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“ I also, who have now heard the doctrine of the Exalted One, am thus well pleased, even as if with a great joy. Most excellent, Lord, are the words of thy mouth, most excellent, just as if a man were to set up what has been thrown down, or were to reveal that which has been 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—just even so, Lord, has the truth been made known to me, in many a figure, by the Exalted One. ”

“ When speaking on sacrifice to a sacrificial priest, on union with God to an adherent of the current theology, on Brahman claims to superior social rank to a proud Brahman, on mystic insight to a man who trusts in it, on the soul to one who believes in the soul theory, the method followed is always the same. Gotama puts himself as far as possible in the mental position of the questioner. He attacks none of his cherished convictions. ”

“ Those conditions of heart, Sirs, which are good or accounted as such among you, which are blameless or accounted as such among you, which suffice to lead a man to Arahatship or are accounted as sufficient among you, which are pure or accounted as such among you—who is it who conducts himself as one who has more completely taken them upon him, the Samaṇa Gotama, or the other venerable ones, the teachers of schools? ”

“ So in the Puggala Paññatti (IV, 24) the very practices set out in our Sutta, by Kassapa the ascetic, [\q 208/] as desirable and praiseworthy, are set out as the actions by which a man injures himself. There is nothing of this sort in our Sutta. To judge from it alone one might fairly conclude that the Buddha approved of asceticism, only insisting that the self-mastery and self-control of the Path were the highest and best forms of it. ”

“ On the other hand, they who sacrifice, and give alms go to the moon, and thence return to earth, and are reborn in high or low positions according to their deeds. But the bad become insects.
According to the Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad, those who know the mystic doctrine of the five fires, and those who in the woods practise faith and truth (not tapas) go to the Brahma worlds. On the other hand, those who practise sacrifice, charity, and austerity (tapas) go to the moon, and are thence reborn on earth. But those who follow neither of these two paths become insects. ”

“ Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Mode of Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Rapture.
‘This, Kassapa, is that way, this that method, which if a man follow, he will of himself, both know and see that: “The Samaṇa Gotama is one who speaks in due season, speaks that which is, that which redounds to profit, that which is the Norm, that which is the law of self-restraint.” ”

“ VIII. KASSAPA-SĪHANĀDA SUTTA. [THE NAKED ASCETIC.]
[161] 1. Thus have I heard. The Blessed One was once dwelling at Ujuññā, in the Kaṇṇakatthala deerpark. [37] Now Kassapa, a naked ascetic, came to where the Exalted One was, and exchanged with him the greetings and compliments of civility and courtesy, and stood respectfully aside. And, so standing, he said to the Exalted One:
2. ‘I have heard it said, O Gotama, thus: “The Samaṇa Gotama disparages all penance; verily he reviles and finds fault with every ascetic, with every one who lives a hard life.” ”

“ And then, partly by putting a new and (from the Buddhist point of view) a higher meaning into the words; partly by an appeal to such ethical conceptions as are common ground between them; he gradually leads his opponent up to his conclusion. This is, of course, always Arahatship—that is the sweetest fruit of the life of a recluse, that is the best sacrifice, that the highest social rank, that the best means of seeing heavenly sights, and a more worthy object; and so on. In our Sutta it is the path to Arahatship which is the best asceticism. ”

“ Now while the belief in the special efficacy and holiness of austerity, self-torture, tapas; is a world-wide phenomenon, and the practice of it was, no doubt, very early in India too, the idea of the wandering mendicant is peculiar to India. ”

“ We ought, no doubt, to think of compilers, rather than of a compiler. The memory of co-disciples had to be respected, and kept in mind. And so far as the actual doctrine is concerned our Dialogues are probably a more exact reproduction of the thoughts of the teacher than the dialogues of Plato.
However this may be, the method followed in all these Dialogues has one disadvantage. In accepting the position of the adversary, and adopting his language, the authors compel us, in order to follow what they give us as Gotama’s view, to read a good deal between the lines. ”

“ He maintains, as in our Sutta, that the insight and self-control and self-mastery of the Path, or of the system of intellectual and moral self-training laid down for the Bhikkhu, are really harder than the merely physical practices so much more evident to the eye of the vulgar. ”

“ Āpastamba closes his exposition of them with a remark that upsets the whole theory: ‘There is no reason to place one Āsrama before another.’ [24] And just before that he quotes a saying of Prajāpati from which it follows that those who become Bhikshus do not gain salvation at all, ‘they become dust and perish.’
This was no doubt the real inmost opinion of the more narrow-minded of the priests. But the first maker of the phrase did not quite like to put this forward in his own name—the idea of the Bhikshu as a man worthy of special esteem had already become too strong for that. ”

