Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) by Charles Eliot

C >> Charles Eliot >> Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3)

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Buddhaghosa has given an account[347] of the way in which the Buddha was
wont to spend his days when stopping in some such resting-place, and his
description is confirmed by the numerous details given in the Pitakas.
He rose before dawn and would often retire and meditate until it was
time to set out on the round for alms but not unfrequently he is
represented as thinking that it was too early to start and that he might
first visit some monk of the neighbourhood. Then he went round the town
or village with his disciples, carrying his almsbowl and accepting
everything put into it. Sometimes he talked to his disciples while
walking[348]. Frequently, instead of begging for alms, he accepted an
invitation to dine with some pious person who asked the whole band of
disciples and made strenuous culinary efforts. Such invitations were
given at the conclusion of a visit paid to the Buddha on the previous
day and were accepted by him with silence which signified consent. On
the morning of the next day the host announced in person or through a
messenger that the meal was ready and the Buddha taking his mantle and
bowl went to the house. The host waited on the guests with his own
hands, putting the food which he had prepared into their bowls. After
the repast the Buddha delivered a discourse or catechized the company.
He did the same with his own disciples when he collected food himself
and returned home to eat it. He took but one meal a day[349], between
eleven and twelve, and did not refuse meat when given to him, provided
that he did not know the animals had been slaughtered expressly for his
food. When he had given instruction after the meal he usually retired to
his chamber or to a quiet spot under trees for repose and meditation. On
one occasion[350] he took his son Rahula with him into a wood at this
hour to impart some of the deepest truths to him, but as a rule he gave
no further instruction until the late afternoon.

The Pitakas represent all believers as treating the Buddha with the
greatest respect but the salutations and titles which they employ hardly
exceed those ordinarily used in speaking to eminent persons[351]. Kings
were at this time addressed as Deva, whereas the Buddha's usual title is
Bhagava or Bhante, Lord. A religious solemnity and deliberation prevails
in the interviews which he grants but no extravagance of adoration is
recorded. Visitors salute him by bowing with joined hands, sit
respectfully on one side while he instructs them and in departing are
careful to leave him on their right hand. He accepts such gifts as food,
clothes, gardens and houses but rejects all ceremonial honours. Thus
Prince Bodhi[352] when receiving him carpeted his mansion with white
cloths but the Buddha would not walk on them and remained standing at
the entrance till they were taken up.

The introduction to the Ariyapariyesana-Sutta gives a fairly complete
picture of a day in his life at Savatthi. It relates how in the morning
he took his bowl and mantle and went to the town to collect food. While
he was away, some monks told his personal attendant Ananda that they
wished to hear a discourse from him, as it was long since they had had
the privilege. Ananda suggested that they had better go to the hermitage
of the Brahman Rammaka near the town. The Buddha returned, ate his meal
and then said "Come, Ananda, let us go to the terrace of Migara's
mother[353] and stay there till evening." They went there and spent the
day in meditation. Towards evening the Buddha rose and said "Let us go
to the old bath to refresh our limbs." After they had bathed, Ananda
suggested that they should go to Rammaka's hermitage: the Buddha
assented by his silence and they went together. Within the hermitage
were many monks engaged in instructive conversation, so the Buddha
waited at the door till there was a pause in the talk. Then he coughed
and knocked. The monks opened the door, and offered him a seat. After a
short conversation, he recounted to them how he had striven for and
obtained Buddhahood.

These congregations were often prolonged late into the night. We hear
for instance how he sat on the terrace belonging to Migara's mother[354]
in the midst of an assembly of monks waiting for his words, still and
silent in the light of the full moon; how a monk would rise, adjusting
his robe so as to leave one shoulder bare, bow with his hands joined and
raised to his forehead and ask permission to put a question and the Lord
would reply, Be seated, monk, ask what you will. But sometimes in these
nightly congregations the silence was unbroken. When King Ajatasattu
went to visit him[355] in the mango grove of Jivaka he was seized with
sudden fear at the unearthly stillness of the place and suspected an
ambush. "Fear not, O King," said Jivaka, "I am playing you no tricks. Go
straight on. There in the pavilion hall the lamps are burning ... and
there is the Blessed One sitting against the middle pillar, facing the
east with the brethren round him." And when the king beheld the assembly
seated in perfect silence, calm as a clear lake, he exclaimed "Would
that my son might have such calm as this assembly now has."

