The hermit of Sakya, as we have seen, took his departure from two profound convictions,—the evil of perpetual change, and the possibility of something permanent. He might have used the language of the Book of Ecclesiastes, and cried, "Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!" The profound gloom of that wonderful book is based on the same course of thought as that of the Buddha, namely, that everything goes round and round in a circle; that nothing moves forward; that there is no new thing under the sun; that the sun rises and sets, and rises again; that the wind blows north and south, and east and west, and then returns according to its circuits. Where can rest be found? where peace? where any certainty? Siddârtha was young; but he saw age approaching. He was in health; but he knew that sickness and death were lying in wait for him. He could not escape from the sight of this perpetual round of growth and decay, life and death, joy and woe. He cried out, from the depths of his soul, for something stable, permanent, real.
Again, he was assured that this emancipation from change and decay was to be found in knowledge. But by knowledge he did not intend the perception and recollection of outward facts,—not learning. Nor did he mean speculative knowledge, or the power of reasoning. He meant intuitive knowledge, the sight of eternal truth, the perception of the unchanging laws of the universe. This was a knowledge which was not to be attained by any merely intellectual process, but by moral training, by purity of heart and lite. Therefore he renounced the world, and went into the forest, and became an anchorite.
But just at this point he separated himself from the Brahmans. They also were, and are, believers in the value of mortification, abnegation, penance. They had their hermits in his day. But they believed in the value of penance as accumulating merit. They practised self-denial for its own sake. The Buddha practised it as a means to a higher end,—emancipation, purification, intuition. And this end he believed that he had at last attained. At last he saw the truth. He became "wide awake." Illusions disappeared; the reality was before him. He was the Buddha,—the MAN WHO KNEW.
Still he was a man, not a God. And here again is another point of departure from Brahmanism. In that system, the final result of devotion was to become absorbed in God. The doctrine of the Brahmans is divine absorption; that of the Buddhists, human development. In the Brahmanical system, God is everything and man nothing. In the Buddhist, man is everything and God nothing. Here is its atheism, that it makes so much of man as to forget God. It is perhaps "without God in the world," but it does not deny him. It accepts the doctrine of the three worlds,—the eternal world of absolute being; the celestial world of the gods, Brahma, Indra, Vischnu, Siva; and the finite world, consisting of individual souls and the laws of nature. Only it says, of the world of absolute being, Nirvana, we know nothing. That is our aim and end; but it is the direct opposite to all we know. It is, therefore, to us as nothing. The celestial world, that of the gods, is even of less moment to us. What we know are the everlasting laws of nature, by obedience to which we rise, disobeying which we fall, by perfect obedience to which we shall at last obtain Nirvana, and rest forever.
To the mind of the Buddha, therefore, the world consisted of two orders of existence,—souls and laws. He saw an infinite multitude of souls,—in insects, animals, men,—and saw that they were surrounded by inflexible laws,—the laws of nature. To know these and to obey them,—this was emancipation.
The fundamental doctrine of Buddhism, taught by its founder and received by all Buddhists without exception, in the North and in the South, in Birmah and Thibet, in Ceylon and China, is the doctrine of the four sublime truths, namely:—
1. All existence is evil, because all existence is subject to change and decay.
2. The source of this evil is the desire for things which are to change and pass away.
3. This desire, and the evil which follows it, are not inevitable; for if we choose we can arrive at Nirvana, when both shall wholly cease.
4. There is a fixed and certain method to adopt, by pursuing which we attain this end, without possibility of failure.
These four truths are the basis of the system. They are: 1st, the evil; 2d, its cause; 3d, its end; 4th, the way of reaching the end.
Then follow the eight steps of this way, namely:—
1. Right belief, or the correct faith.
2. Right judgment, or wise application of that faith to life.
3. Right utterance, or perfect truth in all that we say and do.
4. Right motives, or proposing always a proper end and aim.
5. Right occupation, or an outward life not involving sin.
6. Right obedience, or faithful observance of duty.
7. Right memory, or a proper recollection of past conduct.
8. Right meditation, or keeping the mind fixed on permanent truth.