Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t5: Buddha's Method of Teaching

Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t5

Language: English

c8.s1.t5.23 — 4 parts

Buddha's Method of Teaching

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Our task is now to give some idea of the form of Buddha's teaching;—we reserve the attempt to unfold its purport for the following Part. Buddha's whole work was carried on by

oral communication; written he has not. Writing itself was in all probability not unknown in his day, but certainly book-writing was unheard of. Brief written communications, brief written notifications, appear to have been common in India even at that time: books were not written, but learned by rote and taught from memory. Those extensive treatises, such as were addressed by the apostles in the form of letters to the early Christian Churches, and which cast so rich a light on the history of those Churches and circles of thought, are wholly wanting in Buddhist literature.

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Buddha spoke, not Sanscrit, but, like every one around him,[*] the popular idiom of eastern Hindostan. We can by inscriptions and the analogies of a closely allied, probably South Indian popular dialect, the Pâli, obtain an adequate picture of this dialect: a soft and agreeably-sounding language, which is distinguished from the Sanscrit by the same smoothing down of the conjoined consonants, the same tendency to vocalic terminations, which gives the Italian its character as opposed to the Latin language. People said mutte for muktas ("free"), vijju for vidyut ("the lightning"), as the Italian says fatti for facti, ama for amat. The syntax was simple and not very well suited to express fine and sharp shades of dialectic.

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∗ The Brahmans also of this eastern land spoke undoubtedly in their daily intercourse the popular dialect; had the Sanscrit been here, as we find it later in the dramas, the language of the upper classes, some trace of this circumstance must have shown itself in the sacred Pâli texts. But, as far as I know, there is no reference to be found in them (except, perhaps, at "Cullavagga," v, 33) to the Sanscrit, which to all appearances was not, setting aside the Brahman schools, known in wider circles. And this is not at all difficult to account for, as the Sanscrit belongs originally to the western parts of Hindostan; its universal employment as the language of the educated classes through all India, it has, as also the inscriptions teach us, first acquired at a much later period.

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In the early Church, moreover, no special importance was attached to the dialect in which the doctrine of deliverance had been first preached. Buddha's words are confined to no language. "I direct, O disciples," tradition* makes him say, "that each individual learn the words of Buddha in his own tongue."

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Anyone who reads the lectures which the sacred texts put in Buddha's mouth, can scarcely refrain from asking whether the form, in which he himself taught his doctrine, can possibly have resembled these self-same panoramas of abstract and often abstruse structures with their endless repetitions piled high upon each other. Should we not like to see in the picture of those early times something else beside merely a living spirit operating with the fresh vigour of youth in the circle of master and pupils, and should we not for that reason be inclined to eliminate from this picture all that imparts to it an air of tension and fiction? And at the same time is it natural, when we endeavour to obtain a representation of Buddha's teaching and preaching, for us to resort to another source beside the tradition of the Buddhist Church, that is, when thought, consciously or unconsciously, recurs to the teaching of Jesus? Those homely sentences with their totally unstudied external setting and their deep internal wealth, seem to wear that very form, from which we may infer that it, or some similar form, may have accompanied the dissemination of the Buddhist doctrine, as long as the spirit of the early ages survived.

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Reflections such as these are not easy to repress, but historical treatment, before committing itself to them, will do well not to leave untested the ground and foundation on which they rest.

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It cannot be forgotten that the fundamental differences of the thoughts and the dispositions with which the early Christian and early Buddhist communities dealt, were such that these differences must also find expression in the method of religious instruction.

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∗ "Cullavagga," v, 33, 1.

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Where the pure sentiment of the simple, believing heart is supreme, where there are children to whom the Father in heaven has given His kingdom to possess, there the brief and homely language, which comes from the depth of a pure heart, may touch the proper chords more effectually than the highly organized development of a system of ideas. But the mode of thinking of the world in which Buddha lived, moves in other paths: for it all weal and woe, depend on knowledge and ignorance; ignorance is the ultimate root of all evil, and the sole power, which can strike at the root of this evil, is knowledge. Deliverance is, therefore, above all, knowledge;* and the preaching of deliverance can be nothing less or more than the exposition of this knowledge, which means the unfolding of a series of abstract notions and abstract propositions.

