In brief, the Buddha’s enlightenment consisted, first, in the discovery of the origin and remedy of suffering, and, next, in the knowledge of the existence of an eternal Force—a force generated by what in Sanskṛit is called Karman, ‘Act.’ The accumulated force of the acts of one Universe produced another.
Every man, therefore, was created by the force of his own acts in former bodies, combined with a force generated by intense attachment to existence (upādāna). Who or what started the first act, the Buddha never pretended to be able to explain. He confessed himself in regard to this point a downright Agnostic. The Buddha himself had been created by his own acts, and had been created and re-created through countless bodily forms; but he had no spirit or soul existing separately between the intervals of each creation. By his protracted meditation he attained to no higher knowledge than this, and although he himself rose to loftier heights of knowledge than any other man of his day, he never aspired to other faculties than were within the reach of any human being capable of rising to the same sublime abstraction of mind.
He was even careful to lay down a precept that the acquisition of transcendent human faculties was restricted to the perfected saints called Arhats; and so important did he consider it to guard such faculties from being claimed by mere impostors, that one of the four prohibitions communicated to all monks on first admission to his monastic Order was that they were not to pretend to such powers (see [p. 81]).
Nor is there any proof that even Arhats in Gautama’s time were allowed to claim superhuman faculties and the power of working physical miracles.
By degrees, no doubt, powers of this kind were ascribed to them as well as to the Buddha. Even in the Yinaya, one of the oldest portions of the Tri-piṭaka, we find it stated (Mahā-vagga I. 20, 24) that Gautama Buddha gained adherents by performing three thousand five hundred supernatural wonders (Pāli, pāṭi-hāriya; see [p. 46]). These were thought to be evidences of his mission as a great teacher and saviour of mankind; but the part of the narrative recording these, although very ancient, is probably a legendary addition.
It is interesting, however, to trace in portions of the early literature, the development of the doctrine that Buddhahood meant first transcendent knowledge, and then supernatural faculties and the power of working miracles.
In the Ākaṅkheyya-sutta (said to have been composed in the fourth century B.C.) occurs a remarkable passage, translated by Prof. Rhys Davids (S.B.E., p. 214):—
‘If a monk should desire through the destruction of the corrupting influences (āsavas), by himself, and even in this very world, to know and realise and attain to Arhatship, to emancipation of heart, and emancipation of mind, let him devote himself to that quietude of heart which springs from within, let him not drive back the ecstasy of contemplation, let him look through things, let him be much alone.
‘If a monk should desire to hear with clear and heavenly ear, surpassing that of men, sounds both human and celestial, whether far or near; if he should desire to comprehend by his own heart the hearts of other beings and of other men; if he should desire to call to mind his various temporary states in the past, such as one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand births, or his births in many an age and æon of destruction and renovation, let him devote himself to that quietude which springs from within.’
Then, in the Mahā-parinibbāna-sutta (I. 33, Rhys Davids) occurs the following;—