Thomas William Rhys Davids

“ Many are the pet names, the poetic epithets bestowed upon it—the harbour of refuge, the cool cave, the island amidst the floods, the place of bliss, emancipation, liberation, safety, the supreme, the transcendent, the uncreated, the tranquil, the home of peace, the calm, the end of suffering, the medicine for all evil, the unshaken, the ambrosia, the immaterial, the imperishable, the abiding, the farther shore, the unending, the bliss of effort, the supreme joy, the ineffable, the detachment, the holy city, and many others. ”

“ Gautama Buddha taught that everything corporeal is material and therefore impermanent. Man in his bodily existence is liable to sorrow, decay, and death. The reign of unholy desires in his heart produces unsatisfactory longings, useless weariness, and care. Attempted purification by oppressing the body is only wasted effort. It is the moral evil of the heart which keeps a man chained down in the degraded state of bodily life, which binds him in a union with the material world. Virtue and goodness will only insure him for a time, and, in another birth, a higher form of material life. ”

“ Now the older school also held, in the first place, that, when a man had, in this life, attained to Arahatship, his karma would not pass on to any other individual in another life—or in other words, that after Arahatship there would be no rebirth; and, secondly, that four thousand years after the Buddha had proclaimed the Dhamma or doctrine of Arahatship, his teaching would have died away, and another Buddha would be required to bring mankind once more to a knowledge of the truth. ”

“ Towards the end of this conversation, when it was evening, Ānanda broke down and went aside to weep, but the Buddha missed him, and sending for him comforted him with the promise of Nirvāna, and repeated what he had so often said before about the impermanence of all things,—“O Ānanda! do not weep; do not let yourself be troubled. You known what I have said; sooner or later we must part from all we hold most dear. This body of ours contains within itself the power which renews its strength for a time, but also the causes which lead to its destruction. ”

“ In India seven are worshipped, and one measure in Ramagama, by the kings of the serpent race. One tooth, too, is honored in heaven, and one in Gandhara's city, one in the Kalinga realm, and one more by the Naga race. Through their glory the bountiful earth is made bright with offerings painless, for with such are the Great Teacher's relics best honored by those who are honored, by gods and by Nagas and kings, yea, thus by the noblest of monarchs—bow down with clasped hands! Hard, hard is a Buddha to meet with through hundreds of ages! ”

“ To have realized the Truths, and traversed the Path; to have broken the Bonds, put an end to the Intoxications, and got rid of the Hindrances, is to have attained the ideal, the Fruit, as it is called, of Arahatship. One might fill columns with the praises, many of them among the most beautiful passages in Pāli poetry and prose, lavished on this condition of mind, the state of the man made perfect according to the Buddhist faith. ”

“ Each new creation, each new step in the theory, demanded another, until the whole sky was filled with forgeries of the brain, and the nobler and simpler lessons of the founder of the religion were hidden beneath the glittering stream of metaphysical subtleties. ”

“ Some thought he was dead, but he recovered, and from that time took regular food and gave up his severe penance, so much so that his five disciples soon ceased to respect him, and leaving him went to Benares.
There now ensued a second struggle in Gotama’s mind, described with all the wealth of poetry and imagination of which the Indian mind is master. The crisis culminated on a day, each event of which is surrounded in the Buddhist accounts with the wildest legends, on which the very thoughts passing through the mind of Buddha appear in gorgeous descriptions as angels of darkness or of light. ”

“ Weep not, neither lament! We are well rid of the great Samana. We used to be annoyed by being told, 'This beseems you, this beseems you not.' But now we shall be able to do whatever we like; and what we do not like that we shall not have to do!"
But the venerable Maha Kassapa addressed the brethren, and said: "Enough, my brethren! Weep not, neither lament! Has not the Blessed One formerly declared this to us, that it is in the very nature of all things near and dear unto us that we must divide ourselves from them, leave them, sever ourselves from them? ”

“ The older school had taught that Gotama, who had propounded the doctrine of Arahatship, was a Buddha, that only a Buddha is capable of discovering that doctrine, and that a Buddha is a man who by self-denying efforts, continued through many hundreds of different births, has acquired the so-called Ten Pāramitās or cardinal virtues in such perfection that he is able, when sin and ignorance have gained the upper hand throughout the world, to save the human race from impending ruin. ”