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∗ This mode of viewing things is not capable of a more significant and at the same time naïve expression than that which it has found in the narrative of the Singhalese Church records of the first conversation of Mahinda, the converter of Ceylon, with the king Devânampiya Tissa (circ. 250 B.C.). The Thera (elder) proceeds to a formal examination of the king in logic, "to find out: does the king possess a clear understanding?" There is a mango tree near. The Thera asks: "What is this tree called, O great king?" "It is called mango, sire." "Are there, O great king, beside this mango tree yet other mango trees or are there not?" "There are, sire, many other mango trees." "Are there, O great king, beside this mango tree and those mango trees still other trees?" "There are, sire; but they are not mango trees." "Are there beside those other mango trees and non-mango trees yet another tree?" "Yes, sire, this mango tree here." "Well done, great king, thou art clever." The Thera proceeds to apply another test which the

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If, therefore, we do not wish, out of deference to a universal feeling of probability, which has based its standard on a ground other than Indian, to destroy the singularity and continuity of Indian developments, we must be on our guard against making a fanciful picture of Buddha, as if he were one of those aboriginal natures living only amid the concrete and tangible, to whom the spirit is everything, the letter nothing. His thought drew its nourishment from the long course of metaphysical speculation which preceded him; he shares the delight in the metaphysical which is inherent in the Indian blood, the taste for abstraction, classification, and construction, and viewing him from this aspect, we should compare him not so much to the founder of Christianity, as to its theological champions, something such as Origen was. Thus we cannot refuse credence to the tradition which, in however many forms it makes Buddha speak, yet represents the particular weight of his teaching as lying in great lectures, beside which dialogue and parable, fable and sententious sayings, appear to be something merely adventitious or marginal.

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The Vedic literature gives us a picture of the forensic style of dogmatic teaching and debate, which had established itself long before Buddha's time in the Brahmanical schools and on the sacrificial ground. The word which is to convey holy things, needs a fitting garb: the setting of spiritual discourse bears a solemn, sacred character, the stateliness of which soon changes to ponderous gravity. The personal bearing of the king stands as successfully. "Beside thy relatives and the non-relatives, is there any other man, O great king?" "Myself, sire." "Well done, great king, a man is neither relative nor non-relative to himself." "Thereupon the Elder said," the narrative proceeds, "that the king is clever and that he will be able to understand the doctrine, and he propounded to him the parable of the elephant's foot."—*Buddhaghosa, in the Vinaya Pitaka, vol. iii, p. 324.*

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speaker also is not a matter of indifference: a strict ceremonial regulates his appearance and his movements. Thus men were wont to think in Brahman circles long before Buddha’s time; thus they were wont to think in the Buddhist Church at the time in which our texts were compiled. Are we to suppose that Buddha and the circles around him, standing in the middle between this epoch and that, felt differently from both? However widely form, tone, and movement in the didactic lectures, which we find in the sacred texts, may differ from what appears to us the natural and necessary manner of living, spoken language, anyone who knows how to apply different standards to things differing in their conditions, will find it not impossible to believe that the solemnly earnest style of address of Buddha was much more nearly allied to the type of the addresses preserved to us by tradition, than to that which our feeling of the natural and the probable might be tempted to substitute for it.

