Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s2.14

c7.s2.14

But from passages like these, current as they are among the moral preceptors of all ages and all lands, we cannot infer that at that time there was an atmosphere prevalent something like that prevailing at Rome in the sultry period of the early days of the empire. No such period was necessary for the Indian to strike him with sudden terror at the picture of life which surrounded him, to bring to his notice the traces of death in that picture. From the unprofitableness of a state of being to which they had not learned to give stability by labours and struggles for ends worthy of labour and struggle, men fly to seek peace for the soul in a renunciation of the world. The rich and the noble still more than the poor and humble; the young, wearied of life before life had well begun, rather than the old, who have nothing more to hope from life; women and maidens, abandon their homes and don the garb of monks and nuns. Everywhere we meet pictures of those struggles, which every day must have brought in that period, between those who make this resolution, and the parents, the wife, the children, who detain those eager for renunciation; acts of invincible determination are narrated of those who, in spite of all opposition, have managed to burst the bonds which bound them to a home-life.