the King of Kosala asked for a Sakya in marriage, 
 the chiefs gathered in their Mote Hall and decided that they 
 could not lower their dignity by allowing one of their free- 
 born daughters to marry him; so they sent back the bastard 
 daughter of one of them by a slave woman.'' 
 
 Life at the house of one of these chiefs would be not un- 
 like that at a Scottish castle in the Middle Ages; not only 
 was there the same pride of race, but there was much the 
 same feudal system, and much the same strange wayfaring 
 life; scholar and minstrel, noble and friar, soothsayer and 
 jester, ascetic and juggler, would pass in a fascinating pan- 
 orama before the son of the house, and a rough hospitality 
 awaited all. 
 
 The boy was born probably about the year 560 B. C.^ 
 at a pleasaunce between the capital of the Sakyas and that 
 of the Koliyas, a clan from whom his mother, the Lady 
 Maya, seems to have sprung. To mark the site of this 
 garden of Lumbini a pillar was erected by the Emperor 
 
 ^ See Rhys Davids, "Buddhist India," p. 11. This insult led, we are 
 told, to the sack of Kapilavatthu and the massacre oi the Sakyas by 
 Vidudabha towards the end of Gotama's life or soon after his death. 
 
 » Another possible date is sixty-four years earlier : a date accepted in 
 Ceylon and arrived at by reckoning backwards the sum , of years assigned 
 to each of the kings of Ceylon, till the time of the introduction of Buddhism 
 into the Island by Mahinda, the son of Asoka, whose dates are well known, 
 and who is said to have been crowned 218 years after the death of Gotama. 
 
The Early Life of Gotama 9 
 
 Asoka about 244 B. C. with the inscription "Here the Ex- 
 alted One was bom." 
 
 Amongst the many legends of his birth and early days 
 there is one which seems reasonable enough; it tells how the 
 old man Asita came to see the babe, and foretold a great 
 future for him.^ Another legend tells that his mother died 
 soon after his birth, and that it was her sister, the Lady 
 Pajapati, Suddhodana's second wife, who brought him up. 
 He was called Siddhattha, that is, "Desire Accomplished," 
 but his family name was Gotama, a name derived from one 
 of the ancient families of rishis or seers of Vedic times.^* 
 
 We can imagine the little boy, who seems to have been a 
 son of Suddhodana's old age, brought up with loving care, 
 and even spoiled by his doting aunt and her women. He 
 probably learned early an imperious habit, and the legends 
 are lavish in their description of his pampered childhood 
 and youth : "I wore garments of silk, and my attendants held 
 a white umbrella over me," he used to tell his disciples in 
 after days. As he walked out thus we may be sure that the 
 boy's eyes and ears were busy! 
 
 His mind would be formed very largely by the things he 
 saw in the everyday life of his people. Living in the midst 
 of a rural community, he would get to know the life of the 
 villages dotted about amongst the rice fields, and of the 
 jungle, and the legends attribute to him an early love of the 
 animals for whom in later life he was to do so signal a 
 service. 
 
 Hunting was perhaps the chief sport of the Kshatriyas, 
 and sacrifices kept the Brahmins busy. It may well have 
 been -some victim of the chase or of the altar that first 
 kindled in him as a boy the divine compassion which still 
 makes his memory so fragrant. 
 
 In the long sunny days of summer he would play, perhaps 
 with his cousins Ananda and Devadatta, certainly with his 
 
 ' Nalaka Sutia of the Sutta Nipata. 
 
 " It is not dear why a warrior clan should have had a Brahmin family 
 name. See Oldenberg, "Buddha," E. T., pp. 413, 414. Dr. Rhys Davids 
 says: "It is a curious fact that Gautama is still the familjr name of the 
 Rajput chiefs of Nagara, the village wrongly identified with Kapilavastu 
 by Cunningham." "Buddhism," p. 27. 
 
lo Gotama Buddha 
 
 friend Kaludayin, the immemorial outdoor games of his 
 coimtry, chariot-races, wrestling, running, hunting, a kind 
 of "hopscotch," and many others common today in India; 
 and in the wet season, marbles, dice, chess, "tip-cat," "spilli- 
 kins," and many more.^^ Or they would sit and listen in 
 the flickering lamplight to the legends of ancient India, cele- 
 brating the deeds of heroes and of gods; or some village 
 Uncle Remus would tell them old folk-lore tales, many of 
 which we in the West know in JEsop and La Fontaine, and 
 which in days to come Gotama was to turn to good account. 
 Stories, too, there were of a more fearsome kind, of ghosts 
 and goblins, or of red-eyed ogresses who stole and ate chil- 
 dren, or let loose plagues to devastate whole districts. And 
 often as they passed some dark tree they would make a little 
 offering to the spirit hiding there, who might be in a bad 
 temper, and who must needs be propitiated. Or they would 
 take their part in the ceremony of feeding the hungry spirits 
 "Betas" (Fathers) who thronged the thresholds of tiieir old 
 homes, or jibbered hungrily at crossroads.^^ 
 
 Thus fear played its part in their early training, and a 
 further tinge of mystery and horror wa:s added to it at the 
 sight of self-inflicted tortures, common then as now in India. 
 The ascetic with his terrible emaciated body and distorted 
 limbs would make a keen appeal to the imagination of the 
 child, and perhaps an indelible impression shaping his after 
 life. Of such asceticism he spoke in old age, and his de- 
 scription of what he himself endured may well serve as a 
 picture of some Indian Sddhu who arrested his attention as a 
 boy; as indeed it might portray the Sannyasi of today .^* 
 
 "I have fed my body on mosses, grasses, cow-dung. I 
 have lived upon the wild fruits and roots of the jungle, 
 eating only of fruit fallen from the trees. I have worn 
 garments of hemp and hair, as also foul clouts from the 
 charnel-house, rags from dust-heaps. I have wrapped my- 
 self in the abandoned skins and hides of animals; covered 
 
 " Caltavagga, I. 13. Tevijja Sutta, II. "Dialogues of the Buddha,' 
 Rhys Davids, II. 9-11. 
 
 "^Cf. "The Heart of Buddhism," p. 48 (from the Ktmddaka NikSya). 
 " "Dialogues of Gotama," tr. by Silacara, I. 97-99. 
 
The Early Life of Gotama ii 
 
 my nakedness with lengths of grass, bark, and leaves, with a 
 patch of some wild animal's mane or tail, with the wing of 
 an owl. I was also a plucker-out of hair and beard, prac- 
 tised the austerity of rooting out hair from head and face. 
 I took upon myself the vow always to stand, never to sit 
 or lie down. I bound myself perpetually to squat upon my 
 heels, practised the austerity of continual heel-squatting. A 
 'thorn sided one' was I ; when I lay down to rest, it was with 
 thorns upon my sides. . . . 
 
 "I betook myself to a certain dark and dreadftd wood and 
 in that place made my abode. And there in the dense and 
 fearsome forest such horror reigned, that the hair of whom- 
 soever, not sense-subdued, entered that dread place, stood on 
 end with terror." 
 
 Such scenes would help to quicken his already luxuriant 
 imagination, and to make him sensitive; might they not 
 plant in him a phobia, which later led to a one-sided insist- 
 ence upon the sorrow and pain of life? 
 
 But whilst his emotions were being thus stirred, his mind 
 was also being instructed. We cannot doubt that he sat 
 at the feet of some Indian guru and learned from him 
 something of the earlier Vedas and of the central teach- 
 ings of contemporary Hinduism. Probably it was not very 
 much,^* but it gave a permanent cast to his mind, so that 
 later he never questioned such doctrines as those of Karma 
 (action and its result) and Samsara (transmigration)^* — 
 doctrines probably taught him almost in infancy by those 
 about him in his father's household, and re-emphasized by 
 his guru, who at the age of ten or eleven would initiate 
 him, giving him the bow-string girdle, the madder undervest, 
 and the deerskin robe of the warrior, and instructing him 
 each year from July to October in Vedic lore. 
 
 At other times he and his friends would sit and listen to 
 some wandering scholar expounding his system in the court- 
 
 " Dr. Oldenberff argues that "in the training of nobles in those lands 
 which were but slightly attached to Brahmanism, more attention was paid 
 to martial exercise than to knowledge of the Veda," and that "Buddhists 
 have not attributed Vedic scholarship to their master." "Buddha," E. T., 
 p. 100. 
 
 "■ Though as we shall see he was the first to make the Karma doctrine 
 reasonable and ethical, and he profoundly modified the doctrine of Samsara. 
 
12 Gotama Buddha 
 
 yard of the family home, and would note, half -consciously, the 
 good-humored tolerance with which his elders listened even 
 though they did not understand. And after the good man 
 was gone, he would join in the kindly fun poked at him, 
 and laugh at some name such as "eel-wriggler," "hair-split- 
 ter,"^8 or "weaver of trifles" which they would coin for 
 him. But the ideal of a Buddha — or Wise Teacher who 
 would give his people peace — this would, no doubt, be men- 
 tioned by some more earnest soul, and it seems to have found 
 a lodging in the mind of the young Siddhattha. 
 
 Of the Brahmins, too, and of their claims, he would learn 
 much; one view from his guru, another from his Kshatriya 
 relations, "who esteemed the Brahmin highly whilst they es- 
 teemed themselves more highly still"; and would speak of 
 them much as a medieval baron in the West might speak 
 of the clergy of his day, good worthy folk, but not, for the 
 most part, of noble birth.^' Or perhaps his father wotild 
 take him to the court of Magadha when he went to pay 
 homage, and here, too, he would learn that the g^eat kings 
 did not altogether relish the growing power and claims of 
 these Brahmins, but were ever ready to become patrons of 
 any who set up a rival teaching. He would exult in the 
 great rock fortress of Giribajja, and the new town of 
 Rajagaha, then probably still being built — ^both symbols of 
 Kshatriya domination. 
 
 Or he may have gone to Savatthi or to the opulent and 
 dissolute Vesali, whose rich nobles he later described as "like 
 a host of gods." It is interesting to speculate upon how such 
 journeys were accomplished. Probably they would accom- 
 pany some merchant caravan as it passed along one of the 
 great trade routes of the day, routes he was to use so often 
 in the long years of his wanderings as a religious teacher. 
 
 We can imagine the boy wide-eyed with excitement, and 
 reveling in this long sunny picnic from Kapilavatthu along 
 the foot of the mountains to the neighborhood of Vesali, 
 and then south to the Ganges and Rajagaha. The long 
 
 ""Dialogues," 137, 138. 
 
 ..n"iil-''?*?*?'- Y- 2'''',„* Brahmin of Benares is called "low-born" (see 
 Buddhist India," pp. 60, 61). 
 
The Early Life of Gotama 13 
 
 caravan, with its loaded camels and throng of servants, would 
 pass through Kusinara, Pava, Pataliputta, and Nalanda, — 
 names famous in after days because of their association with 
 him and his Order. Of the two latter, one was to become 
 the capital of a mighty Buddhist empire, the other the seat 
 of one of the great Buddhist universities. Or, they may 
 have gone upon a pleasant river trip on the Ganges or the 
 Jumna." 
 
 Arrived at one of the royal cities he would see the king as 
 he is pictured -in ancient sculptures at Barhut and elsewhere, 
 seated or standing in his four-horse chariot, and accom- 
 panied by the royal elephants, the archers, the cavalry, the 
 infantry, and all the busy throng of courtiers and court 
 servants. A list of such is given in an early narrative tell- 
 ing of the visit of King Ajatasattu to Gotama sixty years 
 later, and as Professor Rhys Davids has pointed out, they are 
 all "just the sort of people employed about a camp or palace." 
 In the palace itself, probably a two-storied building with an 
 upper apartment for the women and open courtyards below, 
 the boy would watch the gamblers dicing, and learn how the 
 kings got plentiful revenue from their winnings. Or he 
 would listen eagerly to the latest tales of some terrible punish- 
 ment inflicted by the autocrat, or of some ambitious project 
 for subduing a neighboring state. That these kings were 
 often tyrannical in the extreme is suggested by several pas- 
 sages in the Buddhist books, which describe monstrous tor- 
 tures inflicted for sins such as theft, highway robbery, and 
 adultery : 
 
 "Then the rulers cause them to be seized and condemn them 
 to various punishments, such as, to be flogged with whips, 
 sticks or switches ; to have their feet cut off ; or to have both 
 their hands and their feet cut off; to have their ears cut 
 off ; to have their nose cut off ; or to have both ears and nose 
 cut off. ... Or they are basted with boiling oil, torn to 
 pieces of dogs, impaled alive, or beheaded; and so they come 
 by death or deadly hurt."^* 
 
 "See Rhys Davids, "Buddhist India," p. 103. 
 
 " This kind of thing was even done later on in the interests of Buddhism 
 by Ajatasattu after his conversion. "Dialogues of Gotama," tr. by Sila- 
 cara, I. 110. 
 
14 Gotama Buddha 
 
 The boy would discover, too, the growing rivalry between 
 the great states of Magadha and Kosala, which has been called 
 the leading point in the politics of the day; for the kingdom 
 of Kosala had made rapid progress, and a great struggle was 
 imminent between it and Magadha. He could not help learn- 
 ing that the rival kings attached great importance to the 
 allegiance of such clans as the Sakyas and Licchavis ; it was 
 indeed by the help of the latter that the King of Magadha 
 eventually obtained supremacy. 
 
 No doubt, therefore, the boy and his companions would 
 be honorably entertained, and made free of royal hospitality; 
 and they would take their share as befitted young nobles 
 in the royal sports. Then, as the caravan made its way 
 homewards, there would be much discussion of the rival 
 kingdoms, and as they gathered round the camp fire at nights 
 some graybeard would tell of the glories of the Chakkavatti 
 — ^that ideal king who was to rule in righteousness, loving 
 and greatly loved. 
 
 Thus the boy grew up, proud of race, strong in body, quick 
 in imagination, not uninstructed in Vedic learning, and alive 
 to the political and social movements of his day. 
 
 In due course he was married, and entered into the re- 
 sponsibilities of his station, with some share, no doubt, in 
 the administration of his father's affairs. Yet he was a man 
 of leisure, with residences, we are told, for each of the three 
 seasons, and opportunities for further study and thought. 
 Perhaps he now began to take part in discussions with the 
 wandering sophists; certainly he was accumulating experi- 
 ences and ideas which drove him forth to become himself a 
 wandering ascetic, and eventually a teacher preeminent 
 amongst them all. The form of the great discovery which 
 made him Buddha suggests that he was not unfamiliar 
 with the medical systems of his day, and it may well be that 
 from some court-physician such as jivaka, who is mentioned 
 in the books and who afterwards ministered to his physical 
 needs.^" he learned the current theories of disease, and the 
 methods of its treatment. It must not be forgotten that In- 
 
 "■In a very thorough wayl See "Sacred Books of the East," XVII. 191. 
 
The Early Life of Gotama 15 
 
 dian medicine had reached a high stage of efficiency, and that 
 Buddhism did much in later days to foster if^ 
 
 How best could he serve his people ? We can imagine him 
 in these days of early manhood, gazing out with longing 
 over the rich plains and clustering hamlets of his father's 
 domain till a passionate patriotism filled him with yearning 
 to serve these people that he loved, and to win for them some 
 abiding happiness. Like the cultured Indian boy of today, 
 he would have- ideals large and a little vague, a passionate 
 aspiration but dimly understood; like other adolescents he 
 was potentially a knight-errant. Gradually, as he grew to 
 man's estate, these ideals would take form and shape. And it 
 is perhaps this process which is commemorated in the old 
 legend of a vision^^ which the gods sent him; vivid pictures 
 of old age and disease and death, culminating in that of a 
 yellow-robed Sannyasi, seeking freedom from them all. Such, 
 at any rate, was the resolve to which his musings brought 
 him, and which at the age of twenty-nine he resolutely carried 
 out. A Chakkavattif Yes, perhaps, but of a kind new to 
 his people or familiar to them as the Wise Teacher — Buddha 
 — whose sway is made possible by a change of heart and 
 mind. 
 
 "Unto this I came 
 And not for thrones: the Kingdom that I crave 
 Is more than many realms — and all things pass 
 To change and death." 
 
 The legend tells that as he tore himself from the ties of 
 home, messengers came to him from his wife's chamber an- 
 nouncing the birth of his little son. "Call his name Rahula, 
 a bond," he cried, "for here is another bond which I must 
 break." India has for more than 2,500 years acclaimed this 
 as an heroic sacrifice, much as the Christian Church, in spite 
 of 2,000 years of Christianity, still, for the most part, ad- 
 mires the readiness with which Abraham set about offering 
 
 "The Chinese pilgrim I-Tsing mentions dispensaries and hospitals at 
 Patna; Asoka tells how he provided medical care even for animalsi; 
 Kanishka was a patron of the medical profession; and Japanese Buddhism 
 makes much of a god of medicine. 
 
 "" Described in Anguttara NikSya, I. 145, as a series of "thoughts" or 
 ''ideas." 
 
1 6 Gotama Buddha 
 
 up his only son. Yet the conscience of today can approve 
 neither; and should a vision urge the modem father to take 
 either step, he would refuse to believe his senses; for the 
 God whom we have learned to know both in East and West 
 could not ignore the rights of wife or child. 
 
 But the young Gotama, like the old Abraham, was the son 
 of a patriarchal age, a man of his time, and is to be judged 
 accordingly. It does not lessen our veneration for him as a 
 man, but it must be set in the scales of any fair-minded 
 biographer against the tremendous claims which his disciples 
 very soon began to make on his behalf. 
 
 The step now taken by Gotama, and his subsequent re- 
 ligious life, romantic and adventurous as it seems to the West, 
 follow the accepted practice of Brahmin discipline. The 
 four asramas, or religious stages in the life of the Brahmin 
 are as follows : In the first he is a son of his father's house, 
 and a pupil of his guru, from whom he learns the sacred 
 texts and the methods of sacrifice; in the second he marries 
 and brings up a family; in the third he goes forth accom- 
 panied by his wife, or alone, into the jungle and becomes an 
 anchorite ; and in the fourth he abandons all earthly ties for- 
 ever and devotes himself to meditation.^' 
 
 But these Brahmin disciplines follow orderly and natural 
 stages. When a man has brought up his family, and "seen 
 his son's son," he may well leave the world without being 
 sorely missed. 
 
 Gotama, more ambitious and more adventurous, went forth 
 in the bloom of youth and, Kshatriya as he was, to find a 
 way of escape from rebirth and its attendant sorrows. Hence- 
 forward he is Sakyamuni — ^the "Solitary" or Sage of the 
 Sakya clan. 
 
 " Brahmachtrin, Grihastha, Vanaprastha, and SannySsin, or Bhikstm, 
 are the technical terms. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 QUEST AND CONQUEST 
 
 "While life is good to give, I give, and go 
 To seek deliverance and that unknown Light." 
 
 "The Light of Asia." 
 
 "In the prime of my youth, O disciples, a black-haired boy 
 passing into manhood, against the will of my sorrowing par- 
 ents, I shore off hair and beard, and putting on the yellow 
 robe went out from home, vowed henceforward to the wan- 
 dering life." 
 
 In these quiet words Gotama is recorded to have described 
 one of the great events of history, an event big with mean- 
 ing for untold millions. There is amongst the Ajanta 
 frescoes an exquisite picture of him at this turning-point in 
 his life. It belongs to the seventh century A. D. and can- 
 not be called a portrait; but it is notable for a majesty and a 
 sorrowful tenderness that remind us of da Vinci's study of 
 the youthful Christ. It is thus that the Buddhist world has 
 treasured the memory of one who "out of compassion for 
 mankind"^ endured unspeakable austerities in seeking salva- 
 tion, or freedom from rebirth. 
 
 The spirit of this great adventure is thus finely described 
 by Fielding Hall : 
 
 "He went to seek wisdom, as many a one has done, look- 
 ing for the laws of God with clear eyes to see, with a pure 
 heart to understand, and after many troubles, aft^r many 
 mistakes, after much suffering, he came at last to the truth. 
 
 "Even as Newton sought for the laws of God in the move- 
 ment of the stars, in the falling of a stone, in the stir of 
 
 ^It seems probable that this altruistic motive became articulate later; the 
 young Gotama was primarily concerned with winning his own freedom. 
 
1 8 Gotama Buddha 
 
 the great waters, so this Newton of the spiritual world sought 
 for the secrets of life and death, looking deep into the heart 
 of man, marking its toil, its suffering, its little joys, with a 
 soul attuned to catch every quiver of the life of the world. 
 And as to Newton truth did not come spontaneously, did not 
 reveal itself to him at his first call, but had to be sought with 
 toil and weariness, till at last he reached it where it hid in 
 the heart of all things, so it was with the prince. He was not 
 born with the knowledge in him, but had to seek it as other 
 men do. He wasted time and labor following wrong roads, 
 demonstrating to himself the foolishness of many thoughts. 
 But never discouraged, he sought on till he found, and 
 what he found he gave as a heritage to all men for ever, that 
 the way might be easier for them than it had been for him."^ 
 
 He went first to Rajagaha, the royal city of Magadha, to 
 teachers whom it may well be he had already visited as a 
 boy, or whose fame had reached him in his father's home. 
 "Thus vowed to homelessness and seeking the highest, even 
 the way of peace, I went where the ascetic Alara Kalama 
 dwelt and thus addressed him: 'Friend Kalama, I would lead 
 the life of a recluse as your pupil and follower,' and very 
 swiftly I learned, O disciples, what he had to teach."* 
 
 It probably did not amount to much ; and the young Indian 
 noble was already familiar, we may be sure, with the current 
 Indian systems of religion. We learn of sixty-two different 
 schools of thought in the India of his day, and the Kshattriyas 
 from whom he sprung were keenly interested in these wander- 
 ing teachers, often providing quiet places of refuge for 
 them, and always glad, as we have seen, when they com- 
 bated the growing ascendency of the Brahmins. What was 
 it that Alara Kalama taught him? It is described as the 
 "realm of nothingness"* and as "the eight stages of medita- 
 
 2 "The Soul of a People," H. Fielding Hall, pp. 20, 21. 
 
 ° That early Buddhism owed much to the Samkhya system has been 
 argued by Garbe and others; but that Gotama owed this knowledge to Alara 
 Kalama is unlikely. It is, however, significant that the Japanese Legend 
 says that Alara gave to him "two staves" — which are the mark of ascetics 
 of the Samkhya School. Majjhima Nikaya, I. 163-5. Lakshmi Narasu says 
 quite confidently "He was evidently a follower of Kapila, the reputed 
 founder of the Samkhya system of philosophy" ("Essence of Buddhism." 
 2d Edition, p. 6). 
 
 The Buddha Carita ("Sacred Books of the East," XLIX) gives a fairly 
 full summary of his views as reconstructed by Asvaghosa. 
 
 ' Ibid. 
 
Quest and Conquest 19 
 
 tion."^ And that is all we know about it. Probably his sys- 
 tem was one of ascetic meditation, and his doctrine that the 
 soul can be set free from the body. Though he was urged 
 to become fellow-leader with Alara of his company of 
 ascetics, Gotama turned away, reflecting that this teaching 
 "did not lead to the supreme goal, but only to the realm of 
 nothingness," and went on to another teacher, Uddaka, the 
 disciple or son of Rama, with no better success. So he left 
 the rockhewn hermitages on the hillsides of Rajagaha 
 "thoroughly dissatisfied,"* and came to the town of Uruvela. 
 "And there I spied a beautiful and quiet spot among the trees 
 of the forest, with a clear river flowing past them, and with 
 fields and pasture lands around them. Here, thought I, is a 
 pleasant and fitting place for mental effort."^ 
 
 The river seems to have been the Neranjara — the modern 
 Phalgu — and here five mendicant hermits joined him, and 
 with him for six years practiced such extreme asceticism 
 that they were worn to skin and bone. A Graeco-Indian 
 statue of Gandhara, terrible in its realism, shows the great 
 teacher at the limit of his strength, and he seems himself to 
 have left a word-picture with his disciples : "Like wasted 
 withered reeds became all my limbs, like a camel's hoof my 
 hips, like a wavy rope my backbone, and as in a ruined house 
 the roof-tree rafters show all aslope, so sloping showed my 
 ribs because of the extremity of fasting. As in a deep well 
 the watery gleam far below is scarcely to be seen, so in my 
 eye sockets, the gleam of my eye balls, far sunken, well-nigh 
 disappeared, and as a severed gourd uncooked and left out in 
 the sun becomes rotten and shrunken, so hollow and shrunken 
 became the skin of my head. When I touched the surface 
 of my belly my hand touched my backbone, and as I stroked 
 my limbs the hair, rotten at the roots, came away in my 
 hands."* Such heroic measures are not uncommon in India, 
 and had Gotama succumbed to them it would be only one 
 more added to the long tale of her self-immolations. He 
 
 'Jataka, I. 65-69. 
 
 " "Discourses of Gotama," tr. by Silacara, II. 99 (from the Majjhima 
 NikSya). 
 ' Ibid. 
 'Ibid., p. 104. 
 
20 Gotama Buddha 
 
 almost did succumb, so that messengers hurried to Suddho- 
 dana to tell him that his son was dead. But with splendid 
 sanity he realized at the eleventh hour that self-torture was 
 not the road to enlightenment, that he had been "trying to tie 
 the air into knots."' Though it meant parting company with 
 his devoted disciples who left him "when he was most in 
 need of sympathy," he took food and returned to a more nor- 
 mal way of life. He ceased to be a tapasa (self-torturer) 
 and became a paribhajaka (wanderer). The books attribute 
 to Mara the Evil One a longing which now assailed him to 
 return to wife and child and to resume a truly normal life. 
 
 At the end of these six terrible years, of which we have no 
 detailed knowledge, the great day of his Enlightenment was 
 at hand. Leaving Nouveta, he went to Budhgaya, to a great 
 grove of trees near by — those beautiful groves of mango and 
 palm and fig that are the delight of the heart in that land of 
 burning, flooding sunshine — and there he slept, defeated, dis- 
 credited, and abandoned ; and there truth came to him. 
 
 "There is a story of how a young wife, coming to give 
 her little offerings to the spirit of the great fig-tree, saw him, 
 and took him for the spirit, so beautiful was his face as he 
 rose. 
 