“ Not so many years ago, at the time when Buddhism first became known in Europe through philosophic writings of about six centuries after Buddha, then newly translated, it caused amazement that a religion which had brought three hundred millions of people under its sway should acknowledge no god. But the religion of Buddha, during a thousand years of practice by the Hindus, is entirely different from the representations given us in these translations. ”

“ Put into modern language this is that the conditions necessary to make an individual are also the conditions that necessarily give rise to sorrow. No sooner has an individual become separate, become an individual, than disease and decay begin to act upon it. Individuality involves limitation, limitation in its turn involves ignorance, and ignorance is the source of sorrow. Union with the unpleasant, separation from the pleasant, unsatisfied craving, are each a result of individuality. ”

“ The acute minds of the Buddhist pandits, no longer occupied with the practical lessons of Arahatship, turned their attention, as far as it was not engaged upon their hierarchy of mythological beings, to questions of metaphysical speculation, which, in the earliest Buddhism, are not only discouraged but forbidden. We find long treatises on the nature of being, idealistic dreams which have as little to do with the Bodhisatship that is concerned with the salvation of the world as with the Arahatship that is concerned with the perfect life. ”

“ The central point of primitive Buddhism was the doctrine of “Arahatship”—a system of ethical and mental self-culture, in which deliverance was found from all the mysteries and sorrows of life in a change of heart to be reached here on earth. This doctrine seems to have been The “Great Vehicle.” held very nearly in its original purity from the time when it was propounded by Gotama in the 6th century B.C. to the period in which northern India was conquered by the Huns about the commencement of the Christian era. ”

“ Let him cultivate towards the whole world—above, below, around—a heart of love unstinted, unmixed with the sense of differing or opposing interests. Let a man maintain this mindfulness all the while he is awake, whether he be standing, walking, sitting or lying down. ”

“ We are worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will we put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will we celebrate a feast!"
And the Sakiyas of Kapila-vatthu heard the news that the Blessed One had died at Kusinara. And the Sakiyas of Kapila-vatthu sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying "The Blessed One was the pride of our race. We are worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will we put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will we celebrate a feast!" ”

“ Startled at such news he rose up, seizing the end of his outer robe, and hastened to the place where Gotama was, exclaiming, “Illustrious Buddha, why do you expose us all to such shame? Is it necessary to go from door to door begging your food? Do you imagine that I am not able to supply the wants of so many mendicants?” “My noble father,” was the reply, “this is the custom of all our race.” “How so?” said his father. “Are you not descended from an illustrious line? no single person of our race has ever acted so indecorously.” ”

“ The Jains are the last direct representatives on the continent of India of those schools of thought which grew out of the active philosophical speculation and earnest spirit of religious inquiry that prevailed in the valley of the Ganges during the 5th and 6th centuries before the Christian era. For many centuries Jainism was so overshadowed by that stupendous movement, born at the same time and in the same place, which we call Buddhism, that it remained almost unnoticed by the side of its powerful rival. ”

“ Verily! it is this Noble Eightfold Path, that is to say, Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right speech, conduct and mode of livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Rapture.”
A few words follow as to the threefold way in which the speaker claimed to have grasped each of these Four Truths. That is all. There is not a word about God or the soul, not a word about the Buddha or Buddhism. 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. ”

“ To true wisdom there is only one way, the path that is laid down in my system. Many have already followed it, and conquering the lust and pride and anger of their own hearts, have become free from ignorance and doubt and wrong belief, have entered the calm state of universal kindliness, and have reached Nirvāna even in this life. ”

“ Parallel with this evolution, so to say, of the suttas, the short statements of doctrine, in prose, ran the treatment of the verses. There was a great love of poetry in the communities in which Buddhism arose. Verses were helpful to the memory. And they were adopted not only for this reason. The adherents of the new view of life found pleasure in putting into appropriate verse the feelings of enthusiasm and of ecstasy which the reforming doctrines inspired. When particularly happy in literary finish, or peculiarly rich in religious feeling, such verses were not lost. ”

“ We are accustomed to find the legendary and the miraculous gathering, like a halo, around the early history of religious leaders, until the sober truth runs the risk of being altogether neglected for the glittering and edifying falsehood. The Buddha has not escaped the fate which has befallen the founders of other religions; and as late as the year 1854 Professor Wilson of Oxford read a paper before the Royal Asiatic Society of London in which he maintained that the supposed life of Buddha was a myth, and “Buddha himself merely an imaginary being.” ”