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The periods of these addresses in their motionless and rigid uniformity, on which no lights and shadows fall, are an accurate picture of the world as it presented itself to the eye of that monastic fraternity, the grim world of origination and decease, which goes on like clockwork in an ever uniform course, and behind which rests the still deep of the Nirvâna. In the words of this ministry, there is heard no sound of working within, no voice of yearning, nothing which—passing from person to person with the power which the utterance of a superior man possesses, and with all the relentlessness which is inseparable from that power—may fasten on the hearers. No impassioned entreating of men to come to the faith, no bitterness for the unbelieving who remains afar off. In these addresses, one word, one sentence, lies beside another in stony stillness, whether it expresses the most trivial thing or the most important. As worlds of gods and worlds of men are, for the Buddhist consciousness, ruled by everlasting necessity, so also are the worlds of ideas and of verities: for these, too, there is one, and only one, necessary form of knowledge and expression, and the thinker does not make this form but he adopts what is ready to hand—as Buddha speaks, so countless Buddhas in countless ages of the world have spoken and will speak. Therefore, everything which resembles a free or arbitrary dealing of the mind with the material, must be absent from the diction of this ministration of salvation; every idea, every thought, has the same right to be heard in full and uncurtailed at the place which belongs to it, and thus those endless repetitions accumulate which Buddha's disciples were never tired of listening to anew, and always honouring afresh as the necessary garb of holy thought, as something which should be so and not otherwise. One might often fancy that at Buddha's time the human mind had not yet discovered the magic word which joins together the lengths of disconnected co-ordinates into one compact whole, the insignificant but powerful word "and." Hear how one of the most renowned discourses expresses the thought that all man's senses and the world, which they apprehend, are attacked and wasted by the sorrow-bringing powers of the earthly and the impermanent as by a flaming fire.∗

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∗ "Mahâvagga," i, 21.

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Then said the Exalted One to the disciples: "Everything, O disciples, is in flames. And what Everything, O disciples, is in flames? The eye, O disciples, is in flames, the visible is in flames, the knowledge of the visible is in flames, the contact with the visible is in flames, the feeling which arises from contact with the visible, be it pleasure, be it pain, be it neither pleasure nor pain, this also is in flames. By what fire is it kindled? By the fire of desire, by the fire of hate, by the fire of fascination, it is kindled; by birth, old age, death, pain, lamentation, sorrow, grief, despair, it is kindled: thus I say. The ear is in flames, the audible is in flames, the knowledge of the audible is in flames, the contact with the audible is in flames, the feeling which arises from contact with the audible, be it pleasure, be it pain, be it neither pleasure nor pain, this also is in flames. By what fire is it kindled? By the fire of desire, by the fire of hate, by the fire of fascination, it is kindled; by birth, old age, death, pain, lamentation, sorrow, grief, despair, it is kindled: thus I say. The sense of smell is in flames—and then follows for the third time the same series of propositions;—the tongue is in flames; the body is in flames; the mind is in flames;—each time the same detail follows unabridged.” Then the address goes on:—

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“Knowing this, O disciples, a wise, noble hearer of the word becomes wearied of the eye, he becomes wearied of the visible, he becomes wearied of the knowledge of the visible, he becomes wearied of contact with the visible, he becomes wearied of the feeling which arises from contact with the visible, be it pleasure, be it pain, be it neither pleasure nor pain. He becomes wearied of the ear,—and then follows one after the other the whole series of ideas as above.” The address concludes:—

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“While he becomes wearied thereof, he becomes free from desire; free from desire he becomes delivered; in the delivered arises the knowledge: I am delivered; re-birth is at an end, perfected is holiness, duty done; there is no more returning to this world; he knows this.”

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The address on the flames of the conflagration of the senses purports to have been delivered by Buddha to the thousand hermits of Uruvelâ,* when they had already confessed the faith and received initiation, when in them, as the texts are wont to express it, "the pure and moteless eye of the truth was awakened: whatever is subject to the law of origination, every such thing is also subject to the law of decease." But if the object be to bring the doctrine of suffering and of deliverance near to a novice, who is still far from the revelation of Buddha, the variations of the sacred writings assume a somewhat different form. As a specimen of their type, place may here be given to the narrative of the village-fathers of the eighty thousand villages of the Magadha kingdom, who were assembled round the king of Magadha, and at the end of their deliberations were sent by him to Buddha.†

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† "Mahâvagga," v, 1.

