‘By oneself is evil done; by oneself is one injured; by oneself is evil
left undone; by oneself is one purified; no one purifies another.’
(Compare Manu IV. 240.)
‘Better than dominion over the earth, better than going to Heaven, or
having sovereignty over the worlds, is the attainment of the first step
in sanctification.’
‘Not to commit evil, to accumulate merit by good deeds (kusalassa
upasampadā), to purify the heart, this is the doctrine of the
Enlightened’ (165, 178, 183).
‘As a frontier town is guarded[52] within and without, so guard
thyself.’ (Dh. 315.)
‘He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him I call a
real driver; any other merely holds the reins.’ (Dh. 222. Compare Manu
II. 88.)
‘Let a man overcome anger by gentleness, let him overcome the evil by
good; the parsimonious by liberality, the liar by truth.’ (Dh. 223. Manu
VI. 47, 48.)
‘The fully enlightened finds no satisfaction even in heavenly pleasures;
but only in suppression of desires.’
‘One by one, little by little, moment by moment, a wise man frees
himself from personal impurities as a refiner blows away the dross of
silver.’ (Dh. 187, 239.)
‘There is a treasure laid up in the heart, a treasure of charity,
purity, temperance, soberness. A treasure, secure, impregnable, that no
thief can steal; a treasure that follows after death. (Compare Manu IV.
241.) Universal science, all the perfections, supernatural knowledge,
supreme Buddhaship itself this treasure can procure.’ (Childers’
Nidhi-kāṇḍa.)
The following are some of the blessed states described in the
Mahāmaṅgala-sutta. They prove that Gautama required married men to
discharge their duties faithfully.
‘The succouring of mother and father, the cherishing of child and wife,
and the following of a peaceful calling, this is the greatest blessing’
(maṅgalam uttamam).
‘The giving alms, a religious life, aid rendered to relations, blameless
acts, this is the greatest blessing.’
‘Reverence and humility, contentment and gratefulness, the hearing of
the Law at the right time, this is the greatest blessing.’
‘Patience and lowly speech, association with religious men, recitation
of the Law at the right time, this is the greatest blessing.’
‘Self-mortification and chastity, discernment of the noble truths,
perception of Nirvāṇa, this is the greatest blessing.’
In the Aṅguttara (II. iv. 2) it is said that no adequate return can be
made by children to parents ‘even by menial service.’ With Gautama, to
honour father and mother was better than to worship the gods of heaven.
Many other examples might be given. Not only was a man forbidden to
kill, he was never to injure.
Then in the Rājovāda Jātaka we have the story of the one king ‘who
overcomes the strong by strength, the soft by softness, the good by
goodness, and the wicked by wickedness;’ and of the other king ‘who
conquers anger by calmness, the wicked by goodness, the stingy by gifts,
the liar (alika-vādinam) by truth.’
Other precepts require a man to exercise charity and respect towards all
aged persons, teachers, servants, and animals. He was to set an example
of self-sacrifice.
It is recorded of Gautama Buddha that on one occasion he plucked out his
own eyes, and that on another he cut off his own head, and that on a
third he cut his own body to pieces to redeem a dove from a hawk.
Yet we repeat that with all this apparently sublime morality no true
idea of sin, as displeasing to a Holy God, was connected with the
infraction of the moral code. Nor did a Buddhist always avoid harming
others from any true reverence for life. He was to cherish the life of
others, but his chief motive was the fear that by not doing so he would
entail the misery of continuous life on himself; and his chief motive
for avoiding anger was that it was incompatible with that equanimity,
which ought to characterize every wise man who aimed at the extinction
of his own personality.
The ease with which charitable acts might be performed is amusingly
illustrated by a story told in Huc’s travels in Tibet. A certain zealous
fellow-traveller (who considered that it was quite possible to be at the
same time a good Buddhist and a good Christian) invited the French
missionaries to co-operate with him in performing charitable acts to
commemorate the termination of a fatiguing journey, especially by
providing worn-out travellers, like themselves, with horses. The
missionaries pleaded their own poverty, but to their surprise were told
that they were only required to draw horses on paper, which were taken
to the edge of a precipice, thrown up into the air, and, certain
formularies being recited, were carried away by the wind and changed
into real horses by the power of Buddha.
Let us by no means, however, shut our eyes to the praiseworthy feature
of the Buddhist system mentioned at page 125—its recognition of the need
of inner purity and sanctification—an inner Buddhism of the heart,
without which even a monk was no true Buddhist. Of course the Law could
be observed superficially without any real heart-belief or heart-purity.
When the inner heart-condition of a Buddhist is described, he is said to
be walking on one of four paths (ćattāro Maggā), and is then called
Ariyo (= Ārya), ‘worthy of reverence’ (distinguished from Pṛithag-jana,
‘an ordinary professing Buddhist’). To avoid confounding these paths
with the eightfold path (p. 44) it would be better to speak of them as
four stages of inner sanctification. Dhyāna, ‘meditation,’ of four
kinds, is the chief means of entering and passing through these stages
(p. 32), which once entered can never be abandoned.
The first stage is that of the man—be he monk or layman—who is just
converted, by an inner awakening, to true heart-Buddhism. This man has
freed himself from the first three fetters—namely, delusion of self,
doubts about the Buddha’s doctrine, and dependence on external rites (p.
127). He is called Sotāpanno, ‘one who has entered the stream’
(Srota-āpanna), _inevitably_ carrying him onwards—though not necessarily
in the same body—to the calm ocean of Nirvāṇa, and his state is called
Sotāpatti. He can only be re-born as a god or man, but not in the four
lower births (p. 121).
Mark that the doctrine of ‘perseverance’ is a remarkable feature in this
phase of the Buddhist system.
The second stage is that of the man who has nearly freed himself from
the first five fetters, but has a sufficient number left to cause one
more birth on the earth. He is called Sakad-āgāmī (Sakṛid-āg°).
The third stage is that of the man who is quite free from the first five
fetters. Such a man can only be re-born in a Brahmā heaven, from which
he reaches Nirvāṇa. He is therefore called An-āgāmī, ‘one who will not
come back to earth.’
The fourth stage is that of the completely freed man who attains
Arhatship (Arahattaṃ) in this life, and will at death experience no
re-birth. There is, of course, a difference between one who has only
just entered each stage of the journey and one who has reached the
terminus. And this Arhatship is open to all (even to women), though only
likely to be attained by true monks or true nuns. The name Arhat (Pāli
Arahā, in Ceylon Rahat), ‘most deserving’ (root _arh_), is significant
of the highest merit; for the Arhat is perfect, freed from all pain
(nishkleṡa), from all the ten fetters, from all attachment to existence
(upādāna) whether on earth or in heaven, and from all re-creative
Act-force. He has already entered Nirvāṇa, and while still living he is
dead to the world. He is the Jīvan-mukta, ‘emancipated living man,’ of
the Yoga. By the force of the fourth Dhyāna, he has gained the Abhijñās
(Abhiññā), or ‘transcendent faculties of knowledge,’ the inner eye,
inner ear, knowledge of all thoughts, and recollection of previous
existences, and the extraordinary powers over matter called Iddhi (=
Ṛiddhi). In short he is Asekha, ‘one who has nothing to learn.’
Although, theoretically, a layman and even beings existing in other
spheres, might enter the stream leading to Arhatship (see p. 90) without
becoming monks, yet it is evident that as a rule it was only likely to
be entered by persons who renounced the world and led a celibate
monastic life.