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BUDDHIST FAITH / SPREAD OF BUDDHISM / GAUTAMA SIDDHARTHA - Guest - 05-21-2011
GAUTAMA SIDDHARTHA
94:7.1
Contemporary with Lao-tse and Confucius in
China,
another great teacher of truth arose in
India,
Gautama Siddhartha was born in the sixth century before Christ in the
north Indian
province of
Nepal.
His followers later made it appear that he was the son of a fabulously
wealthy ruler, but, in truth, he was the heir apparent to the throne of a
petty chieftain who ruled by sufferance over a small and secluded
mountain valley in the southern
Himalayas.
94:7.2
Gautama formulated those theories which grew into the philosophy of
Buddhism
after six years of the futile practice of Yoga. Siddhartha made a
determined but unavailing fight against the growing caste system. There
was a lofty sincerity and a unique unselfishness
about this young prophet prince that greatly appealed to the men of
those days. He detracted from the practice of seeking individual salvation through physical affliction and personal pain. And he exhorted his followers to carry his gospel to all the world.
94:7.3
Amid the confusion and extreme cult practices of
India,
the saner and more moderate teachings of Gautama came as a refreshing
relief. He denounced gods, priests, and their sacrifices, but he too
failed to perceive the
personality
of the One Universal. Not believing in the existence of individual human
souls,
Gautama, of course, made a valiant fight against the time-honored belief
in transmigration of the soul. He made a noble effort to deliver men
from fear, to make them feel at ease and at home in the great universe,
but he failed to show them the pathway to that real and supernal home of
ascending
mortals—Paradise—and
to the expanding service of eternal existence.
94:7.4
Gautama was a real prophet, and had he heeded the instruction of the hermit Godad, he might have aroused all
India
by the inspiration of the revival of the Salem gospel of salvation by faith. Godad was descended through a family that had never lost the traditions of the Melchizedek missionaries.
94:7.5
At
Benares
Gautama founded his school, and it was during its second year that a
pupil, Bautan, imparted to his teacher the traditions of the Salem
missionaries about the Melchizedek covenant with Abraham; and while Siddhartha did not have a very clear concept of the Universal Father, he took an advanced stand on salvation
through faith—simple belief. He so declared himself before his
followers and began sending his students out in groups of sixty to
proclaim to the people of
India
"the glad tidings of free salvation; that all men, high and low, can attain bliss by faith in righteousness and justice."
94:7.6
Gautama's wife believed her husband's gospel and was the founder of an
order of nuns. His son became his successor and greatly extended the
cult; he grasped the new idea of salvation
through faith but in his later years wavered regarding the Salem gospel
of divine favor through faith alone, and in his old age his dying words
were, "Work out your own salvation."
94:7.7
When proclaimed at its best, Gautama's gospel of universal salvation,
free from sacrifice, torture, ritual, and priests, was a revolutionary
and amazing doctrine for its time. And it came surprisingly near to
being a revival of the Salem gospel. It brought succor to millions of
despairing souls, and notwithstanding its grotesque perversion during
later centuries, it still persists as the hope of millions of human
beings.
94:7.8
Siddhartha taught far more truth than has survived in the modern cults bearing his name. Modern
Buddhism
is no more the teachings of Gautama Siddhartha than is
Christianity
the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
THE BUDDHIST FAITH
94:8.1
To become a Buddhist, one merely made public profession of the faith by
reciting the Refuge: "I take my refuge in the Buddha; I take my refuge
in the Doctrine; I take my refuge in the Brotherhood."
94:8.2
Buddhism
took origin in a historic person, not in a myth. Gautama's followers
called him Sasta, meaning master or teacher. While he made no superhuman
claims for either himself or his teachings, his disciples early began
to call him the enlightened one, the Buddha; later on, Sakyamuni Buddha.
94:8.3
The original gospel of Gautama was based on the four noble truths:
1.The noble truths of suffering.
2. The origins of suffering.
3.The destruction of suffering.
4.The way to the destruction of suffering
94:8.8
Closely linked to the doctrine of suffering and the escape therefrom was
the philosophy of the Eightfold Path: right views, aspirations, speech,
conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and contemplation. It was not
Gautama's intention to attempt to destroy all effort, desire, and affection
in the escape from suffering; rather was his teaching designed to
picture to mortal man the futility of pinning all hope and aspirations
entirely on temporal goals and material objectives. It was not so much
that love of one's fellows should be shunned as that the true believer
should also look beyond the associations of this material world to the
realities of the eternal future.
94:8.9
The moral commandments of Gautama's preachment were five in number:
94:8.101.You shall not kill.
94:8.112. You shall not steal.
94:8.123.You shall not be unchaste.
94:8.134. You shall not lie.