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"But when the king of Magadha, Seniya Bimbisâra, had instructed the eighty thousand village elders in the laws of the visible world, he dismissed them and said: Friends, ye have now been instructed by me in the rules of the visible universe; go now and approach him, the Exalted One; he, the Exalted One, will instruct you in the things of the hereafter." Then the eighty thousand village elders went to the mountain Gijjhakûta (vulture peak). At that time the venerable Sâgata was on duty with the Exalted One. The eighty thousand village elders went on to where the venerable Sâgata was; when they had come up to him, they said to the venerable Sâgata: "Here come eighty thousand village elders, sire, to see the Exalted One. Come, sire, vouchsafe to us to see the Exalted One." "Tarry here a while, my friends, that I may announce you to the Exalted One." Then vanished the venerable Sâgata from the steps (at the entrance to the monastery) in the presence of the eighty thousand village elders, and before their eyes rose up in the presence of the Exalted One and spoke to the Exalted One: "The eighty thousand village elders are come hither, sire, to see the Exalted One.

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Sire, let the Exalted One be pleased to do what he now thinks right for the occasion." "Then place a seat for me, Sâgata, in the shadow of the monastery." "Yes, sire," replied the venerable Sâgata to the Exalted One, took a stool, vanished before the face of the Exalted One, came up again before the face of the eighty thousand village elders and before their eyes on the steps, and prepared a seat in the shadow of the monastery. Then the Exalted One went out of the monastery and took a seat on the stool which had been set for him in the shadow of the monastery. Then the eighty thousand village elders approached to where the Exalted One was; when they had come up to him they bowed themselves before the Exalted One and sat down near him. But the eighty thousand village elders directed their thoughts to the venerable Sâgata alone, and therefore not to the Exalted One. Then the Exalted One knew in his mind the thoughts of the eighty thousand village elders, and said to the venerable Sâgata: "Come, Sâgata, show yet greater marvels of superhuman ability." "Yes, sire," the venerable Sâgata answered the Exalted One, rose up into the air, and walked on high in the atmosphere, stood, descended, sat down, emitted smoke and flames, and vanished. When the venerable Sâgata had exhibited in various ways, on high in the atmosphere, such marvels of superhuman power, he bowed his head at the feet of the Exalted One, and said to the Exalted One: "My master, sire, is the Exalted One;

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I am his disciple; my master, sire, is the Exalted One; I am his disciple." Thereupon thought the eighty thousand village elders: "truly this is glorious, truly it is wonderful: if the disciple is so exceedingly mighty and exceedingly powerful, what will the Master be!" and they directed their thoughts to the Exalted One alone and not to the venerable Sâgata. Then the Exalted One knew in his mind the thoughts of the eighty thousand village elders, and preached to them the word according to the law, as it is: the discourse on giving, the discourse on uprightness, the discourse on the heavens, the corruption, vanity, impurity of desires, the glory of being free from desire. When now the Exalted One perceived that their thoughts were prepared, susceptible, free from obstructions, elevated, and directed towards him, he preached to them what is pre-eminently the teaching of the Buddhas, suffering, the origin of suffering, the removal of suffering, the way to the removal of suffering. As a clean garment, from which all impurity is removed, wholly absorbs within itself the dye, so opened in these eighty thousand village elders, as they sat there, the pure moteless eye of the truth: whatever is subject to the law of origination, all such is subject to the law of decease.