“ Thus one text says: ‘There are three branches of duty—sacrifice study of the Veda and charity are the first, austerity (tapas) is the second, to dwell as a learner one’s life [\q 211/] long in the house of one’s teacher is the third. All these have as reward heavenly worlds. ”

“ If that be so, this is the earliest passage in which any one of these three ideas (the wandering mendicant, his superiority to the ascetic, and the special ethical sense of the word Brāhmaṇa [23] ) have, as yet, been found.
The oldest reference in the priestly literature to unorthodox Bhikshus (not necessarily Buddhists) is probably the Maitri Upanishad VIII, 8, which is much later. There is a custom, often referred to in the law books, of students begging their food. This was doubtless of long standing. But it is a conception altogether different from that of the wandering mendicant. ”

“ Now the distinction between the two is quite clear, though the ambiguity of the English word ‘ascetic,’ often applied to both, may tend to hide it from View. [16] Gautama starts his [\q 214/] description of the hermit by saying that he is to feed on roots and fruits, and practise tapas. And all the later books lay stress on the same point; often giving, as instances of the tapas, one or other of the very practices detailed by Kassapa the tāpasa, in his three lists, in our Sutta. [17] On the other hand, the wandering mendicant does not practise these severe physical self-mortifications. ”

“ Both Buddhist and Jain records agree on this point. And they are confirmed by an isolated passage in an Upanishad which, as a whole, is pre-Buddhistic. [19] There it is said that he who desires to see [\q 215/] the god Brahman cannot attain his end by speculation; he must put away learning and become childlike, put away childishness and become a muni (a silent one) , [20] put away silence and become a Brāhmaṇa (that is, of course, not a Brahmaṇa by birth, but one in a sense nearly the same as Gotama attaches to the word in the Soṇadaṇḍa Sutta) . ”

“ This is oddly enough also called a Sīhanāda Sutta, and the reason is not far to seek.
The carrying out of such practices, in all countries, wins for the ascetic a very high reputation. Those who despise earthly comforts, and even submit themselves to voluntary torture, are looked upon, with a kind of fearsome wonder, as more holy than other men. And no doubt, in most cases, the ascetics laid claim to special virtue. In the Suttas dealing with the practices of the ascetics, Gotama, in laying stress on the more moderate view, takes occasion also to dispute this claim. ”

“ A wise man should not take heed of them. [25]
If the priests, when the custom of ‘going forth’ as a Bhikshu was becoming prevalent, had wished to counteract it, to put obstacles in the way, and especially to prevent any one doing so without first having become thoroughly saturated with the priestly view of things, they could scarcely have taken a more efficacious step than the establishment of this theory. ”

“ They were also addicted, but to a somewhat less degree, to tapas; and Buddhaghosa here adds that they wore a loin cloth.
No. 3. The disciples of the Shaveling are stated by Buddhaghosa to be the same as No. 2. The reading is doubtful, and his explanation requires explanation. Perhaps some special subdivision of the Jains is intended.
No. 4. Those who wear their hair in braids. To do so was the rule for the orthodox hermits (the Vānaprasthas or Tāpasas, Gautama III, 34) . The Brāhmaṇa Bhikshu, on the other hand, was either to be bald, or to have only a forelock (ibid. 22) . ”

“ The followers of Gotama means, almost certainly, the followers of some other member of the Sākya clan, distinct from our Gotama. who also founded an Order. We only know of one who did so, Devadatta. The only alternative is that some Brāhmaṇa, belonging to the Gotama gotra, is here referred to as having had a community of Bhikshus named after him. But we know nothing of any such person.
No. 10. Those who follow the religion of the God are not mentioned elsewhere. Who is ‘the God’? ”

“ Student, (2) Householder, (3) Hermit, (4) Wandering Mendicant—Brahmacārin, Gṛihastha, Vānaprastha, and Parivrājaka. [15]
It will be noticed that this final arrangement differs in two respects—and both of them of importance—from the earliest. In the first place the wandering beggar is put in the last, that is in the highest, place. He is not subordinated, as he was at first, to the hermit. In the second place the expression Bhikshu, applied in Gautama to the wandering mendicant, is dropped in the later books.
The commentators are at great pains to harmonise the divergent order. ”

“ The differences are just such as would arise when two authors are drawing upon one uniform tradition.
It would seem from M. I, 238, if compared with I, 524, that it was the Ājīvakas (see note above on p. 71) who were more especially known for the practice of these forms of asceticism: and from M. I, 77 that it was these forms that had been followed by Gotama himself before his eyes were opened, before he attained to Nirvāṇa. (M. I, 167.) ”

“ As to some of those things they approve, we also approve thereof. As to some of those things they disapprove, we also disapprove thereof. As to some of the things they approve, we disapprove thereof. As to some of the things they disapprove, we approve thereof. And some things we approve of, so do they. And some things we disapprove of, so do they. [163] And some things we approve, they do not. ”