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The Seventh Lesson: Buddhism.1247
ready to mow down man as the grass of the field. Behind all he heard ever
“the tinkle of the camel-bell,” as the Persian poet has called it—the warning
of approaching death. He therefore determined to forsake all and become
an ascetic, and in that life to seek the peace which the world had failed to
give him. He escaped from his father’s palace, and fled to the jungle. He
met the various Brahmin philosophers, and studied their doctrines, but still
peace evaded him. Asceticism and self-punishment also failed to bring the
coveted reward. And so at last he came to the conclusion that Peace can
come only from Within, and he began a life of meditation and mental selfexamination,
with concentration upon the idea of the Source of Pain and
Sorrow.
He determined to conquer the difficulty by sheer force of Mind. And
so he sat beneath the famous Bo-Tree for weeks at a time, plunged in
the most profound meditation, and abstract thought. At last Nirvana or
Transcendental Illumination came to him, and he saw clearly the cause of
phenomenal life and the pain attendant thereupon, and also the Way of
Escape. He saw that in Samsara, or the Cycle of Existences, is to be found
the Source of Pain. For, he reasoned, if we were not born and reborn, we
should not be subject to pain, sickness, misery, old age and death. And then
reasoning backwards, he finds that the cause of Samsara lies in Desire, and
its continuance upon Ignorance. Therefore, he who masters Ignorance, and
who is strong enough to kill out Desire, may escape the bonds of Samsara,
the Wheel of Life, and attain Nirvana or Peace. And then came the final
stage, in which he set himself mentally free from Samsara, and attained
Nirvana on earth, to be followed by Para Nirvana after he passed from
the body—the chain of Rebirth being broken, and Samsara being defeated.
And then Gautama went forth as a teacher of Freedom and Emancipation,
and the founder of his school or system, which afterward developed into
the Buddhist religion and church. He made many and important converts,
and firmly established his philosophical system, and his system of morality
which rose therefrom, before his death, which occurred in Kusinagara.