The major part of the Buddha's activity was concerned with the
instruction of his disciples and the organization of the Sangha or
order. Though he was ready to hear and teach all, the portrait presented
to us is not that of a popular preacher who collects and frequents
crowds but rather that of a master, occupied with the instruction of his
pupils, a large band indeed but well prepared and able to appreciate and
learn by heart teaching which, though freely offered to the whole world,
was somewhat hard to untrained ears. In one passage[356] an enquirer
asks him why he shows more zeal in teaching some than others. The answer
is, if a landowner had three fields, one excellent, one middling and one
of poor soil, would he not first sow the good field, then the middling
field, and last of all the bad field, thinking to himself; it will just
produce fodder for the cattle? So the Buddha preaches first to his own
monks, then to lay-believers, and then, like the landowner who sows the
bad field last, to Brahmans, ascetics and wandering monks of other
sects, thinking if they only understand one word, it will do them good
for a long while. It was to such congregations of disciples or to
enquirers belonging to other religious orders that he addressed his most
important discourses, iterating in grave numbered periods the truths
concerning the reality of sorrow and the equal reality of salvation, as
he sat under a clump of bamboos or in the shade of a banyan, in sight
perhaps of a tank where the lotuses red, white and blue, submerged or
rising from the water, typified the various classes of mankind.

He did not start by laying down any constitution for his order. Its
rules were formed entirely by case law. Each incident and difficulty was
referred to him as it arose and his decision was accepted as the law on
that point. During his last illness he showed a noble anxiety not to
hamper his followers by the prestige of his name but to leave behind him
a body of free men, able to be a light and a help to themselves. But a
curious passage[357] represents an old monk as saying immediately after
his death "Weep not, brethren; we are well rid of the Great Monk. We
used to be annoyed by being told, 'This beseems you and this does not
beseem you. But now we shall be able to do what we like and not have to
do what we don't like.'" Clearly the laxer disciples felt the Master's
hand to be somewhat heavy and we might have guessed as much. For though
Gotama had a breadth of view rare in that or in any age, though he
refused to multiply observances or to dogmatize, every sutta indicates
that he was a man of exceptional authority and decision; what he has
laid down he has laid down; there is no compulsion or punishment, no vow
of obedience or _sacrificium intellectus_; but it is equally clear that
there is no place in the order for those who in great or small think
differently from the master.

In shepherding his flock he had the assistance of his senior disciples.
Of these the most important were Sariputta and Moggallana, both of them
Brahmans who left their original teacher Sanjaya to join him at the
outset of his ministry. Sariputta[358] enjoyed his confidence so fully
that he acted as his representative and gave authoritative expositions
of doctrine. The Buddha even compared him to the eldest son of an
Emperor who assists his father in the government. But both he and
Moggallana died before their master and thus did not labour
independently. Another important disciple Upali survived him and
probably contributed materially to the codification of the Vinaya.
Anuruddha and Ananda, both of them Sakyas, are also frequently
mentioned, especially the latter who became his personal attendant[359]
and figures in the account of his illness and death as the beloved
disciple to whom his last instructions were committed. These two
together with four other young Sakya nobles and Upali joined the order
twenty-five years before Gotama's death and perhaps formed an inner
circle of trusted relatives, though we have no reason to think there was
any friction between them and Brahmans like Sariputta. Upali is said to
have been barber of the Sakyas. It is not easy to say what his social
status may have been, but it probably did not preclude intimacy.

The Buddha was frequently occupied with maintaining peace and order
among his disciples. Though the profession of a monk excluded worldly
advancement, it was held in great esteem and was hence adopted by
ambitious and quarrelsome men who had no true vocation. The troubles
which arose in the Sangha are often ascribed in the Vinaya to the
Chabbaggiyas, six brethren who became celebrated in tradition as spirits
of mischief and who are evidently made the peg on which these old
monkish anecdotes are hung. As a rule the intervention of the Buddha was
sufficient to restore peace, but one passage[360] indicates resistance
to his authority. The brethren quarrelled so often that the people said
it was a public scandal. The Buddha endeavoured to calm the disputants,
but one of them replied, "Lord, let the Blessed One quietly enjoy the
bliss which he has obtained in this life. The responsibility for these
quarrels will rest with us alone." This seems a clear hint that the
Blessed One had better mind his own business. Renewed injunctions and
parables met with no better result. "And the Blessed One thought" says
the narrative "'truly these fools are infatuated,' and he rose from his
seat and went away."

