Do Not Again Assume The Name Of
"Liberal." You Cannot Lift The Weights Of Liberality.
When will you
arrive at that day's journey?'
"When I heard this I was alarmed, and with many solicitations asked
him to forgive my fault, and to take whatsoever he wished. He would
not accept my gifts at all, and went away saying, 'If you were now
to offer me your whole kingdom I would not receive it from you.' "
This studied indifference about a matter of more than a thousand
pounds, though perhaps not often exercised upon so large a scale, is
just that which these wandering fanatics display towards every offering
they receive, and in every action of their useless lives. Whatever
may be said against them, however, their profession of poverty and
suffering is no mockery, as was that of the well-fed "monks of old,"
whose reasonings were something similar on religious points.
The Fukeer soliloquizes: "The condition of our being born is, that
our griefs are many and our pleasures few, because this world is the
root of misery. What happiness, therefore, has man? If any man should
climb to the top of a tree, or sit down on the summit of a hill, or
remain concealed in water, yet death does not allow him to escape. At
the most, man's age is a hundred years, half of which passes away in
night, half of the other half is expended in childhood and old age;
the remainder is spent in altercation, separation from those we love,
and affliction, and the soul is restless as a wave of the sea. No
one who has come into the world has escaped from affliction. It
is vain to fix one's affections on it, and therefore it is best to
cultivate and practise religion." And so, as a remedy for the evil
which he has discovered to exist upon the earth, and to work out a
successful escape from it, he sits himself down in dust and ashes,
and, mistaking the sign-post, adopts the path which leads him furthest
from the point he wishes to arrive at.
As the Hindoo is the most ancient of religions, so the Buddhist
is the one which is professed by the largest portion of the human
race. It is the religion of Burmah, Ceylon, China, Siam, Thibet, and
Russian Tartary, and is computed to claim as many as three hundred
and sixty-nine millions among its Votaries.[36] "Gautama," or "Sakya
mounee," its founder, was born in Bengal about the seventh century
before Christ. Yet India at present contains no modern temples of its
worship, and no native of India, that I have ever met, knew anything
of its founder, or was even acquainted with the term "Buddha," or
"Buddhist." Its doctrines are the most curious of those that have
ever been promulgated, and appear even now to be scarcely understood
in all their ramifications. According to original Buddhism, there is
no Creator, nor being that is self-existent and eternal.
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