A SKETCH OF SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
If biography be as defined by a certain writer, philosophy exemplified, then the life of Gotama the Buddha, whose name is revered and whose teachings have moulded and fashioned the religious life and character of untold millions, is well calculated to impart instructive lessons which practised and woven into the tissues of our daily lives, cannot fail to manifest themselves in acts and deeds of unselfishness and devotion to the service of humanity. In his life we find portrayed the ideal of a character worthy of imitation, and in its records of trial and suffering, its stern conflicts of self-interest and duty, in its aspirations and endeavors after a higher and diviner life of self-abnegation, also in its struggles for success and victory over the world within; we may discern obscurely — vaguely it may be, the dim outlines and course of our own pilgrimage on the great highway of human destiny. It may appear somewhat strange that so little is known of his real life, that we are so ignorant of the character of his teachings which have exercised such a widespread influence; that in this age of universal knowledge and inquiry, we are so little acquainted with the acts and achievements of a life like that of Gotama. This has certainly not been owing to lack of interest in the records that have been handed down respecting him, but is rather the result and outcome of that spirit of pharisaism which in its haughty egotism and narrow-minded intolerance, refuses to believe and cannot recognize that anything good can come out of Nazareth, or exist out of itself. It will not, however, always be so. This supercilious and fatuous bigotry is doomed to pass away and when the circle of humanity expands and embraces the world, then will the life and teachings of Gotama the Buddha receive their due meed of attention, his name be held in reverence and enrolled in the noble band of the Christs and Saviours, whose mission has been the emancipation of human nature from the thraldom of error and ignorance, the unfoldment of higher and loftier ideals and the leading it onward and upward to the attainment and realization of a higher and diviner life, the only true goal of happiness.
The biography of Gotama like that of many others, is replete and fraught with marvellous legends and supernatural incidents, the growth and accretion of centuries, as to render it somewhat difficult to separate the true from the false, to distinguish between what is fact and fiction so essentially necessary in forming a just estimate of his character and a right conception of him as a Buddha or enlightened teacher. Ignoring these wondrous stories, this much may be affirmed, that there is a strange and remarkable parallelism between many of the incidents and circumstances of his life, and that of the great prophet of Nazareth, a coincidence of fact and teaching which will some time have to be explained and accounted for by those who are looked up to and regarded as defenders of the Christian faith.
About 2500 years ago, in the city of Kapilavastu, situated 100 miles northwest of Benares, reigned a scion of the great solar race of kings named Suddhodana, renowned and honored alike by all for his princely virtues and loftiness of character. He belonged to the warrior caste and was wedded to a princess endowed with the highest and choicest gifts of intelligence and piety. Her exceeding beauty was such, that the name of Maya or the Vision had been given her as being one of those creatures of light and loveliness beheld only in visions. One night in a dream she saw a brilliant star falling from heaven, which descending upon her, entered into her body on the right side. Suddenly awakening out of her sleep, .she at once informed her husband of the vision, who somewhat alarmed and unable to divine what it foreboded, summoned at once all the court sages, sooth-sayers and astrologers, as also his Brahman priests, and demanded from them the meaning of a portent so strange and extraordinary. After due and serious deliberation, they declared that it signified that the queen would give birth to a child of supernatural wisdom and who would become an universal monarch. Great preparations were made against the arrival into the world of the young prince.