Other troubles are mentioned but by far the most serious was the schism
of Devadatta, represented as occurring in the old age of Gotama when he
was about seventy-two. The story as told in the Cullavagga[361] is
embellished with supernatural incidents and seems not to observe the
natural sequence of events but perhaps three features are historical:
namely that Devadatta wished to supersede the Buddha as head of the
order, that he was the friend of Ajatasattu, Crown Prince and afterwards
King of Magadha[362], and that he advocated a stricter rule of life than
the Buddha chose to enforce. This combination of piety and ambition is
perhaps not unnatural. He was a cousin of the Buddha and entered the
order at the same time as Ananda and other young Sakya nobles. Sprung
from that quarrelsome breed he possessed in a distorted form some of
Gotama's own ability. He is represented as publicly urging the Master to
retire and dwell at ease but met with an absolute refusal. Sariputta was
directed to "proclaim" him in Rajagaha, the proclamation being to the
effect that his nature had changed and that all his words and deeds were
disowned by the order. Then Devadatta incited the Crown Prince to murder
his father, Bimbisara. The plot was prevented by the ministers but the
king told Ajatasattu that if he wanted the kingdom he could have it and
abdicated. But his unnatural son put him to death all the same[363] by
starving him slowly in confinement. With the assistance of Ajatasattu,
Devadatta then tried to compass the death of the Buddha. First he hired
assassins, but they were converted as soon as they approached the sacred
presence. Then he rolled down a rock from the Vulture's peak with the
intention of crushing the Buddha, but the mountain itself interfered to
stop the sacrilege and only a splinter scratched the Lord's foot. Then
he arranged for a mad elephant to be let loose in the road at the time
of collecting alms, but the Buddha calmed the furious beast. It is
perhaps by some error of arrangement that after committing such
unpardonable crimes Devadatta is represented as still a member of the
order and endeavouring to provoke a schism by asking for stricter rules.
The attempt failed and according to later legends he died on the spot,
but the Vinaya merely says that hot blood gushed from his mouth.

That there are historical elements in this story is shown by the
narrative of Fa Hsien, the Chinese pilgrim who travelled in India about
400 A.D. He tells us that the followers of Devadatta still existed in
Kosala and revered the three previous Buddhas but refused to recognize
Gotama. This is interesting, for it seems to show that it was possible
to accept Gotama's doctrine, or the greater part of it, as something
independent of his personality and an inheritance from earlier teachers.

The Udana and Jataka relate another plot without specifying the year.
Some heretics induced a nun called Sundari to pretend she was the
Buddha's concubine and hired assassins to murder her. They then accused
the Bhikkhus of killing her to conceal their master's sin, but the real
assassins got drunk with the money they had received and revealed the
conspiracy in their cups.

But these are isolated cases. As a whole the Buddha's long career was
marked by a peace and friendliness which are surprising if we consider
what innovations his teaching contained. Though in contending that
priestly ceremonies were useless he refrained from neither direct
condemnation nor satire, yet he is not represented as actively
attacking[364] them and we may doubt if he forbade his lay disciples to
take part in rites and sacrifices as a modern missionary might do. We
find him sitting by the sacred fire of a Brahman[365] and discoursing,
but not denouncing the worship carried on in the place. When he
converted Siha[366], the general of the Licchavis, who had been a Jain,
he bade him continue to give food and gifts as before to the Jain monks
who frequented his house--an instance of toleration in a proselytizing
teacher which is perhaps without parallel. Similarly in the
Sigalovada-sutta it is laid down that a good man ministers to monks and
to Brahmans. If it is true that Ajatasattu countenanced Devadatta's
attempts to murder him, he ignored such disagreeable details with a
sublime indifference, for he continued to frequent Rajagaha, received
the king, and preached to him one of his finest sermons without alluding
to the past. He stands before us in the suttas as a man of amazing power
of will, inaccessible to fear, promises and, one may add, to argument
but yet in comparison with other religious leaders singularly gentle in
taking the offensive against error. Often he simply ignored it as
irrelevant: "Never mind" he said on his deathbed to his last convert
"Never mind, whether other teachers are right or wrong. Listen to me, I
will teach you the truth." And when he is controversial his method is
often to retain old words in honourable use with new meanings. The
Brahmans are not denounced like the Pharisees in the New Testament but
the real Brahman is a man of uprightness and wisdom: the real sacrifice
is to abstain from sin and follow the Truth.

