Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.165

c8.165

∗ In addition to the external ground of the history of this temptation being wanting in the “Mahâvagga,” there is still another deeper consideration which determines me to believe that it was excluded from the older traditions. We shall afterwards come to the history of Buddha’s internal struggle whether he should preach his doctrine and not rather enjoy the acquired deliverance himself alone: Brahma’s appearance solved the doubt. This history conveys no other thought but the same which underlies the narrative of Mâra: Buddha’s struggle with the possibility of permitting the sacred knowledge which he had won, to benefit himself only and not humanity at large. Had he repelled Mâra’s tempting suggestion to do this, by saying that the time to enter Nirvâna would not come until he had gained disciples, male and female, and preached his doctrine to all the world, there would have been no opening left for the whole account of the dialogue with Brahma.