and haggard," his fame as an ascetic "spread abroad like the sound of a great bell hung in the canopy of the sky." But after six years' trial, he found that the road to enlightenment did not lie through asceticism. Therefore he abandoned it, and enunciated one of the fundamental truths of his system, "Moderation in all things." He had tried the two extremes of luxury and asceticism; true enlightenment was not to be found in either. Then he learned that "like as the man who would discourse sweet music must tune the strings of his instrument to the medium point of tension, so he who would arrive at the condition of Buddha must exercise himself in the medium course of discipline."[1]
Once more he went begging through the villages. At length the day of enlightenment came, as he was seated one evening under a tree, which for many centuries afterwards became the most interesting object of the pilgrim's pilgrimage.[2] The temptation which preceded that supreme moment is most touching. A peasant woman led her little child by the hand to offer food to the holy man. The sight carried back his thoughts to the home he had left. The love of wife and child, the wealth and power of place, came upon him with a force overwhelmingly attractive. It was a sore temptation.[3] He agonized in doubt. But as the sun set, the religious side of his nature won the victory; he came forth purified in the struggle; he abandoned all—wife, child, home, princely power—in order to win deliverance for mankind: "I vow from this moment to deliver the world from the thraldom of death and of the evil one. I will procure the salvation of all men, and lead them across to the other shore." The supernatural side of this struggle is described with all the wealth of oriental imagery. Mâra[4] with his daughters and angels alternately rage against and caress him; all nature is convulsed at the conflict "between the saviour of the world and the prince of evil;" the earth shakes as she only does when a man's virtue reaches perfection or is utterly lost. The Buddhist description bears a striking resemblance to the passage in "Paradise Regained" in which the "patient Son of God" was tempted in the wilderness, and sat "unappalled in calm and sinless peace."[5] Buddha sat "unmoved from his fixed purpose, firm as Mount Sumeru," until Mâra, having exhausted all his powers, fell at his feet, in terror; and the cry went through the worlds of heaven and hell, "Mâra is overcome, the prince is conqueror." Then Buddha's mind was enlightened, and he saw the way of salvation for all living creatures.
From out the darkness and gloomy night of the world,
The gross darkness and ignorance that envelop mankind,
This Holy One, having attained the perfection of wisdom,
Shall cause to appear the brightness and glory of his own light.
The tree beneath which Buddha attained enlightenment and the Buddhaship has become to his followers a symbol as expressive of their faith as is the cross to the Christian. The victory won beneath that tree has brightened, and to this day brightens, the lives of more men and women than does any other victory in the history of the world; for out of the thousand million inhabitants which it is computed people this earth, four hundred and fifty million are Buddhists. On that day heaven and earth sang together for joy, flowers fell around the holy one; "there ceased to be ill-feeling or hatred in the hearts of men; all wants of food and drink and clothing were supplied; the blind saw, the deaf heard, the dumb spake; the prisoners in the lower worlds were released; and all living creatures found rest and peace." [6]
III. The Enlightenment.—What was the enlightenment which made the young prince the enlightened one, the Buddha, who should enlighten the world? It was the uay by which men should escape from the sorrows of old age, disease, and death. The way was contained in the four sublime truths, or noble truths, proclaimed in his first sermon, the sutra of "The Foundation of Righteousness." These truths are, (i) sorrow exists ; (2) sorrow increases and accumulates through
- ↑ Cf. the philosophical position of the Hebrew preacher: "Be not wise overmuch; be not foolish overmuch; be not righteous overmuch; be not wicked overmuch" (Eccles. vii. 16, 17).
- ↑ Asoka's daughter brought to Ceylon in 245 b.c. a branch of this tree (Fiscus religiosa). The branch grew, and is now "the oldest historical tree in the world." Its history is preserved in a series of continuous chronicles, which are brought together by Sir Emerson Tennent, "Ceylon," vol. ii., pp. 613 sq. Fergusson, "Tree and Serpent Worship," p. 56.
- ↑ The temptation scene is figured on the middle beam of the northern gateway at Sanchi. Frontispiece to "Tree and Serpent Worship."
- ↑ "Mâra est le démon de 1'amour, du péché et de la mort; c'est le tentateur et l'ennemi du Buddha." — Burnouf, Introd. 76. Mâra, as the night-mare, still torments English people.
- ↑ Mr. Rhys Davids has worked out the parallel in “Buddhism," S.P.C.K. Ed.
- ↑ Rom. Hist., p. 225.
