♦Solitary Study♦ ♦Enlightenment♦ He retreated deeper into the forest, and spent the following year in profound meditation. Seated under the tree ever after known as the Bo tree (tree of wisdom) the light dawned upon him. He saw that earthly desire, the yielding to selfish aims, was the true cause of human misery. If men were free from these, suffering must cease. Not then in religious ceremonial, which is not even symbolic of the truth; nor in self-torture or bodily discipline; but in the strenuous and constant denial of the Self-life until the dominion of self is broken, and also, in the tenderest pity for the great world of suffering men and women, is salvation to be found. _Towards self, discipline, Towards others, love_,-- this is the path of emancipation. ♦Temptation♦ It was while Gautama, now the Buddha, or Enlightened One, rested from the mental strain through which he had passed, and meditated upon his new-found Gospel, that the tempter came to him with subtle temptation. All earthly desires came before him, and he mastered them one by one, until at length he lay under the tree exhausted, but triumphant. ♦Service♦ Peace had been obtained for himself, and now the thought of the suffering world possessed him. It was not in the nature of Gautama to desire publicity; but he could not rest with this new-found gospel of release from misery through the conquest of Desire. He went in search of his old Brahman teachers; but they were dead. He then found the five companions of his ascetic life, who received him at first with doubt; but when he made plain to them in a wonderful sermon, the experience through which he had passed, they gladly received the new gospel. The rest of his busy life was spent in telling his gospel, and in sending out his disciples on preaching tours. Before many months had passed, he was able to send out sixty disciples; and in the course of a very few years his followers numbered many thousands. From the high and the low, and especially from the troubled, they gathered around him, and many entered upon the Way. For forty years he carried on his gentle and loving ministry; travelling from place to place, eating the food which the rich and the poor vied with each other in providing for his own and his followers’ need, and then teaching those who gathered around him. When the Rainy Season came round, he retired with his disciples to some quiet retreat, and talked with them of the great things of the “Kingdom of righteousness.” ♦Death♦ His long life was spent thus in the open air, a simple and sweet and unselfish life; and when he died, at Kusi-Nagar, his body was burned and the ashes were divided, and carried for reverent burial to those parts of the land where there were the largest number of his followers. Gautama died in the year 480 B.C. THE FOURFOLD SACRED TRUTH.[1]