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Although these statements that Nirvana and Samsâra are the same are not at all in the manner of the older Buddhism, yet this ideal of disinterested activity combined with Nirvana is not inconsistent with the portrait of Gotama preserved in the Pali Canon. The Mahayanist Buddhism of the Far East makes free use of such phrases as the Buddha in the heart, the Buddha mind and the Buddha nature.
Here he was assailed by Mâra the Tempter who offered him universal empire but in vain. After jumping the river Anomâ on his steed, he cut off his long hair with his sword and flinging it up into the air wished it might stay there if he was really to become a Buddha. It remained suspended; admiring gods placed it in a heavenly shrine and presented Gotama with the robes of a monk.
It says nothing about laws and rites: it simply states that the way to be happy is to have a good heart and mind, taking shape in good deeds and at last finding expression and fulfilment in the rapture of ecstasy. Gotama rises above all his contemporaries and above all subsequent teachers except Christ.
In the Mahâ and Culla-vaggas of the Vinaya Pitaka we possess a large collection of regulations purporting to be issued by the Buddha for the guidance of the Order on such subjects as ceremonial, discipline, clothes, food, furniture and medicine. The arrangement is roughly chronological. Gotama starts as a new teacher, without either followers or a code.
"Completely and eternally awake are the disciples of Gotama! Unceasingly, by day and night, their minds know the sweetness of perfect peace. "Completely and eternally awake are the disciples of Gotama! Unceasingly, by day and night, their minds enjoy the deep peace of meditation."
This decadence was hastened by an unfortunate alliance with those forms of magic and erotic mysticism which are called Śâktism . It is difficult to estimate the extent of the corruption, for the singularity of the evil, a combination of the austere and ethical teaching of Gotama with the most fantastic form of Hinduism, arrests attention and perhaps European scholars have written more about it than it deserves.
Gotama seeks to obtain enlightenment by self-mortification: finds that this is the wrong way: tries a more natural method and succeeds: debates whether he shall become a teacher and at first hesitates. These are not features which the average Indian hagiographer, anxious to prove his hero omnipotent and omniscient, would invent or emphasize.
Then Gautama, foremost of men, taking up another bow, O king, covered Sikhandin with a large number of whetted shafts. Thus covered in that battle by the illustrious son of Gotama, Sikhandin, that foremost of car-warriors sank on the terrace of his car. Beholding him thus weakened, Kripa in that encounter, struck him with many arrows, from desire of slaying him, O Bharata!
Probably it was first employed to designate an imaginary prophet, and then a series of spiritual though actual successors by whom, in the course of centuries, the Avesta was evolved. Otherwise Zarathrustra and Gotama are brothers in Brahmanaspati. Both had virgin mothers. In the lives of both miracles are common. The advent of Zarathrustra was accounted the ruin of demons.
And here he soon attracted attention because his appearance and mien were so noble that even his coarse clothes and his new way of life could not disguise him. He called himself a prince no longer, but instead took the name of Gotama, this being one of the names of the family from which he sprang.
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