 "The woman thought he was the spirit come down to ac- 
 cept her offering, and she gave it to him — the cup of curdled 
 milk — in fear and trembling, and he took it. The woman 
 went away again full of hope and joy, and the prince re- 
 mained in the grove. He lived there for forty-nine days, 
 we are told, under the great fig-tree by the river. And the fig- 
 tree has become sacred for ever because he sat there, and be- 
 cause there he found the truth. We are told of it all in 
 wonderful trope and imagery — of his last fight over sin, and 
 of his victory. 
 
 "There the truth came to him at last out of his own heart. 
 He had sought for it in man and in Nature, and found it not, 
 and lo ! it was in his own heart."" 
 
 Whilst he was musing the fire kindled: albeit a fire with 
 more light than heat ! On a clear still evening in the month 
 
 "Jataka, I. 67. 
 
 10 "The Soul of a People," pp. 38, 39. The story of Sujata is told in 
 JataRa, 1. 68. 5. 
 
Quest and Conquest 21 
 
 of May, at the time known in India as "cowdust," when the 
 air is golden and the heat of the day has begun to abate, he 
 sat at the foot of the bo-tree^^ and setting his teeth, once 
 more made a resolution which afterwards he commended to 
 his followers: "Though skin, nerves, and bone should waste 
 away, and life-blood itself be dried up, here sit I till I attain 
 Enlightenment." The sun had not set before victory was 
 won, and the intuition which is the gospel of Gotama 
 Buddha had dawned on his mind. "When this knowledge 
 had arisen within me, my heart and mind were freed from 
 the drug of lust, from the drug of rebirth, from the drug of 
 ignorance. In me, thus freed, arose knowledge and freedom, 
 and I knew that rebirth was at an end, and that the goal 
 had been reached."^^ There broke from the lips of the 
 seeker a song of victory which still stirs a deep chord in us, 
 and is one of the great paeans of religious literature: 
 
 " Many a house of life 
 Hath held me — seeking ever him who wrought 
 These prisons of the senses, sorrow-fraught; 
 Sore was my ceaseless strife! 
 
 But now, 
 Thou builder of this tabernacle — Thou! 
 I know thee! Never shalt thou build again 
 
 These walls of pain. 
 Nor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay 
 
 Fresh rafters on the clay; 
 Broken thy house is, and the ridge-pole split: 
 
 Delusion fashioned it ! 
 Safe pass I thence deliverance to obtain."^* 
 
 Thus serene and joyful he sat as the brilliant Indian moon 
 rose, and the stars came out, and wood and river were 
 bathed in silver light. His mental state is well described in 
 the "Legend of the Burmese Buddha." 
 
 " The Ficus Religiosa — an exquisite and much loved tree, at once majes- 
 tic and delicate. 
 
 " Maha-saccaka Sutta: "Discourses of Gotama," E. T., I. 107. 
 
 ^ Dhammapada, 153-4. Sir Edwin Arnold's translation. The "builder" 
 is of course Tanhi — craving, which builds and rebuilds "the house of life" 
 i.e. the body. 
 
22 Gotama Buddha 
 
 "Mental exertion and labor were at an end. Truth in its 
 effulgent beauty encompassed his mind and shed over it the 
 purest rays. Placed in that luminous center, Phra'-* saw all 
 beings entangled in the web of passions, tossed over the 
 raging billows of the sea of renewed existences, whirling in 
 the vortex of endless miseries, tormented incessantly and 
 wounded to the quick by the sting of concupiscence, sunk into 
 the dark abyss of ignorance, the wretched victims of an il- 
 lusory, unsubstantial, and unreal world. He said then to 
 himself : 'In all the worlds there is no one but me who knows 
 how to break through the web of passions, to still the waves 
 that waft beings from one state into another, to save them 
 from the whirlpool of miseries, to put an end to concupiscence 
 and break its sting, to dispel the mist of ignorance by the 
 light of truth, and thereby lead them to the true state of 
 Neibban.' Having thus given vent to the feelings of com- 
 passion that pressed on his benevolent heart, Phra, glancing 
 over future events, delighted in contemplating the great num- 
 ber of beings who would avail themselves of his preachings, 
 and labor to free themselves from the slavery of passions. 
 He counted the multitudes who would enter the ways that 
 lead to the deliverance, and would obtain the rewards to be 
 enjoyed by those who will follow one of those ways."^^ 
 
 In a word, he had attained an ecstatic joy, the joy of 
 victory after long struggle, of insight after long groping, 
 and probably of altruism after, long search for self-emanci- 
 pation. "Insight arose, ignorance was dispelled; darkness 
 was done away and light dawned. There sat I, strenuous, 
 aglow, and master of myself."^* 
 
 Gotama has become an Arahat, seeing clearly, he believed, 
 the way to put an end to rebirth, and conscious that his own 
 release from rebirth had come. 
 
 The content of religious experience is in large measure 
 determined by upbringing and environment. The peace and 
 coolness of that quiet scene became to him forever asso- 
 
 "Pftro is one of the Burmese titles for Gotama, who is called Gaudama 
 in Burma. 
 
 »»Pp. 98, 99. 
 
 1" Maha-saccaka Sutta in Majjhima NikSya: a dialogue with the Jain con- 
 troversialist Saccaka, which ends with a hi^h tribute to Gotama's calmness 
 and to the coherence and clearness of his argument as compared with 
 rival preachers. 
 
Quest and Conquest 23 
 
 dated with the great spiritual victory he had won; and he 
 had no doubt pondered deeply such current sayings of his 
 people as the great prayer of the Satapatha Brahmana: 
 "From darkness lead me to light: from death to life." 
 
 It is from this source that he seems to have derived the 
 terms Samana, which describes the ascetic recluse-life he 
 had been living, and Arahat, which describes the state of 
 emancipation which he had now reached. He claims ac- 
 cordingly that he had passed from heat to coolness, from 
 darkness to light, and from death to life, or immortality; 
 and the word Amata, ambrosia or deathlessness, became a 
 synonym for Nihbana. We cannot doubt the reality of this 
 experience; for the joy and fervor of it sent him out on a 
 life-long mission to his people, and the achievements of 
 twenty-five centuries of Buddhism are based upon it. 
 
 With Gotama's interpretation of it it is not so easy to 
 agree. What did he mean by Nihbana? No question, even 
 in Buddhism, has been so variously answered, and Buddhists, 
 even of the orthodox Theravada tradition of Burma and 
 Ceylon, are t6 this day divided between three interpreta- 
 tions i" 
 
 1. Complete extinction of being; 
 
 2. Extinction of the fire of lust, anger, and infatuation; 
 
 3. A haven of bliss. 
 
 It is not the part of a biographer to deal fully with later 
 developments of his hero's teachings: but it is clearly his 
 duty to attempt a statement of what so central a doctrine 
 seems to have meant to its author. 
 
 In the first place it must be emphasized that Gotama had 
 his own doctrine of the nature of the self; the unique thing 
 in his psychology is the doctrine of Anatta. He considered 
 the self to be a stream of consciousness {Vinnana) of which 
 successive moments are related to one another, and yet differ 
 from one another — "flashpoints of intelligence, cinema-films, 
 thaumatrope figures welded into an apparent unity."^^ Thus, 
 whilst he took over the current belief of his people in trans- 
 migration, he profoundly modified it, teaching tiiat no such 
 
 " For a fuller discussion see Appendix II. 
 
 M "Buddhist Psychology," C. A. F. Rhys Davids, p. 14. 
 
24 Gotama Buddha 
 
 thing as the "soul" exists in this life, but that it and succes- 
 sive lives are part of a continuous stream; and that the in- 
 dividual who is "reborn" is therefore neither the same as 
 the one who preceded him, nor is he another; he is in fact 
 part of a stream whose direction is determined partly by past, 
 partly by present activity, Kamma. Kamma is what deter- 
 mines rebirth: it is Kamma alone which "passes over." This 
 teaching we shall have to consider in more detail later, but 
 it must be grasped now if Gotama's doctrine of Nibbana is to 
 be understood. 
 
 In the second place it must be emphasized that even in this 
 high and difficult region Gotama was "a son of fact" and a 
 teacher of morals. When he spoke of Nibbana he was try- 
 ing to describe his own experience, and, being a moral teacher, 
 he strove to describe it in ethical terms. What he intended 
 to hold up as the goal was an experience which he himself 
 had known, and of wtjich the main characteristics were joy 
 and peace. The dying out of Tanha, craving — ^that was Nib- 
 bana. His sense of the supreme value of this experience was 
 the spur which drove him on to a life of unremitting labor ; he 
 was convinced that he had something to impart, for lack 
 of which his people were perishing. He calls himself "Bud- 
 dha"— the. Enlightened; '7iwa"— the Victor; and "Ftra"— the 
 Hero; all in a moral sense; but his favorite name for him- 
 self henceforward is Tathagata — ^he who has reached the 
 goal;" and it was to this goal that he was always urging 
 others, a goal only to be reached by moral effort, a su/m- 
 mum bonum of which the characteristics are calmness, in- 
 sight, and serene joy, the end of the solicitings of craving. To 
 the philosophical it might suffice to talk of the cessation of 
 the flux of being; but this would not do for ordinary folk. 
 "Coolness and rest" — ^these are the attractions which it offers 
 to the laity. As the fierce Indian sun makes the tired body 
 long for rest in some cool shade, so to the spirit tired by the 
 long struggle of countless lives, and tormented by desire, 
 Nibbana offers an "alluring vision" of rest and coolness.^ 
 
 "Usually translated "Blessed One." 
 
 ^ Mutti, deliverance, and Scmti, peace, are favorite synonyms for 
 Nibbana; and SihibhUto, cooled, is a frequent epithet of the Arahat. 
 
Quest and Conquest 25 
 
 How far away this austere and simple ideal seems from the 
 elaborate and difficult explanations of Buddhist scholasticism ! 
 Whether Gotama himsdf, forced into the arena by rival 
 teachers, was obliged to use the weapons of metaphysic is 
 not clear, but it seems certain that he cannot have left his 
 teaching about Nibbana quite so naively simple. 
 
 The early books certainly make it clear that it was only 
 within certain well-defined limits that he indulged in meta- 
 physical explanations. "One thing only do I teach, O monks, 
 sorrow and the uprooting of sorrow": that is surely an 
 authentic word of the teacher, which defines the limits of 
 his purpose and is the central thing in his ethics. When the 
 monk Malunkyaputta grumbled because he had not answered 
 such questions as whether the good man continues to exist 
 after death, and threatened to leave the Sangha, Gotama 
 asked him mildly: "When you joined our Company did I 
 agree to elucidate such points, or did you ask for such eluci- 
 dation?" and closed the discussion with the dry comment: 
 "Anyone who should say, 'I will not lead the religious life 
 under the Blessed One until he explains all these points' — 
 well, he would die before he got that explanation."^^ In 
 other words, he insists that his offer to men is to heal their 
 moral disease, not to satisfy their intellectual curiosity.^* 
 But within this circumscribed area he does seem to have de- 
 veloped a psychological doctrine of the self — ^the doctrine of 
 AnattU — and to this extent to have satisfied men's curiosity 
 about Nibbana. When they pressed him as to whether an- 
 nihilation of greed, hatred, and lust carried with it annihila- 
 tion of the self, he seems to have answered : "It depends upon 
 what you mean by the self. If you mean some sort of 'soul' 
 apart from the aggregates or Skandhas — well, no such thing 
 exists in this life. If you mean the process of becoming, the 
 
 "■Majjhima Nikiya, I. 426, quoted by de la Vallee Poussin in his 
 Hibbert Lectures "The Way to Nirvana, perhaps the best treatment of 
 the whole subject yet published. 
 
 ™ On at least four points Gotama refused to dogmatize : 
 
 1. Is the world eternal? 
 
 2. Is it infinite? 
 
 3. Are body and soul identical? 
 
 4. Does the Arahat exist after death? 
 
 Buddhism became more and more a "middle way" between different meta- 
 physical positions. 
 
26 Gotama Buddha 
 
 stream of metal throbs with Tanha and Kamma as its 
 living core, then that is certainly annihilated in Nibbana. 
 Sabba anatta; all things are without any underlying 'self 
 or 'soul.' How can that be annihilated which has never ex- 
 isted? It is Tanha which gives the delusion of existence. 
 How shall that not be annihilated which is the source of all 
 our sorrow?" In other words, we cannot describe Nibbana 
 until we have mastered the true nature of the self ; and there 
 is no self in the usual sense !^ Even so we can describe 
 Nibbana best by negatives! It is the absence of evil: no 
 less it is the absence of toil and heat and sorrow.^* The first 
 step is to get rid of wrong notions of self, and from this 
 there will follow the conquest of egoism and the attainment 
 of peace.^^ 
 
 Professor de la Vallee Poussin does not hesitate to say that 
 Gotama taught one thing to the elect, and another thing to 
 the simple. He maintains that to the elect he was frankly 
 a rationalist teaching annihilation, and gives us the follow- 
 ing instructive simile: 
 
 "A Buddha is a tiger, or rather a tigpress. This tigress has 
 to transport her cub, and accordingly takes it into her mouth ; 
 she holds it between her double set of teeth. But for the 
 teeth, the cub would fall; but if the teeth were to be tightly 
 closed, it would be crushed. In the same way a Buddha saves 
 beings, transports them across the ocean of transmigration, 
 by the parallel teaching of permanence and impermanence. 
 Self and Selflessness, bliss of Nirvana, and annihilation in 
 Nirvana. Permanence, Self, bliss of Nirvana : so many false- 
 hoods. Useful falsehoods: but for them one would give up 
 the religious training towards deliverance. Impermanence, 
 selflessness, annihilation: so many truths. Dangerous truths 
 like a serpent with a jewel in its hood: it requires a clever 
 hand to take the jewel. In the same way few men are able 
 
 ® Dr. D. T. Suzuki has well said : "To postulate an independent atman 
 outside the comhination of the five skandhas ... is to unresenredly wel- 
 come egoism with all its pernicious corollaries." ("Outlines of Mahayana 
 Buddhism," p. 32.) 
 
 " Cf, Section XV of the Dhammapada. 
 
 ^ "1 see no other single impediment, O monks, which so hinders man- 
 kind as the impediment of ignorance. . . . All misfortunes are rooted in 
 ignorance and craving." Itivuttaka, 14-40. 
 
Quest and Conquest 27 
 
 to avoid being crushed by these sublime and terrible truths. 
 Selflessness wrongly understood would lead to the wrong view 
 that there is no survival ; the doctrine of annihilation in Nir- 
 vana would originate despair or distrust. 
 
 "Therefore, Sakyamuni has been obscure on these points, 
 and did not avoid some contradictions; and, when an in- 
 quirer was bold enough to ask for a plain answer, he plainly 
 answered : 'You shall not know. Cela ne vous regarde pas' "^* 
 
 I am not prepared to go as far as this, for I believe that 
 he remained to the end of his life an agnostic as to what 
 full Nibbana really meant, satisfied himself with his own 
 moral experience, and convinced that to all his people here 
 was an experience sufficiently vital and real to carry them 
 on into that Beyond, whose nature it is impossible to describe 
 except in negative terms, because it will be like nothing which 
 we have known in this life. As a lover finds it impossible 
 to describe the inwardness of his experience to any except one 
 who has shared it, so Gotama must have striven in vain to 
 make Nibbana a living reality to the rank and file of his 
 people. They for their part no doubt interpreted his teaching 
 according to their own preconceptions and needs. That is 
 the fate of all great teachers. Doubts as to the possibility 
 of enlightening them were his first temptation. During a 
 month of meditation which followed his great experience the 
 Devil assailed him in the form of ciepression and doubt 
 whether what he had so hardly won could be handed on to 
 a world which would surely find these lessons both difficult 
 and distasteful.^'' In technical language Gotama was tempted 
 to remain a Paccekabuddha (a Buddha for his own sake) 
 rather than to become a Sammdsambtiddha (universal Bud- 
 dha, teaching all). Like Elijah he was overwhelmed with 
 a sense of loneliness and dejection, but to him also there came 
 a still small voice which nerved him for his high task. 
 
 The records tell us that Brahma himself came to reas- 
 sure him, and to rekindle his deep compassion for humanity. 
 
 ""The Way to Nirvana," p. 137. 
 
 "' MahSvagga 1, 5, 2. For Mara's testimony to Gotama's faultless be- 
 havior during the seven years that he dogged his footsteps, see "Sacred 
 Books of the East," XII. 71. 
 
28 Gotama Buddha 
 
 "Open, O wise one, the door of Eternity; 
 Preach, O thou stainless, the truth thou hast found. 
 Thou who art sorrow-free, preach to the sorrowing. 
 Standing aloft let them hear the glad sound!" 
 
 Certain it is that he braced himself for the task, and set out 
 calm and convinced upon his great mission. 
 
 That Gotama thus "had compassion on the world" and 
 came down from the "terraced heights of wisdom" to help 
 those "toiling on the plains" is in itself enough to justify 
 the Bodhisattva ideal which came gradually to supersede that 
 of the Arahat. The Mahayana in claiming to embody the true 
 spirit of Gotama is to that extent justified. 
 
 He sought first his old teachers at Rajagaha, but found 
 that they were dead, and then walked 100 miles or more 
 in a northwesterly direction to Benares in order that his 
 five disciples, purified by long asceticism, might have the 
 first opportunity of learning the good news. On his way 
 the Jain ascetic Upaka met him and thus addressed him: 
 "Placid and serene is thy countenance. Who is thy teacher ?" 
 To whom he replied in these verses : 
 
 "All-conqueror I, knower of all. 
 From every soil and stain released. 
 Renouncing all, from craving ceased. 
 Self-taught; yvhom should I Master call? 
 
 " That which I know I learned of none. 
 My fellow is not on the earth. 
 Of human or of heavenly birth 
 To equal me there is not one. 
 
 " I truly have attained release. 
 The world's unequalled teacher I. 
 Alone enlightened perfectly, 
 I dwell in everlasting peace. 
 
 " Now to Benares Town I press 
 To set the Truth-wheel whirling round. 
 In this blind world I go to sound 
 The throbbing drum of deathlessness." 
 
 "It may be so, friend, it may be so," said the skeptical 
 Upaka, and went on his way. For he had been taught to 
 
Quest and Conquest 29 
 
 look upon Vardhamana as the true Ilka, or conqueror, and 
 this "Wheel" of Gotama's makes a big claim.^^ 
 
 After wandering from place to place, Gotama came to 
 Benares. The five monks saw him coming and agreed among 
 themselves to snub him as a renegade, but his radiant coun- 
 tenance and the serene dignity of his bearing won them 
 over. He bade them no longer address him as "friend 
 Gotama" but as Tathagata, and he began to instruct them, 
 giving to them the teaching known as Dhawmacakkappavatana 
 Sutta — "The rolling of the victorious wheel" or "The es- 
 tablishing of the Kingdom" as it is sometimes rendered by 
 Western writers.^^ The "Discourse of the Middle Way" 
 would better express its contents. We have only an abbre- 
 viated version of it, disappointing in its dry brevity, and 
 hardly worthy of the occasion. It was a notable one ! "His- 
 tory," it has been well said, "knows no chapters so beauti- 
 ful and noble as those which tell of the coming of the great 
 prophets and founders of religions to the men of their time. 
 The story of Isaiah in Jerusalem, of Socrates in Athens, of 
 Zoroaster on the uplands of Iran, of Gautama in the deer 
 park of Benares — on all these immortal stories there lies a 
 light beyond the light of time. They tell how great new 
 thoughts of the eternal things came to men through the 
 human medium of a noble personality, how like magnets 
 they drew to the new teacher the flower of the noble youth 
 of the time, who followed the Master — 
 
 " 'Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 
 Made him their pattern to live and to die.' 
 
 "They one and all tell also of the great fights of the spirit 
 that followed the advent of the new teacher. 'All things 
 are at odds,' said Emerson, 'when God lets a new thinker 
 loose upon the planet.' "^° Such was Gotama, and it is clear. 
 
 " "Discourses of Gotama," tr. by Silacara, II. 14. Other records make 
 Upaka a Brahmin or an Ajivika. 
 
 " "To set rolling the royal chariot wheel of a universal empire of 
 truth and righteousness" is Dr. Rhys Davids's rendering ("Buddhism," 
 p. 45). In his Hibbert Lectures Dr. Davids has shown very convincingly 
 that Gotama fulfilled the Chakkavatti ideal, yet transcended and sub- 
 limated it, much as Jesus did that of the Messiah. 
 
 ™D. S. Cairns, "The Reasonableness of the Christian Faith," pp. 165- 
 167. 
 
30 Gotama Buddha 
 
 in spite of the meager reports, that he had a new and stirring 
 message to deliver, and that it constrained and uplifted him. 
 It was in this exalted mood that he preached his first "ser- 
 mon." 
 
 It was clearly bom of his own heroic experience, and in it 
 he sets forth his religion as a Golden Mean. As a lyre gives 
 the right tone only if the string is stretched neither too much 
 nor too little, so is it with the life of man. So he taught them 
 later, when his mind had had time to work upon his experience. 
 Now he gave them the following key to truth : "Two extremes 
 are there, O brethren, which the recluse must avoid — ^the life 
 of passion and of sensuality on the one hand, a low and pagan 
 way, ignoble and profiting nothing, and on the other hand 
 self-torture, which is also ignoble and unprofitable, as well 
 as very painful. The path which I have discovered is a 
 path which opens the eyes, gives understanding and leads to 
 peace, to Nibhana. It is the Noble Eight-Fold path." He 
 then goes on to tell them of the Four Noble Truths, in which 
 he traces the origin of suffering to craving for such things 
 as gratification of the senses or for the joys of life after 
 death, or for prosperity in this world; and shows how suf- 
 fering can only be put away if such craving is first killed 
 out. It is to attain this goal that "noble youth leave home 
 and go forth to the homeless life, and the way to it is the 
 Middle Path," i.e. the "Noble Eight-Fold Path," Right Views, 
 Right Aspirations, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right 
 Means of Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindedness, and 
 Right Rapture. 
 
 Of this sermon Professor Rhys Davids has written: 
 
 "There is not a word about God or the soul, not a word 
 about the Buddha. It seems simple, almost jejune; so thin 
 and weak that one wonders how it can have formed the 
 foundation for a system so mighty in its historical results. 
 But the simple words are pregnant with meaning. Their im- 
 plication was clear enough to the hearers to whom they are 
 addressed."^^ 
 
 Yet we cannot but wish that some fuller record had come 
 down to us. Though these words came out of the heart 
 
 »i "Early Buddhism," p. 53. 
 
Quest and Conquest 31 
 
 of a great experience, and therefore, meager as they are, may 
 have carried conviction to the five who had suffered all things 
 with him, yet one cannot doubt that Gotama spoke more fully 
 and with a wealth of illustration and comment which has not 
 been preserved. And this is true of many of his discourses 
 which are reported to have had an immediate response in the 
 "conversion" of his hearers. "Religion is caught rather than 
 taught" and it was often the contagion of his own joy rather 
 than the substance of his teaching which won their allegiance. 
 
 We are to picture him calm and serene, with a note of 
 triumph and joy which was its own best apologetic. Count- 
 less statues of him show him standing or seated thus, teaching 
 with the certainty and precision of a modem teacher of 
 science, and occasionally one is to be found with the quizzical 
 smile of a Socrates. To those who argued he proved a re- 
 morseless antagonist, but most capitulated without a struggle, 
 charmed by his winsomeness and convinced by his logic, or 
 more often by his analogies. 
 
 His great discovery seems to be an application of the cur- 
 rent medical theory of his day in the moral sphere, and it 
 carried immediate conviction. In fact it seems so simple as 
 to be almost axiomatic: if there is suffering there is a cause 
 for it; to get at the disease we must get at its cause. Suf- 
 fering is caused by craving of a wrong sort: to get rid of 
 this craving we must busy ourselves with right moral con- 
 duct. 
 
 The second "sermon" is said to have been delivered four 
 days later, to the same five ascetics, and is called "The 
 Anatta-lakkhana Sutta."^^ It took them a stage further: 
 and they became Arahats, first Kondana, and later the dther 
 four. This sermon sets out to combat the "soul" theories 
 of the ordinary man. Men desire wrongly because they think 
 wrongly. The first stage in the Path is right thinking. 
 Gotama shows how emancipation comes through right think- 
 ing; let them apply to the "soul" or "self" a process of an- 
 alysis : they will find that it is made up of so many qualities 
 and characteristics, so many sensations and perceptions, and 
 
 I Vinaya, I. 14. Samyutia Nikaya, III. 66. 
 
32 Gotama Buddha 
 
 therefore has no real being that we should desire to be reborn. 
 "Think you, O monks, that form is permanent or transitory, 
 or that sensation, perception, is permanent or transitory?" 
 "They are transitory," replied the five. "And of that which is 
 transitory and evil, and liable to change can it be said, 'This 
 is myself, my soul ?' " "Nay, truly it cannot be said," the five 
 argued. In this way he produces in his disciples a feeling of 
 contempt for physical life. "What is the self but a bundle of 
 attributes?" And he replaces the emotion of desire for life 
 by the emotion of disgust. This method was carried to a fine 
 art as the system developed, until meditation in graveyards 
 and upon skeletons by the wayside is recommended as a ready 
 means of securing such detachment and aloofness from the 
 things of sense as will lead on to freedom. 
 
 Is it not the mere skeleton of a sermon which has come 
 down to us? But the "third sermon," preached to the lay 
 community on a mountain-side near Gaya, is more like preach- 
 ing, and less like a classroom lecture; possibly because the 
 audience now consisted of certain young nobles, and others, 
 mostly the instructed "monks with matted hair," or Jatilas, 
 fire-worshipers, who had added themselves to his company, 
 and needed different handling. The occasion of it was a 
 conflagration which broke out in the jungle as the teacher 
 was seated with his disciples "on the Elephant Rock near 
 Gaya, with the beautiful valley of Rajagaha stretched out 
 before them."^^ It is known as the "Fire Sermon," Aditta- 
 pariyaya Sutta, and is one of the most typical and famous of 
 Buddhist utterances : "All things, O Bhikkhus, are aflame, the 
 eye is aflame, forms are aflame, impressions received by the 
 eye are aflame; and all sensations that arise from these im- 
 pressions received through the eye are aflame. And what is 
 the flame? It is the flame of lust, of anger, and of infatua- 
 tion; birth, old age, death, mourning, and despair; all are 
 set on fire with this flame." 
 
