HE WHO FOUND THE LIGHT--II
'He who never spake but good and wise words, he who was the light
of the world, has found too soon the Peace.'--_Lament on the death
of the Buddha._
The prince rode forth into the night, and as he went, even in the first
flush of his resolve, temptation came to him. As the night closed behind
he remembered all he was leaving: he remembered his father and his
mother; his heart was full of his wife and child.
'Return!' said the devil to him. 'What seek you here? Return, and be a
good son, a good husband, a good father. Remember all that you are
leaving to pursue vain thoughts. You, a great man--you might be a great
king, as your father wishes--a mighty conqueror of nations. The night is
very dark, and the world before you is very empty.'
The prince's heart was full of bitterness at the thought of those he
loved, of all that he was losing. Yet he never wavered. He would not
even turn to look his last on the great white city lying in a silver
dream behind him. He set his face upon his way, trampling beneath him
every worldly consideration, despising a power that was but vanity and
illusion; he went on into the dark.
Presently he came to a river, the boundary of his father's kingdom, and
here he stopped. Then the prince turned to Maung San, and told him that
he must return. Beyond the river lay for the prince the life of a holy
man, who needed neither servant nor horse, and Maung San must return.
All his prayers were in vain; his supplications that he might be allowed
to follow his master as a disciple; his protestations of eternal faith.
No, he must return; so Maung San went back with the horse, and the
prince was alone.
As he waited there alone by the river, alone in the dark waiting for the
dawn ere he could cross, alone with his own fears and thoughts, doubt
came to him again. He doubted if he had done right, whether he should
ever find the light, whether, indeed, there was any light to find, and
in his doubt and distress he asked for a sign. He desired that it might
be shown to him whether all his efforts would be in vain or not, whether
he should ever win in the struggle that was before him. We are told that
the sign came to him, and he knew that, whatever happened, in the end
all would go well, and he would find that which he sought.
So he crossed the river out of his father's kingdom into a strange
country, and he put on the garment of a recluse, and lived as they did.
He sought his bread as they did, going from house to house for the
broken victuals, which he collected in a bowl, retiring to a quiet spot
to eat.
The first time he collected this strange meal and attempted to eat, his
very soul rose against the distastefulness of the mess. He who had been
a prince, and accustomed to the very best of everything, could not at
first bring himself to eat such fare, and the struggle was bitter. But
in the end here, too, he conquered. 'Was I not aware,' he said, with
bitter indignation at his weakness, 'that when I became a recluse I must
eat such food as this? Now is the time to trample upon the appetite of
nature.' He took up his bowl, and ate with a good appetite, and the
fight had never to be fought again.
So in the fashion of those days he became a seeker after truth. Men,
then, when they desired to find holiness, to seek for that which is
better than the things of this world, had to begin their search by an
utter repudiation of all that which the world holds good. The rich and
worldly wore handsome garments, they would wear rags; those of the world
were careful of their personal appearance, they would despise it; those
of the world were cleanly, the hermits were filthy; those of the world
were decent, and had a care for outward observances, and so hermits had
no care for either decency or modesty. The world was evil, surely, and
therefore all that the world held good was surely evil too. Wisdom was
to be sought in the very opposites of the conventions of men.
The prince took on him their garments, and went to them to learn from
all that which they had learnt. He went to all the wisest hermits of the
land, to those renowned for their wisdom and holiness; and this is what
they taught him, this is all the light they gave to him who came to them
for light. 'There is,' they said, 'the soul and the body of man, and
they are enemies; therefore, to punish the soul, you must destroy and
punish the body. All that the body holds good is evil to the soul.' So
they purified their souls by ceremonies and forms, by torture and
starvation, by nakedness and contempt of decency, by nameless
abominations. And the young prince studied all their teaching, and
essayed to follow their example, and he found it was all of no use. Here
he could find no way to happiness, no raising of the soul to higher
planes, but, rather, a degradation towards the beasts. For
self-punishment is just as much a submission to the flesh as luxury and
self-indulgence. How can you forget the body, and turn the soul to
better thoughts, if you are for ever torturing that body, and thereby
keeping it in memory? You can keep your lusts just as easily before your
eyes by useless punishment as by indulgence. And how can you turn your
mind to meditation and thought if your body is in suffering? So the
prince soon saw that here was not the way he wanted. His soul revolted
from them and their austerities, and he left them. As he fathomed the
emptiness of his counsellors of the palace, so he fathomed the emptiness
of the teachers of the cave and monastery. If the powerful and wealthy
were ignorant, wisdom was not to be found among the poor and feeble, and
he was as far from it as when he left the palace. Yet he did not
despair. Truth was somewhere, he was sure; it must be found if only it
be looked for with patience and sincerity, and he would find it. Surely
there was a greater wisdom than mere contempt of wealth and comfort,
surely a greater happiness than could be found in self-torture and
hysteria. And so, as he could find no one to teach him, he went out into
the forest to look for truth there. In the great forest where no one
comes, where the deer feed and the tiger creeps, he would seek what man
could not give him. They would know, those great trees that had seen a
thousand rains, and outlived thirty generations of men; they would know,
those streams that flashed from the far snow summits; surely the forest
and the hills, the dawn and the night, would have something to tell him
of the secrets of the world. Nature can never lie, and here, far away
from the homes of men, he would learn the knowledge that men could not
give him. With a body purified by abstinence, with a heart attuned by
solitude, he would listen as the winds talked to the mountains in the
dusk, and understand the beckoning of the stars. And so, as many others
did then and afterwards, he left mankind and went to Nature for help.
