Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s2.4

c7.s2.4

Those speculations which represented the phenomenal world to be unstable and worthless as compared with the world's base, the Âtman, had at one blow deprived of their value all those aims of life which appear important to the natural consciousness of ordinary men. Sacrifice and external observance are unable to raise the spirit to the Âtman, to disclose to the individual ego his identity with the universal ego. Man must separate himself from all that is earthly, must fly from love and hate, from hope and fear; man must live as though he lived not. The Brahmans, it is said, "the intelligent and wise desire not posterity : what are descendants to us, whose home is the Âtman? They relinquish the desire for children, the struggle for wealth, the pursuit of worldly weal, and go forth as mendicants.”