Gautama Buddha

“ In the centre of this religion is Gautama Buddha, the ideal teacher of redeeming truth, whose human life was adorned by the faith of his followers with a crown of wonderful legends; from an abode in heaven, out of mercy to the world, he descended into the world, conceived and born of a virgin mother, greeted and entertained by heavenly spirits, recognized beforehand by a pious seer as the future redeemer of the world ”

“ The evil one came to him again, and whispered to him of love and power, of wealth and honour, and urged him to seek his home, his wife, and his child. For forty-nine days and nights Gautama sat under the Bo-tree, his mind torn with the conflict as to what was his duty. At the end of that time his doubts vanished, his mind cleared, the storm was over, and he had become the "Buddha"—that is, the "Enlightened One." He knew now that it was his duty to go and preach to people the way to happiness and peace, to show them how to avoid misery, and how to conquer even death itself. ”

“ It is willing to regard Gautama, Buddha as an inspired servant of God, teaching a measure of the truth, at least giving to these people that twilight of truth by which they may somewhat see their way. ”

“ Resuming his staff and begging-bowl, he walked on to Benares and there converted his lost disciples and ultimately the world, Gautama Buddha being first to preach universal equality and the brotherhood of man; enjoining pity, love, and charity for all; protesting against caste distinctions, against propitiation by sacrifices, penances, and offerings; and teaching that man must attain divine favor and perfect wisdom by his moral qualities and pure life alone, and thus reach the peace of Nirvana, the calm that follows upon self-victory, the extinction of anger, lust, and ignorance. ”

“ While we credit Hinduism with the idea of incarnation, we regard it as only showing this to be a necessity of human thought, and as far from satisfying man's longings for union with God. Gautama Buddha, passionless and lost in the contemplation of his own excellence, is not the Christian Redeemer, who daily bears our burdens and takes upon himself, in order that he may take away, the sin of the world. ”

“ In all likelihood legendary histories of the Founder of 19 Buddhism were current in Nepāl and Tibet in the early centuries of our era; but unhappily his too enthusiastic and imaginative admirers have thought it right to testify their admiration by interweaving with the probable facts of Gautama Buddha’s life, fables so extravagant that some modern critical scholars have despaired of attempting to sift truth from fiction, and have even gone to the extreme of doubting that Gautama Buddha ever lived at all. ”

“ THE GOD CONCEPT OF BUDDHISM The great weakness in the cosmology of Buddhism was twofold: its contamination with many of the superstitions of India and China and its sublimation of Gautama, first as the enlightened one, and then as the Eternal Buddha. Just as Christianity has suffered from the absorption of much erroneous human philosophy, so does Buddhism bear its human birthmark. But the teachings of Gautama have continued to evolve during the past two and one-half millenniums. ”

“ Indeed, no religion or religious system which has not emanated from some one heroic central personality, or in other words, which has not had a founder whose strongly marked personal character constituted the very life and soul of his teaching and the chief factor in its effectiveness, has ever had any chance of achieving world-wide acceptance, or ever spread far beyond the place of its origin.
Hence the barest outline of primitive Buddhism must be incomplete without some sketch of the life and character of Gautama Buddha himself. ”

“ For of Christianity it is no exaggeration to say that upon the truth of the received accounts of its Founder's Life and Person its whole position absolutely depends; whereas, could it be proved that Gautama never even lived, the system associated with his name would suffer no material loss,—and this, because in Buddha we are invited to contemplate only a teacher and a guide, one who would have men seek purification and deliverance by the same means as he himself needed to employ, and one who never claimed to be more than human. ”

“ Yet even the Vedanta teaching failed to satisfy the masses; its atmosphere was too rarefied for them. So about the middle of the millennium a new Teacher arose. Gâutama Buddha was born about the year B.C. 560 at Kapilavâstu, and the followers of the religion of which he was the founder number at this present day nearly one-third of the whole human race.
A magnificent work truly, look at it how we may! Yet it becomes the more astounding when we enquire into the religion itself; for it holds out no bait to humanity. ”

