Part 10 (1/2)

And the Blessed One addressed Ka.s.sapa and said: ”Thou seest the truth, but acceptest it not because of the envy that dwells in thy heart. Is envy holiness? Envy is the last remnant of self that has remained in thy mind. Thou art not holy, Ka.s.sapa; thou hast not yet entered the path.” 15

And Ka.s.sapa gave up his resistance. His envy disappeared, and, bowing down before the Blessed One, he said: ”Lord, our Master, let me receive the ordination from tin. Blessed One.” 16

And the Blessed One said: ”Thou, Ka.s.sapa, art chief of the Jatilas. Go, then, first and inform them of thine intention, and let them do as thou thinkest fit.” 17

Then Ka.s.sapa went to the Jatilas and said: ”I am anxious to lead a religious life under the direction of the great Sakyamuni, who is the Enlightened One, the Buddha. Do as ye think best.” 18

And the Jatilas replied: ”We have conceived a profound affection for the great Sakyamuni, and if thou wilt join his brotherhood, we will do likewise.” 19

The Jatilas of Uruvela now flung their paraphernalia of fire-wors.h.i.+p into the river and went to the Blessed One. 20

Nadi Ka.s.sapa and Gaya Ka.s.sapa, brothers of the great Uruvela Ka.s.sapa, powerful men and chieftains among the people, were dwelling below on the stream, and when they saw the instruments used in fire-wors.h.i.+p floating in the river, they said: ”Something has happened to our brother.” And they came with their folk to Uruvela. Hearing what had happened, they, too, went to the Buddha. 21

The Blessed One, seeing that the Jatilas of Nadi and Gaya, who had practised severe austerities and wors.h.i.+pped fire, were now come to him, preached a sermon on fire, and said: 22

”Everything, O Jatilas, is burning. The eye is burning, all the senses are burning, thoughts are burning. They are burning with the fire of l.u.s.t. There is anger, there is ignorance, there is hatred, and as long as the fire finds inflammable things upon which it can feed, so long will it burn, and there will be birth and death, decay, grief, lamentation, suffering, despair, and sorrow. Considering this, a disciple of the Dharma will see the four n.o.ble truths and walk in the eightfold path of holiness. He will become wary of his eye, wary of all his senses, wary of his thoughts. He will divest himself of pa.s.sion and become free. He will be delivered from selfishness and attain the blessed state of Nirvana.” 23

And the Jatilas rejoiced and took refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. 24

XX

THE SERMON AT RAJAGAHA.

And the Blessed One having dwelt some time in Uruvela went forth to Rajagaha, accompanied by a great number of bhikkhus, many of whom had been Jatilas before; and the great Ka.s.sapa, chief of the Jatilas and formerly a firewors.h.i.+pper, went with him. 1

When the Magadha king, Seniya Bimbisara, heard of the arrival of Gotama Sakyamuni, of whom the people said, ”He is the Holy One, the blessed Buddha, guiding men as a driver curbs bullocks, the teacher of high and low,” he went out surrounded with his counsellors and generals and came to the grove where the Blessed One was. 2

There they saw the Blessed One in the company of Ka.s.sapa, the great religious teacher of the Jatilas, and they were astonished and thought: ”Has the great Sakyamuni placed himself under the spiritual direction of Ka.s.sapa, or has Ka.s.sapa become a disciple of Gotama?” 3

And the Tathagata, reading the thoughts of the people, said to Ka.s.sapa: ”What knowledge hast thou gained, O Ka.s.sapa, and what has induced thee to renounce the sacred fire and give up thine austere penances?” 4

Ka.s.sapa said: ”The profit I derived from adoring the fire was continuance in the wheel of individuality with all its sorrows and vanities. This service I have cast away, and instead of continuing penances and sacrifices I have gone in quest of the highest Nirvana. Since I have seen the light of truth, I have abandoned wors.h.i.+pping the fire.” 5

The Buddha, perceiving that the whole a.s.sembly was ready as a vessel to receive the doctrine, spoke thus to Bimbisara the king: 6

”He who knows the nature of self and understands how the senses act, finds no room for selfishness, and thus he will attain peace unending. The world holds the thought of self, and from this arises false apprehension. 7

”Some say that the self endures after death, some say it perishes. Both are wrong and their error is most grievous. 8

”For if they say the self is perishable, the fruit they strive for will perish too, and at some time there will be no hereafter.

Good and evil would be indifferent. This salvation from selfishness is without merit. 9

”When some, on the other hand, say the self will not perish, then in the midst of all life and death there is but one ident.i.ty unborn and undying. If such is their self, then it is perfect and cannot be perfected by deeds. The lasting, imperishable self could never be changed. The self would be lord and master, and there would be no use in perfecting the perfect; moral aims and salvation would be unnecessary. 10

”But now we see the marks of joy and sorrow. Where is any constancy? If there is no permanent self that does our deeds, then there is no self; there is no actor behind our actions, no perceiver behind our perception, no lord behind our deeds. 11

”Now attend and listen: The senses meet the object and from their contact sensation is born. Thence results recollection. Thus, as the sun's power through a burning-gla.s.s causes fire to appear, so through the cognizance born of sense and object, the mind originates and with it the ego, the thought of self, whom some Brahman teachers call the lord. The shoot springs from the seed; the seed is not the shoot; both are not one and the same, but successive phases in a continuous growth. Such is the birth of animated life. 12