In one of the royal pleasure gardens to the northeast of Kapilavastu and under a satin tree exhaling exquisite perfumes, Maya was delivered of her firstborn, who was at once submitted to the inspection of the wise men and priests. These all declared that on his body were found all the marks characteristic of a great sovereign, and predicted for him a glorious future. No sooner was he born than the arrival was announced of a sage and holy hermit renowned for his piety and severe austerities. Warned of the Prince's birth through a dream, he proceeded at once to leave his hermitage and on arriving where he lay, took him up in his arms, as the aged Simeon did the young child Jesus, and gazing in wonderment and ecstasy declared: "This child is destined to become a mighty monarch whose sovereignty shall extend throughout the world; but if he shall chance to behold an old man, a lifeless corpse or a Bikshu or religious mendicant, nothing will prevent him renouncing earthly splendor and renown and becoming a Buddha, a Saviour of mankind." Seven days after Gotama's birth, Maya his mother, died, and the young prince was confided to Prajapati his aunt, who watched over and took the greatest care of the infant prince. As he grew up to boyhood, the most learned and famous men in the realm were chosen as his teachers. The child grew up a most beautiful and accomplished boy, and by docility in learning and attention to his studies, soon manifested evidences of an erudition and knowledge that greatly surprised his masters. He was always asking the most curious and abstruse questions, and when he saw them puzzled and perplexed, would himself give them the answer. It is stated that one of them named Vismavitra, renowned for his wisdom and extensive learning, declared that the boy already knew more than what he himself had acquired through a long life of study. He was in fact a puzzle and an enigma they could not solve or explain. The truth was that the boy's Higher Self, even at that early period of his life, had begun to operate within him. The intuitive faculty had already commenced to unfold itself by which he was able at times to read the great book of Nature and decipher her secret writing. At fitful moments dim gleamings and flashings of a higher realm of knowledge unknown to his teachers, illumined his mind. The past with all its stores of wisdom and learning, became revealed to his wondering gaze. Anon he stood in the presence of great sages, or sat at the feet of beings of noble mien and majestic intelligence, those sceptred sovereigns of the mind whose names though unknown and their works buried in oblivion, yet have their lofty ideas and teachings floated down on Time's stream and now form part of the ocean of human life and thought. Under such teachings his childhood passed away, and as he grew in years he increased like his Hebrew after-type, in wisdom and in favor of all men, who regarded and respected him as a paragon of all princely virtues. In him the poor, the suffering and unfortunate found a gracious friend, whose purse and help was always available, whilst by his words of kindness and sympathy he excited towards himself feelings amounting almost to reverence. By his agreeable and pleasing manner, he won the hearts of the noble and wealthy; and proud of him as their leader, there was not a common soldier who would not for his sake have faced death with ready willingness. Yet for all this popularity, amidst such circumstances tending to excite within him exalted notions of self; though placed on the pinnacle of earthly grandeur, Gotama lost not that mental balance so essential in the preservation of character. With that clear, keen intellect which read human nature like a book, this truth did not escape him: that all was not gold that glitters and that things were not what they seemed.
Gorgeous robes of nobles and emblazoned coronets of stately courtiers could not hide from his piercing gaze, the feelings of bitter animosity and selfish ambition that filled their minds, causing them to plot and counterplot against each other for positions of eminence. Seeing all this, knowing all this, many a time, weary at heart and pained at witnessing such wretched exhibitions of human weakness, he would leave the gaiety and festivities of court life and betake himself to the lone solitudes of the neighboring forests, subject to thoughts and feelings he could neither express in words nor define. There for hours, he would sit in lonely musing and lost in revery, meditating upon the great problems of life and death and the mysteries of Being. In this manner, far from the madding crowd, remote from the din and noise and turmoil of city life and the wild revelries and excitement of the court, Gotama began to be conscious of a blank within, the absence, the yearning after an indefinable something without which, he felt that life must become a burden. At times he felt vibrating within himself the still, sad music of humanity thrilling his soul with a feeling of ineffable compassion. Now he felt
"A presence that disturbed him with the joy
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit which impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
At other times he caught the accents of a speech he could not comprehend, and heard tones of a language he could not understand. At rare moments his spirit seemed to go forth roaming the illimitable universe in quest of a something he knew not what and returned filled with the agonizing sense of a great want. All these, the first dawnings, the dim flashings forth, the fitful shadowings forth of a higher and more spiritual life endeavoring to overcome and break down his lower nature, he could not understand and therefore filled with unrest and sadness he gave up himself to a life of revery, so much so, as to run the risk of becoming a confirmed recluse, a visionary dreamer. His father expostulated with him again and again, endeavoring to impress upon him a sense of his princely duties and the folly of sacrificing the solid realities and pleasures of a kingdom, for the unsubstantialities and airy nothings of a hermit's imagination. All, however, was of no avail. The prince listened in respectful silence and lived on as usual a lone student. Well for him, had there been some sympathetic friend, one who knew, who could have initiated him in the philosophy of the higher life, who could have guided him and raised him out of the Slough of Despond and melancholy into which he had fallen. It would have saved him after years of mental anguish and suffering; but there was no one to look to as a teacher and therefore he had to drag on an existence of gloom and sadness. Becoming really alarmed, his father consulted the courtiers as to the best expedient to reclaim him from his hermit life. Many were suggested and tried but they failed to produce any effect, until some one more worldly wise than the rest, at last proposed marriage should be tried. It was he thought, just the thing to bring back the young prince to his senses and excite within him, an interest in the pleasures and enjoyments of life. The monarch hastened at once to the prince's apartment and broached the subject to him, who consented to the project rather than cause his father pain by refusing.