Women played a considerable part in the entourage of Gotama. They were
not secluded in India at that time and he admitted that they were
capable of attaining saintship. The work of ministering to the order, of
supplying it with food and raiment, naturally fell largely to pious
matrons, and their attentive forethought delighted to provide for the
monks those comforts which might be accepted but not asked for.
Prominent among such donors was Visakha, who married the son of a
wealthy merchant at Savatthi and converted her husband's family from
Jainism to the true doctrine. The Vinaya recounts how after entertaining
the Buddha and his disciples she asked eight boons which proved to be
the privileges of supplying various classes of monks with food, clothing
and medicine and of providing the nuns with bathing dresses, for, said
she, it shocked her sense of propriety to see them bathing naked. But
the anecdotes respecting the Buddha and women, whether his wife or
others, are not touched with sentiment, not even so much as is found in
the conversation between Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi in the Upanishad. To
women as a class he gave their due and perhaps in his own opinion more
than their due, but if he felt any interest in them as individuals, the
sacred texts have obliterated the record. In the last year of his life
he dined with the courtezan Ambapali and the incident has attracted
attention on account of its supposed analogy to the narrative about
Christ and "the woman which was a sinner." But the resemblance is small.
There is no sign that the Buddha, then eighty years of age, felt any
personal interest in Ambapali. Whatever her morals may have been, she
was a benefactress of the order and he simply gave her the same
opportunity as others of receiving instruction. When the Licchavi
princes tried to induce him to dine with them instead of with her, he
refused to break his promise. The invitations of princes had no
attraction for him, and he was a prince himself. A fragment of
conversation introduced irrelevantly into his deathbed discourses[367]
is significant--"How, Lord, are we to conduct ourselves with regard to
womankind? Don't see them, Ananda. But if we see them, what are we to
do? Abstain from speech. But if they should speak to us what are we to
do? Keep wide awake."

This spirit is even more evident in the account of the admission of Nuns
to the order. When the Buddha was visiting his native town his aunt and
foster mother, Mahaprajapati, thrice begged him to grant this privilege
to women but was thrice refused and went away in tears. Then she
followed him to Vesali and stood in the entrance of the Kutagara Hall
"with swollen feet and covered with dust, and sorrowful." Ananda, who
had a tender heart, interviewed her and, going in to the Buddha,
submitted her request but received a triple refusal. But he was not to
be denied and urged that the Buddha admitted women to be capable of
attaining saintship and that it was unjust to refuse the blessings of
religion to one who had suckled him. At last Gotama yielded--perhaps the
only instance in which he is represented as convinced by argument--but he
added "If, Ananda, women had not received permission to enter the Order,
the pure religion would have lasted long, the good law would have stood
fast a thousand years. But since they had received that permission, it
will now stand fast for only five hundred years[368]."

He maintained and approved the same hard detached attitude in other
domestic relations. His son Rahula received special instruction but is
not represented as enjoying his confidence like Ananda. A remarkable
narrative relates how, when the monk Sangamaji was sitting beneath a
tree absorbed in meditation, his former wife (whom he had left on
abandoning the world) laid his child before him and said "Here, monk, is
your little son, nourish me and nourish him." But Sangamaji took no
notice and the woman went away. The Buddha who observed what happened
said "He feels no pleasure when she comes, no sorrow when she goes: him
I call a true Brahman released from passion[369]." This narrative is
repulsive to European sentiment, particularly as the chronicler cannot
spare the easy charity of a miracle to provide for the wife and child,
but in taking it as an index of the character of Gotama, we must bear in
mind such sayings of Christ as "If any man come to me and hate not his
father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple[370]."

