Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t5.25

c8.s1.t5.25

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.