United States or Canada ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
North of the vihara two or three le there was the Smasanam, which name means in Chinese "the field of graves into which the dead are thrown." Going on still to the west for five or six le, on the north of the hill, in the shade, they found the cavern called Srataparna, the place where, after the nirvana of Buddha, 500 Arhats collected the Sutras.
Such was the fate of that established by Zoroaster, and upon the ruins of the grandest theology this world has known, Siddartha Gautama erected the Buddhist credo, which is really a revolt to first principles a search for happiness here on earth, the attainment of Nirvana.
Almost all who treat of nirvana after death try to make the Buddha say, is or is not. That is what he refused to do. We still want a plain answer to a plain question and insist that he really means either that the saint is annihilated or enters on an infinite existence.
Salvation is the discovery of the illusion; and this discovery is the victory over it; for no one fears the lion's skin, however much he may fear the lion. This discovery secures the dropping back from the little, limited, individual self-line, into the infinite passionless, thoughtless, and motionless existence of the absolute being, Nirvana.
James T. Bixby, in a powerful plea for truth-seekers, quoted approvingly the words of an eminent ecclesiastic of the church of England who characterized the present age as "preeminently the age of doubt." Another writer says that Europe is turning in despair toward Nirvana.
I was talking on the subject once with an intelligent Chinese gentleman, when he remarked, "Have you not much the same thing in Europe in the worship of Mary?" Compare what is said in chap. v. This nirvana of Buddha must be not his death, but his attaining to Buddhaship.
The Pratyeka Buddha heard their words, and immediately attained to nirvâna; and hence this place was named "The Park of the rishi's Deer-wild." After the World-honored one had attained to perfect Wisdom, men built the vihâra in it.
Other-worldliness is the Christian modification of the Oriental philosophy of illusion. Heaven is a world beyond, to be exchanged for this. It is not constituted by the denial of this world, as is Nirvana, but access to it is conditioned by such denial. It is goodness and happiness hypostasized, and offered as compensation for martyrdom.
Then deeply pondering the joy of "snapped relationship," the idea of Nirvâna, deepened and widened in him, his body as a peak of the Golden Mount, his shoulder like the elephant's, his voice like the spring-thunder, his deep-blue eye like that of the king of oxen; his mind full of religious thoughts, his face bright as the full moon, his step like that of the lion king, thus he entered his palace; even as the son of Lord Sakra, or Sakra-putra, his mind reverential, his person dignified, he went straight to his father's presence, and with head inclined, inquired, "Is the king well?"
They sought to actualize what their predecessors tried to symbolise. To the Neo-Confucian mind the cosmic law was not reflected in the phenomenal world, but the phenomenal world was the cosmic law itself. Aeons were but moments Nirvana always within grasp. The Taoist conception that immortality lay in the eternal change permeated all their modes of thought.
Word Of The Day