Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.56

c8.56

† Buddha tarries seven days at the foot of the banyan tree Ajapâla (“Mahâvagga,” i, 2 and 5), and for the same length of time at the foot of the Mucalinda tree (i, 3) and the Râjâyatana tree (i, 4). On the way from Benares to Uruvelâ he leaves the street to sit down at the foot of a tree in a grove. Similarly the monk Kassapa (“Cullavagga,” xi, 1, 1). Ânanda, urged by Buddha to leave him alone for awhile, “set himself down at the foot of a tree not far off” (“Mahâ Parinibbâna S.,” p. 24). In a description of the ascetic exerting himself, it is said (in the “Cûlahatthipadopamasutta”): “He dwells in a lonely spot, in a grove, at the foot of a tree, on a mountain, in a cave, in a mountain grotto, in a burial-place, in the wilderness, under an open sky, on a heap of straw.” (Cf. also “Cullavagga,” vi, 1, 1.) The number of these instances of the tarrying of ascetics under trees may be multiplied ad libitum, if there be any necessity.