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And discerning the doctrine, having pierced through to the doctrine, knowing the doctrine, sinking themselves in the doctrine, overcoming doubt, free from vacillation, having penetrated to knowledge, needing nothing else in their faith in the Master's doctrine, they spoke to the Exalted One thus: "Excellent, sire, excellent, sire; as a man, O sire, straightens that which is bowed down, or uncovers the hidden, or shows the way to one who has gone astray, or shows a light in the darkness, so that he who has eyes may be able to see the forms of things, even so has the Exalted One proclaimed the doctrine in manifold discourses. We, O sire, take our refuge with the Exalted One, and with the Doctrine and with the Order of his disciples: may the Exalted One receive us as his lay disciples, for from this day henceforth we have taken our refuge with him as long as our life endures."

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∗ Vide antea, p. 132.

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This narrative of the visit of the elders to Buddha may be taken as a typical one, the features of which reappear in the sacred texts on all similar occasions. Buddha does not speak at starting of the things which constitute the scope and kernel of his teaching, but he begins by admonishing to the practice of virtues in worldly vocations, to generosity, to rectitude in every earthly occupation: he speaks of the heavens with their rewards which await him who has led a life of earnest purpose here below. And as soon as he knows that his hearers are fitted to receive something deeper, he proceeds to speak to them of that which, as the texts say, "is pre-eminently the revelation of the Buddhas," the doctrines of suffering and deliverance. These are always the same subjects of Buddha's preaching, and we over and over again meet the same expressions of joy and gratitude on the part of the converted, then finally the formula with which they take their refuge as lay brothers or lay sisters in the ancient trinity of the Buddhist Church, the Buddha, the Doctrine, and the Order. Here and there there is inserted a story of some wonder which rises in no way above the level of quaint and tedious miracle. All these narratives are absolutely wanting in individuality; we seek in vain to gather something therefrom as to how Buddha penetrated and operated on the private, personal life of the individual among his disciples. Whenever we open our gospels, we find portrayed the most delicate and deepest traces of the work of Jesus, which, providing, consoling, healing, and building up, passes from man to man: very different from the picture which the Buddhist Church has preserved to us of its master's work; the living human, the personal hides itself behind the system, the formula; no one to seek out and to console the suffering and the sorrowing; it is only the sorrow of the whole universe of which we again and again hear.

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Here and there the outward garb of such narratives is somewhat altered; instead of a sermon we find a dialogue; Buddha questions or is questioned. In the task of producing a life-like picture of such conversations as took place in Buddha's time, or in their own circles, the compilers of our sacred texts, who had not many things to go upon, but had nothing less than a dramatic vein, have certainly in their mode of treatment failed most signally. Those who converse with Buddha are good for nothing else but simply to say "yes," and to be eventually converted, if they have not yet been converted.* But any one who does not suffer himself to be deterred by this want of living concrete reality from following up the logical train of these conversations, will here find more than one trace, though dim and unskilful, of the same maieutic method of dialectic, which history has properly denominated Socratic, after the name of the man who has practised it incomparably more perfectly, among a more brilliantly-gifted people—the same sifting of spiritual truths by argument from analogies which daily life supplies, the same rudiments of the inductive method.

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∗ An amusing illustration of the manner in which the sacred texts deal with the claims of character of the speakers and the other requirements of description by dramatic dialogue, is to be found in the history of Buddha's conversation with Anâthapindika's daughter-in-law (in the "Anguttara-Nikâya," Sattakanipâta). Buddha comes in his begging excursion to the house of his wealthiest and most liberal admirer, the great wholesale merchant Anâthapindika. He hears loud conversation and wrangling, and asks: "Why are the people screaming and crying in thy house? One would think fishermen had been robbed of their fish." And Anâthapindika pours out his grief to Buddha: a daughter-in-law of a rich family has come into his house, who will not listen to her husband and her parents-in-law, and declines to show due reverence to Buddha. Buddha says to her: "Come, Sujâtâ." She answers: "Yes, sire," and comes to Buddha. He says to her: "There are seven kinds of wives which a man may have, Sujâtâ. What seven are they? One resembles a murderess, another a robber, another a mistress, another a mother, another a sister, another a friend, another a servant. These Sujâtâ, are the seven kinds of wives which a man may have. Which kind art thou?" And Sujâtâ has forgotten all obstinacy and pride, and says deferentially: "Sire, I do not understand the full meaning of that which the Exalted One has stated in brief; therefore, sire, may the Exalted One so expound to me his doctrine, that I may be able to understand the full meaning of that which the Exalted One has stated briefly." "Hearken, then, Sujâtâ, and take it well to heart: I shall state it to thee."—"Yes, sire," said Sujâtâ. And Buddha describes to her then the seven kinds of women, from the worst who goes after other men, despises her husband, and tries