 So he goes on, taking the other sense organs in turn, and 
 including the mind amongst them, showing that all the world 
 
 » Mahavagga, I. 21 (For the full text of the sermon see Warren, "Bud- 
 dhism in translations," pp. 351-353). 
 
Quest and Conquest 33 
 
 is a conflagration, till he leads his disciples to disgust for 
 sense impressions and to detachment from desire. "So is the 
 disciple shorn of desire, so is he freed, and so he knows that 
 he is free; he knows that the process of becoming is at an 
 end, that he has attained to the pure life, that he has done 
 what had to be done, and has put off mortality for ever."'* 
 
 This and similar preaching was so successful that the 
 number of Arahats grew very rapidly. Not all were like the 
 Teacher and the five ascetics who after long striving found 
 release : a party of young nobles who were very worldly were 
 converted en bloc as they were sporting in the forest, and 
 soon there were sixty Arahats. 
 
 These after a period of instruction Gotama sent out on a 
 preaching tour: "Go forth," he said, "on a journey that shall 
 be for the good of many and for their happiness. Go forth 
 in compassion towards the world for the weal of gods and 
 men. Go forth in pairs, but to each his own work. Teach 
 the beneficent Law; reveal the holy life to men blinded with 
 the dust of desire. They perish for lack of knowledge. Teach 
 them the Law."*^ 
 
 We may question this sending of men so recently con- 
 verted. But Gotama seems to have realized that the young 
 convert needs some exercise of the will, and that there is no 
 surer way of testing one's beliefs than by attempting to teach 
 them to simple folk. And the more important part of their 
 message was a call to righteous living which it needed no 
 subtlety of mind nor any training in metaphysic to under- 
 stand. If the masses could not understand Nibbdna, they 
 could at any rate set out upon the Eight-Fold Path. And who 
 should teach them so appealingly as fellow-voyagers who be- 
 lieved that they themselves had found both chart and com- 
 pass? 
 
 " Rhys Davids, "Buddhism," p. 39. Mrs. Rhys Davids prefers to trans- 
 late Tanhi by "craving": I agree. 
 
 '' Samyutta Nikaya, I. 105. In "Sacred Books of the East," XIII. 112, 
 it is stated that they were sent out "one by one." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 GOTAMA AT THE HEIGHT 
 OF HIS POWER 
 
 The fragrance of the righteous travels far and wide. — 
 Dhammapada 54. 
 
 "His progress was a triumph of gladness." 
 
 E. W. Hopkins. 
 
 That the teaching of the first Buddhist missionaries was 
 eagerly welcomed seems clear; for they were filled with joy 
 and conviction, and the times were fully ripe for the moral 
 teaching that they had to give. It has been contended that it 
 was chiefly amongst the nobility that this teaching found ac- 
 ceptance, and the reason has been suggested that the warriors 
 and rajas of the day gave the new religion a ready hearing 
 because it was set up in opposition to the Brahmins, and be- 
 cause they recognized in Gotama one of themselves. "He 
 spoke," says Hopkins, "to glad hearers, who heard repeated 
 loudly now as a religious truth what often they had said de- 
 spitefully to themselves in private" :^ and Professor Oldenberg 
 finds in early Buddhism a decided predilection for the aris- 
 tocracy.^ 
 
 No doubt these were elements in the success of the new re- 
 ligion, but it was at heart a democratic movement and it was 
 not essentially anti-Brahmin: into the Sangha Brahmins, 
 kings, warriors, cultivators, and men and women of low caste, 
 and of no caste, were equally welcomed.® Preaching was in 
 the vernaculars of Magadha and Kosala, and lay folk could 
 understand much of it. The two first lay disciples were 
 
 1 Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 304. 
 ' Oldenberg, "Buddha," E. T., p. 157., 
 " Mahavagga, I. 15, 
 
Gotama at the Height of His Power 35 
 
 Tapussa and Bhallika, merchants, and Upali, a barber of the 
 court of the Sakyas, was very early ordained and attained a 
 position of leadership in the Sangha. He is indeed credited 
 with the main share in compiling the Vinaya or code of disci- 
 pline for the new Order. 
 
 Amongst the first converts were three brothers Kasyapa,* 
 fire-worshipers or Jatilas, and two others destined to become 
 leaders: Sariputta and Moggallana, both Brahmins, whilst 
 Ananda and Devadatta were both of the warrior caste ; so that 
 even in its inner circle the Sangha was fairly representative. 
 The fact that Gotama himself promoted Sariputta and Mog- 
 gallana to positions of leadership suggests how far he was 
 from desiring to organize an anti-Brahmin campaign. Yet 
 there is no question about the frankness with which he dis- 
 sected and ridiculed Brahmin claims to supremacy. 
 
 The traditional story of the conversion of these two friends 
 seems probable enough. They were wandering ascetics, dis- 
 ciples of Sanjaya, and had promised one another that he who 
 should first find salvation {Amata or Ambrosia) would tell 
 the other. One day Sariputta saw Asajji, one of Gotama's 
 first five disciples, on his begging ground ; struck by his noble 
 and calm bearing, he asked him who was his teacher, and what 
 he taught. "There is a great sage, a son of the Sakyas, who 
 has gone forth to the homeless life ; he is my teacher, and it 
 is his doctrine I profess," said Asajji, and quoted this verse: 
 
 " That all things from a cause are sprung 
 This hath the Teacher shown: 
 How each shall to its ending come 
 This too he hath made known." 
 
 On hearing this Sariputta attained "to the pure eye for the 
 truth" or, in other words, was converted to the Buddhist faith ! 
 That the universe is orderly and that there is a key to its 
 workings — ^this is to many minds a gospel indeed. He hurried 
 off to Moggallana, told him that he had found Ambrosia, and 
 they were both admitted to the Order .^ About a week after- 
 
 * Cf. Majjhima Nikaya-Assalayana Sutta and Tevijja Sutta of Dlgha 
 Nikdya, both quoted in full by Dr. T. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, II. 
 'Mahavagga, I. 23 ("Sacred Books of the East," XIII. 144, 145). 
 
36 
 
 Gotama Buddha 
 
 wards Moggallana dozed when he should have been meditat- 
 ing, and Gotama drily reminded him that '"Torpor is not 
 the same as Aryan silence."* But the two friends made 
 rapid progress : they became pillars of the Sangha, and some 
 parts of the Ahhidhamma, the metaphysical section of the 
 Buddhist books, are, I think unjustly, attributed to themJ 
 
 Another great convert of these early days was Maha Kas- 
 sapa, who, like his master, had given up a beautiful wife and 
 a position of wealth and influence to seek a way of salvation ; 
 it is he who is recorded to have called the first Buddhist Coun- 
 cil together after Gotama's death, and is the reputed author 
 of this poem in praise of the master [and of himself] : 
 
 " In the whole of Buddha's following, 
 Saving alone the mighty Master's self, 
 I stand the foremost in ascetic ways: 
 No man doth practise them so far as I. 
 The Master hath my fealty and love, 
 And all the Buddha's ordinance is done. 
 Low have I laid the heavy load I bore. 
 Cause for rebirth is found in me no more. 
 For never thought for raiment, nor for food, 
 Nor where to rest doth the great mind affect. 
 Immeasurable, of our Gotama. 
 
 " No more than spotless lotus-blossom takes 
 A mark from water ; to self-sacrifice 
 Continually prone, he from the sphere 
 Threefold of new becoming is detached. 
 The neck of him is like the fourfold tower 
 Of mindfulness set up; yea, the great Seer 
 fiath faith and confidence for hands; above. 
 The brow of him is insight ; nobly wise. 
 He ever walketh in cool blessedness."* 
 
 In this tribute to Gotama we note the impression which 
 he made upon his contemporaries; not only is his asceticism 
 praised, and his noble wisdom and great powers of mind. 
 
 'TheragathS, CCLXIII. 
 
 ' And to Sariputta is attributed the Niddesa or commentary on the 
 Sntta Nipaia. 
 
 ' Mrs. Rhys Davids, "Songs of the Brethren," pp. 367, 368 (Theragatha, 
 CCLXl). 
 
Gotama at the Height of His Power 37 
 
 but Kassapa attributes to him faith, and confesses to a per- 
 sonal loyalty and devotion which the Master kindled in him. 
 We cannot doubt that it was this, even more than his teach- 
 ing, which nerved these early followers and gave them the 
 sense of joy and of well-being which rings through their 
 verses. That Kassapa went to extremes of asceticism seems 
 clear; there is another song of his which is perhaps the most 
 gruesome thing in all religious literature, and which reveals 
 the revolting length to which Buddhist detachment could go 
 in those early days of enthusiasm: 
 
 " Down from my mountain lodge I came one day 
 And made my round for alms about the streets. 
 A leper there I saw eating his meal, 
 (And as was meet, that he might have a chance,) 
 In (silent) courtesy I halted at his side. 
 He with his hand all leprous and diseased 
 Put in my bowl a morsel; as he threw, 
 A finger mortifying, broke and fell. 
 Leaning against a wall I ate my share. 
 Nor at the time nor after felt disgust. 
 For only he who taketh as they come 
 The scraps of food, medicine from excrement, 
 The couch beneath the tree, the patchwork robe, 
 Stands as a man in north, south, east, or west."° 
 
 Such was Kassapa; and we shall see later what were the 
 qualities for which each of the other leaders of the Sangha 
 was most honored. But there were many other early con- 
 verts not so eminent: there was for instance Yasa, a young 
 noble, who very early in his ministry came to Gotama and 
 became an Arahat, whilst his father, mother, and wife be- 
 came lay adherents. The Mahavagga tells us that Yasa was 
 brought up in great luxury and, disgusted at the sight of the 
 sleeping women of the harem, came to Gotama crying : "Alas ! 
 What sorrow ! What danger !" To him Gotama first talked 
 about the merit obtained by almsgiving, the beauties of moral- 
 ity, heaven, the evils of vanity, and the dust of desire. When 
 he saw that the mind of the noble youth was prepared, he 
 preached the more essentially Buddhistic doctrine of suffer- 
 
 » "Songs of the Brethren," p. 362 (Jheragatha, CCLXI). 
 
38 
 
 Gotama Buddha 
 
 ing, its cause, and the way to escape. And because Yasa 
 was fit for such instruction, we are told that "as a clean 
 cloth absorbs the dye" he absorbed the teaching that what- 
 soever is subject to birth is also subject to death. 
 
 Had he been less prepared, Gotama would have been con- 
 tent to lead him much more gradually from the elements to 
 the arcana of his teaching. It is quite clear that to the 
 masses he contented himself with preaching a simple morality 
 like that embodied in the edicts of Asoka and that only as in- 
 dividuals showed themselves ready for the more difficult teach- 
 ing did he impart it. "First study the person," says a Buddhist 
 proverb of Japan, "then teach the Law." 
 
 Gotama's family were also amongst the earliest converts; 
 and they all, except Rahula, became lay adherents. 
 
 During these six long years of painful search and final 
 victory, reports had reached the old Chief at Kapilavatthu. 
 Impatient to see his son, he sent messengers to him at Raja- 
 gaha. One after another they came under the spell of 
 Gotama, and forgot their messages in the greatness of their 
 enthusiasm for the new teacher; but at last Kaludayin,' a 
 former plajnnate of Gotama and now Minister of State, was 
 sent to urge his return. On the full-moon day of Phalgim he 
 came, and urged that, in this perfect weather when "the trees 
 are crimson with blossom and the hour big with hope," 
 Gotama should return.^" He prevailed, and in the early spring 
 the company set out for Kapilavatthu, a journey of 400 miles, 
 which they accomplished by slow stages ; traveling about seven 
 miles a day, and enjoying the beauty of the fresh fields and 
 flowering groves, they came to the little city. 
 
 The "Legend of the Burmese Buddha" describes the beauty 
 of the Indian springtide, a delightful time for one of the 
 pilgrimage-picnics dear to the Indian heart, and puts into 
 the mouth of Kaludayin these words: 
 
 "The cold season is over, the warm season has just begun, 
 this is now the proper time to travel through the country; 
 nature wears a green aspect ; the trees and the forests are in 
 full blossom; the roads are lined to right and left with trees 
 
 '^ Theragstha, CCXXXIII ("Songs of the Brethren," p. 249). 
 
Gotama at the Height of His Power 39 
 
 loaded with fragrant blossoms and delicious fruits; the pea- 
 cock proudly expands his magnificent tail ; birds of every de- 
 scription fill the air with their ravishing and melodious sing- 
 ing; at this season heat and cold are equally temperate, and 
 nature is scattering profusely these choicest gifts."*^ 
 
 Men, women, and children came out from the city to greet 
 the wanderer and found him resting in a grove. Very ten- 
 derly, but very firmly, he dealt with his old father, who com- 
 plained that this mendicant life was no life for the son of an 
 illustrious line ; far different was the custom of kings. "This," 
 said Gotama, "is the custom of the Buddhas, and to their 
 lineage do I belong" ; and in a verse reminded his father that 
 the good man wins happiness, hereafter as well as in this 
 life.^^ Eventually Suddhodana was convinced, and joined 
 the Sangha. After supper the women of the household came 
 and paid him homage, except the Princess Yasodhara, who 
 felt, not unreasonably, that it was for the wanderer to seek 
 her out. We are told that, accompanied by Sariputta and 
 Moggallana, he went in to find her and she, running to meet 
 him, laid her head upon his feet. Yet there was some bitter- 
 ness in her heart, and she is said to have asked passionately 
 for the inheritance of the little Rahula. "I will give him a 
 more excellent inheritance," said the ascetic and bade Mog- 
 gallana shave his head, and admit him to the Sangha?-^ After 
 this they set out again for Rajagaha. 
 
 On the way, in the mango grove of Anupiya he met a num- 
 ber of the Sakya princes, amongst them Ananda, Anuruddha, 
 and Devadatta, his cousins, all of whom were destined to 
 play a great part in his life; either then or later they were 
 all admitted to the Sangha. 
 
 Arriving at Rajagaha the teacher was greeted by Ana- 
 thapindika, a merchant of Savatthi, with a munificent gift of 
 
 "P. 170. 
 
 ^Dhp. 168. 
 
 >s "Sacred Books of the East," XIII. 208, 209. The admission of 
 children led to serious misunderstandings at a later date, and it is laid 
 down in the Vinaya that it was not to continue, except with the full 
 sanction of the boy's parents (of. MahSvagga, I. 48). Later the ordination 
 of any candidate under twenty years of age was forbidden (Ibid., I. 49) 
 for it did not tend to "convert the unconverted or to augment the number" 
 (or the prestige) "of the converted." 
 
40 Gotama Buddha 
 
 a monastery of eighty cells and other residences with terraces 
 and baths, and accepted his invitation to Savatthi. There was 
 a "fragrance chamber" for Gotama himself, and here he took 
 up his abode. In accepting this or a similar gift Gotama is 
 said to have tittered the following thanksgiving :" 
 
 "Here cold and heat no sojourn make, 
 
 Here ravenous beasts no entry find, , 
 
 Nor stinging fly, nor creeping snake, 
 Winter's cold rain nor summer's scorching wind. 
 
 " Here is a place to concentrate 
 
 The thoughts to dwell serene, apart. 
 Where men of insight meditate — 
 
 Such habitations charm the Sage's heart! 
 
 "These) are choice gifts: therefore, ye wise. 
 Having your own best weal in mind, 
 Let sacred edifices rise 
 To lodge the holy Brethren of mankind. 
 
 " Raiment and fitting drink and food 
 And ample bedding now prepare! 
 These offer to the Brotherhood; 
 Let them in turn the Righteous Law declare. 
 
 " So shall your misery remove. 
 
 And ye be purged of every stain. 
 Goodness and Truth ye'll learn to love. 
 And loving shall the longed-for Goal attain !" 
 
 Lay patrons such as Anathapindika played a great part in 
 the spread of the Order. Another was the Lady Visakha, who 
 also dwelt at Savatthi, and who seems to have been formerly 
 a disciple of the Naked Sect of Jains, but who now gave the 
 great monastery of Pubbarama to the Sangha. The courtesan 
 Ambapali^s ^^s also a generous patroness. Her town was 
 Vesali ; and we find a noble emulation between the chief towns 
 of the district for the honor of lodging the monks. 
 
 The next three rainy seasons they spent in the Bamboo 
 
 ""The Heart of Buddhism," p. 31. (Translated from Cullavagga, VP.) 
 ^ "Sacred Books of the East," XVII. p. 105. This courtesan seems to 
 have wielded great influence. She has been compared to Madame Pompa- 
 dour. 
 
Gotama at the Height of His Power 41 
 
 Grove at Rajagaha, and we are told that in the fifth season 
 Gotama, then at Vesali, mediated between the Sakyas and the 
 Koliyas, to both of whose chief families he was related, in a 
 dispute over the waters of the river RohinI, and spoke to 
 them various parables proving that hatred does but breed 
 hatred, and that feuds perpetuate themselves — an elementary 
 truth not yet learned, it would seem, by the statesmen of the 
 great Christian nations: 
 
 " Bad folk by wrath are overthrown, 
 As when an avalanche comes down." 
 
 Thus war was averted. So greatly was Gotama already es- 
 teemed in the council chambers of kings; so convincing was 
 the sweet reasonableness of his teaching ! 
 
 About this time it seems that women were first admitted to 
 the Order. On the death of Suddhodana, his wife, the lady 
 Pajapati came with the wives of other Sakya chiefs and urged 
 that they should not be left to mourn alone, but should be ad- 
 mitted to the Order. This request seems to have puzzled 
 Gotama, who refused it three times, for he held the ideas of 
 women which were usual in the India of his day.^^ But the 
 ladies were importunate; they cut off their hair, put on the 
 yellow robe, took begging bowls, and set out to meet him; 
 and so, with bleeding feet, and travel-stained, these high-born 
 women came to Vesali. The first to meet them was Ananda, 
 whose wife was probably amongst them, and he besought Go- 
 tama to admit them to the Sangha. Again he refused, till 
 Ananda, with more intelligence than usual, asked him whether 
 there was any spiritual defect in women to prevent their at- 
 taining even to the Goal, Nibbana. Gotama was too honest 
 to fence with this question, but he gave way with sorrow and 
 misgivings. "Let them be subject and subordinate to the 
 brethren," he commanded. "Even so their admission means 
 that the Good Law shall not endure for a thousand years, but 
 only for five hundred. For as when mildew falls upon a field 
 of rice that field is doomed, even so when women leave the 
 household life and join an Order, that Order will not long 
 
 1* Women are likened in the Ifivuftaka or Logia of Gotama to croc- 
 odiles and demons who wait for the swimmer in the stream of life. 
 
42 Gotama Buddha 
 
 endure. Yet as water is held up by a strong dyke, so have I 
 established a barrier of regiilations which are not to be trans- 
 gressed."^^ 
 
 In taking this step, Gotama knew he was taking risks, yet it 
 seemed inevitable; and was on the whole well justified by 
 events: though the nuns proved fretful at times and though 
 there were instances of immoral conduct, yet some of them 
 such as Dhammadinna, Sukha, and Khema did nobly, reach- 
 ing equal eminence with the great monks. Thus we find the 
 lady Khema teaching the King of Kosala and winning Go- 
 tama's approval for her clear and accurate handling of the 
 vexed question, "Does the Blessed One, having entered Nib- 
 bana, still exist ?"^* 
 
 Like St. Francis of Assisi, Gotama had now two Orders 
 of the "religious" men and women, giving their whole atten- 
 tion to the Good Law; and a third Order of lay people, in- 
 cluding kings and warriors, who, whilst carrying on their 
 ordinary duties, kept a simplified rule of life, and gave of 
 their substance and energy to the spreading of the faith. And 
 in return it seems clear that the Sangha gave them sound and 
 practical advice; thus at Vesali Gotama seems to have taught 
 the Vajjians that it is right conduct that exalts a people; so 
 long as they meet in conference and dwell in concord, so long 
 as they respect woman, above all so long as they support 
 and protect the Sangha, so long will they prosper, and go 
 forward. But like a Hebrew prophet he warns them of im- 
 pending disaster.19 They were not ungrateful, but they al- 
 lowed dissension to spring up amongst them, and soon after- 
 wards Ajatasattu conquered them and destroyed their city. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that all went smoothly with the new 
 teaching; or that Gotama's serene course had no dark mo- 
 ments. In the first place the people of Magadha seem to 
 have complained bitterly that he was making orphans and 
 widows of them all : "He causes fathers to beget no children ; 
 
 " Cullavagga, X. 16. Is the prophecy contained in these words due 
 to a momentary fit of depression in the serene and optimistic Gotama or 
 is it the work of a later hand, writing at a time when the "good law" was 
 already m decline? 
 
 M Oldenberg, "Buddha,"' E. T., pp. 278-280. 
 
 " Mahapan-nibbina Sutta. 
 
Gotama at the Height of His Power 43 
 
 and wives to become widows; and families to become ex- 
 tinct."^ 
 
 Besides such criticism and opposition from without, Go- 
 tama was clearly subject to temptations from within, which 
 the books naively attribute to Mara, the Prince of Darkness 
 and Death. After his illtmiination, as we have seen, came 
 temptations to succumb to a cynical estimate of mankind and 
 to keep his discovery to himself. 
 
 Later came other insidious suggestions; once, for example, 
 while he was meditating alone in a hut on the Himalayas 
 the thought came to him : "How much good the truly righteous 
 king might do, ruling in peace, inflicting no pain, seeing that 
 no man oppress his neighbor." Hotfoot upon this thought 
 came Mara, who reminded him of his miraculous power by 
 which he might turn all the Himalayas into gold, but to him 
 Gotama, now completely master of himself, replied : "And 
 pray what profit would it be to the sage to possess a mountain 
 of gold?"^^ Yet these two temptations, to become a great 
 ruler, and to use miracle in setting up a "theocracy without a 
 God," were no doubt very real ; they resemble the temptations 
 which assailed Jesus of Nazareth at the beginning of his pub- 
 lic ministry, and it must have needed great heroism in each 
 case to put them away. May we not find in the temptation 
 of Gotama a recurrence of early ambitions to become a Chak- 
 kavatti, ambitions now refined and spiritualized? And other 
 temptations, too, he must have known — above all, the yearn- 
 ing to leave a contrary and critical world to roll on to perdi- 
 tion ! 
 
 There were disputes again, even within the Sangha, and 
 outside it there were many rival teachers, who did not look 
 favorably upon the growing enthusiasm for the new religion, 
 and some of whom even resorted to gross attacks upon Go- 
 tama's moral character .^^ Not unnaturally, Sanjaya, the 
 former teacher of Sariputta and Moggallana, resented their 
 defection. Another rival sect whom Gotama strongly con- 
 
 '^Mahmiaggo, I. 24 ("Sacred Books of the East," XIII. ISO). 
 ^Samyutta NikSya, I. 
 
 '^ For the quaint story of the girl Cinca see "The Heart of Buddhism," 
 pp. 155, 156. 
 
44 Gotama Buddha 
 
 demned were the Ajivikas, who taught a determinism which 
 seems to have led directly to immoral conduct; their chief, 
 Makkhali Gosala, he described as a "bad man," who would 
 catch his disciples like fish in order to destroy them.^* An- 
 other sect was that of Mahavira Vardhamana, known as the 
 Jains, a sect which had many points of resemblance with his 
 own teaching, but whose members were much more ascetic 
 and believed in the reality of the soul and in its personal iden- 
 tity after death. Gotama's attitude to these rival sects is 
 summed up in the Majjhima NikSya, where he divides ascet- 
 ics outside his own following into eight classes, four of which 
 are "incontinent,'' amongst these being the Ajivikas, whilst 
 four are "unsatisfying," amongst these being the Jains.^* And 
 though Gotama bade his followers show no anger if these 
 rival teachers attacked them, yet he made it very clear that 
 he strongly disapproved of some and despised others. We 
 are told that these rival teachers, finding no support in 
 Magadha, whose king, Bimbisara, befriended the Buddhist 
 Sangha (seeing in its teaching of unity a splendid aid to 
 statecraft), went off to Kosala, hoping to win the patronage 
 of its king, the Pasenadi Agnidatta,^^ but he too eventually 
 joined Gotama. 
 
 This Pasenadi has a section of the Samywtta Nikaya de- 
 voted to him, and is one of the most interesting figures of 
 Gotama's day. 
 
 They seem to have met first quite early in Gotama's ministry 
 on the occasion of a great animal sacrifice, when the com- 
 passion of the Teacher was deeply stirred, and he spoke out 
 as the prophet of a new righteousness and the priest of a 
 new and more seemly sacrifice. And all his days he was a 
 
 ^In the Anguttara Nikaya Gotama calls the doctrine of Makkhali the 
 "worst of doctrines": it is like the hair shirt its author wore — rough to 
 the touch, unpleasant to the smell! An account of his teachine is eiveu 
 in "Dialogues of the Buddha," I. 71. 
 
 ^ In the Brahmajdla Sutta of Dlgha Nikaya Gotama enumerates sixty- 
 tWo current philosophies and says that all who attempt in those ways to 
 reconstruct the past or to decide the future are "like fish caught in a net 
 However much they plunge and flounder, they are the more entangled." 
 "Dialogues," I. 319. 
 
 "^ Pasenadi seems to have been a title, not a name. 
 
Gotama at the Height of His Power 45 
 
 champion of "our little brothers" whom men so thoughtlessly 
 and wantonly torture and slay. 
 
 "Now at this time a great sacrifice was arranged to be held 
 for the King, the Kosalan Pasenadi. Five hundred bulls, five 
 hundred bullocks, and as many heifers, goats, and rams were 
 led to the pillar to be sacrificed, and then the slaves and meni- 
 als and craftsmen, hectored about by blows and by fear, made 
 the preparations with tearful faces weeping. 
 
 "Now a number of almsmen having risen early and 
 dressed and taken bowl and robe, entered Savatthi for alms. 
 . . . And after their return they sought the presence of the 
 Exalted One and told him of the preparations for the sacri- 
 fice. 
 
