The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons | Page 5

the necessity for avoiding every species of evil thought and
word, and for doing, speaking and thinking everything that is good, and for the bringing
of the mind into subjection so that these may be accomplished without selfish motive or
vanity. Lessons of self-purification and communion, by which the illusiveness of
externals and the value of internals are understood.
Well might St. Hilaire burst into the panegyric that Buddha "is the perfect model of all
the virtues he preaches ... his life has not a stain upon it". Well might the sober critic Max
Müller pronounce his moral code "one of the most perfect which the world has ever
known". No wonder that in contemplating that gentle life Edwin Arnold should have
found his personality "the highest, gentlest, holiest and most beneficent ... in the history
of thought," and been moved to write his splendid verses. It is twenty-five hundred years
since humanity put forth such a flower: who knows when it did before?
Gautama Buddha, Sakya Muni, has ennobled the whole human race. His fame is our
common inheritance. His Law is the law of Justice, providing for every good thought,
word and deed its fair reward, for every evil one its proper punishment. His law is in
harmony with the voices of Nature, and the evident equilibrium of the universe. It yields
nothing to importunities or threats, can be neither coaxed nor bribed by offerings to abate
or alter one jot or tittle of its inexorable course. Am I told that Buddhist laymen display
vanity in their worship and ostentation in their almsgiving; that they are fostering sects as
bitterly as Hindus? So much the worse for the laymen: there is the example of Buddha
and his Law. Am I told that Buddhist priests are ignorant, idle fosterers of superstitions
grafted on their religion by foreign kings? So much the worse for the priests: the life of
their Divine Master shames them and shows their unworthiness to wear his yellow robe
or carry his beggar's bowl. There is the Law--immutable--menacing; it will find them out
and punish.
And what shall we say to those of another caste of character--the humble-minded,
charitable, tolerant, religiously aspiring hearts among the laity, and the unselfish, pure
and learned of the priests who know the Precepts and keep them? The Law will find them
out also; and when the book of each life is written up and the balance struck, every good
thought or deed will be found entered in its proper place. Not one blessing that ever
followed them from grateful lips throughout their earthly pilgrimage will be found to
have been lost; but each will help to ease their way as they move from stage to stage of
Being
UNTO NIRVANA WHERE THE SILENCE LIVES.
* * * * *

THE ADYAR PAMPHLETS

Vol. IX.
97. Occultism. Annie Besant
98. Brotherhood. Dr. Th. Pascal
99. Life After Death. Annie Besant
100. Difficulties in Clairvoyance. C. W. Leadbeater
101. Is Belief in the Masters Superstitious or Harmful? Annie Besant
102. The Case for Reincarnation. B. Douglas Fawcett
103. Memory. Annie Besant
104. Spiritualism and Theosophy. H. S. Olcott
105. The Kabalah and the Kabalists. H. P. Blavatsky
* * * * *
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