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It relates how a monk called Yasa, when a guest of the monks of Vesâlî, quarrelled with them because they accepted money from the laity and, departing thence, sought for support among the Theras or elders of the south and west.
Then when his catechumen's mind was prepared, he preached to him "the chief doctrine of the Buddhas, namely suffering, its cause, its cessation and the Path." And when Yasa understood this he obtained the Eye of Truth. It is clear, therefore, that the Buddha regarded practice as the foundation of his system. He wished to create a temper and a habit of life.
Sweden was formerly under the Danish yoke, but Gustavus Yasa delivered it when he introduced the reformed religion in 1527. His reign of thirty-seven years was great and glorious in the annals of Sweden. We will now proceed on our course: shall we go still further north, into the White Sea, or are you tired of the cold, and prefer journeying to the south, and embarking on the Black Sea?"
When the Buddha instructs his sixth convert, Yasa, the introduction is slightly different, doubtless because he was a layman. It treats of "almsgiving, of moral duties, of heaven, of the evil, vanity and sinfulness of desires, of the blessings which come from abandoning desires."
For example: The legend describing Buddha's leave-taking of his harem is clearly borrowed from an earlier story of Yasa, a wealthy young householder of Benares, who, becoming disgusted with his harem, left his sleeping dancing girls and fled to the Buddha for instruction.
The first was a youth named Yasa who joined the order, while his father, mother and former wife became lay believers. Then came first four and subsequently fifty friends of Yasa and joined the order. "At that time" says the Mahâvagga. "there were sixty-one Arhats in the world," so that at first arhatship seems to have followed immediately on ordination.
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