 "Then the Exalted One, understanding the matter, uttered 
 in that hour these verses : 
 
 " 'The sacrifices called "the Horse," the Man, 
 The Peg-thrown Site, the Drink of Victory, 
 The Bolts Withdrawn, and all the mighty fuss : — 
 These are not rites that bring a rich result. 
 Where divers goats and sheep and kine are slain, . 
 Never to such a rite as that repair 
 The noble seers who walk the perfect way. 
 But rites where is no bustle nor no fuss. 
 Are offerings meet, bequests perpetual, 
 Where never goats and sheep and kine are slain. 
 To such a sacrifice as this repair 
 The noble seers who walk the perfect way. 
 These are the rites entailing great results. 
 These to the celebrant are blest, not cursed. 
 Th' oblation runneth o'er; the gods are pleased.'"^' 
 
 Like Samuel he insisted that the offering of righteousness 
 (dhamma puja) is better than the offering of material sacri- 
 fice (^amisa puja). 
 
 At another time Gotama was distressed at the story of cap- 
 tives taken in one of Agnidatta's wars, and at the bonds which 
 
 " Samyutta Nikiya in Mrs. Rhys Davids's "The Book of the Kindred 
 Sayings," pp. 102, 103. Gotama does not seem to have condemned sacrifice 
 in itself; but "better even than a bloodless sacrifice is liberality . . . and 
 the highest sacrifice of all is to enter Nibbana, saying *I return no more 
 to earth.' " (Kutadanta Sutta, Dtgha Nikaya, 143.) 
 
46 
 
 Gotama Buddha 
 
 still held the King himself captive : the love of self and of the 
 world. 
 
 The story of the King's conversion is worth quoting in 
 full. 
 
 "Thus have I heard: 'The Exalted One was once staying 
 near Savatthi, at the Jeta Grove in Anathapindika's Park. 
 Now the King, the Kosalan Pasenadi, came into the presence 
 of the Exalted One, and after exchanging greetings with him 
 and compliments of friendship and courtesy, sat down at one 
 side. So seated he said to the Exalted One : 
 
 " 'Does Master Gotama also make no claim to be perfectly 
 and supremely enlightened?' 'If there be anyone, sire, to 
 whom such enlightenment might rightly be attributed, it is 
 I. I verily, sire, am perfectly and supremely enlightened.' 
 
 " 'But Master Gotama, there are recluses and Brahmins 
 who also, like yourself, have each their order of disciples, 
 their attendant followers, who are teachers of disciples, 
 well-known and reputed theorizers, highly esteemed by the 
 people — I mean Purana-Kassapa, Makkhali of the Cowstall, 
 the Nigantha Nata's son,^' Sanjaya Belatthi's son, Kacca- 
 yana of the Pakudhas, Ajita of &e Hairblanket. Now they, 
 when I have asked this same question of them, have not laid 
 claim to perfect and supreme enlightenment. How can this 
 be? For (as compared with them) master Gotama is young 
 in years, and is a novice in the life of religion.' 
 
 " 'There are four young creatures, who are not to be dis- 
 regarded or despised, because they are youthful. What are 
 the four? A noble prince, a snake, a fire, an almsman 
 (bhikkhu). Yea, sire, these four young creatures are not to 
 be disregarded or despised because they are youthful. 
 
 tt f 
 
 Hence with these four — ^the serpent and the fire. 
 The prince of high estate, the saintly friar — 
 Let liie wise man, his own good-will in sight, 
 Conduct himself as seemly is and right.' 
 
 "When these things had been said. King Pasenadi, the 
 Kosalan, spoke thus to the Exalted One: 
 
 " 'Most excellent. Lord, most excellent ! Just as if a man 
 were to set up that which has been thrown down, or were 
 
 "' Nataputta was the founder of the Jain Sect, whose members call him 
 both Jtna (conqueror) and Buddha, 
 
Gotama at the Height of His Power 47 
 
 to reveal that which is hidden away, or were to point out the 
 right road to him who has gone astray,, or were to bring a 
 lamp into the darkness so that those who have eyes could see 
 external forms — even so, lord, has the truth been made known 
 to me in many a figure by the Exalted One. I, even I, lord, 
 betake myself to the Exalted One as my refuge, to the Norm 
 and to the Order. May the Exalted One accept me as a fol- 
 lower, as one who from this day forth as long as life endures 
 has taken his refuge therein.' ""^ 
 
 So were many lesser folk converted : not so much by argu- 
 ment as by good-humored analogy or the argumentum ad 
 hominem. "You are yourself young, O King," says Gotama 
 in effect to the Pasenadi, "why despise me for my youth?" 
 And not a word more was needed — no refutation of the other 
 teachers, no vindication of his own Dhamma, but only a 
 serene, authoritative claim, politely wrapped up in a com- 
 pliment ! This is the way to deal with kings. But with 
 philosophers and rival teachers he took another line. 
 
 King Agnidatta became the lifelong friend and supporter 
 of the Sangha and, like the great Asoka after him, seems to 
 have been chastened by contact with them till he gave up 
 animal sacrifices, and even spared his enemy Ajatasattu, after 
 defeating him in battle. "Although," he reflected, "this king 
 injures me who have done him no wrong, yet he is my nephew. 
 What if I take away his army and leave him his life?" And 
 we find the Buddhist chronicler avowing "That the King of 
 Kosala, Pasenadi, is a friend and an intimate, yea, an active 
 promoter of all that is good." Whilst of Ajatasattu we read 
 that "He is the friend and intimate of all evil, and an active 
 associate." 
 
 But we are anticipating. The sinister plots of Ajatasattu 
 and Devadatta belong to the story of Gotama's old age, and 
 must be told in a later chapter. 
 
 During the greater part of his lifetime it was Bimbisara 
 who ruled in Magadha; his Queen Khema was converted in 
 spite of herself in the sixth year of Gotama's ministry; and 
 his dates are known with a fair measure of certainty — from 
 
 " Samyntta NikSya in Mrs. Rhys Davids's "The Book of the Kindred 
 Sayings," p. 95. 
 
48 Gotama Buddha 
 
 543 to 491 B. C. Their son Ajatasattu comes on the scene 
 when Gotama is about seventy years old. 
 
 The chronology of Gotama's ministry up to the age of 
 fifty has been carefully, if not very convincingly, worked out 
 in some of the biographies, such as that translated by Bishop 
 Bigandet under the title "The Life or Legend of Gaudama," 
 and for want of more certain knowledge the general sequence 
 of events may be accepted as there arranged. But it is 
 monkish chronology for the most part, concerned with such 
 things as when the Sangha went into retreat, and even this 
 skeleton fails us for the period of his life between the ages of 
 fifty and seventy, which are, as the Bishop says, "an almost 
 complete blank." 
 
 It seems as if a late editor had collected all the available 
 material and used it up too quickly!' It is certain that the 
 whole story has been edited and re-edited by monks, until in 
 Japan we have a complete chronology worked out ; each year 
 being remembered by some discourse, and each era concerned 
 with a very definite development of doctrine, until at the end 
 of his life Gotama reveals a fully worked out Matayana gos- 
 pel in the famous Saddharma-pundarika! More scientific 
 biography must select from the available matter what is best 
 calculated to give a true impression of its hero, and what is 
 least improbable and fabulous. But until the whole of the 
 Buddhist works are accessible to us and until much more tex- 
 tual criticism has been done, biography in the strictest sense is 
 not possible. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DAILY LIFE OF GOTAMA 
 AND HIS DISCIPLES 
 
 In bliss we dwell amongst men of hatred, hating none. — 
 Dhammapada 197. 
 
 Smiled on by kings and growing rapidly in numbers and 
 in power, the Sangha had to be organized. This was a grad- 
 ual process, for Gotama seems to have realized the value of a 
 discipline which sprang out of actual experience. In the 
 very early days when there were only six Arahats, they seem 
 to have wandered from place to place at all seasons of the 
 year ; but this led to criticism, for in the wet weather the land 
 teems with insect life, and the young crops are also easily 
 damaged ! So the people complained, says the Mahavagga,^ 
 and reminded them that birds go to their nests and even 
 "heretics" have a "close season." Gotama accordingly, fol- 
 lowing a practice already recognized in other "Orders," in- 
 stituted the Buddhist Vassa or "Lent," which has ever since 
 been observed. 
 
 Towards the end of May or the beginning of June (the 
 month of Ashadha), the Indian sky is heavy with black clouds, 
 and man's eyes turn longingly towards them as they pile up 
 upon the horizon, now lit by flashes of lightning, now hang- 
 ing dark and big with rain.^ Then at last they break, and a 
 great sigh of thanksgiving seems to go up from the weary 
 land. 
 
 ^Mahavagga, III ("Sacred Books of the East," XIII. 2^8, 299). 
 
 2 The brewing of the rains varies — in the northwest it is as late as the 
 end of June; so the Mahdvagga gives alternate dates, either the day after 
 the full moon of Ashadha, or a month later, for the beginning of Vassa. 
 
50 Gotama Buddha 
 
 During this season we are to imagine Gotama and his fol- 
 lowers leading the "strenuous life of meditation" in quiet 
 places like the Vulture Peak or the bamboo grove at Rajagaha, 
 or in the garden given to them by Anathapindika at Savatthi. 
 In the "Songs of the Buddhist Brethren" we read also of 
 monks and nuns in solitary retreat, and their love of nature 
 is revealed in some of these, though it is always as a back- 
 ground for religious meditation that they think of her beauties. 
 
 " Those upland glades delightful to the soul. 
 Where the kareri spreads its wildering wreaths, 
 Where sound the trumpet-calls of elephants ; 
 Those are the braes wherein my soul delights. 
 Those rocky heights with hue of dark blue clouds. 
 Where lies embosomed many a shining tarn 
 Of crystal-clear, cool waters, and whose slopes 
 The 'herds of Indra' cover and bedeck: 
 Those are the braes wherein my soul delights. 
 Like serried battlements of blue-black cloud. 
 Like pinnacles on stately castle built. 
 Re-echoing to the cries of jungle folk: 
 Those are the braes wherein my soul delights. 
 Fair uplands, rain-refreshed and resonant 
 With crested creatures' cries antiphonal. 
 Lone heights where silent Rishis oft resort: 
 Those are the braes wherein my soul delights. . . . 
 Free from the crowds of citizens below. 
 But thronged with flocks of many winged things, 
 The home of herding creatures of the wild; 
 Such are the braes wherein my soul delights. 
 Crags where clear waters lie, a rocky world. 
 Haunted by black-faced apes and timid deer. 
 Where 'neath bright blossoms run the silver streams : 
 Such are the braes wherein my soul delights. 
 For that which brings me exquisite delight 
 Is not the strains of string and pipe and drum. 
 But when, with intellect well-poised, intent, 
 I gain the perfect vision of the Norm."* 
 
 But the Scmgha as a whole led the corporate life; even 
 if they separated into small groups they came together at 
 
 « Theragstha, 1062-1071, Mrs. Rhys Davids's translation. 
 
Daily Life of Gotama and Disciples 51 
 
 stated intervals; and Retreat would end with mutual con- 
 fession and exhortation, known as Pavarana. 
 
 Then, when the wet season was over and all nature re- 
 joiced, master and disciples would mingle once more with 
 the busy throng of men. They day was most carefully 
 planned.* Rising at dawn Gotama would go out either alone 
 or with his followers to village or town, collecting alms. He 
 would then break his fast, and would discourse to the monks, 
 and give them exercises in meditation suited to their attain- 
 ments. They would then leave him, going off each to his 
 favorite spot to meditate, whilst Gotama would lie down on 
 his right side "in the lion posture" in a quiet chamber, or 
 better still in the cool shade of the forest, and rest — ^not 
 sleeping, yet not practicing systematic meditation. Then the 
 people would come to him for preaching or advice. "When 
 he had taken pity on them" he would bathe and spend a 
 period in meditation in the cool of the evening. And in the 
 first watch of the night he would answer the questions of the 
 disciples, or preach to them. After that we must suppose 
 he slept ! It is characteristic of the monkish records that they 
 account for every one of the twenty-four hours without al- 
 lowing time for this. And after his death it was one of the 
 tenets of the Mahasanghika School that he had no need of 
 sleep. 
 
 That the Sangha grew so rapidly was certainly not due to 
 the ease of the life Gotama offered men. We get many 
 glimpses of their austerity as they slept on the bare earth 
 with no covering but the yellow robe; "Cold, master, is the 
 winter night; the time of frost is coming; rough is the 
 ground with the treading of the hoofs of cattle; thin is the 
 couch of leaves, and light is the yellow robe; the winter 
 wind blows keen";^ so a dweller in Alavi as he saw the 
 
 * Cf. the account in H. C. Warren's "Buddhism in Translations" 
 from Buddhaghosa's Commentary on Dlgha Nikaya. 
 
 A more poetical but later account is in Sumangala Vildsini, translated by 
 Dr. Rhys Davids in his "American Lectures." 
 
 The student who compares the two accounts will note the growth of the 
 miraculous element. 
 
 'Anguttara: SukhSsoyama Sutta, III. 4, 5, where Gotama claims that 
 rough as his bed might be he slept calm and peaceful, unlike kings and 
 worldlings. 
 
52 Gotama Buddha 
 
 teacher seated in the midst of the Sinsapa Forest absorbed in 
 meditation. 
 
 Often, however, they would stop to enjoy the hospitality 
 of kings, and gradually they acquired many pleasant gardens 
 and monasteries, such as the bamboo grove at Veluvana given 
 by Bimbisara: 
 
 "Not too far from nor yet too near the town, well pro- 
 vided with entrances and exits; easily accessible to all peo- 
 ple who inquire after it, with not too much of the bustle of 
 life by day, quiet by night, far from the crowds of men, a 
 place of retirement, a place for solitary meditation ... in 
 these gardens were the residences of the Brethren, houses, 
 halls, cloisters, storerooms, surrounded by lotus pools, fra- 
 grant mango trees and slender fan palms that lifted their 
 foliage high over all lands, and by the deep green foliage of 
 the nyagrodha tree, whose roots dropping from the air to 
 earth become new stems, with their cool shady arcades and 
 leafy walks, seemed to invite to peaceful meditation."^ 
 
 Hither would come to him kings and their retinues, and 
 other lay people, or Brahmins and religious teachers who had 
 heard of his fame, and on moonlight nights when the Indian 
 air is fragrant with the blossoms of flowering trees and 
 solemn with the march of the stars, they would sit enthralled 
 by his discourse on the eternal verities. But if any proved 
 obstinate Gotama would harry him remorselessly till he 
 capitulated, cross-examining him like Socrates until, as we 
 are told, in several passages, the sweat poured from the luck- 
 less man; for Gotama could be surgeon as well as physician. 
 And often the patient would kiss the hand that wielded the 
 knife ! 
 
 At other times the Sangha might be seen pacing with down- 
 cast eyes amongst the villages of Magadha and Kosala, giving 
 in return for their daily food the teaching of the Law, which 
 we are reminded again and again is "the greatest of gifts." 
 On the advice of Bimbisara, Gotama appointed the eighth, the 
 fourteenth, or the fifteenth and the sixteenth days of each 
 
 'Oldenberg, "Buddha," E. T., pp. 143, 145. 
 
Daily Life of Gotama and Disciples 53 
 
 month as Uposatha days for the assembling of the people to 
 listen to the Dhamma.'' 
 
 It was a strange democracy wh^ch the great teacher 
 gathered round him, and which he welded together by a com- 
 mon gratitude and a common purpose. Mrs. Rhys Davids* 
 has shown from the commentary upon the TheragathS,, that 
 of 259 poets to whom these psalms are attributed, 113 were 
 Brahmins, 60 Kshatriyas, 7 landowners or cultivators, S3 bur- 
 gesses or councillors, commoners, merchants, or "rich men's 
 sons," 9 craftsmen, elephant trainers, etc., 10 pariahs, labor- 
 ers, slaves, 1 actor, 3 sons of lay adherents, 3 illegitimate sons 
 of kings or sons of monks. She writes : 
 
 "That the large proportion of these men of letters belong to 
 the class which were the custodians of religious lore and 
 sacred hymns, was inevitable. The really interesting feature 
 is that the residuum, consisting of noblemen trained in war, 
 governance, and sports, or merchants, craftsmen, and the like, 
 occupied with business, commerce, and constructive work, and 
 of the illiterate poor, should be as numerous as it is. Or 
 indeed, that there should have been any of the last-named at 
 all as composers of verses deserving inclusion in the Canon. 
 In fact, it would not be entirely unreasonable to conclude 
 that if four per cent of the canonical poets were drawn from 
 the poor and despised of the earth, from whom no such 
 products as verses could be expected, then the proportion of 
 bhikkhtis, in general, coming from that class may have been 
 considerable." 
 
 However this may be, the fact stands out that there was 
 real democracy within the Sangha.^ An assassin, a barber, 
 an acrobat, and a scavenger were also numbered amongst 
 them, and one of the great services which Gotama Buddha 
 did to his native land was to show that nobility is not a 
 matter of birthji but of conduct; a lesson which she has not 
 yet assimilated: 
 
 ^ Mahdvagga, II. 1, 3 ("Sacred Books of the East," XIII). 
 » "Psalms of the Brethren," pp. XXVIII-XXIX. 
 
 • "Book of the Kindred Sayings," I. Mrs. Rhys Davids, p. 207, cf. 
 p. 210. 
 
54 Gotama Buddha 
 
 " Nay, though he jabber multitudes of runes, 
 Thus is no Brahmin made regenerate, 
 Garbage-defiled, within, propped by deceits. 
 But be he noble. Brahmin, commoner. 
 Or laboring man, or of pariah class. 
 Who stirs up effort, puts forth all his strength. 
 Advances with an ever vigorous stride. 
 He may attain the Purity Supreme. 
 Brahmin, know this !" 
 
 Nor was it only the Brahmin whom the great teacher bade 
 live up to his name. The raj puts from whom he himself 
 had sprung, and kings, are reminded that he is the true warrior 
 who controls himself and that self-mastery is true greatness; 
 even the gods bow before the holy man! Very touching is 
 the story of the scavenger Sunita, and of Gotama's dealings 
 with him ; let him speak to us across a gulf of twenty-five cen- 
 turies, and tell us of Gotama's humanity and tenderness : 
 
 " Humble the clan wherein I took my birth, 
 And poor was I, and scanty was my lot; 
 Mean task was mine, a scavenger of flowers. 
 One for whom no man cared, despised, abused. 
 My mind I humbled and I bent the head 
 In deference to a goodly tale of folk. 
 And then I saw the All-Enlightened come, 
 Begirt and followed by his bhikkhu-train. 
 Great Champion ent'ring Magadha's chief town. 
 I laid aside my baskets and my yoke. 
 And came where I might due obeisance make. 
 And of his loving-kindness just for me, 
 The Chief of men halted upon his way. 
 Low at his feet I bent, then standing by, 
 I begged the Master's leave to join the Rule 
 And follow him, of every creature Chief. 
 Then he whose tender mercy watcheth all 
 The world, the Master pitiful and kind. 
 Gave me my answer: 'Come, Bhikkhu!' he said. 
 Thereby to me was ordination given. 
 
 " Lo ! I alone in forest depths abode. 
 With zeal unfaltering wrought the Master's word. 
 Even the counsels of the Conqueror. 
 
Daily Life of Gotama and Disciples 55 
 
 While passed the first watch of the night there rose 
 
 Long memories of the bygone line of lives. 
 
 While passed the middle watch, the heav'nly eye. 
 
 Purview celestial, was clarified. 
 
 While passed the last watch of the night, I burst 
 
 Asunder all the gloom of ignorance. 
 
 Then as the night wore down at dawn 
 
 And rose the sun, came Indra and Brahma, 
 
 Yielding me homage with their clasped hands: 
 
 'Hail unto thee, thou nobly bom of men! 
 
 Hail unto thee, thou highest among men ! 
 
 Perished for thee are all th' intoxicants; 
 
 And thou art worthy, noble sir, of gifts.' 
 
 The Master, seeing me by troop of gods 
 
 Begirt and followed, thereupon a smile 
 
 Revealing, by this utterance made response : 
 
 'By discipline of holy life, restraint 
 
 And mastery of self: hereby a man 
 
 Is holy; this is holiness supreme !' "^^ 
 
 It is a touching testimony at once to the humanity of Gotama 
 and to the essential democracy of the Sangha. 
 
 To this strange assembly of men and women gathered to- 
 gether under the yellow robe, Gotama gave fully and without 
 reserve his philosophical and moral teachings, and it was 
 to them he entrusted the handing on of the torch when he 
 passed away. In the early days Gotama himself admitted 
 each new member to the Sangha with the simple words Ehi 
 Bhikkhu, "Come, monk," but as numbers grew and there were 
 converts in many places he delegated this office to the order, 
 instituting a form of ordination which has been maintained 
 in an elaborated form ever since. 
 
 After examination to make sure that he is neither a leper 
 nor maimed, and that he is not a confirmed criminal or a slave, 
 the candidate is shaved and clothed in the yellow robe; he 
 salutes the Bhikkhus and takes the "Three-Fold Refuge" in the 
 Buddha, the Dfiamma, and the Sangha. This he does three 
 times, and is then a duly ordained monk.^'^ So was developed 
 
 ""Psalms of the Brethren" {Theragithi, CCXLII). 
 
 " Mahavagga, L. 12. Dr. Oldenberg arg^ues with much reason that this 
 "Tisarana" or Three-Fold Refuge was instituted after Gotama*s death: 
 
56 
 
 Gotama Buddha 
 
 that great Company of the Yellow Robe, which has rendered 
 such eminent service to India and the East — ^the oldest, as it is 
 the most picturesque, of all religious orders ; which, whilst it 
 has often degenerated, shows such strange powers of recovery. 
 The student who would in imagination join himself to that 
 glad yet solemn company will find himself not only moving 
 amongst men and women who have forsaken all for the re- 
 ligious life ; but may mingle in their midst with the lay folk 
 of the Indian town and countryside of those far-off days and 
 lead a life strangely blent of reality and tropical imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 "He will find himself for the most part in a woodland of 
 faerie, opening out here on a settlement of religious brethren, 
 there on scenes of life in rural communities such as might 
 well be met in the India of today, or indeed in other countries. 
 ... The prince of darkness — of life-lust and of recurring 
 death — will startle him in odd and fearsome shapes and ways. 
 Grave and noble sisters will show him a serene peace, and a 
 grasp of truth won at the cost of much that life holds dear. 
 The incorrigible if amiable despot, and the priest, often no less 
 incorrigible, will give themselves away as they talk before 
 him. Mysterious aboriginal creatures, in process of being 
 merged into the stock of folk-myth, will come from the aban- 
 doned shrines of dead deities to listen or to menace. And the 
 gods of today will contend before him with the gods of yester- 
 day, become the Titans of today. 
 
 "And ever, as he wanders on, there will move before him, 
 luminous and serene, the central figure of the great-hearted 
 Gotama, bringing him to the wood's end braced and en- 
 lightened by the beneficent tension of listening to many wise 
 sayings. In these he will hear the lesser gods instructed and 
 the higher gods brought low, the devil swept aside and the 
 demons fearlessly confronted ; the king given simple, practical, 
 secular advice, not too high or unworldly for his limited in- 
 telligence, and the priest's rites and dogmas tested by a new 
 and higher norm; the disciples' talents evoked and appre- 
 ciated, and the earnest lay inquirer made welcome."*^ 
 
 "Could anyone call the disciples his refuge so long as the Master was with 
 them?" ("Buddha," E. T., p. 338.) Yet Gotama may have been preparing 
 them to do without his presence. 
 
 " "Book of the Kindred Sayings," I. vi, vii. 
 
Daily Life of Gotama and Disciples 57 
 
 As he studies the discourses and dialogues in more detail, 
 he will find that he cannot wholly agree with Dr. Dahlke 
 that they are "of a sublime sameness," nor with Dr. Olden- 
 berg that they show " a motionless and rigid uniformity on 
 which no lights and shadows fall."^^ It is true that in being 
 edited they have all been passed through the same mould, 
 but nevertheless there does shine out from them the fact that 
 the teacher adapted his teaching to his pupil, and the com- 
 mentator and editor have not been able wholly to stereotype 
 his genius. Thus, for example, when King Agnidatta Pase- 
 nadi asks him if the law of decay and death is universal 
 he replies, "Look at your royal chariot; even it is showing 
 signs of wear and tear,"^* and there are many similar in- 
 stances of adaptation in Gotama's method. "While his dis- 
 cussions with the learned," says an Indian disciple, "were 
 more or less formal and often coldly logical, in his con- 
 versation with ordinary men the Master generally resorted 
 to similes and parables, fables and folklore, histprical anec- 
 dotes and episodes, proverbs and popular sayings." His sim- 
 iles and parables are drawn for the most part from the jungle 
 — the spoor of elephants, the ways of woodmen, the life of 
 trees — or from the village: herdsman, farmer, fletcher, char- 
 ioteer, all provide him with images, whilst the current folklore 
 of his day was converted to religious purposes. The great 
 things of nature, too, the "patient earth," the wonderftd 
 Indian moon, the sun in his splendor, the majestic rivers — 
 these supplied him with a wealth of imagery. 
 
 Gotama's methods of dealing with lay folk are well illus- 
 trated by the incident of the Brahmin farmer, Bharadvaja, 
 who in the eleventh year of his ministry asked him why he 
 did not work for his living, and was answered in the charm- 
 ing parable of the Sower,^' in which Gotama claims that he, 
 too, is a farmer, and that he sows seed whose crop is am- 
 brosia : which of course led to the farmer's conversion ! As 
 
 ""Buddha," E. T., p. 181. 
 
 " Samyutto Nikaya, III. 1, 3. 
 
 " See "The Heart of Buddhism," pp. 19, 20. 
 
58 Gotama Buddha 
 
 Sariputta remarked, "It is by similes that men come often 
 to vmderstanding."" 
 
 As his fame spread many came to him to seek consolation 
 in bereavement, but it must be confessed, only to receive cold 
 comfort. Best known is the case of the young mother who 
 brought her dead child to him and was told to seek a house 
 where Death had paid no visit, and get from it mustard seed. 
 She sought in vain and came to realize that Death is imi- 
 versal, and to cease from vain lamentation.^^ Thus, too, he 
 brought the aged Visakha to a calm and stoical acceptance 
 of the fact that Death is common to all. 
 
 "The Upasika Visakha was in the habit of giving alms to 
 the Bhikkhus. One day her granddaughter Suddata who 
 lived with her fell ill and died, and Visakha, throwing the 
 body into the charnel-pit, was tmable to bear the grief. So 
 she took her to the Buddha and sat on one side, sad and tear- 
 ful. 'O Visakha!' asked the Blessed One, 'wherefore dost 
 thou sit sad and mournful, shedding tears?' She told him 
 of her granddaughter's death, saying, 'She was a dutiful 
 girl, and I cannot find her like.' 
 