“ For the sake of clearness, we may next proceed to trace a brief outline of the life of Buddha, according to the belief of Buddhists generally, and stripped of such legends and superstitions as find no credence with the more educated and intellectual. It is true that a doubt has sometimes been expressed as to the existence of Gautama Buddha at all ”

“ For never is the world left without its Teacher; never is mankind left orphaned, without the mighty One to guard and save; as one passes away, His function over, another steps in to fill the seat and carry on the teaching of mankind.
When Gautama was initiated as the Buddha, another then became what I have called the “Wisdom-Truth,” the Bodhisattva. His first manifestation upon earth was at the beginning of the next sub-race. ”

“ Nor is there any proof that even Arhats in Gautama’s 237 time were allowed to claim superhuman faculties and the power of working physical miracles.
By degrees, no doubt, powers of this kind were ascribed to them as well as to the Buddha. Even in the Yinaya, one of the oldest portions of the Tri-piṭaka, we find it stated (Mahā-vagga I. 20, 24) that Gautama Buddha gained adherents by performing three thousand five hundred supernatural wonders (Pāli, pāṭi-hāriya; see p. 46) . These were thought to be evidences of his mission as a great teacher and saviour of mankind ”

“ Nevertheless, the glory of a religion belongs to the founder, not to his predecessors nor his successors, he it is who makes all things new; and therefore it is to the life and teaching of Gautama that we must look for the mainspring of the religion. Buddha is one of the few founders of religion who did not claim a special revelation or inspiration: "I have heard these truths from no one," he said; "they are all self-revealed, they spring only from within myself." ”

“ Another day he saw a man suffering from disease, and again the charioteer explained that all men have to suffer pain. A few days later he saw a dead body, and learned for the first time—a fact that had been kept from him through all the days of his childhood and his manhood even up to that hour—that all human beings must die.
Gautama was very sad when he thought of the misery that there is in the world, and he began to wonder if it could not all be done away with. He made up his mind to go away secretly and become a hermit. ”

“ Such supreme Buddhas, who are perfect knowers, and also perfect teachers of the truth, are only manifested on the earth at long intervals of time.
Gautama is the fourth Buddha of the present age (Bhadra-Kalpa) . He was a Kshatriya; his three mythical predecessors—Kraku-ććhanda, Kanaka-muni, and Kāṡyapa—having been sons of Brāhmans. He is to be followed by the fifth Buddha, Maitreya (a name meaning ‘full of love towards all beings’) , but not until the doctrine of Gautama has passed out of men’s memory after five thousand years (p. 181) . ”

“ The three-fold principle laid down by Gautama, and now in dogma, literature, art and worship, a triad or formal trinity, is, Buddha, the attainment of Buddha-hood, or perfect enlightenment, through meditation and benevolence; Karma, the law of cause and effect; and Dharma, discipline or order; or, the Lord, the Law and the Church. Paying no attention to questions of cosmogony or theogony, the universe is accepted as an ultimate fact. Matter is eternal. Creation exists but not a Creator. All is god, but God is left out of consideration. The gods are even less than Buddhas. ”

“ In China, again, examples sometimes occur of images which do not exhibit Buddha as the ideal of a man who has conquered his passions, but rather with the figure and features of a self-indulgent libertine [257] ; while others again portray him with a grim aspect.
We now pass on to the representations of other Buddhas, Bodhi-sattvas, saints, gods and goddesses.
Often two other images are associated with that of Gautama Buddha himself.
And, first of all, his image was joined with the other two persons of the earliest Triad (see p. 175) , viz. Dharma (the Law) and Saṅgha (the Monkhood) . ”

“ It would take too long now to tell you what it was that the Buddha preached to those who would listen to him. Some time when you are older you must read this for yourself in another book.
Gautama now returned to Benares, and addressed a great crowd of angels, men, and animals. Each man in the multitude, no matter what his language might be, understood the words of the speaker, and even the birds of the air and the beasts of the field knew that the wise man spoke to them, too. ”

