DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45392#0432
Buddha & the Gospel of Buddhism
—but represents this life with passionate sympathy for all
its sensuous perfection. Praise of the beauty of women
could not be more plainly spoken, and the sound of music
is everywhere: no reference is made to age, and there
is no insistence upon death or suffering, for human and
animal life alike are always represented at the highest levels
of experience. It is in quite another way that Buddhist ideals
are here expressed—by the ever present sense of tragedy:
for the very emphasis on youth and beauty is the revelation
of their transcience. The life of the world is depicted
with such transparency—“ as if in a mountain fastness
there were a pool of water, clear, translucent, and serene ”
—that it appears like the substance of a dream, too frail
to grasp, however heaven-like its forms. And there
moves through these enchanted scenes the figure of one
whose heart is set on a more distant goal, and feels an
infinite compassion for all born beings whose sweet
delights are subject to mortality (Plate CC). It is
just because the mediaeval Buddhist consciousness has
learnt so well to understand the value of the world that
the figure of One who seeks to save all creatures from
this radiant phenomenal life appears so tragic.
“ ‘ It is not that I do not value these my tusks,’ says the
Bodhisattva elephant in the Chaddanta Jataka, ‘nor
that I desire the status of a god, but because the tusks of
Infinite Wisdom are dearer to me a thousand times than
these, that I yield you these, good hunter.’ ”
It is to be observed, too, that the spiritual Superman is
never poor and despised, but always freely endowed with
the lordship and the wealth of the world, he does not
scorn the company of beautiful women. Dharma, artha,
and kama, social virtue, wealth, and the pleasures of the
senses are his, and yet the Bodhisattva’s thoughts are
334
—but represents this life with passionate sympathy for all
its sensuous perfection. Praise of the beauty of women
could not be more plainly spoken, and the sound of music
is everywhere: no reference is made to age, and there
is no insistence upon death or suffering, for human and
animal life alike are always represented at the highest levels
of experience. It is in quite another way that Buddhist ideals
are here expressed—by the ever present sense of tragedy:
for the very emphasis on youth and beauty is the revelation
of their transcience. The life of the world is depicted
with such transparency—“ as if in a mountain fastness
there were a pool of water, clear, translucent, and serene ”
—that it appears like the substance of a dream, too frail
to grasp, however heaven-like its forms. And there
moves through these enchanted scenes the figure of one
whose heart is set on a more distant goal, and feels an
infinite compassion for all born beings whose sweet
delights are subject to mortality (Plate CC). It is
just because the mediaeval Buddhist consciousness has
learnt so well to understand the value of the world that
the figure of One who seeks to save all creatures from
this radiant phenomenal life appears so tragic.
“ ‘ It is not that I do not value these my tusks,’ says the
Bodhisattva elephant in the Chaddanta Jataka, ‘nor
that I desire the status of a god, but because the tusks of
Infinite Wisdom are dearer to me a thousand times than
these, that I yield you these, good hunter.’ ”
It is to be observed, too, that the spiritual Superman is
never poor and despised, but always freely endowed with
the lordship and the wealth of the world, he does not
scorn the company of beautiful women. Dharma, artha,
and kama, social virtue, wealth, and the pleasures of the
senses are his, and yet the Bodhisattva’s thoughts are
334