A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines. Clayton Edwards
his food and eating the bitter bread of poverty.
He crossed the river called the Ganges and came at last to a city named Rajagha. And here he soon attracted attention because his appearance and mien were so noble that even his coarse clothes and his new way of life could not disguise him. He called himself a prince no longer, but instead took the name of Gotama, this being one of the names of the family from which he sprang.
In course of time the King of the new country where the Prince was begging his bread and meditating on Life and Death desired to see the holy man of whom he had heard much talk, and he offered the Prince lands and riches. But the Prince told him that he had already laid aside far greater riches than these, and that nothing in life mattered to him except his quest for the truth, which one day he would surely find. And the King, whose name was Bimbasara, asked him when he had found the truth to return and teach it to the people of his country—and this the Prince promised to do.
For a long time the Prince lived in a cave not far from Rajagha and studied the faith of India as it was then taught, but his studies brought him no nearer to gaining the truth. So he went into the wilderness, where, he believed, fasting and meditation might bring him the things he sought.
He traveled southward for many miles and entered the very heart of the great Indian jungle, teeming with poisonous snakes and filled with savage beasts. Here he prayed and fasted, seeking enlightenment; and he carried out his fasts with such severity that he nearly died as a result of them.
While in the jungle the Prince met five other holy men who were so much impressed with his fasts and his thoughtful demeanor that they became his disciples. But when he ceased to fast because he did not come any nearer the truth by going hungry, these disciples left him, believing that he had strayed from the path of the truth and never would gain the enlightenment he sought.
After several years the Prince left the jungle and commenced traveling through the country, begging his food wherever he happened to be. And now he was close to gaining the vision that he so greatly desired, for without his knowledge his years of thought and of self-denial had borne their fruit.
One day, bitterly discouraged, and heartsick with his many failures and temptations, he seated himself beneath a peepul tree with the firm resolve that he would not stir from the spot until he gained the truth that he sought. And while he sat there, the legends tell us, he was assailed by all the powers of darkness and evil, and devils crowded upon him so thickly that they darkened the sky and threw all Nature into convulsions in which the earth shook and the air was filled with thunder. All night the Prince sat motionless and all through the night the evil forces strove to turn him from the truth that they knew he was about to achieve. In the morning they departed, and the Prince as he sat, saw flowers spring up and blossom all around him with miraculous swiftness. The air seemed purer than ever before, the sun was wonderfully bright and a peaceful serenity seemed to enfold the entire earth. And when night came and the stars awoke, the truth for which the Prince had been seeking flowed into his soul. He had indeed become a Buddha.
Gone were the temptations and the sorrows in a divine peace—a peace that became the reward of all disciples of the religion that he founded. This peace was called by him Nirvana and his disciples say he is the only man who attained it in his lifetime, for Nirvana is supposed to come only to the spirits of the dead, who have purified themselves not in one life, but in many. In Buddha's belief (for as Buddha we shall now know him), human beings live many times and receive the reward or the punishment of past existences in those that follow. This belief is known as "the transmigration of souls." It is the foundation of the faith of Buddha which is believed in to-day by millions of persons in India and China, as well as in other countries.
In the truth that Buddha had acquired he learned many things. Chief of them, as he believed, are four great facts of life and nature from which the soul cannot escape—that there will always be sorrow and suffering in the world; that these are caused by clinging to things that are always changing or dying; that the only way to obtain peace is to renounce these things and care for them no longer; and that the only way to live is to walk in the paths of righteousness, honesty, virtue, and to believe in the Buddhist faith.
Buddha also believed that animals have souls just as men do, and that by some good action these animal souls become the souls of men. Then the souls go through many existences. If they are righteous they approach the peace of Nirvana, which is attainable only when they are entirely purified; if they are unrighteous they are cast down again into lower forms of life and once more have to struggle upward toward the truth. There is no escape from the consequences of sin in the Buddhist faith. Just so certainly as a man sins he will be punished for it—if not in this life in the next one—and if his sin is sufficiently deadly he will lose again the form of a man and return to the shape of a snake or a lizard to expiate his wickedness through countless generations.
Heaven and Hell have a place in the belief of Buddha also. They are different from the Heaven and Hell that Christians know because in the Buddhist religion they are only temporary abodes for the spirit between its many existences on earth.
When his new faith had come to him, Buddha left the jungle to preach it to mankind. On his way he met the five disciples that had deserted him and he told them that the truth had indeed come to him and that he was now a Buddha. After they heard him preach they were converted, and after three months the number of Buddha's disciples had increased to sixty, who, like himself, gave all their worldly possessions to assume the garments of beggars and ask for their bread from door to door.
Buddha then told his disciples that they must go in different directions and teach all that desired to learn. He himself went back to Rajagha where King Bimbasara, who desired to know the truth, was living. And he preached to King Bimbasara and converted him, and the King presented Buddha with a bamboo grove in which he might hold his assemblies and preach to the many thousands that now came to hear his sermons.
The fame of Buddha's teachings soon reached his native city and his father, the old King Suddhodana, yearned to see the son who might have been a great conqueror but who had chosen to be one of the most enlightened teachers that the world has ever seen. So he sent a retinue to greet Buddha and ask him to return to his native city. One thousand men went forth upon this errand, but none returned, for all were converted by Buddha and remained to listen to his teachings and then to spread the faith themselves. Then King Suddhodana sent another thousand, and these too remained with Buddha. At last, however, he sent one messenger, the same Channa who had accompanied the Prince when he left the city, and the faithful Channa bore the message to Buddha.
Buddha decided to visit his father and see his family once more, for he desired to bring the faith to the land of the Sakyas. With thousands of his followers accompanying him he went to the royal city and met his father without the walls. And the father's heart was heavy to see how the son had changed, for Buddha was no longer young, strong and handsome, but wrinkled and emaciated, with gray hair and a bent figure from the hardships he had endured in many years of wandering and preaching.
Buddha would not enter the city of his countrymen but preached in a banyan grove without the walls. And when he preached he converted many of his former friends and relatives. His wife whom he had deserted and who had grieved for him ever since, gained happiness once more, for she too, became converted to the Buddhist faith, and entered the Buddhist sisterhood, becoming a nun. Even the King himself was finally converted by Buddha's teaching, and we are told that he too entered the faith and became a disciple. The son that Buddha had only seen once when a day old became a disciple also, and, when he had mastered the teachings of Buddhism, was made a monk in the Buddhist order.
Buddha lived to be eighty years old and all the rest of his life was spent in traveling through the world and preaching the faith wherever he went. The land that he visited most frequently lay on both sides of the river Ganges and for thousands of years has been called the Buddhist Holy Land. Wise men of all ages have believed in the faith as he taught it, and even to-day and in modern European nations there are those that profess to be of the Buddhist faith.
The order of monks that was founded by Buddha is the oldest existing religious order in the world. For nearly two thousand five hundred years these monks have practised renunciation and high