The Life or Legend of Gaudama, the Buddha of the Burmese (Volume II)Bigandet, Paul Ambroise
Religion
The Life or Legend of Gaudama, the Buddha of the Burmese (Volume II)
Bigandet, Paul Ambroise
Buddhism -- Burma; Burma -- Religion; Gautama Buddha
This and the following articles contain subjects of so abstruse and
refined a nature, that it would require one to possess the science of a
Buddha to come to a right understanding of them. The difficulties arising
from this study are due to the confused and very unsatisfactory ideas
of the Buddhist philosophers respecting the soul and its spirituality,
and perhaps to the inability of the writer to understand the vague and
undefined terms employed to convey their ideas on these matters. The
field of Buddhist metaphysics is, to a European, in a great measure a
new one; the meaning of the terms is half-understood by the Burmese
translators; definitions of terms do not convey explanations such as we
anticipate, and ideas seem to run in a new channel; they assume, if we
may say so, strange forms: divisions and subdivisions of the various
topics have no resemblance to what a European is used to in the study of
philosophy. The student feels himself ushered into a new region; he is
doomed to find his way by groping. Finally, the false position assumed
by the Indian philosophers, and the false conclusions they arrive at,
contribute to render more complicated the task of elucidating this
portion of the Buddhist system. That the difficulties may be somewhat
lessened, and the pathway rendered less rugged and a little smooth, the
writer proposes to avoid as much as it is in his power overcharging with
Pali terms the explanations he is about to afford, under the guidance of
the Buddhist author.
In the preceding article we have treated of meritorious actions that
are purely exterior, and briefly alluded to the nature of the rewards
bestowed on earth and in the six seats of Nats upon those who have
performed these good actions. Now we leave behind all the exterior good
deeds, and turn the attention of our mind to something more excellent,
to those acts that are purely interior, and are performed solely by
the soul and the right exercise of its faculties; that is to say, by
meditation and contemplation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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