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Thus is related to us the conversation of Buddha with Sona,[*] a young man, who had imposed on himself an excess of ascetic observances, and now, when he becomes aware of the fruitlessness of his practice, is on the point of turning to the opposite extreme, and reverting to a life of enjoyment. Buddha says to this disciple: "How is it, Sona, were you able to play the lute before you left home?"—"Yes, sire."—"What do you think then, Sona, if the strings of your lute are too tightly strung, will the lute give out the proper tone and be fit to play?"—"It will not, sire."—"And what do you think, Sona, if the strings of your lute be strung too slack; will the lute then give out the proper tone and be fit to play?"—"It will not, sire."—"But how, Sona, if the strings of your lute be not strung too tight or too slack, if they have the proper degree of tension, will the lute then give out the proper sound and be fit to play?"—"Yes, sire."—"In the same way, Sona, energy too much strained tends to excessive

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to take his life, up to the best who, like a servant, is always submissive to her husband's will, and bears without a murmur all he says and does. "These, Sujâtâ, are the seven kinds of wives which a man may have. What kind among these art thou?"—"From this day forward, sire, may the Exalted One esteem me one who is to her husband a wife who resembles a servant."

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∗ "Mahâvagga," v, 1-15, seq.

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zeal, and energy too much relaxed tends to apathy. Therefore, Sona, cultivate in yourself the mean of energy, and press on to the mean in your mental powers, and place this before you as your aim.”

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Another conversation,* carried on between Buddha and a Brahman, deals with the relation between the four castes and the claim to service and obedience which the Brahmans advance against all other castes, and each higher among other castes advances against the lower castes. Buddha couches his criticism in the form of a dialogue, with question and answer. “If anyone were to ask a Kshatriya (noble) as follows: ‘To whom wouldst thou render service: to him with whom, if thou doest him service, thou wilt fare worse for thy service, not better; or to him with whom, if thou doest him service, thou wilt fare better for thy service, not worse?’ The Kshatriya would, if he answers properly, answer thus: ‘Him with whom, if I did him service, I should fare worse for my service, not better, him would I not serve; but him with whom, if I did him service, I should fare better for my service, not worse, to him would I render service.’” And then the induction goes on in its stiff consecutive course: “If anyone were to ask a Brahman as follows—if anyone were to ask a Vaiçya as follows—if anyone were to ask a Çûdra as follows.” The answer is naturally every time the same, and the exposition eventually yields this result: “Where by the service which anyone renders to another, his faith increases, his virtue increases, his understanding increases, his knowledge increases, there, I say, it is that he should render him service.”

