Buddhism -- Burma; Burma -- Religion; Burma -- Social life and customs
There is a story of how a young wife, coming to offer her little
offerings to the spirit of the great fig-tree, saw him, and took him for
the spirit, so beautiful was his face as he rose.
There are spirits in all the great trees, in all the rivers, in all the
hills--very beautiful, very peaceful, loving calm and rest.
The woman thought he was the spirit come down to accept her offering,
and she gave it to him--the cup of curdled milk--in fear and trembling,
and he took it. The woman went away again full of hope and joy, and the
prince remained in the grove. He lived there for forty-nine days, we
are told, under the great fig-tree by the river. And the fig-tree has
become sacred for ever because he sat there and because there he found
the truth. We are told of it all in wonderful trope and imagery--of his
last fight over sin, and of his victory.
There the truth came to him at last out of his own heart. He had sought
for it in men and in Nature, and found it not, and, lo! it was in his
own heart.
When his eyes were cleared of imaginings, and his body purified by
temperance, then at last he saw, down in his own soul, what he had
sought the world over for. Every man carries it there. It is never dead,
but lives with our life, this light that we seek. We darken it, and turn
our faces from it to follow strange lights, to pursue vague glimmers in
the dark, and there, all the time, is the light in each man's own heart.
Darkened it may be, crusted over with our ignorance and sin, but never
dead, never dead, always burning brightly for us when we care to seek
for it.
The truth for each man is in his own soul. And so it came at last, and
he who saw the light went forth and preached it to all the world. He
lived a long life, a life full of wonderful teaching, of still more
marvellous example. All the world loved him.
He saw again Yathodaya, she who had been his wife; he saw his son. Now,
when passion was dead in him, he could do these things. And Yathodaya
was full of despair, for if all the world had gained a teacher, she had
lost a husband. So it will be for ever. This is the difference between
men and women. She became a nun, poor soul! and her son--his son--became
one of his disciples.
I do not think it is necessary for me to tell much more of his life.
Much has been told already by Professor Max Mueller and other scholars,
who have spared no pains to come to the truth of that life. I do not
wish to say more. So far, I have written to emphasize the view which, I
think, the Burmese take of the Buddha, and how he came to his wisdom,
how he loved, and how he died.
He died at a great age, full of years and love. The story of his death
is most beautiful. There is nowhere anything more wonderful than how, at
the end of that long good life, he entered into the Great Peace for
which he had prepared his soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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