Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t2.25

c8.s1.t2.25

The Judas Iscariot among Buddha's disciples—except that his machinations were unsuccessful—is, as narrated, Buddha's own cousin, Devadatta.∗ Stimulated by ambition he seems to have aimed at stepping into the place of Buddha, who had already grown old, and at getting the management of the community into his own hands. When Buddha does not permit this, he attempts, in conjunction with Ajâtasattu, the son of king Bimbisâra, who is aiming at his father's throne, to put the Master out of the way. Their projects fail: miracles are related, by which the life of the Holy One is preserved: the defeated murderers are attacked by fear and trembling, when they come near Buddha; he speaks gently to them, and they are converted to the faith; the piece of rock which is intended to crush Buddha, is interrupted by two converging mountain peaks, so that it merely grazes Buddha's foot: the wild elephant, which is driven against Buddha in a narrow street, remains standing before him, paralyzed by the magic power of his "friendly thought," and then turns tamely back. At last Devadatta is said to have attempted to obtain the leadership of the Church in another way. He makes five propositions, of which we possess an account seemingly quite above suspicion.† On a number of points which affect monastic life, on which Buddha allowed a certain amount of freedom of action at the discretion of the individual member, Devadatta attempted to substitute a more rigorous ascetic praxis for these liberal regulations: for instance, he insisted that a monk should have his camping-place all his life long in the jungle, while Buddha permitted him to live in the neighbourhood of towns and villages, and was himself accustomed to live there; a monk was, furthermore, to live only on the contributions which he collected on his begging excursions, and was not to accept any invitations to dine with the pious laity; he was to dress himself only in clothes made up of gathered rags; and more of the like. Whoever acted otherwise, would be punished with expulsion from the community. Devadatta proposed these rules as the fundamental principles of a true and rigid spiritual life, in opposition to Buddha’s arrangements as a lax concession to human frailties, and he tried to draw off to himself the monks around Buddha: if we may believe tradition, with a transient success, which then turned into total discomfiture. Devadatta is said to have come to a deplorable end.*