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Here and there, as in our gospels, parables alternate with doctrine and admonition: “I shall show you a parable,” Buddha says, “by a parable many a wise man perceives the meaning of what is being said.” The operations of man as well as the life of nature are the fields of observation, with which these similes for spiritual life and effort, for deliverance, and the company of the delivered, deal. Buddha’s preaching of deliverance is compared to the work of the physician, who draws the poisoned arrow from a wound, and overcomes the power of the poison with remedial herbs. The company of disciples, the gathering of noble spirits, in whom all worldly differences of high and low cease, resembles the sea with its wonders, in the depths of which lie pearls and crystals, in which gigantic creatures have free play, into which the rivers flow, and lose their names, and make up the ocean, so many of them there are. As the lotus flower raises its head out of the water, unaffected by the water, so the Buddhas born in the world, rise above the world, unaffected by the impurity of the world. As the peasant ploughs his fields and sows the seed and irrigates, but has not the power to say: the grain shall swell to-day, to morrow it shall germinate, next day it shall ripen, but must wait till the proper time comes and brings growth and ripeness of his corn, so also it is with the disciple who seeks deliverance: he must regulate his course according to strict discipline, practise religious meditation, study diligently the doctrine of salvation, but he has not the power to say: to-day or to-morrow shall my spirit be delivered from every impure habit, but he must wait until his time comes for deliverance to be vouchsafed to him. For the tempter who tries to shut up against man the path of salvation and to lure him to false paths, and the deliverer, who leads him back to the right path, this simile is employed:* “As when, O disciples, in the forest, on a mountain slope, there lies a great tract of low land and water, where a great herd of deer lives, and there comes a man, who devises hurt, distress and danger for the deer; who covers over and shuts up the path which is safe, good, and pleasant to take, and opens up a false path, a swampy path, a marshy track. Thenceforward, O disciples, the great herd of deer incurs hurt and danger and diminishes. But now, O disciples, if a man comes, who devises prosperity, welfare, and safety for this great herd of deer : who clears and opens up the path which is safe, good and pleasant to take, and does away with the false path, and abolishes the swampy path, the marshy track. Thenceforth, O disciples, will the great herd of deer thrive, grow, and increase. I have spoken to you, O disciples, in a parable, to make known my meaning. But the meaning is this. The great lowland and the water, O disciples, are pleasures. The great herds of deer, O disciples, are living men. The man, O disciples, who devises hurt, distress, and ruin, is Mâra, the Evil One. The false path, O disciples, is the eight-fold false path, to wit : false faith, false resolve, false speech, false action, false living, false effort, false thought, false self-concentration. The swampy way, O disciples, is pleasure and desire. The swampy track is ignorance. The man, O disciples, who devises prosperity, welfare, salvation, is the Perfect One, the holy, supreme Buddha. The safe, good way, O disciples, in which it is well to walk, is the holy eight-fold path, to wit : right faith, right resolve, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right thought, right self-concentration. Thus, O disciples, has the safe, good path, in which it is well to walk, been opened up by me; the false path has been done away, the swampy path, the swampy track has been abolished. Everything, O disciples, that a master, who seeks the salvation of his disciples, who pities them, must do out of pity for them, that have I done for you."

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∗ Phasukâri Suttanta (Majjhima Nikâya).

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∗ Dvedhâvitakka Sutta (Majjh. N.).

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Such similes run through the discourse on sorrow and deliverance. Through the measured formality of the monastic church-diction, we constantly feel the breath of intelligent sympathy with life and nature, that genuine human desire to observe this motley world, and see whether it cannot by its figurative language throw some light on the spirit world and its secrets.

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From similes to fable and romance is not a long way; the Buddhist mendicant monks were sufficiently Indian to have an abundant share of the old Indian delight in romance. Sometimes the sacred writings make Buddha tell his disciples a fable of animals, sometimes a history of strange occurrences, and all kinds of human actions, thoughtful or amusing: "There were once two wise brothers," or "there was once at Benares a king, called Brahmadatta," the history of the banished king Long-grief, and his sagacious son Long-life, or the fable, how the partridge, the ape, and the elephant have learned to live together in virtue and harmony; at the end of every history came, as is fitting, a moral.*

