Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t4.18

c8.s1.t4.18

We have no quite reliable opinion as to the terms upon which the monks of the rival communities mixed with each other. Openly expressed enmity appears to have not always prevailed; it was not unusual for members to visit each other in their hermitages, to exchange civilities, to speak to each other coolly and temperately on dogmatic subjects. That there was notwithstanding an incessant play of intrigue in progress will be obvious; where the object in view was to deprive each other of the protection of influential personages no trouble was spared. King Asoka found occasion in his edicts to point out to the spiritual brotherhoods, that he is only doing an injury to his own faith who thinks to set it in a clear light by abusing the adherents of another faith. But whether Buddha himself and the disciples immediately round him descended from the heights of holy meekness, on which the orthodox tradition enthrones them, to this religious scramble, is a point on which we are forbidden to hazard a conjecture.