 " 'How many men are there dwelling in Savatthi, O Visa- 
 kha?' 
 
 '"Lord, men say there are seven kofis (seventy millions).' 
 
 '"If all these were like thy granddaughter, wouldst thou 
 not love them?' 
 
 " 'Verily, Lord.' 
 
 " 'And how many die daily in Savatthi ?' 
 
 " 'Many, Lord.' 
 
 " 'Then there is never a moment when thou wouldst not be 
 grieving for some one !' 
 
 "'True, Master.' 
 
 " 'Wouldst thou then spend thy life weeping day and night?' 
 
 " 'I understand. Lord ; it is well said !' 
 
 " 'Grieve then no more.' "i* 
 
 There is a fine sanity about Gotama which shines through 
 even such seeming coldness, and we cannot doubt that his 
 words were spoken with real compassion and with an earnest 
 
 " Majihima, XLIII. 
 
 " "Sacred Books of the East," X. 106. 
 
 " "The Heart of Buddhism," pp. 81, 82. From Dhp, Commentary. 
 
Daily Life of Gotama and Disciples 59 
 
 desire to help. He was ever accessible to inquirers and to 
 those who needed advice. And he moved amongst them 
 always serene and master of himself, always courteous and 
 considerate. In the early books of the Pali Canon there 
 seems to be revealed a struggle just beginning between the 
 moral ideals of self-culture and altruism ; let the student com- 
 pare many passages of the Dhammapada, for example, with 
 the story of Punna or with the famous hymn on "Compas- 
 sion" given in Appendix III and he will realize that this 
 conflict naturally gave birth to the two great schools of 
 Buddhism. 
 
 The disciples, however, seem for the present to have dwelt 
 together in great unity, each honoring the other for his 
 contribution to the common life, all devoted to their leader. 
 
 The Majjhima Nikaya gives us a charming picture of the 
 teacher surrounded by his disciples, and enables us to dis- 
 cover what were the gifts most highly valued amongst them. 
 Moggallana and Kassapa go to hear Sariputta discoursing; 
 Anuruddha, Revata,"^' and Ananda join them. Sariputta 
 greets Ananda thus: "Welcome, twice welcome, it is the 
 Venerable Ananda who waits upon the Blessed One,^'' who 
 is ever near the Blessed One ! Charming, friend Ananda, 
 is Gosingam Wood, clear and cloudless are the nights, the 
 lordly trees are decked in a wealth of fruit and blossom, fra- 
 grance as it were from heaven is wafted abroad. Of what 
 sort, friend Ananda, is the monk who adds to the glory of 
 Gosingam Wood?" 
 
 Each of the Brethren answers in turn; Ananda that "he 
 who is well informed, treasures learning, accumulates learn- 
 ing, and hands it ori with comments and explanations, he 
 is the monk who adds to the glory of Gosingam Wood." 
 
 Revata says that it is the monk who delights in meditation 
 and attains to ecstasy and penetrating insight in solitary 
 places who adds to the glory of the Wood ; Anuruddha that it 
 is the man who has attained to "the heavenly eye" and sees a 
 
 " Revata was a brother of Sariputta. 
 
 "i An indication that this incident belongs to the last thirty years of 
 his public ministry. 
 
6o Gotama Buddha 
 
 thousand worlds; Kassapa that it is the man who leads the 
 forest life and sings its praises, who sings the praises also of 
 the mendicant life, its poverty, solitude, ordered meditation, 
 and the knowledge and deliverance which proceed from 
 them, who adds a glory to the Wood. 
 
 Moggallana says: "Two monks, friend Sariputta, discuss 
 together the deeper things of the doctrine by putting questions 
 each to the other. And having answered such questions each 
 again withdraws apart, their conversation having been edify- 
 ing and instructive. Of such sort, friend Sariputta, is the 
 monk who adds to the glory of Gosingam Wood." 
 
 Lastly, Sariputta himself is asked by Moggallana to reply: 
 "A certain monk, friend Moggallana, bears rule over his 
 own mind, his mind does not bear rule over him. In what- 
 soever mental attainment he desires to abide during each 
 watch of the day, in that he duly abides, just as a king or 
 great noble, possessed of a chest full of garments of many 
 different colors, in the morning hours wears what he chooses 
 for the morning wear, and at midday whatever robes he pre- 
 fers for midday wear, and again in the evening wears gar- 
 ments which he has selected for the evening. Of like kind 
 is the monk who rules his mind and meditates at each watch of 
 the day upon what he will. Of such a sort, Moggallana, is the 
 monk who adds to the glory of Gosingam Wood." 
 
 Having each answered, they agree that they will go and ask 
 Gotama, and they go and report their conversation to him. 
 He has a word of praise for each, and says that each has 
 answered rightly according to his capacity and training ; each 
 has spoken out of his own experience, and therefore truly. 
 Sariputta asks which has spoken best, and he replies: "Each 
 of you in his way has spoken well, Sariputta; but now hear 
 from me what sort of monk adds to the glory of Gosingam 
 Wood. The monk, Sariputta, having returned from his beg- 
 ging round and partaken of his meal, sits down with crossed 
 legs under him, body upright, and brings himself to a state 
 of recoUectedness. 'I will not rise from this spot,' he re- 
 solves within himself, 'until, freed from clinging, 'my mind 
 attains to deliverance from all Bane.' Such is the monk. 
 
Daily Life of Gotama and Disciples 6i 
 
 Sariputta, who truly adds to the glory of Gosingam Wood."^^ 
 In another passage Gotama compares Moggallana with Sari- 
 putta: "Like a woman who gives birth to a son, so is Sari- 
 putta to a young disciple; like a schoolmaster who educates 
 him, so is Moggallana."^^ Here we get tenderness praised 
 as well as more intellectual qualities; but in the former pas- 
 sage it is noteworthy that neither master nor disciples make 
 any reference to the glory of service. Ananda, as we should 
 expect, comes nearest to it. 
 
 Yet these leading disciples vied with each other in waiting 
 upon Gotama, till in the twenty-fifth year of his public 
 ministry he summoned them to the "Fragrance Chamber" and 
 addressed them thus: "O monks, I am now an old man, and 
 some of you as you wait upon me are clumsy and some 
 self-willed, turning one way when I would go another. Do 
 ye know of a monk who shall become my regular attendant ?" 
 A noble emulation followed these rather blunt words. Sari- 
 putta, who was known as the "general of the Dhamma," and 
 Moggallana both prayed to be allowed to wait upon him, as 
 did all the other chief disciples. Only Ananda kept silence. 
 He had no great gifts of mind such as distinguished the 
 others, and when they questioned him, "Why do you not 
 speak ?" he replied, "Let the Master choose ! Else what choice 
 is it?" But being invited by Gotama himself, he shrewdly 
 laid down some very sensible conditions — ^that invitations to 
 the Master were to be considered first by him and that he was 
 to receive no special privileges except those of waiting upon 
 Gotama and being instructed in the Dhamma by him.^' 
 
 So Ananda was appointed, and for twenty-five years was 
 Gotama's "faithful shadow," combining the duties of pupil, 
 body-servant, and chaplain with admirable devotion — even 
 though at times he was accused of being too fussy about de- 
 tails,''* whether of his household duties, or of the moral teach- 
 ings of the Dhamma. Only after Gotama's death did he at- 
 
 21 "Discourses of Gotama, the Buddha," tr. by Silacara, II. 73-70. 
 "Majihima Nikaya, III. 248. 
 =» Theragatha, CCLX. 
 '*Ibid., CXIX. 
 
62 Gotama Buddha 
 
 tain Arahatship; but it was not for want of earnest striving 
 and whole-hearted devotion that the vision tarried so long. 
 
 Such, then, was the way of the Sangha — a way of quiet 
 yet strenuous activity — in which there was time for the life's 
 courtesies, and abundant leisure for discussion of those prob- 
 lems which according to Gotama are "heart-wood" problems — 
 dealing with essential points of conduct or of mind culture. 
 That there were abuses in the Sangha the books honorably 
 and faithfully record — sins of the flesh crept in, both those 
 which are called "natural" and those which are abnormal, 
 and sins of schism. 
 
 There was an unruly group of monks, for instance, known 
 as the Khabbaggiya Bhikkhus, who seem to have been pos- 
 sessed with a demon of mischief, beating the novices and even 
 pouring dirty water on the nuns ! And at KosambI a serious 
 schism took place. A certain monk was expelled and others 
 took his part. Gotama cried out, "The Order is divided !" and 
 in great distress went to Kosambi and laid down legislation 
 for their guidance. But things got worse and the monks even 
 came to blows. Gotama told them the beautiful story of 
 Dighiti, King of Kosala, who forgave his enemy the king 
 of Kasi, and taught the great lesson that "hatred never ceases 
 by hatred, but only through love is it put to an end."^^ Even 
 this did not pacify them, and Gotama left them saying, "Truly 
 they are fools and infatuate." The books of discipline are full 
 of warnings against the sin of disorder in the Sangha, and 
 Gotama is recorded himself to have said, "Whoso troubleth 
 the Order abideth for an age in perdition : yea, he bumeth in 
 hell."^* The most serious schism was that led by Devadatta, 
 and this was made all the sadder by the fact that Gotama and 
 he were both old men when it came to a head. 
 
 ^Mahavagga, X. 2 ("Sacred Books of the East," XIII.). 
 " lUivuttaka, §19. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE OLD AGE AND DEATH OF GOTAMA 
 
 The morally strenuous do not die ! — Dhammapada 21. 
 
 In the year 491 B. C. King Bimbisara of Magadha was suc- 
 ceeded by his son Ajatasattu, who, as we have seen, is de- 
 scribed in the Buddhist books as "the friend and supporter 
 of all that is evil." However that may be, he carried on his 
 father's work, and by conquering Kosala and Vesali, made 
 Magadha supreme in northeast India. 
 
 When he came to the throne Gotama was seventy-two years 
 old, but his genius still shone bright and clear, and he seems 
 to have lost nothing of his virility and strength. This is il- 
 lustrated in the record of the first meeting between him and 
 the new king, who tried to test him by asking : "What in the 
 world is the good of this renunciation of yours, and this 
 Order of yours? For people such as elephant-riders, chari- 
 oteers, archers, slaves, cooks, barbers, bath-attendants, con- 
 fectioners, potters, garland-makers, clerks, accountants, and 
 the like who follow ordered crafts get something out of them. 
 They can make themselves comfortable in this world and keep 
 their families in comfort. Can you, sir, declare to me any 
 such immediate fruit reaped in this world of the life of a 
 recluse ?"i To which Gotama answered, politely yet pointedly 
 reminding him of the peasantry, whom he had not mentioned, 
 yet upon whom as taxpayers both he and his court depended; 
 a timely reminder to the landed proprietor in India then as 
 now, and an indication that in those days Kshatriyas, like 
 Brahmins, paid no taxes. 
 
 Though they now met for the first time, it seems clear that 
 some at least of the Sangha had had dealings with Ajata- 
 
 1 Quoted by Rhys Davids, "Buddhist India," p. 88. 
 
64 
 
 Gotama Buddha 
 
 sattu whilst he was still raj-kumS/ra (crown prince). De- 
 vadatta, who came to Gotama in the very early days at Anu- 
 piya, may have joined the Order then, or more probably have 
 wavered for some years before he was admitted.^ When he 
 was ordained he made little progress in the essence of the re- 
 ligion, but acquired great skill in magic of a worldly kind.^ 
 This he practiced on the prince of Magadha with such suc- 
 cess that he brought him to a determination to murder his 
 father, the King, and to help oust Gotama from the leadership 
 of the Sangha. Black magic indeed ! 
 
 Bimbisara was either murdered by his son, or in 
 a very Indian way retired in his favor. The books gen- 
 erally call Ajatasattu parricide, but whether he carried out 
 his vile plot or no, he secured the throne. 
 
 When the news of Devadatta's complicity in the crime was 
 brought to Gotama, he replied with a discourse showing that 
 pride goes before a fall. So it proved with Devadatta; jeal- 
 ousy and pride grew unchecked in him, until he openly and 
 in the presence of the King asked Gotama to hand over the 
 leadership of the Sangha, alleging that old age had overtaken 
 him. Kern drily points out that Devadatta and Gotama were 
 of the same age ; but it is possible that he had become a novice 
 whilst still a child, and was in reality a good deal younger 
 than his great cousin. 
 
 Gotama was of a sterner mould than Bimbisara, and more 
 was at stake than even the prosperity and well-being of a 
 kingdom ! Moreover, he had no intention of appointing a 
 successor: the Sangha was to become a democracy, not a 
 hierarchy. He denounced Devadatta with these comments: 
 
 "He is as one who seeks to pollute the ocean with a jar of 
 poison !"* 
 
 " Professor Rhys Davids says that he was not admitted till the twentieth 
 year of Gotama's ministry, but this statement is, I venture to believe, 
 based on a misreading of the Song of Ananda quoted below, Adhere Ananda 
 is referring not to the time he had been a Bhikkhu, but to the period of 
 his personal attendance upon Gotama. There is not sufficient reason for 
 abandoning the accepted tradition that Devadatta was one of the Sakyan 
 princes who joined Gotama at the beginning of his public ministry, together 
 with his cousin, Ananda. To Professor Ehys Davids's article in the 
 "Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics** I am much indebted. 
 
 » Vinaya, II. 286. 
 
 *ItkiuUaka, 89. 
 
The Old Age and Death of Gotama 65 
 
 " As is the plantain, the bamboo, and the rush 
 Each by the fruit it bears undone, 
 So is the sinner by men's homage slain."^ 
 
 This admirable detached and confident spirit he maintained 
 as the plot thickened.^ The various attempts of Devadatta 
 to kill his master are described in detail in the books. The 
 story of the elephant whom he made drunk and then let loose 
 upon Gotama is improbable, though it serves to illustrate the 
 belief of Gotama's followers in his great power over the 
 animal world.*' That which tells how a band of cutthroats 
 hired by Devadatta were won over by Gotama's loving and 
 dignified bearing is quite probable. They were not the only 
 brigands who yielded to the power of love, as it was embodied 
 in Gotama: Ang^limala, who wore a necklet of 999 human 
 fingers taken from his victims, is an even more famous case, 
 and the story of his conversion is still used in Buddhist lands 
 as a charm.* 
 
 Devadatta's next move was to split the Sangha; he de- 
 manded a more ascetic rule of life, urging, amongst other 
 things, that the monks should dwell only in the woods, should 
 eat no meat, and should clothe themselves in cast-off rags. 
 These proposals Gotama, with splendid sanity, rejected; but 
 Devadatta had now a fairly strong case for appealing to the 
 younger spirits in the Order, 500 of whom are said to have 
 joined him. As the Dhammapada^ says: "Honey-sweet to 
 the fool is his sin until it ripens; then he comes to grief," 
 and "When the fool's wisdom bears evil fruit it bursts 
 asunder his happiness, and smashes his head."^* Devadatta 
 was riding for a fall ! We find him at last surrounded by a 
 multitude of adherents discoursing on his view of the doc- 
 
 ' Samyutta, I. 153. 
 
 » In I the Milinda Panha, VII. 6, 11 ("Sacred Books of the East," 
 XXXVI. 355), Sariputta is represented as saying that Gotama was equally 
 minded to Devadatta, the conspirator, and to Rahula, his own worthy son. 
 
 ' Like St. Francis of Assisi and other saints Gotama does seem to have 
 had a strange power over animals. Cf, the Cariya Pitaka, in which he 
 claims to have lived in a former birth surrounded by wild beasts whom 
 his benevolence had tamed. 
 
 ' Cf . the story of St. Francis and the robbers. Fioretti, p. 26. 
 
 » 69-72. 
 
 M Ibid. 
 
66 Gotama Buddha 
 
 trine. He sees Sariputta and Moggallana approaching and 
 rejoices, thinking that they have come to join him. Contin- 
 uing the discourse far into the night he falls asleep, leaving 
 Sariputta to carry on. Sariputta gives them a lecture on 
 preaching, and Moggallana follows this with a discussion of 
 true magic {iddhi) as opposed to false. What wonder then 
 that when Devadatta awakes he finds the flock scattered and 
 only a few of his followers left ? We are told that the blood 
 poured from his mouth, which suggests that a fit of apoplec- 
 tic rage came upon him. Here we may leave him, though a 
 later book tells a story of a visit when near his death to Go- 
 tama; and of how he claimed his kinship with the Master, 
 and repeated the formula of refuge; soon afterwards he died 
 and went to hell. 
 
 Whatever we may think of the details of this story, it seems 
 pretty clear that not only Buddhists, but Jains and others out- 
 side the Order, knew about the schism.^"- It is characteristic 
 of the Buddhist books that the case of Devadatta is used rather 
 to enforce the lesson of emancipation of mind^^ as the central 
 object of the religion, than as a warning against disloyalty. 
 Devadatta is a typical "fool" rather than a typical "traitor," 
 and in their boundless optimism the books maintain that it is 
 never too late for the fool to have his eyes opened ; Buddhists 
 even believe that Devadatta will come again as a Buddha. 
 
 We cannot doubt that this defection of one of his chief 
 disciples, involving as it did a split in the Sangha, was a sore 
 grief to the aged Gotama. Confident he clearly was that such 
 pride as Devadatta's must come to a speedy end: he would 
 not allow it to provoke him to anger, and yet this betrayal 
 by one of his own household must have clouded and saddened 
 his last days. 
 
 Another crushing blow must have been the destruction of 
 his people in the seventh year of Ajatasattu by Vidudabha, 
 King of Kosala. Vidudabha was a son of the Pasenadi of 
 Kosala by the natural daughter of one of the Sakyan nobles, 
 and a slave-girl." When he grew up he felt that his father 
 
 " Cf. MajjUma, 392, quoted by Professor Rhys Davids, E. R. E., IV. 
 i=Cf. Ma/jhima. I. 192. 
 ^^ See above. Chap. I, 
 
The Old .Age and Death of Gotama 67 
 
 had been slighted by the Sakyans, and his own life clouded 
 by the trick they had played. He marched upon Kapilavatthu, 
 and exterminated the clan.^* 
 
 Ajatasattu meantime began to be troubled by conscience, 
 and on the advice of Jivaka, his physician, who seems to have 
 been something of a psychologist, he sought Gotama and 
 under that gentle and skilful knife lost the "root of evil," 
 even though he had to endure the consequences of past sin. 
 We find him wreaking terrible vengeance upon the bandits 
 who murdered the venerable Moggallana, and the aged 
 Teacher calmly arguing that neither he nor they could have 
 met such an end did their Kamma not demand it, Moggallana's 
 culminating after innumerable years. 
 
 Gotama's life was now drawing to a close ; there are events 
 which we may believe occurred in this evening of his days, 
 but we have no actual chronology. One charming incident, 
 not unlike the meeting of St. Francis and St. Dominic at the 
 end of their days, was his sojourn with Pukkusati in the 
 "house of the potter" at Rajagaha. The old man Pukkusati 
 had been a king of Taxila in Kashmir, and a friend of Bim- 
 bisara; perhaps the two kings and the physician Jivaka had 
 been fellow-students at the great university. Gotama was 
 wandering alone near Rajagaha, and asked a night's shelter 
 at the potter's house; he was told that a friar of noble birth 
 was already within, but was allowed to share the hospitality 
 of the house ; and the two old men sat meditating, till Gotama, 
 noting the serenity of his companion, asked him why he had 
 left the world and who was his teacher — apparently a recog- 
 nized formula on such occasions. Pukkusati replied that it 
 was the Sakyamuni whom he followed. Gotama did not make 
 himself known at once, but began to expound the Dhamma, till 
 Pukkusati cried out with joy, "I have found the Masterv 
 whom I sought." So sure was Gotama's touch on human 
 hearts and minds, and the very legends show how great an 
 impression he made upon the men of his nation. An Indian 
 disciple has written of him thus : 
 
 "JStaka, IV. 144, quoted by Kern, "Handbook of Indian Buddhism," 
 p. 40. 
 
68 Gotama Buddha 
 
 "More potent than his method and his word was the Blessed 
 One's wonderful personality. When he talked with men his 
 serene look inspired them with awe and reverence, and his 
 lovely voice struck them with rapture and amazement. Could 
 mere words have converted the robber Angulimala or the can- 
 nibal of Alavi ? To have come under his spell is to be his for 
 ever. He was a winner of hearts. It is not so much because 
 he preached the truth that his hearers believed; it is because 
 he had won their hearts that his words appeared to them true 
 and salutary. A single word from him was enough to recon- 
 cile King Prasenajit to his Queen Mallika. His heart always 
 overflowed with kindness. Was it not the effluence of the 
 Master's love that made Roja the Mallian follow him as a 
 calf does the cow? To meet him is to be penetrated by his 
 love (maitri) and to know him is to love him forever."^^ 
 
 Even we of the West are glad to echo this sentiment, and to 
 acknowledge that charm which despite the lapse of twenty- 
 five centuries, and the artificiality of the records which en- 
 shrine his life, still lays its spell on our hearts. We love him 
 for his amazing courage, for his sweet reasonableness, for his 
 quiet dignity, for his tenderness to all living things, for his 
 moral earnestness, and not least for his sturdy protest against 
 unworthy ideas of God and of religion. Sincerity was the 
 keynote of his life, as graciousness was the secret of his power 
 over men's hearts. In the happy phrase of a Japanese disci- 
 ple, "Here was a king of the spiritual in the guise of beg- 
 gary."'-" 
 
 Gotama was now seventy-nine years old. He continued his 
 ministry of preaching and teaching, revisiting his favorite 
 haunts, from Pataliputta in the southeast to Savatthi in the 
 northeast, and the incident of his advice to the Vajjians may 
 belong to this period; as does his prophecy that Pataliputta, 
 then being fortified by Ajatasattu, would become a great city" 
 — both examples of shrewd insight. 
 
 « Narasu, "The Essence of Buddhism,'" 2d edition, p. 21. The author 
 IS a convert from Hinduism to Buddhism. Roja was a rather bitter opponent 
 of the Sangha, whom Gotama converted by "sending out to him a wave 
 of benevolence." Mah&vagga, VI. 36, 4. 
 
 i»Riusaku Tsunoda, "The Essence of Japanese Buddhism," p. 16. The 
 author as a Buddhist missionary has proved his devotion. 
 
 "Mahavagga, VI. 28 ("Sacred Books of the East," XVII. 101). 
 
The Old Age and Death of Gotama 69 
 
 We still find the great ones of the land competing for the 
 honor of entertaining him; thus the courtesan Ambapali 
 outdid the Licchavi nobles and entertained him sumptuously at 
 Vesali.18 From there he went to a village named Beluva, 
 where he spent his last retreat. Here a severe illness laid 
 him low and he felt that death was approaching, but he con- 
 tinued visiting his disciples to the end. At Pava he took a 
 meal at the house of Chunda, the smith. Some very tough 
 pork was set before him, and Gotama, anxious not to hurt 
 the poor man's feelings, ate it. Then, with a whimsical 
 smile, he asked Chunda to bury what was left, "for no one 
 in the world except a Buddha could digest it." He was seized 
 with an attack of dysentery, yet pressed on to Kusinara, where 
 under some sandal trees he bade Ananda spread a couch for 
 him; there he lay down on his right side, with his head 
 towards the north, "in the lion attitude.'' It is thus that the 
 ancient monuments depict him, calm and serene, yet very 
 weary, with Ananda standing in tears at his head. To the last 
 his spirit shone clear and even humorous. Thus, when one 
 of the monks, or as the Burmese record has it, a stout nun, 
 stood fanning him, he said rather harshly, "Stand aside"; 
 when Ananda asked the reason for this harshness, Gotama, 
 with a twinkle in his eye we may be sure, replied that there 
 were myriads of gods anxious to have a sight of the Master, 
 and this "powerful one" stood in the way ! To Ananda, weep- 
 ing bitterly and crying, "Behold, I am but a learner and not 
 yet perfect, and my teacher is passing to Nibbana, he who was 
 so compassionate to me," Gotama sent a message, and when 
 he came and stood respectfully at one side, "Enough, 
 Ananda," he said, "weep no more. Have I not already told 
 thee that it is in the nature of things, however dear, that we 
 must be separated from them ? How can it be, Ananda, that 
 what has been bom should not perish ? Long, O , Ananda, 
 hast thou waited on the Blessed One with kind, devoted, and 
 single-hearted service. Much merit has thou acquired, O 
 Ananda ! Continue to strive and soon thou wilt be free from 
 all trace of evil." Then he commended Ananda to the rest 
 
 ^'Mahavagga, XVII. 105. 
 
70 Gotama Buddha 
 
 for his four wonderful qualities, amongst them his popular 
 preaching, alike to the initiated and the lay-people, and his 
 devoted service. When he had spoken, Ananda, true to his 
 character, fussily urged Gotama to leave this "wattle and 
 daub" town in the jungle and to go to one of the big cities, 
 such as Rajagaha or Benares, and make a dignified end in 
 more respectable surroundings! Gotama refused and, devis- 
 ing a task to keep the poor old man busy, sent him to tell the 
 Mallas that the Blessed One was passing away in their ter- 
 ritory and to summon them to his side. The whole clan 
 came out, and Ananda, with his love of order, marshaled 
 them by families and brought them in this order to do rever- 
 ence to Gotama. To Ananda's question as to what should be 
 done with his body after death Gotama bade him leave such 
 matters to the pious laity. It is clear that he found the poor 
 old man rather officious ! 
 