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But the most beautiful embellishments of Buddha's preaching are those poetical sentences in which all the most delicate powers of light and warmth, which dwell within the Buddhist mind, are concentrated as it were in a focus. Here we need not by any means see merely a poetic embellishment which the Church has attributed to its master's teaching; sentences of this kind, short improvisations, to which the pliant nature of the Çloka-metre readily adapted itself, may very well have been actually a feature of Buddha's mode of speech, and of that specially-gifted among his disciples.* These apothegms are so unlike the dry numbness of the prose lectures, that we may be tempted to ask whether they were really the same spirits which have composed the one and the other. We feel how that prose confined and bound up those who spoke in it; but when the domain of prose ceases, where men are expressing not dry, subtle systems of ideas, but the simple emotions, the sorrows and hopes of their own hearts, life is roused and the blood of life, poetry. Thoughtful feeling, clad in the grand and rich attire of Indian metaphor, looks out upon us, and the Çlokas with their gently measured rhythms, so peculiarly combining uniformity and diversity, flow up and down like the surging billows of the sea, on which the clear sky is reflected amid variegated, fragrant lotus flowers. The soul of this poesy, too, is nothing else but what the soul of the Buddhist faith itself is, the one thought, which rings out in sublime monotony from all these apothegms: Unhappy, impermanence, happy he who has the eternal. From this thought there pervades the proverbial wisdom of the Buddhist, that tone of deep, happy repose, of which that proud sentence says that the gods themselves envy it, that repose which looks down upon the struggling world, stoops to the most distressed and quietly extends to him the picture of absolute peace. For the elucidation of Buddhism nothing better could happen than that, at the very outset of Buddhist studies, there should be presented to the student by an auspicious hand the Dhammapada,* that most beautiful and richest of collections of proverbs, to which anyone who is determined to come to know Buddhism must over and over again return, and to which we shall often have to allude in our sketch of the Buddhist teaching.

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∗ Some of these stories—hardly all—are so applied that their leading hero is identified with Buddha in one of his previous existences, and the other personages who appear with persons in Buddha's society or in the circles of his opponents. Later on new stories, but always with the same points, were invented by the hundred, or even old legendary matter has been wrought up in majorem Buddhæ gloriam; these make up a particular book of the sacred writings, the collection of the Jâtaka (stories of earlier births), cf., however, also my note to Suttavibhaṅga, Pâcittiya, 2, 1.

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∗ Tradition allots specially the task of improvisation (paṭibhâna) among Buddha's disciples to Vangîsa ("Dîp.," iv, 4), who is the hero of one particular section in the holy texts, the Vangîsathera-Samyutta. There it is often said: this and that thought "dawned on Vangîsa" (paṭibhâti), and then he utters a verse in which he gives expression to the collateral circumstances, praises Buddha, and so on. He then says of these verses, they are not prepared beforehand (pubbe parivitakkitâ) but "they suddenly dawned on me" (ṭhânaso mam paṭibhanti).

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* Here a few sayings of the Dhammapada (60, 153 seq. 383, 82) may find a fitting place; I have avoided attempting to reproduce the metrical form:

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“Long is the night to him who keeps watch, long is the road to the weary, long is the wandering path of re-births for the foolish, who know not the word of truth.”

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“A path of many re-births have I vainly traversed, seeking the builder of the house (of corporeity); full of suffering is birth (recurring) over and over again. Now have I seen thee, O builder of the house; thou shalt not again build the house. Thy rafters are all broken, the battlements of the house are demolished. The soul, having escaped changeability, has attained the end of desire.”

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“Stem the current with might, banish from thee all desire, O Brahman; if thou hast sighted the end of the changeable, thou art a knower of the uncreated, O Brahman.”

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“A rest like that of the deep sea, calm and clear, the wise find, who hear the truth.”

Linked texts (10)

Cullavagga — Pāli
Mahāvagga — Pāli
Jātaka — Pāli
Dīpavaṃsa — Pāli
Dhammapada — Pāli
Suttavibhaṅga — Pāli
Vinayapiṭaka — Pāli
Majjhimanikāya — Pāli
Saṃyuttanikāya — Pāli
Aṅguttaranikāya — Pāli

Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t5: Buddha's Method of Teaching

Contents

Buddha's Method of Teaching

Linked texts (10)