The Gâtakamâlâ; Or, Garland of Birth-StoriesAryasura
Religion
The Gâtakamâlâ; Or, Garland of Birth-Stories
Aryasura
Gautama Buddha -- Pre-existence
One time the Bodhisattva, it is said, was an ascetic who had forsaken
the world. He had become convinced that the life in a home, since it is
beset with bad occupations, leaves but little room for righteousness;
for it is visited by many sins and evils and unfit for quiet, inasmuch
as it implies the prevalence of material interest (artha) and sensual
pleasures (kâma); it is exposed to the inroad of defiling passions:
love, hatred, infatuation, jealousy, anger, lasciviousness, pride,
selfishness, and the rest; it involves the loss of the possession of
shame and religion, and is the abode of covetousness and wicked lust. On
the other hand he understood the homeless state, as it avoids material
property and sensual objects, to be an agreeable one, being wholly free
from those evils. Thus knowing, he became an ascetic, eminent by his
conduct, his learning, his placidity of mind, his modesty, and his
self-restraint. As he was in the habit of always preaching forbearance
and teaching the Law from that point of view, in strict conformity with
the vow he had taken to do so, people neglecting his proper name and
that of his family, made him a name of their own invention, calling him
Kshântivâdin (forbearance-preacher).
1. Illustrious domination or knowledge or penance, also an extreme
passion for arts, likewise anomaly of body, language or behaviour are
the causes of giving new names to men.
2. So was the case with him. His true name vanished for the appellation
of Kshântivâdin, because knowing the power of forbearance and desiring
to adorn mankind, like himself, with that virtue he constantly used to
discourse on that topic.
3. The great endurance, which was a part of his very nature and the
firmness of which he showed by his unaltered calm, when injured by
others, as well as his excellent sermons on that subject, gave him the
renown of a Muni.
The residence of the High-minded One was a place in the forest, lovely
by its utter solitude and exhibiting the charming beauty of a garden; it
bore flowers and fruits at all seasons, and encompassed a pond of pure
water embellished by white and blue lotuses. By his dwelling there he
procured for that place the holiness of a hermitage.
4. For where pious persons adorned with excellent virtues, have their
residence, such a place is a very auspicious and lovely one, a sacred
place of pilgrimage (tîrtha), a hermitage.
There he was venerated by the different deities, who were living there,
and often visited by such people as were lovers of virtues and desirous
of their salvation. To that multitude of visitors he showed the high
favour of entertaining them with his sermons on the subject of
forbearance, rejoicing both their ears and hearts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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