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Updated: May 2, 2025
These are obviously parallel to the worship of Śiva and Vishnu, and to the rise of the Vedanta. Now the worship of these deities was probably not prevalent before 300 B.C., for they are almost unknown to the Pali Pitakas, and it was fully developed about the time of the Bhagavad-gîtâ which perhaps assumed its present form a little before the Christian era.
Not much is added to the account of his wanderings and austerities as given in the Pitakas, but the attainment of Buddhahood naturally stimulates the devout imagination. At daybreak Gotama sits at the foot of a tree, lighting up the landscape with the golden rays which issue from his person.
It was against his judgment that the Buddha admitted women to his order and in bidding his monks beware of them he said many hard things. But for women in the household life the Pitakas show an appreciation and respect which is illustrated by the position held by women in Buddhist countries from the devout and capable matron Visâkhâ down to the women of Burma in the present day.
In the older books of the Pitakas six Buddhas are mentioned as preceding Gotama , namely Vipassî, Sikhî, Vessabhû, Kakusandha, Konâgamana and Kassapa. The last three at least may have some historical character. Asoka erected a monument in honour of Konâgamana in Nepal with a dedicatory inscription which has been preserved.
Though this procedure when set forth methodically in a mediæval manual seems an absurd travesty of Buddhism, yet it has links with the early faith. It is admitted in the Pitakas that certain forms of meditation lead to union with Brahmâ and it is no great change to make them lead to union with other supernatural beings. Still we are not here breathing the atmosphere of the Pitakas.
Could we be transported to India in the days of his preaching, we should probably see a figure very like the portrait given in the more sober parts of the Pitakas, a teacher of great intelligence and personal charm, yet distinctly human.
In Buddhism, though the Pitakas speak continually of rebirth, metempsychosis is an incorrect expression since there is no soul to transmigrate and there is strictly speaking nothing but karma. Karma is also used in the more concrete sense of the merit or demerit acquired by various acts. Thus we hear of karma which manifests itself in this life, and of karma which only manifests itself in another.
In the Pitakas there are allusions to such a posterior series, as when for instance we hear that all Buddhas past and to come have had and will have attendants like Ânanda, but Metteya the Buddha of the future has not yet become an important figure.
This word is the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit prajñâ and is interesting as connecting early and later Buddhism, for prajñâ in the sense of transcendental or absolute knowledge plays a great part in Mahayanism and is even personified. The Pitakas imply that Buddhas and Arhats can understand things which the ordinary human mind cannot grasp and human words cannot utter.
Hsüan Chuang even states that the council which sat at Râjagṛiha after the Buddha's death compiled five Pitakas, one of which consisted of Dhâraṇîs, and it may be that the collection of such texts was begun as early as the collection of discourses and rules. But for many centuries there is no evidence that they were in any way confounded with the Dharma.
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