But to resume our story. Gautama fails to find in Brāhmanical philosophy that rest and peace for which his soul was craving when he left his home.
Still there was another way of emancipation and union with the Universal Soul, taught by the Brāhmans. This was the way of Tapas[11], or self-inflicted bodily pain and austerity.
From the earliest times a favourite doctrine of Brāhmanism has been, that self-inflicted bodily suffering is before all things efficacious for the accumulation of religious merit, for the acquirement of supernatural powers, and for the spirit’s release from the bondage of transmigration and its re-absorption into the One Universal Spirit.
Among other forms of self-inflicted pain, religious devotees (Tapasvīs) sometimes went through the process of sitting all day long unmoved during the hottest months on a prepared platform or plot of ground, surrounded by five fires, or by four blazing fires, with the burning sun above their heads as a fifth[12]. Even gods (and notably Ṡiva) are described as mortifying themselves by bodily austerities (tapas), so as not to be outdone by men; for according to the theory of Hindūism, the gods themselves might be supplanted and even ousted from their rank and position as divinities by the omnipotence acquirable by human devotees through a protracted endurance of severe bodily suffering.
Hence we are not surprised to find it recorded of Gautama Buddha, that seeking in vain for rest in the teaching of Brāhmanical philosophy, and eager to try the effect of a course of self-mortification, he wandered forth from Rāja-gṛiha to a wood in the district of Gayā, called Uruvilvā (or Uruvelā).
There, in company with five other ascetics, he began his celebrated sexennial fast. Sitting down with his legs folded under him on a raised seat in a place unsheltered from sun, wind, rain, dew, and cold, he gradually reduced his daily allowance of food to a single grain of rice. Then holding his breath, he harassed and macerated his body, but all in vain. No peace of mind came, and no divine enlightenment. He became convinced of his own folly in resorting to bodily austerity as a means of attaining supreme enlightenment, and delivering himself from the evils and sufferings of life.
Rousing himself, as if from a troubled dream, he took food and nourishment in a natural way, thereby incurring the temporary disapproval of his five companions in self-mortification. Then, when sufficiently refreshed, he moved away to another spot in the same district. There, under the shelter of a sacred fig-tree (Aṡvattha, Ficus religiosa, known as the Pippala or Pīpal), in a village, afterwards called Buddha-Gayā, he gave himself up to higher and higher forms of meditation (Jhāna = Dhyāna). In this he merely conformed to the Hindū Yoga,—a method of attaining mystic union with the Deity, which although not then formulated into a system, was already in vogue among the Brāhmans. There can be little doubt that the Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna (see [p. 209]), and Samādhi of the Yoga were resorted to, even in Gautama’s time, as a means for the attainment of perfect spiritual illumination, as well as of final absorption in the Deity.
In Manu VI. 72 it is said:—‘Let him purge himself from all taints (doshān) by suppression of breath, from sin by restraints of thought (dhāraṇābhiḥ), from sensual attachments by control, and from unspiritual qualities by meditation (dhyānena).’
In the later work called Bhagavad-gītā (see [p. 95] of this volume) it is declared:—‘holding his body, head, and neck quite immovable, seated on a firm seat in a pure spot with Kuṡa grass around, the devotee (Yogī) should look only at the tip of his nose, and should meditate on the Supreme Being’ (VI. 11, 12). Further on he is directed to meditate so profoundly as to think about nothing whatever (VI. 25).
The very Gāyatrī or ancient Vedic prayer (Ṛig-veda III. 62. 10, see [p. 78] of this volume)—which is to Hindūs what the Lord’s Prayer is to Christians, and is still repeated by millions of our Indian fellow-subjects at their daily devotions—was originally an act of meditation, performed with the very object Gautama had in view—supreme enlightenment of mind:—‘Let us meditate (Dhīmahi, root dhyai) on the excellent glory of the divine vivifying Sun, may he enlighten our understandings.’ Even the selection of a seat under an Aṡvattha tree was in keeping with Brāhmanical ideas (see ‘Brāhmanism and Hindūism,’ p. 335).