Indian Myth and Legend

by Donald A. Mackenzie

KRISHNA AND THE GOPIS (HERDSMAIDS)

From a modern sculpture

King Kansa had resort to many stratagems to accomplish the death of Krishna, but his own doom could not be set aside; ultimately he was slain by the two brothers. The Harivamsa, an appendix to the Mahábhárata, which is as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey together, is devoted to the life and adventures of Krishna, who also figures in the Puranas.

Vishnu's Buddha Avatara was assumed, according to orthodox teaching, to bring about the destruction of demons and wicked men who refused to acknowledge the inspiration of the Vedas and the existence of deities, and were opposed to the caste system. This attitude was assumed by the Brahmans because Buddhism was a serious lay revolt against Brahmanical doctrines and ceremonial practices.

Buddha, “the Enlightened”, was Prince Siddartha of the royal family Gautama, which, as elsewhere told, ruled over a Sakya tribe. At his birth marvellous signs foretold his greatness. Reared in luxury, he was kept apart from the common people; but when the time of his awakening came, he was greatly saddened to behold human beings suffering from disease, sorrow, and old age. One night he left his wife and child, and went away to live the life of a contemplative hermit in the forest, with purpose to find a solution for the great problem of human sin and suffering. He came under the influence of Upanishadic doctrines, and at the end of six years he returned and began his mission.

Buddha, the great psychologist, was one of the world's influential teachers, because his doctrines have been embraced in varying degrees of purity by about a third of the human race. Yet they are cold and unsatisfying and gloomy. The “Enlightener's” outlook on life was intensely timid and pessimistic; he was an “enemy of society” in the sense that he made no attempt to effect social reforms so as to minimize human suffering, which touched him with deepest sympathy, but unfortunately filled him with despair; his solution for all problems was Death; he was the apostle of benevolent Nihilism and Idealistic Atheism.

There is no supreme personal god in Buddhism and no hope of immortality. Gods and demons and human beings are “living creatures”; gods have no power over the Universe, and need not be worshipped or sacrificed to, because they are governed by laws, and men have nothing to fear from them.

Buddha denied the existence of the Self-Soul of the Upanishads. Self is not God, in the sense that it is a phase of the World Soul. The “self-state” is, according to the “Enlightener”, a combination of five elements—matter, feeling, imagination, will, and consciousness; these are united by Kamma,[172] the influence which causes life to repeat itself. Buddha had accepted, in a limited sense, the theory of Transmigration of Souls. He taught, however, that rebirth was the result of actions and desire. “It is the yearning for existence”, he said, “which leads from new birth to new birth, which finds its desire in different directions, the desire for pleasure, the desire for existence, the desire for power.” Death occurs when the five elements which constitute life are divided; after death nothing remains but the consequences of actions and thoughts. Rebirth follows because “the yearning”, the essence of “works”, brings the elements together again. The individual exists happily, or the reverse, according to his conduct in a former life; sorrow and disease are results of wrong living and wrong thinking in previous states of existence.