“ Civilization, philosophy and scientific investigation had their origin, in the opinion of these writers, within the six or seven centuries preceding the Christian era, and mankind slowly emerged, for the first time, from "the depths of animal brutality" within the last four or five thousand years.
IV.⁠It is also assumed that Buddhism was brought into existence by Gautama Buddha. The previous existence of Buddhism, Jainism and Arhat philosophy is rejected as an absurd and ridiculous invention of the Buddhists who attempted thereby to assign a very high antiquity to their own religion. ”

“ Baker asked a few questions about the Buddha, since to show no curiosity about such a life subject might excite suspicion. The priests were ready for them, and gave what was evidently the stock answer: the Living Buddha was the very incarnation of Gautama himself, a spiritual leader who was being groomed to take over the guidance of all mankind, in east and west alike.
"Where does the Great One live?" asked Baker, alert for a trap. ”

“ In the meantime, however, a far mightier movement than that caused by philosophical opinions had been set on foot, when, in the sixth century before Christ, Gautama Buddha was born and proclaimed to the poor and the lowly that Vedic rites were useless, that a holy and tranquil and benevolent life is the essence of religion, and that caste distinctions do not exist among those who strive after holiness and purity. Thousands responded to his appeal, and thus a catholic religion began to spread in India, which has since become the religion of Asia. ”

“ In the fifth century B.C., when Gautama Buddha began his career, the later and lower form of Yoga seems to have been little known. Practically, in those days, earnest and devout men craved only for union with the Supreme Being, and absorption into his Essence. Many methods of effecting such union and absorption were contrived. And these may be classed under two chief heads—bodily mortification (tapas) and abstract meditation (dhyāna) . ”

“ The same great truth we are considering is the one that runs through the life and the teachings of Gautama, he who became the Buddha. People are in bondage, said he, because they have not yet removed the idea of I. To do away with all sense of separateness, and to recognize the oneness of the self with the Infinite, is the spirit that breathes through all his teachings. ”

“ Georgiana.—The system which had its origin in Gautama Buddha was founded about 2500 years ago in India, upwards of 500 years before Christ, and Ceylon was the country of its earliest proselytism. Its dogmas represent a form of Atheism, as no God is acknowledged. Buddha represents a man, not a god, although divine adoration is paid to him and his supposed relics. ”

“ It seems clear, therefore, that while, in process of time, images of Gautama Buddha were multiplied everywhere—and, as we shall see, in various attitudes and shapes—images of the personified Law and Saṅgha were never common, and indeed rarely found, except among Northern Buddhists. Those images of the Law which I have examined are in the form of a man [83] with four arms and hands, two of which are folded in worship, while one holds a book (or sometimes a lotus) and the other a rosary [84] .
Sometimes, however, the representation of a book alone is held to be a sufficient symbol of the Law. ”

“ Because he was only a man. We reverence his character, as we do that of other upright men who have tried to do good and to lead their fellow-men to better things. Gautama Buddha seems to have sought with all his soul for light—was willing to forsake a kingdom and to renounce all sensual and even intellectual pleasures in this life for the hope of escaping sin and its consequences in the next.
Why do we worship Jehovah-Jesus? Because He is our sovereign Lord. The Buddha groaned under his own load of guilt, and was oppressed by the sad and universal consequences of sin among men. ”

“ Be it observed, too, that the scale of existence is limited in Buddhism to six classes of beings—gods, men, demons, animals, ghosts, and dwellers in hell (p. 121) . Transmigration is not extended, as in the 111 Brāhmanical system, to plants, stocks, and stones; though a man could be born as a tree-god (p. 112) .
Gautama Buddha himself was merely the last link in a long chain of corporeal forms, and he had been preceded by twenty-four Buddhas, who were to previous ages of the world what he was to the present. ”

“ The Buddhistic brotherhood was, for a long time, not a fraternity of believers but rather a community of student teachers. Gautama forbade their receiving money and thereby sought to prevent the growth of hierarchal tendencies. Gautama himself was highly social; indeed, his life was much greater than his preachment.
9. THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM Buddhism prospered because it offered salvation through belief in the Buddha, the enlightened one. It was more representative of the Melchizedek truths than any other religious system to be found throughout eastern Asia. ”