DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45392#0048
Buddha & the Gospel of Buddhism
at last to happiness, for pain, they say, is the root of
merit.” But to him it seemed that here there was no way
of escape—here too, men endured misery for the sake of
happiness, and that happiness itself, rightly understood,
consisted in pain, for it must ever be subject to mortality
and to rebirth. “ It is not the effort itself which I blame,”
he said, “ which casts aside the base and follows a higher
path of its own: but the wise in sooth, by all this heavy
toil, ought to attain to the state where nothing ever needs
to be done again. And since it is the mind that controls
the body, it is thought alone that should be restrained.
Neither purity of food nor the waters of a sacred river can
cleanse the heart: water is but water, but the true place of
pilgrimage is the virtue of the virtuous man.”
And now, rejecting with courtesy the king’s offers, the
Bodhisatta made his way to the hermitage of the renowned
sage Alara Kalama and became his disciple, learning the
successive degrees of ecstatic meditation. Alara taught,
it is clear, the doctrine of the Atman, saying that the sage
who is versed in the Supreme Self, “ having abolished
himself by himself, sees that nought exists and is called
a Nihilist: then, like a bird from its cage, the soul escaping
from the body, is declared to be set free: this is that
supreme Brahman, constant, eternal, and without distinctive
signs, which the wise who know reality declare to be
liberation.” But Gautama (and it is by this name that
the books now begin to speak of the Bodhisatta) ignores
the phrase “without distinctive signs,” and with verbal
justification quarrels with the animistic and dualistic
terminology of soul and body: a liberated soul, he argued,
is still a soul, and whatever the condition it attains, must
be subject to rebirth, “and since each successive re-
nunciation is held to be still accompanied by qualities, I
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at last to happiness, for pain, they say, is the root of
merit.” But to him it seemed that here there was no way
of escape—here too, men endured misery for the sake of
happiness, and that happiness itself, rightly understood,
consisted in pain, for it must ever be subject to mortality
and to rebirth. “ It is not the effort itself which I blame,”
he said, “ which casts aside the base and follows a higher
path of its own: but the wise in sooth, by all this heavy
toil, ought to attain to the state where nothing ever needs
to be done again. And since it is the mind that controls
the body, it is thought alone that should be restrained.
Neither purity of food nor the waters of a sacred river can
cleanse the heart: water is but water, but the true place of
pilgrimage is the virtue of the virtuous man.”
And now, rejecting with courtesy the king’s offers, the
Bodhisatta made his way to the hermitage of the renowned
sage Alara Kalama and became his disciple, learning the
successive degrees of ecstatic meditation. Alara taught,
it is clear, the doctrine of the Atman, saying that the sage
who is versed in the Supreme Self, “ having abolished
himself by himself, sees that nought exists and is called
a Nihilist: then, like a bird from its cage, the soul escaping
from the body, is declared to be set free: this is that
supreme Brahman, constant, eternal, and without distinctive
signs, which the wise who know reality declare to be
liberation.” But Gautama (and it is by this name that
the books now begin to speak of the Bodhisatta) ignores
the phrase “without distinctive signs,” and with verbal
justification quarrels with the animistic and dualistic
terminology of soul and body: a liberated soul, he argued,
is still a soul, and whatever the condition it attains, must
be subject to rebirth, “and since each successive re-
nunciation is held to be still accompanied by qualities, I
28