The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

PREHISTORIC
54
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AND EPIC PERIODS
- the achievement of a state of cosmic consciousness
as far above the mental plane of ordinary
mortals as that level of human consciousness is
raised above that of primitive men, young
children, or animals. From that moment in his
career when the deeper mysteries of the universe
were revealed to him, the Buddha devoted himself
to the paramount goal of winning for all
humanity salvation or release from the endless
cycle of rebirth. The essentially pessimistic
doctrine preached by the Buddha was that all
existence is sorrow; the cause of which stems
from attachment to self and the ephemeral
delights of the world of the senses. The cure for
this universal malady lay in the suppression of
the self and the extinction of the karma, that
accumulation of past actions which, in the
Brahmin belief, survives what is usually designated
as the Ego, subject to endless reincarnation
and suffering. The Buddha denied the
efficacy of extreme asceticism and reliance on
ritual formulas as efficient means of salvation.
He recommended salvation by the individual's
work and action - by following the Eightfold
Path that included the practice of right belief,
right thought, right speech, and right action; a
way of life possible for all and easily comprehensible
by all, and free of the onerous and expensive
ritual of Brahmanic tradition. 8 This code of
life, based on moral conduct rather than on
belief and sacrifice, was first enunciated by the
Buddha at the time of his first sermon at Sarnath,
when metaphorically he first began to turn the
Wheel of the Law. For the remainder of his
career the Buddha and a growing band of converts
travelled through Magadha and Bihar,
preaching the way of salvation open to all, regardless
of caste or creed. In his eightieth year,
the Master achieved his final Nirvana or death.
There is no term in the whole history of Buddhism
that has been the subject of more controversy
than Nirvana. The Master himself never
explained his last end, and discouraged controversy
upon it as unedifying. We may be reasonably
sure that in early Buddhism the Buddha at
his demise was believed to have entered a realm
of invisibility 'where neither gods nor men shall
know him', or to have achieved a complete extinction
of karma and Ego. As we shall see presently,
in later Buddhism Nirvana came to mean
that the immortal Buddha, who had manifested
himself in mortal shape for the benefit of man,
after 'death' resumed his place as the Lord of a
Paradise, there to await the souls of the faithful
through all ages. Even as early as the time of the
Emperor Asoka (272-232 B.C.), the goal of the
Buddhist layman was already that of everlasting
reward in Paradise, as opposed to the monk's
ideal of the peace of Nirvana to be achieved in
part through the practice of yoga.
The life of Gautama, as recounted in many
different texts of the Buddhist canon, although
undoubtedly based upon the career of an actual
mortal teacher, has assumed the nature of an
heroic myth, in that almost every event from
the hero's life is accompanied by miraculous
happenings, and the Buddha himself invested
with miracle-working powers. Many of the episodes
from the Buddha's real life are interpreted
as allegorical or anagogical references to cosmic
phenomena, accretions from age-old Indian cosmology:
the Buddha's birth is likened to the
rising of another sun; on his Enlightenment,
like the sacrificial fire of Agni, the Buddha
mounts transfigured to the highest heavens of
the gods ; in his turning of the Wheel of the Law
he assumes the power of the world-ruler or
Cakravartin to send the wheel of his dominion,
the sun, turning over all the worlds in token of
his universal power. It is not surprising that
some scholars have interpreted the whole of the
Buddha story, as it appears in later texts, as a reworking
of far earlier solar myths.
It is quite apparent that Buddhism early
formed an alliance with the popular cults of the
soil and of nature, accepting perforce those same