The Religions of India: Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume 1, Edited by Morris JastrowHopkins, Edward Washburn
Religion
The Religions of India: Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume 1, Edited by Morris Jastrow
Hopkins, Edward Washburn
India -- Religion
disagreeable side in his estimation outweighed the joy. He too had
already answered negatively the question Is life worth living?
We must pause here to point out that this oldest and simplest account
of Gautama's resolve shows two things. It makes clear that Gautama at
first had no plan for the universal salvation of his race. He was
alert to 'save his own soul,' nothing more. We shall show presently
that this is confirmed by subsequent events in his career. The next
point is that this narration in itself is a complete refutation of the
opinion of those scholars who believe that the doctrine of _karma_ and
reincarnation arose first in Buddhism, and that the Upanishads that
preach this doctrine are not of the pre-Buddhistic period. The last
part of this statement of opinion is, of course, not touched by the
story of Gautama's renunciation, but the first assumption wrecks on
it. Why should Gautama have so given himself to Yoga discipline? Did
he expect to escape age, sickness, death, in this life by that means?
No. The assumption from the beginning is the belief in the doctrine of
reincarnation. It was in order to free himself from future returns of
these ills that Gautama renounced his home. But nothing whatever is
said of his discovering or inventing the doctrine of reincarnation.
Both hell and _karma_ are taken for granted throughout the whole early
Buddhistic literature. Buddha discovered neither of them, any more
than he discovered a new system of morality, or a new system of
religious life; although more credit accrues to him in regard to the
last because his order was opposed to that then prevalent; yet even
here he had antique authority for his discipline.
To return to Gautama's[8] life. Legend tells how he fled away on his
horse Kanthaka, in search of solitude and the means of salvation, far
from his home to the abode of ascetics, for he thought: "Whence comes
peace? When the fire of desire is extinguished, when the fire of hate
is extinguished, when the fire of illusion is extinguished, when all
sins and all sorrows are extinguished, then comes peace." And the only
means to this end was the renunciation of desire, the discipline of
Yoga concentration, where the mind fixed on one point loses all else
from its horizon, and feels no drawing aside to worldly things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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