Search was at once made amongst neighboring courts for a suitable princess, one who should be worthy of the prince. The choice fell upon Gopa, the daughter of Dandapana, one of his royal neighbors. Gopa was a maiden, possessed of rare personal beauty, and a charm which won for her the admiration of everyone; she was what the French term, highly spirituelle in mind and character. Wherever she went she was a centre of light and joy to those around her. Her words, nay, the very tones of her voice, attracted all hearts towards her as she moved in her father's court a creature of radiant light and beauty. It was an auspicious day, when amidst the plaudits and blessings of untold thousands of spectators, the young couple were united together in marriage. General feasting and entertainments were the order of the day. Both high and low, the rich and poor alike throughout the realm rejoiced together over their young prince's nuptials. As Gopa in all her incomparable beauty which needed not the adornment and splendor of jewels to add to her charms, stood for the first time in presence of her future lord, she recognized in him her ideal of a prince. She felt herself impressed with the greatness of his majestic intellect. She saw and divined at once what no one else had discovered, the existence of that great blank, of that chasm of unrest and sadness, and she mentally resolved that she would fill it with her own light and life; and Gotama, as he gazed upon that face so fair and beautiful, and looked into those eyes of light and love wherein were reflected the rays of a pure soul, seemed to recognize what was necessary to his future happiness. He felt he had at last found his Sandalphon or twin soul, and starting as one awaking out of a dream, or like a soul called back again to life from out of the shadowy halls of Death, he felt a thrill of joyous delight to which he had long been a stranger, and, embracing the Princess on that morning, two souls, the complement of each other, became blended together for weal or woe, to form one joyous and harmonious existence. The change in Gotama was wonderful and gratifying to everyone, especially to his aged father, who loaded him with honors and presented him with three sumptuous palaces with magnificent parks and gardens, filled with leafy bowers and shady groves, resonant with the songs of birds of every clime. Once more he became the darling of the nation, and as years rolled by, the birth of a son added a deeper fringe of happiness to his life. And there, as he stands on the marble terrace of his palace along with Gopa by his side watching his boy's playful gambols and listening to the music of his prattling voice, the horizon of the future lies stretching out before him bright and radiant, with no dark speck and undimmed even with the smallest shadow of a cloud. There we must leave him for the present, but ere doing so, we would gather up as a commentary upon this sketch of Gotama's early life, some of the lessons arising out of it, and which we trust will be received with kindly acceptance and appreciation. The great spirit of the universe, the over-soul, the Higher Self, call it by whatever name we will, has, if we only knew it, spoken and will continue to speak unto us all, telling us as it did Gotama, "That things are not what they seem," that the shows and pageantries of the world are fleeting and evanescent illusions in which it is unwise to trust for happiness. If we ignore it, disregarding its counsel, we put back the clock of our Destiny and protract and lengthen out for centuries, it may be, life's pilgrimage; but giving heed to its tones, it will impart knowledge not to be found in books and endow us with a wisdom more priceless than rubies — a wisdom which raising us above the things of time and sense, will cause us to look not so much at the things that are seen, as at the things unseen; and listening to this still small voice within us, the time will at last come when it shall speak "Let There be Light," and then will dawn within us the light of a higher and diviner existence, which, bringing with it a peace and calm that all the tempests and storms of earthlife cannot ruffle nor disturb, toning down every passionate feeling, banishing and driving out of our natures all selfishness; restraining and holding back the hard unkind word, filling us with a Love that beareth all things, suffereth all things, shall cause us to become living centres and founts of joy to wife and children and friends who will learn to love us not for what we may have, but for what we are in ourselves, and thus become better able to discharge our allotted part in the regeneration and upraising of Humanity.
(To be continued.)