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Throughout the early period of Buddhism in the Far East, the question had been discussed what should be the relations between the Buddhist monks and the emperor, whether they were subject to him or not.
On the anniversary above referred to Her Majesty sent for hundreds of Buddhist priests to pray for those unfortunate people who had died without leaving anyone who could sacrifice for them.
He was a Buddhist, did not fear death and did not want to be kept alive in agony or in prolonged unconsciousness by any extraordinary means, nor did he want to die with tubes in every orifice. I was honored to be a supportive participant in his passing. He died fasting, in peace, and without pain, with a clear mind that allowed him to consciously prepare for the experience.
There again she fell into her old ways, and had a son by king Bimbisara; but she was won over by Buddha to virtue and chastity, renounced the world, and attained to the state of an Arhat. See the earliest account of Ambapali's presentation of the garden in "Buddhist Suttas," pp. 30-33, and the note there from Bishop Bigandet on pp. 33, 34.
The Brahmâ-vihâras are states of emotional meditation which lead to rebirth in the heavens of Brahmâ. They are attained by letting love or some other good emotion dominate the mind, and by "pervading the whole world" with it. This language about pervading the world with kindly emotion is common in Buddhist books though alien to European idiom.
Tall, dark pines and a verdant undergrowth mark the deep ravines and sloping hill-sides, upon which European dwellings may be seen overlooking the bay, interspersed with a few Buddhist temples.
Hell proved, however, to be extremely cold; and while meditating on the partial inappropriateness of the atmosphere, it occurred to me that in the common Buddhist picture-books of the Jigoku I had never noticed any illustrations of torment by cold. Indian Buddhism, indeed, teaches the existence of cold hells.
This valley was one of the chief centres of Buddhist worship, as gigantic idols, mutilated indeed by fanatical Mussulmans, conclusively prove. Bamian, with its colossal statues cut out in the rock, was among the wonders described by the Buddhist monks who traversed Central Asia in the fourth century.
It offends them that he should call central India the "Middle Kingdom," and China, which to them was the true and only Middle Kingdom, but "a Border land;" it offends them as the vaunting language of a Buddhist writer, whereas the reader will see in the expressions only an instance of what Fa-Hsien calls his "simple straightforwardness."
Besides, if it had been written during the Buddhist ascendency, one fancies we should find more Buddhism in it than we do. There is some; there are ideas that would be called Buddhist; but that really only prove the truth of the Buddha's claim that he taught nothing new. But a Poem written in Asoka's reign, one fancies, would not have been structurally and innately, as the Mahabharata is, martial.
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