Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s2.20

c7.s2.20

abstraction, and sought, while separating themselves from all perception of external realities, to imbue themselves with the feeling of the "eternity of space," or of the "eternity of reason," or of "not-anything-whatever-ness," and whatever else these conditions were called. It may easily be imagined that, among this multiplicity of holy men, the whimsical were not unrepresented: we are told of a "hen-saint," whose vow consisted in picking up his food from the ground like a hen and, as far as possible, in all matters acting like a hen; another saint of a similar type lived as a "cow-saint," and thus the Buddhist accounts give a by no means short list of different kinds of holy men in those days, few among whom seem to have always been lucky enough to preserve their holiness from the fate of ridicule and from dangers more serious than ridicule.