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The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons By: Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907) |
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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... Continue reading book >>
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