5.—Meditation on Serenity. The priest contemplates the worldly opinions of men as to the badness and goodness of things; the desire for wealth and power; the hatred of injustice and oppression; he contrasts youth and disease, love and treachery, honour and disgrace, and endeavours so to rise above them all, that without haughtiness or pride he may be indifferent to all the evils and joys which accompany them, and free from all desires to partake of the same.
This is not the place to discuss the philosophy of Buddha, as we are here concerned only with the mendicant order in Siam. But in order to gain a more complete idea of the duties and character of the monastic body as contemplated by their founder, the following facts taken from Professor Rhys Davids's work on "Buddhism" are here given.
Buddha before his death told his disciples that they were to propagate his Laws, viz., (1) The four earnest meditations. (2) The four great Efforts. (3) The four roads to Iddhi. (4) The five moral Powers. (5) The seven kinds of Wisdom; and (6) The Noble Eightfold Path.
The four earnest Meditations are: (1) On the impurity of the body; (2) on the evils which arise from sensation; (3) on the impermanence of ideas; (4) on the conditions of existence.
The four great Efforts are—the exertion (1) to prevent bad qualities from arising; (2) to put away bad qualities which have arisen; (3) to produce goodness not previously existing; (4) to increase goodness where it does exist.
The four roads to Iddhi are the four bases of Saintship by which it is obtained. They are: (1) the will to acquire it; (2) the necessary exertion; (3) the necessary preparation of the heart; (4) investigation.
The five moral Powers are—Faith, Energy, Recollection, Contemplation, Intuition.
The seven kinds of Wisdom are—Energy, Recollection, Contemplation, Investigation of Scripture, Joy, Repose and Serenity.
The noble Eightfold Path which leads to Nirvana comprises: (1) Right belief; (2) Right aims; (3) Right words; (4) Right behaviour; (5) Right mode of livelihood; (6) Right exertion; (7) Right mindfulness; (8) Right meditation and tranquillity.
All these different Powers, Laws, etc., are again subdivided and re-subdivided; but the above lines will be sufficient to outline the moral philosophy of that system which not only the priests should bear out in their lives, but to which every true believer in Buddhism is expected to conform. Practically, however, these counsels are so many obsolete laws, long since dead and forgotten. Outside the permanent priests and a few students, the vast majority of the people know nothing whatever about the system, and if some of the learned writers upon Buddhism in Europe were to preach their Buddhist sermons to the subjects of the only independent Buddhist king remaining, the people would stare in wonder at their new teachers and ask one another what strange doctrines were these that were being preached unto them.