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Updated: June 23, 2025
Thus the Buddha sought in vain for light and cheer in life, and pessimism became to him, as it continues to be to his followers, the very atmosphere of life. Even as in Dante's vision of the Inferno, so in the Temple of Buddha's scheme of life there is inscribed above its portals the words: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."
It was the library of Pali manuscripts containing the sacred books and stories of Buddha's life and doctrine. Many of these manuscripts were written on palm-leaves and were wrapped in silken coverings. Some had been presented by Siamese and by Burmese kings. Some were ancient.
There collecting ox-head sandal-wood and every famous scented wood, they placed the whole above the Buddha's body, pouring various scented oils upon the pyre; then placing fire beneath to kindle it, three times they walked around; but yet it burned not.
That spread takes place, as it is desired by the Buddha, chiefly among the higher classes of society; a great triumph is reached when Bimbisara, king of Magadha, becomes a patron of the order, and some accounts tell of the conversion of the Buddha's own father and mother.
But we are here treating of his life rather than of his doctrine and must now return to the events which are said to have followed the first sermon. The first converts had, even before embracing the Buddha's teaching, been followers of a religious life but the next batch of recruits came from the wealthy mercantile families of Benares.
All over the East you find temples which are supposed to contain some part of Buddha's person, hairs, teeth, even a collar-bone! Of course it is impossible that these things should be genuine, and in any case, if they were, there is nothing sacred about them.
"Man is conceived as a compound of instruments, receptive and reacting " and the Saṃyutta-Nikâya puts into the Buddha's mouth the following dogmatic statement . "Consciousness arises because of duality. What is that duality? Visual consciousness arises because of sight and because of visible objects. Sight is transitory and mutable: it is its very nature to change. Visible objects are the same.
The king of this country, having obtained one portion of the relics of Buddha's body, returned with it and built over it a tope, named the Rama tope. But then the dragon showed itself, took the king into its palace; and when he had seen all the things provided for offerings, it said to him, "If you are able with your offerings to exceed these, you can destroy the tope, and take it all away.
Three times, however, in every twenty-four hours, a demon pours boiling copper into Yama's mouth, and squeezes it down his throat, causing him unspeakable pain." ~Kasyapa Buddha's Skeleton on Mount Gurupada~ The travellers, going on from this three li to the south, came to a mountain named Gurupada, inside which Mahâkasyapa even now is.
The major part of the Buddha's activity was concerned with the instruction of his disciples and the organization of the Sangha or order.
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