could not suffer. But whence comes birth or continued existence?... We have no
room, however, to dwell on his processes of thought; enough to say that he came
to the conclusion that the ultimate cause of existence is ignorance, and that the
removal of ignorance means, therefore, the termination of existence, and of all
the pain and sorrow which existence implies and induces. Realising this absolute
unconsciousness of the outer world in his own self, he claimed and assumed the
name of the Buddha, or “Enlightened.”
The scene of his victory over life and the world received the name of
Bodhimanda, (the seat of intelligence,) and the tree under which the religious
reformer sat in his hour of moral and intellectual triumph was called
Bodhidruma, (the tree of intelligence,) whence Bo-tree. The Buddhists believe
that it marks the centre of the earth. Hiouen-thsang, the Chinese pilgrim,
professes to have found the Bodhidruma, or some tree that passed for it, twelve
hundred years after Buddha’s death, at a spot near Gaya Proper, in Bahar, where
still may be seen an old dagoba, or temple, and some considerable ruins.
Having at last attained to a knowledge of the causes of human suffering, and of
the method of removing and counteracting them, the Buddha felt that the task
was imposed upon him of communicating that knowledge to others. He began
“to turn the wheel of the law,”—that is to preach,—at Benares; and among his
earliest disciples was Bimbisara, the ruler of Magadha. His career as a teacher
extended over forty years, during which period he travelled over almost every
part of Northern India, making a large number of converts, and firmly
establishing his religious system. He died at Kusinagara in Oudh, in 543 B.C., at
the age of eighty, and his body being burned, the relics were distributed among
numerous claimants, who raised monumental tumuli, or topes, for their
preservation.
All the expositions and teachings of the Buddha were oral, and the task of
committing them to writing was undertaken by the chief of his disciples shortly
after his death. These canonical books are divided into three classes, forming the
“Tripitaka,” or “three-fold basket.” In the first class we find the Soutras, or
Sermons of the Buddha; in the second, the Vinaya, or book of discipline; in the
third, the Abhidharma, or philosophy. After a period of a century or so, the
Buddhist leaders met and revised the Tripitaka, and a third revision took place in
250 or 240 B.C., since which date the text has remained without alteration.
The doctrine of Buddha has been defined as a development of four main
principles, (or “Sublime Verities.”) 1st. That every kind of existence is painful