Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.14

c7.14

The course which our sketch will have to follow, is clearly indicated by the nature of the case. Obviously, our first task is to describe the historical national antecedents, the ground and base on which Buddhism rests, above all the religious life and philosophical speculation of pre-Buddhist India; for hundreds of years before Buddha's time movements were in progress in Indian thought, which prepared the way for Buddhism and which cannot be separated from a sketch of the latter. Then the review of Buddhism will naturally divide itself into three heads, corresponding to that Triad, under which even in the very oldest time the Buddhist society in their liturgical language, distributed the whole of those matters which they esteemed sacred, the trinity of Buddha, the Law, the Order. Buddha's own person stands necessarily in our sketch also, as it did in that ancient formula, in the foreground. We must acquaint ourselves with his life and his death, with his *début* as teacher of his people, with his band of disciples, who gathered round him, and with his intercourse with rich and poor, high and low. We shall then turn, in the second place, to the dogmatic thought of the oldest Buddhism, above all to that which stands evermore as a focus in this world of thought, to the doctrine of the sorrow of all that is earthly, the deliverance from this sorrow, the goal of all effort to escape, the Nirvâna. There then remains the characteristic feature of Buddhism, as well as of Christianity, that which externally binds together all who are united by a common faith, and a common effort for deliverance, in bonds of a common church fellowship. In that formula of the Buddhist trinity we find the order named after Buddha and the Law as the third member. We shall follow this course and, when we have spoken of Buddha and his Law, we shall keep in view, in the third place, the Order and their corporate life. We shall come to understand the organization which Buddhism has given to the narrower circle of believers, who have taken their vows as monks and nuns, as well as to the lay community, who accept the doctrine of Buddha. With this will end the investigation of the most ancient Buddhism; or, more accurately expressed, the sketch of Buddhism in that form, which is to us the oldest; and to this investigation only will our sketch be confined.