4

Political changes, in which however he took no part, occurred in the
last years of the Buddha's life. In Magadha Ajatasattu had come to the
throne. If, as the Vinaya represents, he at first supported the schism
of Devadatta, he subsequently became a patron of the Buddha. He was an
ambitious prince and fortified Pataligama (afterwards Pataliputra)
against the Vajjian confederation, which he destroyed a few years after
the Buddha's death. This confederation was an alliance of small
oligarchies like the Licchavis and Videhans. It would appear that this
form of constitution was on the wane in northern India and that the
monarchical states were annexing the decaying commonwealths. In Kosala,
Vidudabha conquered Kapilavatthu a year or two before the Buddha's
death, and is said to have perpetrated a great massacre of the Sakya
clan[371]. Possibly in consequence of these events the Buddha avoided
Kosala and the former Sakya territory. At any rate the record of his
last days opens at Rajagaha, the capital of Magadha.

This record is contained in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, the longest of
the suttas and evidently a compilation. The style is provokingly uneven.
It often promises to give a simple and natural narrative but such
passages are interrupted by more recent and less relevant matter. No
general estimate of its historical value can be given but each incident
must be apprized separately. Nearly all the events and discourses
recorded in it are found elsewhere in the canon in the same words[372]
and it contains explanatory matter of a suspiciously apologetic nature.
Also the supernatural element is freely introduced. But together with
all this it contains plain pathetic pictures of an old man's fatigue and
sufferings which would not have been inserted by a later hand, had they
not been found ready in tradition. And though events and sermonettes are
strung together in a way which is not artistic, there is nothing
improbable in the idea that the Buddha when he felt his end approaching
should have admonished his disciples about all that he thought most
important.

The story opens at Rajagaha about six months before the Buddha's death.
The King sends his minister to ask whether he will be successful in
attacking the Vajjians. The Buddha replies that as long as they act in
concord, behave honourably, and respect the Faith, so long may they be
expected not to decline but prosper. The compiler may perhaps have felt
this narrative to be an appropriate parallel to the Buddha's advice to
his disciples to live in peace and order. He summoned and addressed the
brethren living in Rajagaha and visited various spots in the
neighbourhood. In these last utterances one phrase occurs with special
frequency, "Great is the fruit, great the advantage of meditation
accompanied by upright conduct: great is the advantage of intelligence
accompanied by meditation. The mind which has such intelligence is freed
from intoxications, from the desires of the senses, from love of life,
from delusion and from ignorance."

He then set forth accompanied by Ananda and several disciples. Judging
from the route adopted his intention was to go ultimately to Savatthi.
This was one of the towns where he resided from time to time, but we
cannot tell what may have been his special motives for visiting it on
the present occasion, for if the King of Kosala had recently massacred
the Sakyas his presence there would have been strange. The road was not
direct but ran up northwards and then followed the base of the
mountains, thus enabling travellers to cross rivers near their sources
where they were still easy to ford. The stopping-places from Rajagaha
onwards were Nalanda, Pataliputra, Vesali, Bhandagama, Pava, Kusinara,
Kapilavatthu, Setavya, Savatthi. On his last journey the Buddha is
represented as following this route but he died at the seventh
stopping-place, Kusinara. When at Pataligama, he prophesied that it
would become a great emporium[373]. He was honourably entertained by the
officers of the King who decided that the gate and ferry by which he
left should be called Gotama's gate and Gotama's ferry. The gate
received the name, but when he came to the Ganges he vanished
miraculously and appeared standing on the further bank. He then went on
to Vesali, passing with indifference and immunity from the dominions of
the King of Magadha into those of his enemies, and halted in the grove
of the courtezan Ambapali[374]. She came to salute him and he accepted
her invitation to dine with her on the morrow, in spite of the protests
of the Licchavi princes.

The rainy season was now commencing and the Buddha remained near Vesali
in the village of Beluva, where he fell seriously ill. One day after his
recovery he was sitting in the shade with Ananda, who said that during
the illness his comfort had been the thought that the Buddha would not
pass away without leaving final instructions to the Order. The reply was
a remarkable address which is surely, at least, in parts the Buddha's
own words.