For six years he lived so in the fastnesses of the hills.
We are told but very little of those six years, only that he was often
very lonely, often very sad with the remembrance of all whom he had
left. 'Think not,' he said many years later to a favourite
disciple--'think not that I, though the Buddha, have not felt all this
even as any other of you. Was I not alone when I was seeking for wisdom
in the wilderness? And yet what could I have gained by wailing and
lamentation either for myself or for others? Would it have brought to me
any solace from my loneliness? Would it have been any help to those I
had left?'
We are told that his fame as a solitary, as a a man who communed with
Nature, and subdued his own lower feelings, was so great that all men
knew of it. His fame was as a 'bell hung in the canopy of the skies,'
that all nations heard; and many disciples came to him. But despite all
his fame among men, he himself knew that he had not yet come to the
truth. Even the great soul of Nature had failed to tell him what he
desired. The truth was as far off as ever, so he thought, and to those
that came to him for wisdom he had nothing to teach. So, at the end of
six years, despairing of finding that which he sought, he entered upon a
great fast, and he pushed it to such an extreme that at length he
fainted from sheer exhaustion and starvation.
When he came to himself he recognised that he had failed again. No
light had shone upon his dimmed eyes, no revelation had come to him in
his senselessness. All was as before, and the truth--the truth, where
was that?
For this man was no inspired teacher. He had no one to show him the way
he should go; he was tried with failure, with failure after failure. He
learnt as other men learn, through suffering and mistake. Here was his
third failure. The rich had failed him, and the poor; even the voices of
the hills had not told him of what he would know; the radiant finger of
dawn had pointed to him no way to happiness. Life was just as miserable,
as empty, as meaningless, as before.
All that he had done was in vain, and he must try again, must seek out
some new way, if he were ever to find that which he sought.
He rose from where he lay, and took his bowl in his hands and went to
the nearest village, and ate heartily and drank, and his strength came
back to him, and the beauty he had lost returned.
And then came the final blow: his disciples left him in scorn.
'Behold,' they said to each other, 'he has lived through six years of
mortification and suffering in vain. See, now, he goes forth and eats
food, and assuredly he who does this will never attain wisdom. Our
master's search is not after wisdom, but worldly things; we must look
elsewhere for the guidance that we seek.'
They departed, leaving him to bear his disappointment alone, and they
went into the solitude far away, to continue in their own way and pursue
their search after their own method. He who was to be the Buddha had
failed, and was alone.
To the followers of the Buddha, to those of our brothers who are trying
to follow his teachings and emulate his example to attain a like reward,
can there be any greater help than this: amid the failure and despair of
our own lives to remember that the teacher failed, even as we are doing?
If we find the way dark and weary, if our footsteps fail, if we wander
in wrong paths, did not he do the same? And if we find we have to bear
sufferings alone, so had he; if we find no one who can comfort us,
neither did he; as we know in our hearts that we stand alone, to fight
with our own hands, so did he. He is no model of perfection whom it is
hopeless for us to imitate, but a man like ourselves, who failed and
fought, and failed and fought again, and won. And so, if we fail, we
need not despair. Did not our teacher fail? What he has done, we can do,
for he has told us so. Let us be up again and be of good heart, and we,
too, shall win in the end, even as he did. The reward will come in its
own good time if we strive and faint not.
Surely this comes home to all of our hearts--this failure of him who
found the light. That he should have won--ah, well, that is beautiful;
but that he should have failed--and failed, that is what comes home to
us, because we too have failed many times. Can you wonder that his
followers love him? Can you wonder that his teaching has come home to
them as never did teaching elsewhere? I do not think it is hard to see
why: it is simply because he was a man as we are. Had he been other than
a man, had truth been revealed to him from the beginning, had he never
fought, had he never failed, do you think that he would have held the
love of men as he does? I fear, had it been so, this people would have
lacked a soul.
His disciples left him, and he was alone. He went away to a great grove
of trees near by--those beautiful groves of mango and palm and fig that
are the delight of the heart in that land of burning, flooding
sunshine--and there he slept, defeated, discredited, and abandoned; and
there the truth came to him.
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.
'Ananda,' he said to his weeping disciple, 'do not be too much concerned
with what shall remain of me when I have entered into the Peace, but be
rather anxious to practise the works that lead to perfection; put on
those inward dispositions that will enable you also to reach the
everlasting rest.'
And again:
'When I shall have left life and am no more seen by you, do not believe
that I am no longer with you. You have the laws that I have found, you
have my teachings still, and in them I shall be ever beside you. Do
not, therefore, think that I have left you alone for ever.'
And before he died:
'Remember,' he said, 'that life and death are one. Never forget this.
For this purpose have I gathered you together; for life and death are
one.'
And so 'the great and glorious teacher,' he who never spoke but good and
wise words, he who has been the light of the world, entered into the
Peace.