Part 69 (1/2)
So, by my power of spiritual energy, Will I transport myself across the river, Even though the waters on this southern bank Stood up as high and firm as (Mount) Semeru.”[255:1]
He then floats through the air across the stream.
In the _Lalita Vistara_ Buddha is called the ”Great Physician” who is to ”dull all human pain.” At his appearance the ”sick are healed, the deaf are cured, the blind see, the poor are relieved.” He visits the sick man, Su-ta, and heals soul as well as body.
At Vaisali, a pest like modern cholera was depopulating the kingdom, due to an acc.u.mulation of festering corpses. Buddha, summoned, caused a strong rain which carried away the dead bodies and cured every one. At Gaudhara was an old mendicant afflicted with a disease so loathsome that none of his brother monks could go near him on account of his fetid humors and stinking condition. The ”Great Physician” was, however, not to be deterred; he washed the poor old man and attended to his maladies.
A disciple had his feet hacked off by an unjust king, and Buddha cured even him. To convert certain skeptical villagers near Sravasti, Buddha showed them a man walking across the deep and rapid river without immersing his feet. Purna, one of Buddha's disciples, had a brother in imminent danger of s.h.i.+pwreck in a ”black storm.” The ”spirits that are favorable to Purna and Arya” apprised him of this and he at once performed the miracle of transporting himself to the deck of the s.h.i.+p.
”Immediately the black tempest ceased, as if Sumera arrested it.”[255:2]
When Buddha was told that a woman was suffering in severe labor, unable to bring forth, he said, Go and say: ”I have never knowingly put any creature to death since I was born; by the virtue of this obedience may you be free from pain!” When these words were repeated in the presence of the mother, the child was instantly born with ease.[256:1]
Innumerable are the miracles ascribed to Buddhist saints, and to others who followed their example. Their garments, and the staffs with which they walked, are supposed to imbibe some mysterious power, and blessed are they who are allowed to touch them.[256:2] A Buddhist saint who attains the power called ”_perfection_,” is able to rise and float along through the air.[256:3] Having this power, the saint exercises it by mere determination of his will, his body becoming imponderous, as when a man in the common human state determines to leap, and leaps. Buddhist annals relate the performance of the miraculous suspension by Gautama Buddha, himself, as well as by other _saints_.[256:4]
In the year 217 B. C., a Buddhist missionary priest, called by the Chinese historians s.h.i.+h-le-fang, came from ”the west” into Shan-se, accompanied by eighteen other priests, with their sacred books, in order to propagate the faith of Buddha. The emperor, disliking foreigners and exotic customs, imprisoned the missionaries; but an angel, genii, or spirit, came and opened the prison door, and liberated them.[256:5]
Here is a third edition of ”Peter in prison,” for we have already seen that the Hindoo sage Vasudeva was liberated from prison in like manner.
_Zoroaster_, the founder of the religion of the Persians, opposed his persecutors by performing miracles, in order to confirm his divine mission.[256:6]
_Bochia_ of the Persians also performed miracles; the places where he performed them were consecrated, and people flocked in crowds to visit them.[256:7]
_Horus_, the Egyptian Saviour, performed great miracles, among which was that of raising the dead to life.[256:8]
_Osiris_ of Egypt also performed great miracles;[256:9] and so did the virgin G.o.ddess _Isis_.
Pilgrimages were made to the temples of Isis, in Egypt, by the sick.
Diodorus, the Grecian historian, says that:
”Those who go to consult in dreams the G.o.ddess Isis recover perfect health. Many whose cure has been despaired of by physicians have by this means been saved, and others who have long been deprived of sight, or of some other part of the body, by taking refuge, so to speak, in the arms of the G.o.ddess, have been restored to the enjoyment of their faculties.”[257:1]
_Serapis_, the Egyptian Saviour, performed great miracles, princ.i.p.ally those of healing the sick. He was called ”The Healer of the World.”[257:2]
_Marduk_, the a.s.syrian G.o.d, the ”Logos,” the ”Eldest Son of Hea;” ”He who made Heaven and Earth;” the ”Merciful One;” the ”Life-Giver,” &c., performed great miracles, among which was that of raising the dead to life.[257:3]
_Bacchus_, son of Zeus by the virgin Semele, was a great performer of miracles, among which may be mentioned his changing water into wine,[257:4] as it is recorded of Jesus in the Gospels.
”In his gentler aspects he is the giver of joy, the healer of sicknesses, the guardian against plagues. As such he is even a law-giver and a promoter of peace and concord. As kindling new or strange thoughts in the mind, he is a giver of wisdom and the revealer of hidden secrets of the future.”[257:5]
The legends related of this G.o.d state that on one occasion Pantheus, King of Thebes, sent his attendants to seize Bacchus, the ”vagabond leader of a faction”--as he called him. This they were unable to do, as the mult.i.tude who followed him were too numerous. They succeeded, however, in capturing one of his disciples, Acetes, who was led away and shut up fast in prison; but while they were getting ready the instruments of execution, _the prison doors came open of their own accord, and the chains fell from his limbs_, and when they looked for him he was nowhere to be found.[257:6] Here is still another edition of ”Peter in prison.”
_aesculapius_ was another great performer of miracles. The ancient Greeks said of him that he not only cured the sick of the most malignant diseases, _but even raised the dead_.
A writer in Bell's Pantheon says:
”As the Greeks always carried the encomiums of their great men beyond the truth, so they feigned that aesculapius was so expert in medicine as not only to cure the sick, but even to raise the dead.”[258:1]
Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian, speaking of aesculapius, says:
”He sometimes appeared unto them (the Cilicians) in dreams and visions, and sometimes restored the sick to health.”
He claims, however, that this was the work of the DEVIL, ”who by this means did withdraw the minds of men from the knowledge of the _true_ SAVIOUR.”[258:2]