The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons

The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons

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Title: The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons
Author: H.S. Olcott
Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18194]
Language: English
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ADYAR PAMPHLETS
No. 15
The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons

BY
H. S. OLCOTT

THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA

First Edition: May 1912
Second Edition: Sept. 1919

The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons
The thoughtful student, in scanning the religious history of the race, has one fact
continually forced upon his notice, viz., that there is an invariable tendency to deify
whomsoever shows himself superior to the weakness of our common humanity. Look
where we will, we find the saint-like man exalted into a divine personage and worshipped
for a god. Though perhaps misunderstood, reviled and even persecuted while living, the
apotheosis is almost sure to come after death: and the victim of yesterday's mob, raised to
the state of an Intercessor in Heaven, is besought with prayer and tears, and placatory
penances, to mediate with God for the pardon of human sin. This is a mean and vile trait
of human nature, the proof of ignorance, selfishness, brutal cowardice, and a superstitious
materialism. It shows the base instinct to put down and destroy whatever or whoever
makes men feel their own imperfections; with the alternative of ignoring and denying
these very imperfections by turning into gods men who have merely spiritualised their
natures, so that it may be supposed that they were heavenly incarnations and not mortal
like other men.
This process of euhemerisation, as it is called, or the making of men into gods and gods
into men, sometimes, though more rarely, begins during the life of the hero, but usually
after death. The true history of his life is gradually amplified and decorated with fanciful
incidents, to fit it to the new character which has been posthumously given him. Omens
and portents are now made to attend his earthly avatara: his precocity is described as
superhuman: as a babe or lisping child he silences the wisest logicians by his divine
knowledge: miracles he produces as other boys do soap-bubbles: the terrible energies of
nature are his playthings: the gods, angels, and demons are his habitual attendants: the
sun, moon, and all the starry host wheel around his cradle in joyful measures, and the
earth thrills with joy at having borne such a prodigy: and at his last hour of mortal life the
whole universe shakes with conflicting emotions.
Why need I use the few moments at my disposal to marshal before you the various
personages of whom these fables have been written? Let it suffice to recall the interesting
fact to your notice, and invite you to compare the respective biographies of the
Brahmanical Krshna, the Persian Zoroaster, the Egyptian Hermes, the Indian Gautama,
and the canonical, especially the apocryphal, Jesus. Taking Krshna or Zoroaster, as you
please, as the most ancient, and coming down the chronological line of descent, you will
find them all made after the same pattern. The real personage is all covered up and
concealed under the embroidered veils of the romancer and the enthusiastic
historiographer. What is surprising to me is that this tendency to exaggeration and

hyperbole is not more commonly allowed for by those who in our days attempt to discuss
and compare religions. We are constantly and painfully reminded that the prejudice of
inimical critics, on the one hand, and the furious bigotry of devotees, on the other, blind
men to fact and probability, and lead to gross injustice. Let me take as an example the
mythical biographies of Jesus. At the time when the Council of Nicea was convened for
settling the quarrels of certain bishops, and for the purpose of examining into the
canonicity of the three hundred more or less apocryphal gospels that were being read in
the Christian churches as inspired writings, the history of the life of Christ had reached
the height of absurd myth. We may see some specimens in the extant books of the
apocryphal New Testament, but most of them are now lost. What have been retained in
the present Canon may doubtless be regarded as the least objectionable. And yet we must
not hastily adopt even