 The wandering ascetic Subaddha was anxious to have a 
 doubt in his mind cleared before the Master died, and Ananda 
 refused him d,dmission. But Gotama, overhearing the con- 
 versation, cried: "Enough, Ananda, hinder him not. Let 
 Subaddha ask, for he asks, not to trouble me, but to gain 
 wisdom." Seated respectfully at one side, Subaddha asked 
 whether the other teachers, including Makkhali, Gosala, 
 Ajita, Saiijaya, and others had really discovered truth as they 
 maintained, or were impostors. To this Gotama replies that 
 in whatever doctrine and discipline the noble eight-fold path 
 is not found, there are not found true monks : "But let those 
 within the Order live rightly and the world will not lack 
 saints." "Wonderful, sir, wonderful," cried Subaddha, who 
 seems to have been a simple soul, and joined the Order. Then 
 Gotama turned to Ananda : "It may be, O Ananda, that some 
 of you will think the word of the Teacher belongs to the past ; 
 we have no teacher any more ; but that, O Ananda, is a wrong 
 view. The doctrine and discipline, O Ananda, which I have 
 taught you, let that be your teacher when I am gone."^^ Then 
 
 "That Ananda learned his lesson well is shown by the story of hia 
 meeting with Vassakara, a |:eneral whom Ajatasattu had put in charge 
 of the work of fortifying Rajagaha. Asked by the general how the unity 
 of the Sangha could be maintained if no Head was apparent, he replied, 
 "We have the Teaching." One wonders if this satisfied the military mind I 
 
The Old Age and Death of Gotama 71 
 
 there followed some details as to organization, and the com- 
 mand to punish one of the brethren who had been unruly. 
 Lastly, Gotama asked them all if there was any doubt or per- 
 plexity in their minds. "Ask now, O monks, lest afterwards 
 ye feel remorse, saying, 'Our teacher was present with us, yet 
 we failed to put to him all our questions.' " Thrice he asked 
 them, and thrice they kept silence, till Ananda broke out : "It is 
 wonderful, Reverend Sir, it is marvelous ! I believe that in 
 the whole congregation there is no one of us who has a doubt 
 or a perplexity respecting either the Buddha, or the Doctrine, 
 or the Order, or the Eight-Fold Path." "With you, O Ananda, 
 it is a matter of faith ; but with the Blessed One it is a mat- 
 ter of knowledge." Then, turning to them all, he bade them 
 farewell, saying: "Now, O monks, I take my leave of you. 
 All things are composite and all are transient ; work with dili- 
 gence for the goal of freedom." 
 
 These were his last words, and are a fitting summary of the 
 teaching he labored so hard to popularize amongst his peo- 
 ple. In death as in life he was serene and stoical : "death so 
 divinely calm and tranquil," says a modern Japanese disciple, 
 "has no parallel in human history"-^a pardonable exaggera- 
 tion — "the moon paled, the river sobbed but one can hardly 
 exaggerate the sense of loss of the disciples, who followed 
 him to the last and witnessed, to their grief and joy, the most 
 sublime scene of human history ."2° Ananda, weeping beside 
 the Master he had so faithfully served, is reported to have 
 sung this song: 
 
 "For five-and-twenty years a learner I; 
 No sensual consciousness arose in me. 
 O see the seemly order of the Norm ! 
 For five-and-twenty years a learner I; 
 No hostile consciousness arose in me. 
 
 see the seemly order of the Norm ! 
 
 For five-and-twenty years on the Exalted One 
 
 1 waited, serving him by loving deeds. 
 And like his shadow followed after him. 
 For five-and-twenty years on the Exalted One 
 
 " "The Essence of Japanese Buddhism," p. 27. 
 
72 Gotama Buddha 
 
 I waited, serving him with loving speech, 
 And like his shadow followed after him. 
 For five-and-twenty years on the Exalted One 
 I waited, serving him with loving thoughts. 
 And like his shadow followed after him. 
 When pacing up and down, the Buddha walked. 
 Behind his back I kept the pace alway; 
 And when the Norm was being taught, in me 
 Knowledge and understanding of it grew. 
 But I am one who yet has work to do, 
 A learner with a mind not yet matured; 
 And now the Master hence hath passed away. 
 Who e'er to me such sweet compassion showed I"'''- 
 
 The other disciples, further advanced in the path of eman- 
 cipation, were more stoical and Anuruddha came to Ananda's 
 help, realizing, it would seem, that the only way to comfort him 
 was to keep him busy. He sent him off to summon the Mallas, 
 and to prepare the funeral pyre. Surrounding tribes, the 
 Licchavis and others, as well as some of the neighboring 
 kings, including Ajatasattu, claimed a portion of the relics. 
 At first the Mallas were unwilling to part with any of them, 
 but a Brahmin Dona, reminding them of the magnanimity 
 and forbearance of Gotama, chid their churlishness. So Gro- 
 tama Buddha's remains were divided into eight equal portions, 
 some of which are being unearthed today from their ancient 
 places of burial.^^ 
 
 The date of his death has been variously reckoned. Max 
 Muller placed it at 477 B. C, Oldenberg at 480 B. C, Kern at 
 370-380 B. C. Our materials for arriving at this date are the 
 Ceylon chronicles, and Greek and other evidence for the dates 
 
 ^Theragatha, 1039-104S, in Mrs. Rhys Davids's "Psalms of the Breth- 
 ren," p. 357. The "Norm" is the Dhamma or "Law." 
 
 ^ The great stone coffin discovered in the Nepalese Tarai by Mr. W. C. 
 Pepp6 in 1898 is held by some scholars to have contained relics of Gotama; 
 but Dr. Fleet has made a strong case for reading the inscription of the 
 small stupa contained in the coffin as follows: "This is a deposit of relics 
 of the Blessed One, of his brethren and their little sisters, their wives 
 and children" (Jomrnal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1906). And the 
 ornaments contained in the vessel are pathetic trinkets which we can well 
 imagine as adorning the little victims of Vidudabha's fury when he sacked 
 Kapilavatthu. They would be rather incongruous in the urn of the Lion 
 of the Sakyas! Yet very similar relics have recently been unearthed in 
 Peshawar. 
 
The Old Age and Death of Gotama 73 
 
 of the Mauryan Emperors Chandragupta and Asoka. Work- 
 ing at this evidence Cunningham in 1877 arrived at the date 
 260 B. C. for the anointing of Asoka, and the year 478 B. C. 
 for the death of Gotama. 
 
 The whole question has since been very thoroughly dis- 
 cussed, notably by Dr. J. F. Fleet,^ who places the death of 
 Gotama on October 13, 482 B. C. 
 
 The place is described as a sorry little town,^* and seems 
 to have lain at the confluence of the rivers Hiranyavati and 
 Achiravati, the modem Little Rapti and Gandak. Another 
 site which is more probable is near Kasia in the Gorakhpur 
 District, a spot regarded as one of highest sanctity from the 
 time of Asoka onwards. Several monasteries of various 
 dates besides other buildings and many votive stupas have 
 been built upon it, and Hiuen Tsian describes a colossal image 
 of the dying Buddha, which might well mark the exact spot. 
 But there are many doubtful points which still have to be 
 cleared up before this question can be decided with any meas- 
 ure of certainty. 
 
 What is far more important is that in the account of his 
 last days and death we have a document of whose authenticity 
 and early date there can be little doubt ;^° for it breathes the 
 very spirit of his life, and Ananda and the other principal ac- 
 tors in it are not the lay-figures of so many of the Suttas, 
 whose role is to say 'Yes, yes,' or 'No, no,' but figures of flesh 
 and blood infinitely pathetic as they gather, calmly for the 
 most part, yet with deep sadness, to catch the last words of 
 their great leader. Can we wonder that these words and those 
 poignant scenes were not allowed to pass unrecorded ? 
 
 It speaks much for the frankness of the records that they 
 tell us that no sooner had the Teacher passed away than the 
 monk Subhadda bade them cease their lamentations. "We are 
 well rid," said he, "of the great Sage. He harassed us by 
 his discipline. Now we are free to follow our own bent." 
 
 "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1909. 
 
 ^Jataka, in Cowell and Chalmers's translation, I. 231. 
 
 !* Dr. Rhys Davids calls it "the oldest and most reliable of our authori- 
 ties" and holds that it cannot be dated later than the fourth century B. C. 
 Yet in view of the large element of the miraculous in it, we must conceive 
 it as being edited by a later hand. 
 
74 Gotama Buddha 
 
 Here was another Devadatta, protesting that the discipline 
 was too severe, whereas the arch-schismatic had complained 
 that it was too lax ! But most of the Sangha were content to 
 follow their great Chief, and he died calmly confident that 
 his teachings would prevail. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SECRET OF GOTAMA 
 
 "Jettho Settho Lokassa" : The Honored Elder Brother of 
 Mankind. 
 
 No name is so honored throughout the East as that of 
 Gotama. No Indian name is so widely revered throughout 
 the world. 
 
 His teaching has inspired missionaries to go out to all neigh- 
 boring lands, where they have exerted an influence incal- 
 culably great as educators and philanthropists as well as 
 preachers; and today after many centuries of inertia his 
 disciples are beginning to propagate their religion in the West 
 and in India, where it has almost disappeared — ^though not 
 without leavening the thought and sweetening the life of her 
 peoples. What is the secret of Gotama's amazing success ? It 
 is to be found chiefly in his personality. As Dr. Hopkins 
 says: 
 
 "It was the individual Buddha that captivated men; it 
 was the teaching that emanated from him that fired enthusi- 
 asm; it was his position as an aristocrat that made him ac- 
 ceptable to the aristocracy, his magnetism that made him the 
 idol of the people. From every page stands out the strong, 
 attractive personality of this teacher and winner of hearts. 
 No man ever lived so godless yet so godlike. Arrogating 
 to himself no divinity, despairing of future bliss, but without 
 fear as without hope, leader of thought but despising lovingly 
 the folly of the world, exalted but adored, the universal 
 brother, he wandered among men, simply, serenely; with gen- 
 tle irony subduing them that opposed him, to congregation 
 after congregation speaking with majestic sweetness, the mas- 
 ter to each, the friend of all. His voice was singularly vi- 
 
76 
 
 Gotama Buddha 
 
 brant and eloquent ;'^ his very tones convinced the hearer, his 
 looks inspired awe. From the tradition it appears that he 
 must have been one of those whose personality alone suffices 
 to make a man not only a leader but a god to the hearts of 
 his fellows. When such an one speaks he obtains hearers. 
 It matters little what he says, for he influences the emotions, 
 and bends whoever listens to his will. But if added to this 
 personality, if encompassing it, there be the feeling in the 
 minds of others that what this man teaches is not only a verity, 
 but the very hope of their salvation ; if for the first time they 
 recognize in his words the truth that makes of slaves free 
 men, of classes a brotherhood, then it is hot difficult to see 
 wherein lies the lightning-like speed with which the electric 
 current passes from heart to heart. Such a man was Buddha, 
 such was the essential of his teaching; and such was the in- 
 evitable rapidity of Buddhistic expansion, and the profound 
 influence of the shock that was produced by the new faith 
 upon the moral consciousness of Buddha's people."^ 
 
 All students of that wonderful life will appreciate the sin- 
 cerity of this tribute, and most will be glad to endorse it. Of 
 Gotama's serenity, of his moral earnestness, of his sweet rea- 
 sonableness, of his compassion, of his wisdom, and above 
 all of his magnetic winsomeness, there can be no dispute. 
 That he planned wisely and built on strong foundations, the 
 history of Buddhism through twenty-five centuries proclaims.^ 
 
 That his disciples gave him a place which the modern 
 world, with all its admiration, must needs question is no less 
 evident. Let us consider a typical passage in the early Bud- 
 dhist tooks : 
 
 "At one time, as the Blessed One was wandering here and 
 there through the Kingdom of Kosala with a large following 
 of disciples, he came to a place called Sala, a Kosalan Brah- 
 min village. 
 
 "And the Brahmin householders of Sala heard tell: 'That 
 very ascetic, the venerable Gotama of the Sakyas, >yho 
 forsook his position among the Sakyas to lead the 
 
 > Cf. Kern, "The Lotus," III. 21, and Fausboll's Pariyama Sutta, 9 
 (1131), the "deep and lovely voice of Buddha," and Theragatha, CCXLIL, 
 "his voice divinely sweet"; also "Sacred Books of the East, XII. 58. 
 
 "Hopkins, "The Religions of India," pp. 32S, 326. 
 
 ' For a Buddhist poem admirably expressing this see "The Heart of 
 Buddhism," pp. 58-60. 
 
The Secret of Gotama J'j 
 
 homeless life, is traveling about Kosala with a large company 
 of followers, and has arrived at Sala, and the venerable Go- 
 tama enjoys this fair fame: "This is He, the Holy One, the 
 Perfect in Knowledge and in Conduct, the Auspicious, the 
 Knower of all the worlds, the Incomparable Trainer of men 
 that wish to be trained, the Teacher of gods and men, the 
 Awakened One, the Holy One ! And, having by his own 
 powers penetrated this world with its gods and Maras, and 
 Brahmas, its ascetics and recluses, the whole race of gods and 
 men. He makes known the same. He proclaims the Truth, 
 excellent in its inception, its progress, its culmination, accord- 
 ing to the spirit and according to the letter both. He preaches 
 the Holy Life, perfect and pure. Blessed it is to behold such 
 an Exalted One !" ' 
 
 "Then those Brahmin householders of Sala went whither 
 was the Blessed One, and drawing near, before taking their 
 seats respectfully at one side, some gave the Blessed One rev- 
 erential greeting, some exchanged the customary compliments 
 of friendship and civility, some extended folded hands towards 
 the Blessed One, some announced their names and families 
 to the Blessed One, whilst others took their seats in silence. 
 
 "Thus seated respectfully at one side, these Brahmin house- 
 holders of Sala now spake to the Blessed One as follows : 
 
 " 'For what reason, on what account is it, venerable Go- 
 tama, that some beings, upon the dissolution of the body after 
 death, go upon a sorry journey to ruin and woe in the hell- 
 world; and again, for what cause, do some beings, when the 
 body breaks up in death, go upon a happy journey to the 
 heavenly regions?' 
 
 "'On account of evil and unrighteous behavior, O house- 
 holders, for this cause it is that some beings after death come 
 to realms of woe, and because of good and righteous be- 
 havior, O householders, do other beings at the dissolution of 
 the body come to realms of bliss.' "* 
 
 We have only to read such a passage, one of many like it 
 in the Buddhist books, to be; struck by the contrast between 
 the elementary and simple doctrine of retribution given by the 
 teacher, and the extravagant titles lavished upon him by his 
 followers.^ 
 
 * "Discourses of Gotama Buddha," tr. by Silacara, II. 152, 153. 
 " Other claims made for Gotama by the canonical books are magical 
 powers enabling him to handle sun and moon, knowledge of his former 
 
yS Gotama Buddha 
 
 Whether we really believe that such language was used 
 during his lifetime or not, it is clear that it was adopted by 
 those who wrote and edited the books. How are we to account 
 for this astonishing promotion from the position of leader 
 of a band of ascetics to "teacher of gods and men"? Per- 
 sonal magnetism, moral prestige, and above all radiant confi- 
 dence in his discovery — these are the main elements in his 
 success. And to these we must add that the India of his day 
 was hungry for a way of finding peace and a way of escape 
 from rebirth; for to them, as to their descendants, "life was 
 but one stage of a measureless journey, whose way stretched 
 back through all the night of the past, and forward through 
 all the mystery of the future." And they were weary and 
 afraid. Here was a teacher confidently claiming to give 
 men the key to their shackles ! 
 
 The narrative which we have quoted here proceeds with an 
 elaboration by the teacher of his theme, and the detailed ap- 
 plication of it, and ends with the following instructive pas- 
 sages : 
 
 "And, if, householders, a man of good and righteous ways 
 of life shall wish: 'After death, may I be reborn among the 
 renowned of the warrior class !' or : 'May I be reborn among 
 the renowned of the priestly class!' or: 'May I be reborn 
 among the renowned householder class !* — ^this his wish may 
 well be fulfilled: he may indeed be reborn into an eminent 
 warrior or priestly or householder family, and why so ? Even 
 because he has been of good and righteous ways of life. 
 
 "Or if, householders, a man of good and righteous ways of 
 life should cherish the desire: 'O that after death I might 
 appear among the gods of the Four Great Kings, among the 
 gods of the Thirty-and-Three, among the gods of the Realm of 
 Yama or among the gods of any realm whatsoever, even up to 
 the Realm of Neither Perception nor non-Perception' — this 
 his desire might well be granted : he might indeed after death 
 appear among whatsoever gods he desires to appear. 
 
 "Or if, finally, a man of good and righteous ways of life 
 should thus aspire: 'O even in this present lifetime, by the de- 
 struction of the Banes, being freed from Bane, penetrating 
 
 existences, perfect insight into character. Cf. "Discourses," I. 87, 88. 
 Majjhima, II. 2, etc. 
 
The Secret of Gotama 79 
 
 and realizing for myself, may I attain to the Deliverance of 
 the Mind, the Deliverance that is through Wisdom !'— this 
 his aspiration may indeed be satisfied; he may indeed attain 
 in his present lifetime the Deliverance of the Mind that is 
 through Wisdom, and why so ? Even because he has been of 
 good and righteous ways of life."' 
 
 "In this world," says Laf cadio Heam, "to practice the high- 
 est virtue was difficult; and the great rewards were hard to 
 win. But for all good deeds a recompense was sure, and there 
 was no one who could not acquire merit."^ 
 
 These statements will help us to an understanding of the 
 extraordinary influence wielded by this great man during his 
 life, and of the rapidity with which he was promoted to a 
 place above the gods. For they show us that he spoke with 
 the calm conviction of the man of science; that whilst he 
 recognized the gods, he claimed to possess a veritable key of 
 heaven which would admit the good man into their company; 
 and above all, that he taught with the same calm authority 
 that higher than the life of any god was the life of Freedom 
 to be attained by the wise. "Become an expert in my doc- 
 trine," he said in effect, "and you will be above all gods !" In 
 a land of tropical imagination here was Reason speaking ; in a 
 land of subtle metaphysics here was a champion of morality ! 
 
 Set this serene teacher against the background of the India 
 of his day, already distracted and perplexed by a hundred con- 
 flicting teachings and by countless rival gods, and it is not very 
 difficult to understand the influence that he wielded. We find 
 today that the simple message of the unity of God carries 
 ready conviction amongst animistic peoples. Similarly the 
 preaching of cause and effect in the moral sphere on the lips 
 of a man of magnetic personality, and triumphant with the 
 sense that what he taught he had himself experienced, worked 
 like a charm in men's hearts; it set before them an ideal "at 
 once awful as law and humanly near and gracious as the 
 Master." Yet more potent than his preaching, and more con- 
 straining even than his personality, was the sense of emancipa- 
 tion and joy which radiated from him and his followers. 
 
 ' "Discourses of Gotama Buddha," tr. by Silacara, II. 158, 159. 
 '"Japan," p. 215. 
 
8o Gotama Buddha 
 
 Something of this contagious spirit of joy we may still catch 
 as we read the songs of his yellow-robed company. They 
 were as men who had been lost in a jungle-thicket, and had 
 found their way out to some quiet summit of the hills, austere, 
 yet invigorating and welcome after the stifling closeness of 
 those tropical forests. Their state of mind was not unlike 
 that of the Christian convert, of whom it has been said: 
 
 "There can scarcely be found in the world a joy equal to 
 this feeling of expansion. It is almost like the acquisition of 
 a new life. It is like what we can imagine the feeling of a 
 fish to be, if he has been left by the tide in a land-locked pool, 
 and begins to feel the flow of the returning waters; or what 
 we can suppose to be the delight of the dragon-fly when he 
 shuffles off the skin of his life in the pool and feels his wings 
 expanding for flight."* 
 
 "O free indeed ! O gloriously free ! The breath of Liberty 
 sweeps o'er my soul" — such is the paean of the early Bud- 
 dhists, monk and nun. 
 
 And whilst Gotama himself lived they had, no doubt, a 
 sense of personal devotion which in some measure made up 
 for the sense of that presence of the "Divine Lover," which 
 is so real a thing to the Christian mystic. 
 
 Did Gotama encourage such devotion? There are pas- 
 sages which would lead one to think that he saw in it a help 
 ready to hand to those who would tread the austere path along 
 which he sought to guide them, and yet were not ready for 
 austerity in its most Buddhistic heights! He certainly en- 
 couraged an attitude of Saddha (or faith), which means in 
 Buddhist psychology serene and glad confidence that all is 
 well, because the teaching is true and the teacher infallible.' 
 "The glad bhikkhu who puts his trust in the Buddha's preach- 
 ing, goes to Nibbana, calm and blissful end of rebirth."^* 
 
 So we find Kassapa attributing "faith" to Gotama himself: 
 he is saddhahattho mahWmuni, "the great Seer, who has faith 
 
 'Percy Gardner, "The Religious Experience of St. Paul," p. 38. 
 
 ■ See Childers's Pali Dictionary, p. 352. The words pasada, cittapasada, 
 and manopasada, are constantly used in the sense of faith in Buddha, 
 literally rejoicing because of the joy or peace of mind which faith in 
 Buddha brings with it. 
 
 ^'Dhp. 381. 
 
The Secret of Gotama 8i 
 
 as his hand"^i — a fine description, which reminds us of Go- 
 det's saying "Faith is the hand of the heart"— and in the same 
 poem Kassapa cries : "The Master has my fealty and love . . . 
 low have I laid the heavy load I bore" ; and we cannot doubt 
 that personal devotion to the teacher played a very great part 
 in his religion. "My heart is joined to him," says the aged 
 Pingiya, whose joy and solace was to see the Master with the 
 eyes of his mind.^^ 
 
 This devotion was in part the reverence and respect due to 
 him as Leader of the Sangha, and as "the most honored Elder 
 Brother of the world" :" but it did not lack a more romantic 
 and even passionate note. Sometimes Gotama would check 
 any such personal element in it, as when his followers wanted 
 to celebrate a festival in his honor, and he said drily, "Your 
 business is with morality," and certainly he would have dis- 
 approved of the title "beloved disciple" given by modern 
 writers to Ananda ; but a great and winsome personality has to 
 put up with the devotion he inspires, and perhaps even Gotama 
 realized that there are limits to human powers of repression ! 
 Devotion to this great teacher soon became the vital and cen- 
 tral thing in the new religion. The beloved leader became 
 not only deva, but devatideva, god of gods !^* "From the 
 beginning," says Dr. McNicol, "there was rendered to Buddha 
 what can only be described as worship, though it was not at 
 first a bhakti, a devotion. No place is found in the early 'Ve- 
 hicle' for grace or for prayer in any sense that religion can 
 recognize. But Buddha places himself in a relation to his 
 monks such as is bound to develop into a full-orbed worship 
 with a service of love when he says to them, 'Whoever would 
 wait upon me, he should wait upon the sick.' "^^ With this I 
 find myself in almost complete agreement; it is only of this 
 
 " Theragdiha, 1090. 
 
 " Sutta Nipata. 
 
 ^ "Jettho Settho Lokassa" — ^this is the name which seems to me most 
 clearly to express the correct attitude of his early followers towards Gotama. 
 
 " In the Itwuttaka, §22, Gotama is made to declare, "I reach the 
 empty palace of Brahma: I become myself Brahma omnipotent," and in 
 the Cullavagga ("Sacred Books of the East," XII. 58) he. is addressed as 
 "Sakka" — another Hindu god! 
 
 «> "Indian Theism," p. 71, quoting Mahavagga, VIII. 26 ("Sacred Books 
 of the East," XVII. 240). 
 
82 Gotama Buddha 
 
 application of the Buddha's saying that I am not quite sure — 
 for may it not be that this was one of the cases, and there 
 are many, in which he was gently seeking to disentangle the 
 tendrils of personal affection from himself? In support of 
 this view there are several incidents such as that of Vakkali, a 
 Brahmin convert who seems to have spent his time gazing at 
 Gotama, till he was courteously but firmly reminded that "He 
 who seeth the Teaching he it is who seeth the Teacher."^* 
 Gotama seems ever to have been restless in the presence of 
 the devotee ! He urged on all his followers energy and sturdy 
 effort, and such devotions may be enervating. 
 
 There is a passage in the Majjhima Nikaya, which makes 
 the matter quite clear: "Whosoever shall turn to me," says 
 Gotama, "with faith and love — ^he shall reach the heaven- 
 world. And whatsoever monks shall conform themselves to 
 the Teaching, walking in full faith — these shall attain to the 
 Full Awakening."*' 
 
 Devotion to the Teacher, in a word, will carry you far; 
 obedience to his Teaching alone will "see you through" to 
 Nibbdna. And it is certain that he encouraged more than 
 any other gift or practice, an earnest and mindful effort to fol- 
 low the austere doctrine he taught. "He who is near me," 
 says the Itivuttaka, "yet is covetous, lustful, and malevolent 
 is far from me." For with all his kindliness Gotama is an 
 austere figure; surgeon as well as physician ;*8 schoolmaster 
 as well as brother; king as well as friend.*" 
 
 He was by no means always gentle in his dealing with op- 
 ponents. Sometimes he realized that they were fools and 
 perverse, and left them severely alone ; thus when the brethren 
 of the monastery of Kosambi were wrangling he entreated 
 them, for the sake of their influence on the world at large, to 
 make up the quarrel, and when they were obdurate left them 
 abruptly, saying, "Truly these fools are infatuate; it is no 
 
 " Theragatha, CCV. 
 
 " "Discourses of Gotama," tr. by Silicara, I. 181. 
 
 " "I am the incomparable pbysician, who in healing cause pain," Iti- 
 vuttaka, §100. 
 
 •" "I am the incomparable King of the Dhamma, turning the irresistible 
 wheel," Mahavagga (Sacred Books of the East," XII). 
 
The Secret of Gotama 83 
 
 easy task to issue instructions to them/'^" At other times he 
 so cross-examined and harassed opponents by his remorseless 
 logic that they cried out, "A man might go unscathed to meet 
 an elephant in rut, but not to the Venerable Gotama ! A man 
 might go unscathed to a blazing fire, but not to the Venerable 
 Gotama ! A man might go unscathed to a formidable, poison- 
 ous reptile, but not to the Venerable Gotama !" To the hapless 
 Aggivessana he pointed out that the sweat was pouring from 
 him at the close of their dialogue 1^^ Nor did he hesitate 
 to catechize his own followers very thoroughly, pressing them 
 point by point to acknowledge that they had still some way 
 to travel upon the road to Attainment. He moves amongst 
 them with the ease and dignity of unquestioned authority, and 
 with straightforward bluntness at the very last, when Ananda 
 had ventured to comment upon the remarkable fact that in the 
 great assembly of the faithful there was not one who enter- 
 tained any doubt as to the doctrine of Gotama, he replies: 
 "You say this in faith, Ananda, but I say it because I know 
 it." 
 
