Like The Hindoo, The Buddhist Believes In Transmigration
Of Souls, And Until Utter Annihilation Is Reached, He Is Doomed To
Shift His Earthly Tenement, From Form To Form, According To The Deeds
Done In The Flesh.
It is, therefore, the great object of all beings,
who would be released from the sorrows of successive birth, to seek
the destruction of the moral cause of continued existence, that is,
the cleaving to existing objects or evil desire.
It is only possible to
accomplish this end by attending to a prescribed course of discipline,
and by fixing the mind upon the perfections of Buddha. Those who after
successive births have entirely destroyed all evil desires are called
"Rahuts," and after death the Rahut attains "Nirwana," or ceases to
exist. The actual meaning of the word "Rahut," is "Tranquillity,"
and it appears to be the same word which is used on a small scale,
to express the soothing qualities of that far-famed Eastern sweetmeat,
the Rahut-lukma, or "Morsels of tranquillity."
The Buddhas themselves are beings who appear after intervals of
time inconceivably vast. Previous to their reception of the state,
they pass through countless phases of being, at, one time appearing
in human form, at another as a frog, or fish, &c., in each of which
states they acquire a greater degree of merit.
In the birth in which they become Buddha, they are always of woman
born, and pass through infancy and youth like ordinary mortals,
until at the prescribed age they abandon the world and retire to the
wilderness, where they receive the supernatural powers with which
the office is endowed.
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