Covenanter Witness Vol. 55 - Rparchives.org

spirit"and"seeking."Missionary NumberBIBLE LESSON FOR THE WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 25, 1955WitnessVOLUME LV, NO. 10 TOPEKA, KANSAS, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1955LIFELooks atBuddhismSecond of a Series of Articles in Answer to A LeadingMagazine's Estimate of the World's Greatest ReligionsDon HillisIn Evangelical Action (Used by permission)Hundreds of millions of peopleperhaps asmany as 500,000,000 believe in a gentle and peaceable religion called Buddhism. It is one of the noblestedifices of thought ever created by the human spirit.It is, as a whole, one of the most rational of theworld's great religions, for the system of human conduct that it preaches relies very little on the supernatural. Buddhism has been one of the greatest civilizing forces in the Far East . . This summarizesLife's conception of Buddhism.That this noble edifice "created by the humanshould be accompanied by all the frailties andlimitations of human nature is to be expected. If thesad, idolatrous, illiterate and poverty-stricken conditions of most of the Buddhistic populace is a yardstick to the "civilizing forces" of Buddhism, thencertainly it is not something to be desired. Witnessthe bondage of Tibet.The FounderA Hindu of high caste, Siddhartha Guatama,was the founder of this religion. He was born in theyear 563 B.C. in Nepal. His life's story has beensurrounded by centuries of poetic, oriental legendsForand Asian imagination. These oriental legends standin sharp contrast to the well-documented, imagination-free, histprically accurate facts that surroundthe life teaching of Jesus Christ.the first twenty-nine years of his life, Gautama reveled in the wealth and luxury into which hewas born. Finally awakened to the sin, suffering andsickness that filled his community, he fell into astate of mental frustration. He determined to find asolution to the problems of life. Forsaking his parents, wife and son, he became a Hindu Sadhu. For aperiod of six years, he sought the secret of enlightenment through mortification of the flesh and variousmethods of meditation. One day he seated himselfunder a tree to think and vowed that he would notmove until he attained the secret of enlightenment."In a vision, the armies of Mara, evil tempter of theworld of passion, attacked him with storms, rain,.rocks and blazing weapons, and Mara himself offeredhim the wealth of the world if he would desist fromhis purpose. But Guatama sat unmoved, calling onthe earth beneath him to witness the steadfastnessof his aim. The armies of Mara fled. After forty-ninedays of meditation under a tree, Siddhartha Gautama achieved the enlightenment he was Hebecame the Buddha, the enlightened one. The nextforty-five years were spent traveling the length andbreadth of India preaching and making converts. Hedied at the age of eighty after eating some indigestible food.(Please turn to page 152)