 It is this kind of thing which has led to the impression that 
 he was pompous and very solemn. For example, the early 
 records say that he smiled for the first time in seven years 
 when he visited Kapilavatthu after his Enlightenment! The 
 traditional statues of him also show a digfnified and solemn 
 countenance, but there are some in which his face is lit with 
 a smile, and one would fain believe that these are truer to the 
 facts : thus Sunlta, whose story is told above, tells us that the 
 Master smiled on him. There are certainly sayings attributed 
 to him which are htmiorous enough; and it is significant that 
 several occur in the record of his last days; perhaps because 
 this record — the Mahapari-nibbana Sutta — is really early, and 
 (he figure of the Teacher was not yet conventionalized. Thus, 
 when Ananda asked how he should comport himself in 
 the presence of women, he replied, "Avoid them altogether" ; 
 and when the literal Ananda urged the point that sometimes 
 one might meet them unawares, "Then keep wide awake. 
 
 " Mahavagga, X. 2. , , . . , v 
 
 ^Yet he usually had a kind word for his opponent as soon as he 
 capitulated. 
 
84 
 
 Gotama Buddha 
 
 Ananda," replied the teacher.^^ And there is a pathetic yet 
 whimsical humor in some of the incidents already recorded. 
 There is a playfulness about his questioning of his followers 
 which reminds us at times of Socrates with his youthful disci- 
 ples. Much he had, too, of the Great Teacher's passion for 
 intellectual truth, and this can hardly be imaccompanied by a 
 sense of humor, which is after all largely a sense of propor- 
 tion. 
 
 There is, moreover, a pointedness and brevity about many 
 of the sayings attributed to Gotama which may fairly be called 
 humor, often of a grim kind enough : 
 
 "A man is not wise through much speaking." 
 "To see another's fault is easy : hard is it to see one's own." 
 "No man is made an 'elder' by his grey locks : mere old age 
 is called empty old age." 
 
 " 'Here will I pass the wet season, here the winter and 
 summer' thinks the fool unmindful of what may befall. Then 
 comes Death and sweeps him hence." 
 
 "Better swallow a ball of iron heated red, than to live un- 
 worthy on the alms of the faithful."^^ 
 
 "As one who wraps up stinking fish in a wisp of fragrant 
 grass, so is he who keepeth company with fools."^* 
 
 We must believe, then, that his solemn and earnest teach- 
 ings were not unlit by humor of a grim kind, and that this 
 went far to relieve the austerity of the Teacher, and a cer- 
 tain graciousness and intimacy of tone when with his disci- 
 ples do still more to convince us that it was a very human 
 figure whom they reverenced and even worshiped. 
 
 As he lay dying he asked them, it will be remembered, cer- 
 tain questions: and when they remained silent he sought to 
 put them at their ease: "Maybe it is from reverence to the 
 Teacher that ye keep silence: let us rather speak as friend 
 to friend."25 
 
 ^ Yet it is fair to add that later accounts, e.g. the Burmese, add the 
 beautiful words, "When, however, you must speak to women, consider 
 them, if they are aged, as mothers, and if they are young, treat them as 
 sisters." There has been progress in Buddhist lands as elsewhere in this 
 matter, till in Burma there is real partnership between man and wife. 
 
 ^ Dhammapada, 258, 252, 260, 286, 297. Translation by Wagiwara and 
 Saunders. 
 
 ^IHvuttaka, 76. 
 
 ® Mahapari~nibbdna Sutta. 
 
The Secret of Gotama 85 
 
 For in a land where all are courteous Gotama was pre- 
 eminent for courtesy ;^^ and in a land where humility is always 
 honored he was, in spite of the tremendous claims made on his 
 behalf, great in his humility. 
 
 =» The Milinda Pafiha quotes Sariputta as saying, "The Blessed One 
 was always perfect in courtesy." ("Sacred Books of the East," XXXV. 
 229.) 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 GOTAMA AS TEACHER 
 
 The gift of the Teaching excels all other gifts. — Dhatn- 
 mapada 354. 
 
 We have seen that Gotama claimed to be "King of the 
 Dhamma," and it is as a teacher of morals that he must be 
 finally judged. It is so that he viewed his own mission; like 
 Socrates he was a physician of the soul, and an3i;hing that 
 did not tend to moral health he ignored. In this sphere he 
 claims to teach as one who is himself without fault, and it 
 was largely his moral prestige which won for him so ready 
 a hearing. This claim, explicitly made in many passages such 
 as those quoted above,^ is implied in several of his sayings: 
 "Does this man, himself a slave to desire," he asks concern- 
 ing a skeptical monk, "claim to excel the teaching of the Mas- 
 ter P"^ and that teaching was almost exclusively concerned 
 with the moral life and its reward. 
 
 Gotama was not a social reformer except in the secondary 
 sense which is true of all religious and moral teachers; he is 
 said, in fact, to have warned some of his monks to avoid the 
 example of certain heretics who were acting also as doctors.' 
 Their task was to administer a moral tonic : let them see to it ! 
 
 Nor was he a teacher of philosophy; again and again he 
 insists that he has no concern with metaphysics, and when 
 men press him for information on such high and difficult mat- 
 ters as the origin of the world, he refuses to discuss them. 
 
 "It is, Brothers, as if a man were pierced through by a 
 poisoned arrow, and his friends, companions, and near rela- 
 
 1 See also Anguttara NikSya, IV. 82, quoted by Poussin, "Opinions," 
 p. 142. 
 
 'Samyutta NikSya, III. 103. Ibid., p. 149. 
 
 'Tevijja Sutta ("Sacred Books of the East," XI. 200). 
 
Gotama as Teacher 87 
 
 tives called in a surgeon, and he should say, 'I will not have 
 this arrow pulled out until I know who the man is that has 
 wounded me; whether he is of the royal caste or of the 
 priests' caste, a citizen or a servant'; or else he should say, 
 'I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know who the 
 man is that has wounded me, whether he is tall or short, or 
 of medium height'; verily. Brothers, such an one would die 
 ere he could sufficiently get to know all this."* 
 
 So convinced was he that these metaphysical speculations 
 were unprofitable that on one occasion he departed from his 
 habitual reverence for the gods to tell a story of the visit 
 of one of his disciples to Brahma, who, after several vain 
 attempts at parrying the questions, confessed that he had no 
 answer to give and sent him back to Gotama who alone 
 could satisfy him. To whom Gotama spoke with kindly 
 irony, "As a bird whom sailors loose to discover land, comes 
 back if it fail to find it, so having failed to find the truth 
 from Brahma thou returnest to me."^ Gotama's real attitude 
 to Brahma is probably best indicated in the Tevijja Sutta, 
 where he laughs at the Brahmin claim to have communion 
 with Brahma and says in immortal words, "To pervade the 
 world with kindliness, pity, sympathy, and equable feeling — 
 that is the way to union with Brahma." 
 
 In another place he discusses six current views about the 
 soul and describes them as "mere views, a snare of views, a 
 labyrinth of views, a puppet-show of views, a tangle of views, 
 in which the worldling, ignorant of the truth, is entangled so 
 that he cannot be freed from rebirth, from decay, and death, 
 from sorrow, lamentation, and despair." 
 
 Gotama, then, looked upon himself as a physician,^ who had 
 a practical cure to offer men, and inasmuch as all were sick 
 he felt the urgency and greatness of his task. In his diagno- 
 sis all men suffer because all sin; if they would be free from 
 suffering they must free themselves from sin. Asked how this 
 is done, he replies that it can only be by strenuous effort, each 
 
 * Majjhima Nikdya, I. 8. 
 ' Dlgha Nikaya, I. 215. 
 
 • Buddha-ghosa's Commentary on the Pirit calls Gotama "physician" 
 because he cures the disease of desire with the medicine of Dhammo; and 
 "surgeon" because he amputates false views. 
 
88 Gotama Buddha 
 
 man for himself. This is cold comfort, but he grasped the 
 all-important truth that such things as greed, anger, delusion, 
 have their lodging in the mind and heart, and he gave sane 
 and practical advice as to how they may be dislodged. Thus 
 in the Majjhima Nikaya he lays down five methods of ex- 
 pelling evil thoughts -J 
 
 1. By replacing them with wholesome thoughts: 
 
 2. By manfully facing evil ideas and seeing how unwhole- 
 some and pernicious and sorrow-fraught they are: 
 
 3. By refusing to pay attention to them: 
 
 4. By analyzing them and seeing of what they are really 
 composed : 
 
 5. By suppressing them "with clenched teeth and tongue 
 pressed against the g^ums." 
 
 It is to strenuous self-control that he calls his disciples, and 
 that is the central meaning of the elaborate system of medita- 
 tion and mind-culture which the Sangha carefully built up. 
 "May muscle, skin, and sinews, may bones, flesh, and blood 
 shrivel and dry up rather than I should abandon my efforts 
 while as yet I have not attained to all that is attainable by 
 human perseverance, energy, and effort. This, Brothers, is 
 right effort." 
 
 Right effort is to be assisted by a method of analysis which 
 is essential to the system of Gotama. The good Buddhist 
 is to contemplate his own body and analyze it with anatomical 
 mind, until he is convinced that it is built up of so many bones, 
 so many muscles, so many nerves, and so forth. Then he is 
 to contemplate the foulness of these things: "The body has 
 hair on the head, is covered with hair, has nails, and teeth, skin 
 and flesh, bones and marrow, liver and intestines ; it has cer- 
 tain juices, secretions and excretions." This analysis leads 
 to disgust and detachment. Or the disciple is to go further: 
 
 "And further still. Brothers, just as if the disciple should 
 see a corpse lying on the burial ground, one day dead, or two 
 or three days dead, swollen up, blue-black in color, a prey to 
 corruption, he concludes as regards himself, 'My body also 
 shall so become, has a like destiny, cannot escape it.' 
 
 ''Majjhima Nikaya, 20. 
 
Gotama as Teacher 89 
 
 "And further still, Brothers, just as if the disciple should 
 see a corpse lying in the burial ground, picked to pieces by 
 crows, or ravens, or vultures, stripped of its flesh by dogs or 
 jackals, or gnawed by all kinds of worms, he concludes as re- 
 gards himself 'And my body also shall so become, has a like 
 destiny, cannot escape it' "' 
 
 Buddhism has been called "the religion of analysis," and 
 its claims to psychological exactitude are deservedly recog- 
 nized, for Gotama was an intuitive psychologist of no mean 
 order. Yet in this method of arousing disgust modern psy- 
 chology will find a strangely perverse attempt to play off the 
 instinct of repulsion and the accompanying emotion of disgust 
 against other emotions and instincts which are of more abid- 
 ing value for the religious life. 
 
 And in considering Gotama as teacher we are bound to ask 
 such questions as these: Does this method of analysis not de- 
 stroy all it touches ? And is it not better to sublimate the in- 
 stincts and emotions than to repress them? The Buddhist 
 method of analysis would reduce the works of Shakespeare 
 to a combination of thirty-six little black marks on a white 
 ground ! And with our modem knowledge of the material 
 universe it would reduce the starry firmament to a combina- 
 tion of chemical elements. This kind of analysis does not 
 arrive at religious truth. If it be urged that Gotama's object 
 was to rouse men to disgust for the things which he analyzed, 
 e.g. the human body and mind, it is surely a fair reply that the 
 instinct of curiosity and the emotion of wonder are of greater 
 worth to religion and morality than the instinct of repulsion 
 and the emotion of disgust, and one has only to compare these 
 strange analytic passages in which Buddhism deals with the 
 body, with the reverence and wonder of the 139th Psalm, or 
 with the plea of St. Paul : "Know ye not that your body is the 
 temple of the Holy Spirit ?" to realize that in its desire to stab 
 the soul awake, Buddhist teaching is guilty of the reductio ad 
 ahsurdum of the method of analysis. 
 
 This method Gotama sought to apply to practical pur- 
 pose. In the first place he tried by it to eradicate anger and 
 
 ' Digha Nikaya, 22. 
 
90 Gotama Buddha 
 
 hatred. "Tell me, friend," he says to one who is cherishing 
 resentment, "with whom art thou offended? Is it with the 
 hair of his head that thou art wroth, or with his finger nails, 
 or with any part of his physical frame, or is it with any part 
 of the elements of his consciousness that thou art angry?"* 
 In the second place he applied the method to the eradication oi 
 sex passion : 
 
 "Suppose that there is a maiden of the warrior or the 
 brahmin or the householder class, in all the charm of her fif- 
 teen or sixteen summers; not too tall, not too short, not too 
 slim, not too stout, not too dark, not too fair — is she not at 
 this period at her very loveliest in form and feature ? What- 
 soever pleasure and satisfaction arises at the sight of this 
 beauty and loveliness — ^that is of the delights of form. . . . 
 
 "Suppose that, after a time, one sees this sjime sister when 
 she is eighty or ninety or. a hundred years old, broken-down, 
 crooked as a rooftree rafter, bowed, tottering along leaning 
 on a staff, wasted, withered, all wrinkled and blotched, with 
 broken teeth, grey hair, trembling head. What think ye, 
 monks? That former loveliness of form and feature — ^has it 
 not disappeared and given place to wretchedness ? 
 
 "Again, should one see this sister, sick, suffering, sore af- 
 flicted, lying fouled in her own filth, lifted up by others, 
 tended by others — what think ye, monks? Is not that which 
 aforetime was beauty and loveliness wholly departed, and in 
 its place, wretchedness? 
 
 "Again, should one see this sister after the body has 
 been lying at the burial-place one, two, or three days, bloated, 
 discolored, putrefying, picked at by crows and hawks and 
 vultures, gnawed by dogs and jackals, and all manner of 
 crawling things. Or should one see the body, when it is a 
 mere blood-bespattered skeleton, hung with rags of flesh, or 
 when the bones are all scattered this way and that; or when, 
 white as a sea shell, they are flung together in a heap; or 
 when, after the lapse of a year, they are all weathered away 
 to dust. What think ye, monks? All that grace and beauty 
 which was aforetime — is it not wholly fled, and in its place, 
 wretchedness ? But this is the wretchedness of form."" 
 
 » Visuddhi Magga, IX. Warren, "Buddhism in Translations," p. 159. 
 ""Dialogues of Gotama," tr. by Silacara, I. Ill, 112. 
 
Gotama as Teacher 91 
 
 May we not ask whether such reasoning can really hope to 
 succeed when the floodgates of passion are opened, and 
 yvhether it is indeed desirable that it should? It is surely 
 a radical fault in the method of Gotama as teacher that he 
 dealt too summarily with the natural and primary instincts 
 and emotions, which a great teacher must sublimate and not 
 suppress. "There are two ways in which a practical moral- 
 ist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of 
 the world, either by a demonstration of the world's vanity, 
 so that the heart shall be prevailed upon to withdraw its re- 
 gard from an object which is not worthy of it; or by setting 
 forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its at- 
 tachment; so that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to 
 resign an old affection which shall have nothing to succeed it, 
 but to exchange an old affection for a new one." In these 
 words, spoken a hundred years ago, Thomas Chalmers began 
 his famous sermon, now chiefly known by its title, "The ex- 
 pulsive power of a new affection." "From the constitution 
 of our nature," he went on, "the former method is alto- 
 gether incompetent and ineffectual . . . for the heart must 
 have something to cling to, and never by its own voluntary 
 consent will it so denude itself of all its attachments that there 
 shall not be one remaining object that can draw or solicit it. 
 . . . The love of the world cannot be expunged by a mere 
 demonstration of the world's worthlessness, but may it not be 
 supplanted by the love of that which is more worthy than it- 
 self?" 
 
 These words ring true. They spring from a study of the 
 method of Jesus of Nazareth, and they are entirely borne out 
 by psychological science. Gotama seems to have ignored 
 entirely the fact that there is a noble anger and a noble love 
 of woman, and he dealt too summarily also with other in- 
 stincts and emotions. Take, for example, the parental in- 
 stinct and the tender emotion which accompanies it. Very 
 early in his career the people of Magadha cried out that he 
 was filling the land with widows and orphans, and while it is 
 true that he pointed the laity to lives of filial piety, yet home 
 life he placed on a lower plane, considering it at best a prep- 
 
92 Gotama Buddha 
 
 aration for that higher Order, the celibate life of the Sangha. 
 It may be urged that within the Sangha the parental instinct 
 was given free play in the care for the sick and the teaching 
 of other people's children; it is true that Sariputta is de- 
 scribed as caring specially for the sick, but this was irregu- 
 lar.^i and there is little evidence to show that the Sangha of 
 those days were schoolmasters as they are today in Burma; 
 indeed, their wandering life precluded any regular teaching 
 of the young or any other systematic philanthropy. Bud- 
 dhism in fact teaches benevolence rather than beneficence on 
 the part of the monk. 
 
 Or again, take the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of 
 anger. The great religious teachers whom we know as the 
 "prophets" of Israel sublimated this instinct and gave to their 
 people a moral equivalent for war by their preaching of so- 
 cial righteousness, and by their fierce denunciation of the 
 oppressor and the extortioner; but righteous anger is un- 
 thinkable in the Buddhist system. Gotama sought to sup- 
 press anger altogether as a part of that complex root of all 
 sorrow that he called Tanhd. So often does he call for the 
 eradication of greed, anger, and lust that most Western 
 writers hold that he aimed at the extinction of all desire, and 
 in a famous passage he says: "When greed, anger, and hate 
 have been rooted out, then the actions due to them are torn out 
 as a palm tree uprooted from the soil, and do not lead to 
 future rebirth." "Hence, O Brothers, one may rightly say 
 of me, 'The ascetic Gotama teaches negation, the ascetic Go- 
 tama teaches annihilation,' for certainly. Brothers, I teach an- 
 nihilation — the annihilation namely, of Greed, the annihila- 
 tion of Anger, the annihilation of Delusion, as well as the 
 annihilation of the manifold evil, unwholesome conditions of 
 the mind." 
 
 Though Gotama did not really aim at the extinction of all 
 desire, but of all desire which is not consistent with the Bud- 
 dhist system, yet that covers most of the field of human af- 
 fection ! 
 
 The disciples of modern Buddhism do not dispute that it is a 
 
 ^ Cf. passage quoted above from the Tevijja Sutta. 
 
Gotama as Teacher 93 
 
 coldly reasonable system. "It is true," says Paul Dalkhe, 
 "that there breathes about this system something of the cold- 
 ness of mathematics; on the other hand there lives in it that 
 purest and sublimest beauty, that taintless beauty, which be- 
 longs only to mathematics."^^ ]y[ost gf ^g ^jn j,g forgiven 
 if the pure and sublime beauty of mathematics has eluded us, 
 and the parallel is particularly apt, for whilst the higher math- 
 ematics do make their appeal to a few peculiarly constituted 
 minds, they leave the majority of us cold; and in any case they 
 are not a good substitute for religion ! The modern Buddhist 
 has to confess sorrowfully that for the great bulk of man- 
 kind, the teachings of Gotama are too high and austere. It 
 will be remembered that he himself realized after his Eri^ 
 lightenment that this must necessarily be so, and we are 
 told that it took a visit of Brahma himself to overcome his 
 hesitation on setting forth to preach his new doctrine. For 
 "There are some whose eyes are only a little darkened with 
 dust, and they will perceive the truth." What if this dust of 
 desire be good and not evil ? What if man is intended to be a 
 lover, and his passions and instincts are part of that great 
 plan of the universe which Gotama seems at times so clearly 
 to recognize? 
 
 Yet though he dealt summarily with the emotions he is not 
 to be regarded as a merely negative teacher. He sought to 
 inculcate wisdom of a practical nature, and to turn men into 
 paths of practical goodness, and he did it by an appeal to their 
 reason. This becomes immediately clear if we will contrast 
 the narratives of the conversion of some of the Buddhist 
 saints, such as Sariputta, with that of some of the saints of 
 Christianity. Buddhist conversion consists very often in a 
 calm realization that the law of cause and effect is universal 
 and that suffering and transiency are the law of the universe. 
 This realization Gotama calls the essential knowledge^* and 
 holds up as the principle of life. It is knowledge of the four 
 Noble Truths, and men have but to face the facts of life to 
 
 ""Buddhist Essays," E. T., p. 189. 
 
 " For a comparison of Buddhist and Christian ideals see the verses 
 "St. Francis and Gotama" (Appendix I), and my "Buddhist Ideals." 
 
94 Gotama Buddha 
 
 realize their truth. So Gotama teaches. Take the fact of 
 sorrow : 
 
 "What think you, Brothers? Which is greater, the floods 
 of tears which, weeping and wailing you have shed upon this 
 long way, ever and again hastening towards new birth and 
 new death, united to the undesired, separated from the de- 
 sired, this, or the waters of the Four Great Seas? 
 
 "Long time. Brothers, have you suffered the death of a 
 mother, for long the death of a father, for long the death of 
 a son, for long the death of a daughter, for long the death 
 of brothers and sisters; long time have ye undergone the loss 
 of your goods, long time have you been afflicted with disease. 
 And because you have experienced the death of a mother, the 
 death of a father, the death of a son, the death of a daughter, 
 the death of brothers and sisters, the loss of goods, the pangs 
 of disease, having been united with the undesired and sepa- 
 rated from the desired, you have verily shed more tears upon 
 this long way — hastening from birth to death, from death to 
 birth — ^than all the waters that are held in the Four Great 
 Seas." 
 
 And if this be so, the logical mind will take the next step 
 and will show that all this sorrow must have a cause, and will 
 be ready to agree with Gotama that the cause of the suffer- 
 ing is to be found in that clinging to existence, and that at- 
 tachment to transient things like family affection! But he 
 may also agree with Eben Holden that "Affections are a 
 sing'lar kind of property : No good f er anything till ye've gi'n 
 'em away!" 
 
 As to the third truth, that the way to get rid of sorrow 
 is to get rid of its cause (tanM), that also is logical enough, 
 and as to the Noble Eight-Fold Path, high and austere as it is, 
 it is one possible road along which he who seeks freedom from 
 pain may pass. 
 
 But most would agree that the system sprang from a mind 
 obsessed with the pain of life, and blind to its many joys. 
 "Minnit a man stops lookin' fer trouble," says Eben Holden, 
 "happiness will look fer him." But by a principle of selective 
 attention, Gotama fixes upon the sorrowful things, and takes 
 as an axiom that what is transient must needs be painful ! 
 
Gotama as Teacher 95 
 
 And we may trace in his teachings on this subject the perma- 
 nent effects of a shock to a sensitive nature of the first meet- 
 ing with old age, disease, and death, which is so vividly re- 
 corded in the legend of the Four Visions which came to him 
 at Kapilavatthu : 
 
 "How can you laugh, how can you feel delight in earthly 
 things? Did you never see among you a man or a woman, 
 eighty, ninety, or a hundred years old, decrepit, crooked as a 
 gable-roof, bowed forward, supported on a staff, staggering 
 along with tottering steps, wretched, youth long since fled, 
 toothless, bleached hair hanging in wisps over the blotched 
 and wrinkled brow? And did the thought never come to you 
 then: 'I also am subject to Decay; by no means can I escape 
 
 "Did you never see amongst you men or women who, laden 
 with grievous disease, twisted with pain, wallowed in their 
 own filth, and when they had been lifted up-, were obliged to 
 lie down again ? And did the thought never come to you then : 
 'I also am subject to Disease; by no means can I escape it'? 
 
 "Did you never see amongst you a corpse that had lain 
 for one, two, or three days, swollen up, blue-black in color, 
 a prey to corruption, and did the thought never come to you 
 then : 'I also am subject to Death ; by no means can I escape 
 it' ?"** 
 
 So it is today, and in Buddhist lands the cry "Anicca 
 Dukkhd Anatta" rings out like the solemn tolling of a mon- 
 astery bell, calling men away from that which is fleeting, sor- 
 rowful, and without abiding reality. 
 
 When we study in more detail the psychological method 
 of Buddhism, we find that there are seven elements of En- 
 lightenment (Bojjhanga) which are bom of solitude and de- 
 tachment, and which lead to freedom; these are Attentive- 
 ness, Penetrating Insight, Energy, Interest, Calmness, Con- 
 centration, and Equanimity. In other words, the state of 
 mind which is advocated is one of concentrated attention, or a 
 bringing of the mind to a point with energy and a calm aloof- 
 ness from all things irrelevant. Buddhist psychology delights 
 in classification; thus, in addition to these seven elements of 
 
 ^^Angtittara Nikaya. 
 
96 
 
 Gotama Buddha 
 
 enlightenment, there are six super-normal sciences to be at- 
 tained by Buddhist mind culture; there are five hindrances 
 which prevent the right frame of mind, and so on. The six 
 Abhiiina or super-normal powers that follow upon the right 
 practice of trances and meditation are: 
 
 1. The power to produce magical effects or to work mir- 
 acles. 
 
 2. The heavenly ear by which one can hear what takes 
 place in heaven as well as on earth. 
 
 3. The knowledge by which one sees into the hearts and 
 minds of other beings. 
 
 4. The memory of previous existences. 
 
 5. The heavenly eye by which one is enabled to see the 
 causes of rebirth, to realize why it is that some are born base 
 and some noble, some beautiful and some ugly, some rich and 
 others poor. 
 
 6. The power to put an end to illusion and to attain, even 
 in this life, deliverance through wisdom. 
 
 This at once makes it clear that while in its general teach- 
 ing Buddhism is simple and open to all the world — "One 
 thing only do I teach, O Brothers, suffering and deliverance 
 from suffering" — ^yet it is in these higher reaches as difficult 
 and obscure as any other system of mysticism, a religion for 
 the virtuoso rather than for the man in the street. The 
 primitive narratives are shot through with these ideas, but 
 to see them fully developed one must study the commentaries 
 of the schoolmen of Buddhism, to be found in the Abhidhamma 
 and especially in two volumes available to English readers: 
 "A Compendium of Philosophy" edited by the Burmese 
 scholar, Shwe Zan Aung : and "Buddhist Psychology" by Mrs. 
 Rhys Davids. Indeed, they are to be found nowhere but in 
 such books. By universal consent the adherents of Buddhism 
 today, except perhaps in the Zen sect of Japan (and there in 
 a very much modified form), have given up seeking to prac- 
 tice these inner things of their religion, and this fact must be 
 weighed as we try to estimate the greatness of Gotama as a 
 teacher. 
 
 When we contemplate his compassion to all living things, 
 his calm dignity, and the conviction with which he spoke. 
 
