Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.t1.1

c8.t1.1

The number of believers soon increases. The next convert is Yasa, a scion of a wealthy house at Benares: his parents and his wife likewise hear Buddha’s discourses and become adherents of the faith as a lay-brother and lay-sister. Numerous friends of Yasa, youths of the most prominent houses in Benares and the country roundabout, adopt the monastic life. The company of the faithful soon reaches sixty members. Buddha sends them forth to preach the law throughout the country. In nothing did the secret of the great power of rapid increase, which existed in the young Church, so much lie as in its itinerancy: here anon, there anon, appearing, vanishing, simultaneously at a thousand places. “O disciples,” thus in our authorities run the words with which Buddha sends out his followers, “I am loosed from all bands, divine and human. Ye also, O disciples, are loosed from all bands, divine and human. Go ye out, O disciples, and travel from place to place for the welfare of many people, for the joy of many people, in pity for the world, for the blessing, welfare, and joy of gods and men. Go not in twos to one place. Preach, O disciples, the law, the beginning of which is noble, the middle of which is noble, and the end of which is noble, in spirit and in letter: preach the whole and full, pure path of holiness. There are beings, who are pure from the dust of the earthly, but if they hear not the gospel of the law, they perish: they shall understand the law. But I, O disciples, go to Uruvelâ, to the village of the general, to preach the law.”