94:8.145.You shall not drink intoxicating liquors.
94:8.15
There were several additional or secondary commandments, whose observance was optional with believers.
94:8.16
Siddhartha hardly believed in the immortality of the human personality;
his philosophy only provided for a sort of functional continuity. He
never clearly defined what he meant to include in the doctrine of Nirvana.
The fact that it could theoretically be experienced during mortal
existence would indicate that it was not viewed as a state of complete
annihilation. It implied a condition of supreme enlightenment and
supernal bliss wherein all fetters binding man to the material world had
been broken; there was freedom from the desires of mortal life and deliverance from all danger of ever again experiencing incarnation.
94:8.17
According to the original teachings of Gautama, salvation is achieved by human effort, apart from divine help; there is no place for saving faith or prayers to superhuman powers. Gautama, in his attempt to minimize the superstitions of India,
endeavored to turn men away from the blatant claims of magical
salvation. And in making this effort, he left the door wide open for his
successors to misinterpret his teaching and to proclaim that all human
striving for attainment is distasteful and painful. His followers
overlooked the fact that the highest happiness
is linked with the intelligent and enthusiastic pursuit of worthy
goals, and that such achievements constitute true progress in cosmic
self-realization.
94:8.18
The great truth of Siddhartha's teaching was his proclamation of a
universe of absolute justice. He taught the best godless philosophy ever
invented by mortal man; it was the ideal humanism and most effectively
removed all grounds for superstition, magical rituals, and fear of
ghosts or demons.
94:8.19
The great weakness in the original gospel of
Buddhism
was that it did not produce a religion of unselfish
social service. The Buddhistic brotherhood was, for a long time, not a
fraternity of believers but rather a community of student teachers.
Gautama forbade their receiving money and thereby sought to prevent the
growth of hierarchal tendencies. Gautama himself was highly social;
indeed, his life was much greater than his preachment.
THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM
94:9.1
Buddhism prospered because it offered salvation through belief in the Buddha, the enlightened one. It was more representative of the Melchizedek truths than any other religious system to be found throughout eastern Asia. But Buddhism did not become widespread as a religion until it was espoused in self-protection by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikhnaton in Egypt, was one of the most remarkable civil rulers between Melchizedek and Michael. Asoka built a great Indian
empire through the propaganda of his Buddhist missionaries. During a
period of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than
seventeen thousand missionaries to the farthest frontiers of all the
known world. In one generation he made Buddhism the dominant religion of
one half the world. It soon became established in Tibet, Kashmir, Ceylon, Burma,
Java, Siam, Korea, China,
and Japan. And generally speaking, it was a religion vastly superior to those which it supplanted or upstepped.
94:9.2
The spread of Buddhism from its homeland in India to all of Asia
is one of the thrilling stories of the spiritual devotion
and missionary persistence of sincere religionists. The teachers of
Gautama's gospel not only braved the perils of the overland caravan
routes but faced the dangers of the China Seas
as they pursued their mission over the Asiatic continent, bringing to
all peoples the message of their faith. But this Buddhism was no longer
the simple doctrine of Gautama; it was the miraculized gospel which made
him a god. And the farther Buddhism spread from its highland home in
India, the more unlike the teachings of Gautama it became, and the more
like the religions it supplanted, it grew to be.
94:9.3
Buddhism, later on, was much affected by Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan,
and Christianity in Tibet/ After a thousand years, in India Buddhism simply withered and expired. It became Brahmanized and later abjectly surrendered to Islam, while throughout much of the rest of the Orient it degenerated into a ritual which Gautama Siddhartha would never have recognized.
94:9.4
In the south the fundamentalist stereotype of the teachings of Siddhartha persisted in
Ceylon, Burma, and the Indo-China peninsula. This is the Hinayana division of Buddhism which clings to the early or asocial doctrine.
94:9.5
But even before the collapse in India, the Chinese and north Indian groups of Gautama's followers had begun the development of the Mahayana teaching of the "Great Road" to salvation
in contrast with the purists of the south who held to the Hinayana, or
"Lesser Road." And these Mahayanists cast loose from the social
limitations inherent in the Buddhist doctrine, and ever since has this
northern division of
Buddhism continued to evolve in China and Japan.
94:9.6
Buddhism is a living, growing religion
today because it succeeds in conserving many of the highest moral
values of its adherents. It promotes calmness and self-control, augments
serenity and happiness, and does much to prevent sorrow and mourning. Those who believe this philosophy live better lives than many who do not.
-a
Melchizedek
of Nebadon
THE MELCHIZEDEK TEACHINGS IN THE ORIENT
-Paper 94:7-9
BUDDHIST FAITH / SPREAD OF BUDDHISM / GAUTAMA SIDDHARTHA - Guest - 08-21-2019