Gotama as Teacher 97 
 
 when we realize the greatness of his influence, not only upon 
 those with whom he came in contact but upon unnumbered 
 millions during 2,500 years, we cannot but acclaim him 
 as one of the greatest figures in human history. Yet the 
 biographer must record the failure as well as the success 
 of his hero, and facts must be faced: there is something 
 in Gotama's system which in the end of the day spells 
 failure, or rather it lacks that one thing which alone can 
 guarantee success — a true idea of God. He seems to have 
 trembled on the verge of the great discovery which makes 
 the Hebrew prophets such great and heroic figures and which 
 makes their teaching immortal: the flaming certainty that 
 God is righteous and loving. But Gotama drew back from 
 this conclusion, and deliberately concentrated his attention 
 upon man. A disciple has said of him, "He was most godless, 
 and yet most godlike."^^ He was certainly a rationalist. He 
 recognized, it is true, that there were gods, and he even 
 hinted at his belief in a supreme God, but the religious leaders 
 of his people did not seem to know of a God at once supremely 
 righteous and supremely loving; the bright figures of the Vedic 
 Pantheon were not such as he could worship, and though for a 
 moment Varuna had loomed large in the religious mind of 
 his people, he had somehow fallen once more into the back- 
 ground. Thus Gotama seems to have argued: "We cannot 
 know the supreme God; let us at any rate behave as we may 
 suppose that he would behave. Let us ignore anything except 
 humanity; but let us raise humanity to the highest level we 
 can discern for it. If there is any way to union with Brahma 
 it is by way of kindliness to men." 
 
 But a true doctrine of man and a right attitude to men flow 
 from a right view of God ! There is abundant proof outside 
 Buddhism that he who does not know God cannot know or 
 really love man, and where Gotama has failed as a teacher, it is 
 because he has taken the sane and human view of his subject 
 rather than the romantic and divine ! "God," it has been said, 
 "is incurably romantic," and it is only when we realize this that 
 we know how to deal with men. And so when we study the 
 
 " Lakshmi Narasu, apparently quoting Dr. E. W. Hopkins. 
 
98 Gotama Buddha 
 
 history of Buddhism we find that its early ethic is too coldly 
 reasonable, too severely logical for human nature. It may be 
 quite reasonable to leave parents, wife, and child whilst one 
 seeks one's own salvation. But is it "cricket"?^' 
 
 In the realm of logic itself Gotama is, moreover, not entirely 
 successful. Let us consider his teaching concerning free 
 will — a problem which every ethical teacher must needs face. 
 It is clear that he took man's freedom as axiomatic. When 
 we find him dealing with rival teachers, we note that he is 
 most severe upon those who teach a doctrine of determin- 
 ism. He would agree with his follower, Purana Kassapa, who 
 argued against Ajita of the Hair-Blanket, that his materialist 
 doctrine destroys all personal responsibility; for if it is true 
 "there is no guilt to the murderer, the thief, and the adul- 
 terer."" 
 
 Concerned p.s early Buddhism was with morality, it must 
 combat any doctrine which imperiled a sense of personal re- 
 sponsibility ; yet Gotama at times himself came perilously near 
 to determinism, and we must needs test his work as a teacher 
 by the consistency and sanity of his handling of this central 
 problem. The problem of Karma as he found it in India was 
 a mathematical doctrine of retribution and reward: "As a 
 man soweth so shall he reap" either in this world or in his 
 next rebirth, and he reaps not only happiness or sorrow, but 
 also the dispositions which make for happiness or sorrow. 
 Gotama accepted all this; according to his teaching, Kamma, 
 as he called the doctrine, "explains everything that concerns 
 'the world of living beings' (Sattvaloka) , inhabitants of hell, 
 animals, ghosts, men, and gods ; the power of gods and kings, 
 the physical beauty of women, the splendid tail of peacocks, 
 the moral dispositions of everyone."^* Is man then free ? Yes, 
 for destiny is the power of one's own actions: these are at 
 
 '" Cf. the typical sentiment of an early Bhikkhtt: "I have vomited forth all 
 desires, loves, hates. For my own sake have I done so, not for any 
 others' sake." Therag&thS. 
 
 First get rid of egoism, then you will have room for altruism — is the 
 logic of these early days. Only later did Buddhists realize that the second 
 is the way to the first. 
 
 ""Dialogues of Gotama Buddha," I. 71-73. 
 
 "De la Vallfe Poussin, "The Way to Nirvana," p. 94. 
 
Gotama as Teacher 99 
 
 once "man's inheritance, the womb which bears him, and the 
 refuge to which he must resort."^' Yet each action is pre- 
 determined by disposition, and disposition is predetermined 
 by past action — largely yet not wholly; there is still a loop- 
 hole for free will. By "a most happy contradiction" Go- 
 tama accepts the doctrine that "what we have been makes us 
 what we are," but keeps attached to it the doctrine that we 
 are free to do good, for he is really more physician than 
 mathematician, and what really matters is that we should 
 strive with energy to combat whatever works against vir- 
 tue, whether our own inherited disposition or our evil en- 
 vironment. As we have seen, he was led to reject any theory 
 of a transmigrating soul, and any doctrine of an "over-soul" 
 in which it must one day be merged : for he wanted to throw 
 upon man himself the responsibility for his own actions, and 
 to convince him at any price that he must work out his own 
 salvation; the direction of each "stream" is self-determined; 
 even if the "undercurrent" from the past be very strong and 
 seem at times to exert an overwhtelming force. 
 
 This, his doctrine of Kamma, is "the root of morality," and 
 if we cannot convince ourselves that he succeeded in recon- 
 ciling the claims of free will with those of predetermination, 
 his followers would reply, "His purpose was not to teach 
 metaphysics but to inculcate strenuous morality; and, besides, 
 other teachers of ethics are equally open to criticism. Go- 
 tama is not the only moralist who had failed to reconcile these 
 claims." 
 
 We agree. Short of the solution of Jesus that there is a 
 divine grace yearning to help us overcome the tremendous 
 forces of heredity and environment which are too often 
 ranged against us — that the Righteous Ruler of the Universe 
 has a Father's heart, and that He who sets man his prob- 
 lem is anxious to help him to solve it — short of this, there 
 is no solution yet offered to mankind. And Christians will 
 be very gentle with the Buddhist solution when they con- 
 sider that some even of their fellow-Christians are content 
 to be agnostic like Gotama as to any ultimate reconciliation 
 
 "Maiihima NikSya, III. 203. 
 
loo Gotama Buddha 
 
 between free will and predestination. If Gotama did not 
 succeed in a logical solution, he attempted to base his ethical 
 system on reason and did succeed in effecting in his own con- 
 duct a practical combination of benevolence and self-interest — 
 a benevolence which whilst it is self-regarding is not selfish, 
 and which while it is based on reason avoids calculation. 
 
 Cold and mathematical as is the ethic of Gotama, yet 
 through it there gleams the wintry sunshine of a higher and 
 more passionate teaching: he seems at times to realize that 
 one emotion can only be cast out by another. "Never by hate 
 does hatred cease: by kindness only does it cease," says the 
 Dhammapada, and side by side with a reasonable self -culture 
 goes a reasoned benevolence. Perhaps we may express it 
 thus : The ethic of Gotama is like a radiant butterfly just strug- 
 gling out of the chrysalis. One wing is quite free — ^the wing 
 of Wisdom ; one is still only partially disentangled — the wing 
 of Love or Benevolence. 
 
 In the Majjhima Nikaya there is a discourse entitled "The 
 Saw" which is much less stereotyped and formal than many 
 of the discourses, and contains some admirable illustrations 
 which are full of quaint humor. The occasion of it was that 
 one of the leaders had become closely associated with the nuns, 
 and when people spoke slightingly of them used to get very 
 angry. Gotama sent for him. Very gently he showed him 
 that a true follower of the Good Law must remain kindly and 
 compassionate whatever people say about him. This friendly 
 spirit, he urged, must be cultivated, just as the sapling must 
 be trained; and went on to tell the story of a housewife 
 named Vedehika, who had a great name for goodness and 
 kindness, but whose serving-maid Kali had succeeded in so 
 trying her patience with deliberate intent to prove her that 
 she came out of the affair with a broken head, and the rumor 
 quickly spread, "The Mistress Vedehika is a perfect fury, a 
 shrew, a termagant." 
 
 "In the selfsame way, disciples, a certain monk may be very, 
 very kind, very, very gentle, very, very quiet, so long as no 
 unpleasant words are uttered touching him. When, however. 
 
Gotama as Teacher loi 
 
 people begin to say unpleasant things of that monk — then 
 is the time to see if the monk is kind, then it is to be seen 
 if the monk is gentle, then it is to be seen if he is quiet." 
 
 What then is to be done with those who speak unkindly of 
 us? We are to "permeate them with a stream of loving 
 thought," and so we are to act towards the whole world. 
 After sundry illustrations the discourse ends with these fine 
 words : 
 
 "Yea, disciples, even if highway robbers with a two-handed 
 saw shall take and dismember you limb by limb, whoso grow 
 darkened in mind thereby would not be fulfilling my injunc- 
 tions. Even then, disciples, thus must you school yourselves: 
 'Unsullied shall our minds remain, neither shall evil word es- 
 cape our lips. Kind and compassionate ever, we will abide 
 loving of heart nor harbor secret hate. And those robbers 
 will we permeate with stream of loving thought unfailing; 
 and forth from them proceeding, enfold and permeate the 
 whole wide world with constant thoughts of loving kindness, 
 ample, expanding, measureless, free from enmity, free from 
 all ill will !' Yea, verily, thus, my disciples, thus must you 
 school yourselves. 
 
 "And this admonition of the Parable of the Saw see that 
 you call it to mind again and again. Know you, disciples, 
 aught subtle or simple in this teaching of ours which you 
 should not accept ? 
 
 " 'Nay indeed, Lord !' 
 
 "Wherefore, disciples, again and again refresh your minds 
 with this admonition of the Parable of the Saw. Long will 
 it make for your happiness and well-being."^" 
 
 For as the mongoose is immune from the poison of the 
 snake because he has been inoculated with it in small doses, 
 even so, teaches Gotama the physician, must the monk dwell- 
 ing amidst hate and anger inoculate himself with the divine 
 antitoxin of benevolence.^^ 
 
 "As in the last month of the autumn rains when the sky is 
 clear and the clouds are gone, the great Sun climbs the 
 vault of heaven, pervading all space with his radiance, so 
 
 ^ ''Discourses,** tr. by Silacara, I. xxi. 
 =1 Milinda Panha, VII. 6. 
 
I02 Gotama Buddha 
 
 good will (meftam) glows radiant above all other virtues: 
 yea, it is as the morning star.""^ 
 
 When all is said it was by the living embodiment of this 
 divine quality of good will that Gotama won the hearts of 
 his people. If today he does not always command our in- 
 tellectual assent we should be churls indeed if we refused to 
 him our love and gratitude. 
 
 Gotama is himself a morning star of good will heralding 
 the Sun of Love. 
 
 " Itivuttaka, 27. 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 ST. FRANCIS AND GOTAMA 
 
 "Childlike, thou sayest, is the friend of God? 
 
 Such love he asks from man as lovers use, 
 
 Making of love the path to happiness? 
 
 Fond is such love; for Death and Sorrow dog 
 
 The bliss of lovers and Delusion blinds. 
 
 To tear Delusion's veil and find Release, 
 
 To purge the heart of passionate Desire 
 
 That binds him darkling to the Wheel of Life — 
 
 Such is the Path of Wisdom, such the staff 
 
 For full-grown man to lean on, and escape 
 
 From all the woe and pity of the world. 
 
 Not Love but Wisdom is the remedy: 
 
 Not children we, but men upon the rack !" 
 
 Thus Gotama, whom in a dream I saw 
 
 Hold high communion with Assisi's Saint, 
 
 Francis, that passionate lover of his Lord 
 
 And of his little brethren. Laughingly 
 
 The Ocean laved their feet, and round about 
 
 The patient simple beasts stood listening. 
 
 "Nay but," quotih Francis, "God our Lord on High 
 
 Of us his brethren is not gotten else 
 
 Save only by such Love, so only held: 
 
 By wisdom never nor enlightenment ! 
 
 Therefore in Love is highest wisdom found; 
 
 For losing God, what profiteth the World? 
 
 The power of Love thou knowest, and hast sung. 
 
 Who for it spurned the love of power and pomp, 
 
 Taking for bride our sister Poverty. 
 
 And living in gentleness with man and beast. 
 
 Thou did'st reveal to men the life of God, 
 
 Whose Heart is all compassion, and His name 
 
 Is Love; to whom man's Wisdom seemeth fond. 
 
 For love responds to love as lute to touch 
 
I04 Gotama Buddha 
 
 And loveless wisdom is a stringless lute. 
 
 Such Wisdom passeth, Love alone abides 
 
 Amidst the change and chance of fleeting things." 
 
 "Fleeting indeed ! And like a painted gaud, 
 
 Or some mirage that lures the thirsty soul 
 
 'Mid desert ways under the fierce sun's eye, 
 
 Is this dark world. All passes, naught abides; 
 
 Nor Love nor Wisdom. Therefore let the wise 
 
 Escape, and find elsewhere abiding peace, 
 
 Nibbana's peace that naught can take away, 
 
 Surcease of suffering and lust and all. 
 
 Thou speakest of God; if He be anywhere 
 
 'Tis truly where Love rules the hearts of men: 
 
 Yet Love not blind, as children and lovers use. 
 
 But clear-eyed, purged of passion, pitifid 
 
 And yet serene, nor suffering itself 
 
 By any strain of human woe or sin 
 
 To lose its own calm lofty pinnacle. 
 
 Such pity seeth man as bound and racked 
 
 Upon the Wheel of Fate, and calls him 'Fool !' 
 
 If God there be so must He view the World, 
 
 And pitying contrive a swift release: 
 
 For less are all the waters of the sea 
 
 Than all the weary waste of human tears. 
 
 Could Love create and bind us to the Wheel? 
 
 Strange God — the source of endless misery ! 
 
 Should He not suffer for the world He made, 
 
 As man doth suffer for his lighter sin? 
 
 All suffer, all hate suffering, all alike 
 
 May win escape by wise self-mastery! 
 
 Thus have I taught, and so my followers teach 
 
 (That ancient Knighthood of the Yellow Robe 
 
 Which doth endure when Kings and Emperors pass) ; 
 
 This is the central truth of suffering. 
 
 Pervading all as salt pervades the sea. 
 
 The gods, if any gods there be, are dumb ! 
 
 Strive on, and master self and win release!" 
 
 "In self-forgetfulness is higher Wisdom hid. 
 In self -surrender, not self-mastery ! 
 To high adventure in the cause of Love 
 God calls; to seek release were cowardice. 
 
St. Francis and Gotama 105 
 
 He sets us in this weary world of pain 
 
 To make it glad with joy and love and song. 
 
 Thou askest of the nature of our God: 
 
 In strength made perfect in humility 
 
 See inmost Godhead perfectly revealed; 
 
 There is the abiding source of peace and joy. 
 
 Learn this, my Brother, suffering is a boon; 
 
 The pains of Love are worth all pleasures else. 
 
 Whom most God honors, most He gives to love 
 
 And with most love gives power to suffer most! 
 
 In sufferance is His Majesty made plain, 
 
 His power most mighty when His heart doth break; 
 
 For so alone doth man, o'ercome by Love, 
 
 Find strength to conquer pride and lust and wrath. 
 
 Arming himself in Love's strong panoply. 
 
 So only is he reconciled to God 
 
 And purged his heart of bitter enmity! 
 
 To conquer self, man needs must die to self. 
 
 And Love alone may find the secret path 
 
 That leads through pain to blest communion. 
 
 God suffereth, Brother, as thou sayest He must: 
 
 On Calvary see His breaking heart laid bare !" 
 
 So spake these holy ones, rapt from the world 
 
 Of sense and time, in whom the spirit strove, 
 
 Conquering the frail worn flesh: their eyes. 
 
 Seeing eternal verities, shone full of joy. 
 
 Yet diverse seemed the joy I saw revealed 
 
 In these two heroes of the way of pain 
 
 My soul had reverenced long and now beheld. 
 
 The eyes of Francis glowed with radiant light 
 
 As seeing Him who is invisible, 
 
 And filled with love for man and beast and all 
 
 This beauteous world which is his blazonry. 
 
 Siddhattha's eye was calm and glad, yet lit 
 
 With somber joy and sorrowful content. 
 
 As who should say, "The world is but a snare; 
 
 What matter? It is nought to me and mine!" 
 
 So sate these two physicians of the soul, 
 
 Pondering the Gospel each had found and proved. 
 
 And then I think God whispered in the ear 
 Of His beloved: turning him to song 
 
io6 Gotama Buddha 
 
 Swifter to heal than weightiest argument. 
 
 For never was a reed more simple and straight 
 
 For Him to fill with Heaven's harmony. 
 
 He sang of all God's creatures: Sun and Moon 
 
 And of tiie joyful choir of the Stars 
 
 Which tell aloud the praises of their Lord, 
 
 And hymn Him ever to the listening spheres. 
 
 He sang of water who is pleasant, and of rain 
 
 Who comforts and replenishes the earth. 
 
 Making her sing in praise antiphonal: 
 
 Of birds and beasts, his little brethren too, 
 
 Who. in their joyance praise the Source of Joy, 
 
 And by their living hymn the Lord of Life, 
 
 Till all His World is filled with minstrelsy. 
 
 Then as the silver melody thrilled on. 
 
 Rising like water in a clear pure jet 
 
 To Heaven, I saw Siddhattha smile, and joy 
 
 Light up the deep-set cavern of his eyes : 
 
 "I, too," he sang, "have loved the teeming earth, 
 
 And sought to spare my little brothers pain 
 
 Even to the least, yea, even to the brood of snakes; 
 
 For they too cherish the warm life within. 
 
 Even as a mother's love enfolds her son. 
 
 Her only son, with tender watchful care, 
 
 So, through the world let thy compassion move 
 
 Deep and pervading as the encompassing sea. 
 
 So far I knew — but now I know indeed 
 
 That Love hath depths beyond our mortal ken 
 
 And highest Wisdom is in Love revealed. 
 
 O Maitri !* whom far off I saw and loved, 
 
 In very Christ I find thee, and adore ! 
 
 O Love of God that taught me how to love 
 
 Unknown, unrecognized, yet now made plain ! 
 
 O Holy One ! O suffering Godhead, Thou 
 
 Whose Love encompasses Thy children all, 
 
 O Fount of Love, O Mother-Heart divine; 
 
 On Thee I lay the age-long weight of pain, 
 
 The woe of all this laden laboring world. 
 
 And at Thy feet my emptied self I bow : 
 
 For self is helpless till Thou mak'st it thine." 
 
 • The coming Buddha whom Gotama foretold, calling him Maitri, which 
 means Love, and prophesying his power to bring men to righteousness. 
 
St. Francis and Gotama 107 
 
 Then as I waked I thought high Heaven pealed 
 
 With glad acclaim, and all creation sang, 
 
 Giving to God the glory and the praise 
 
 Of this last miracle His Grace had wrought : 
 
 And angel hosts on high sang Francis' song. 
 
 Whilst these two radiant soi3s passed through the veil. 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 NOTES ON NIBBANA 
 
 Dr. Paul Oltramare thus summarizes the arg^uments which 
 must be weighed in arriving at a true idea of what Gotama 
 taught: 
 
 1. There can only be an 'ego' if there is sensation, or con- 
 tact of the conscious subject with an object. 
 
 2. Whoso maintains that death leaves in existence an ego 
 endowed with perception fails to free the soul from dualism, 
 and so denies salvation. (For Buddhism takes as axiomatic 
 that what is made up of Skandhas, or component parts, is 
 transient, and that what is transient is sorrowful.) 
 
 3. Whoso maintains that death puts an end to perception, 
 but leaves in existence an ego denuded of perception affirms 
 the impossible, for consciousness is bound up with the other 
 Skandhas, or aggregates. 
 
 4. Whoso maintains that after death the ego persists, en- 
 dowed with something which is neither perception nor non- 
 perception, imagines that whilst he is still in the phenomenal 
 world he can attain to that which is not attained by the senses 
 nor by reasoning. If we think of perception we think of 
 something compound, therefore transient ; if we think of non- 
 perception we think of a kind of stupor. 
 
 5. Since it is impossible in this life to prove the existence 
 of the saint, it is a damnable heresy to say that he is anni- 
 hilated by death. Skandhas which go to make up the com- 
 pound being we know in this life. Is he the sensation or the 
 bodily form, eic, etc.? 
 
 6. Lastly, if it is heresy to affirm the existence of a soul, it 
 is also heresy to deny it ; these two opinions are equally wrong 
 and fatal. {Le Museon 1917.) 
 
Notes on Nibbana 109 
 
 Some key passages for the study of the whole subject are: 
 Dtgha Nikaya, Vol. I, p. 67, where it is shown that without 
 sensation there can be no ego: Samyutta Nikaya, Vol. 3, p. 
 109, etc., where Sariputta convinces the heretic Yamaka that 
 even in this life one cannot very well prove the existence of 
 the saint: Majjhima Nikaya, Vol. 2, p. 229, and many other 
 passages quoted in Oldenberg's "Buddha," E. T., pp. 427-445. 
 
 There is further a collection of synonyms of Nibbana, col- 
 lected in metrical form, and current amongst southern Bud- 
 dhists. 
 
 Here it is described as the Extinction of Lust (Tanhak- 
 khayo) and the Destruction of Desire (Virago) ; as an Island 
 and Refuge (Dlpo and Lenam) ; as Ambrosia and Bliss 
 {Amatam and Sivam) ; as the Eternal and Simple (Dhuvam, 
 anantam and asamkhatam) ; as the Cessation of the Process 
 of Becoming and the Ending of all Sorrow and Disease 
 (Dukkhakkhaya; avyapajjham) ; as Escape from Infatua- 
 tion and the Attainment of Freedom and Purity (Apavaggo, 
 yogakkhemo, mutti, vimutti and suddhi). 
 
 My friend, the Sinhalese Pundit Wagiswara, thus sum- 
 marized for me his views of Nibbana: "The extinction of lust 
 is the means to the extinction of the process of becoming, 
 which is the end"; and he explains the use of such positive 
 terms as "happiness" and "calm" by saying that they are 
 only used relatively: Nibbana is like the blowing out of a 
 lamp; it is happy because it is not miserable; it is calm be- 
 cause it is not restless; it is rest because it is different from 
 the flux and change which we know here. Asked what is 
 the unique thing in Buddhist ethics, he replied: "The teach- 
 ing about sorrow and the destruction of sorrow." And what 
 is the unique thing in Buddhist metaphysics, he replied : "The 
 teaching of Anatta, that is, that there is no self or soul in 
 the usually accepted sense." He and the late "High Priest" 
 of Ceylon, Sri Sumangala, are both to be reckoned as cham- 
 pions, of the view expounded above: that Nibbana is the 
 cessation of the flux of becoming that we know here. The 
 present "High Priest," who is less of a metaphysician, seems 
 to believe that it is a continued state of existence, only more 
 
no Gotama Buddha 
 
 blissful than what we know as existence in this life. The 
 Buddhist world is divided between these conflicting theories. 
 As a practicable ideal Nibbana no longer interests it. 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 TWO IDEALS IN THE PALI BOOKS 
 
 A. The Ideal of the Arhat (very thoroughly worked out 
 
 and typical of almost the whole tipitika) . 
 
 1. Even for great benefit to another let no man imperil 
 
 his own benefit. (Dhammapada 166.) 
 
 2. When the wise man has driven out ignorance by zeal, 
 
 and climbed the terraced heights of wisdom, he looks 
 down on the vain world; and himself free from care 
 beholds the care-worn, as one standing upon the 
 mountain-top and gazing serenely upon the toilers 
 in the plains. (Dhammapada.) 
 
 3. O monks, as a man carried away by the current of a 
 
 pleasant river is seen by one standing on the bank, 
 so is man in the flooded river of desire. And as one 
 .standing on the bank who cries, "Ho there ! the river 
 may seem pleasant, but below it is a lake with rapids 
 and crocodiles," so is the Blessed One who stands 
 upon the bank, warning men that death or misery 
 await them. And the flooded river is evil desire, the 
 lake is the sensual life, its waves are anger, its rapids 
 are lust, its crocodiles are women-folk." (Itivuttaka, 
 109.) 
 
 B. The Germ of the Bodhisattva Ideal (just beginning to 
 
 develop). 
 1. " As recking naught of self, a mother's love 
 Enfolds and cherishes her only son, 
 So through the world let thy compassion move, 
 And compass living creatures every one." 
 
 (^Sutta Nipata.) 
 
112 Gotama Buddha 
 
 2. For the beautiful story of Vessantara, see "The Heart 
 
 of Buddhism." 
 
 A Dialogue 
 
 3. Gautama: 
 
 "But O Punna, the men of that country are violent, 
 cruel and savage. When they become angry at theeT 
 and do thee harm, what wilt thou think then?" 
 Punna : 
 
 "I shall think that they are truly good and kind folk, 
 for whilst they speak angry and insolent words, they 
 refrain from striking or stoning me." 
 
 Gautama : 
 
 "They are very violent folk, Punna. What if they 
 strike thee or stone thee?" 
 Punna : 
 
 "I shall think them kind and good not to smite me 
 with staff or sword." 
 
 Gautama : 
 
 "And if they do so?" 
 Punna : 
 
 "I shall think them kind and good not to kill me." 
 Gautama : 
 
 "And if they do kill thee, what then?" 
 Punna : 
 
 I shall think them kind and good who free me from 
 this vile body with so little pain." 
 Gautama : 
 
 "Well said, Punna, well said! Thou with thy great 
 gift of patience mayest indeed essay this task. Go, 
 Punna; saved thyself, save others. Comforted thyself, 
 comfort others. Having arrived at the farther shore 
 and reached Nibbana, do thou guide others to its 
 safety." {Samyutta IV, p. 60, and Majjihima iii. 267. 
 Quoted by De la Vallee Poussin in Bouddhisme: Opin- 
 ions, pp. 267-270.) 
 
Two Ideals in the Pali Books 113 
 
 That the Mahayana developed this second ideal and 
 attacked the first is to its credit, even if it was not al- 
 ways fair in its criticisms. But when jthe passion of 
 controversy is aroused and men are choosing between 
 life and death they cannot be wholly academic ! 
 
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