Page 116 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

trance. For three days and nights he remained motionless. The de-
mon Mara sent his host to assault him and his three lovely daugh-
ters to dance seductively before him, but without moving from
where he sat, the Lord rendered the former powerless while the
latter he transformed into withered hags. Finally, in the moment
of enlightenment, the answer came to him. In his first great ser-
mon in the Deer Park at Benares, he gave his message to the world
in the form of the "Four Noble Truths":
All existence is suffering (dukkha).
The cause of suffering is craving, lust, desire—even desire for exist-
ence itself.
There is an end to suffering, for this craving can be suppressed.
There is a way of suppression, through the Noble Eightfold Path.
The Buddha also taught that there is no such thing as a soul, but
that all life is transitory, all in a perpetual state of becoming. By
following the Eightfold Path, which involves right conduct, right
belief, and right meditation, the devotee can break the cycle of re-
births which binds us eternally to the wheel of existence, and so
secure his release and his final merging in eternity like a cup of
water poured into the sea. Sakyamuni achieved enlightenment in
his lifetime, although he continued to walk the earth, gathering
disciples, performing miracles, and spreading his teaching, until
his final departure, the Mahdparinirvdna, at the age of eighty. His
teaching was austere and, moreover, only for the chosen few who
were prepared to renounce the world and face the rigours of life as
a mendicant or, later, the regimen of the monastery. Its appeal lay
partly in its simplicity—a welcome relief from the complexities of
Hindu theology and metaphysics—and partly in the hope it of-
fered of release from a destiny from which Hindu doctrine saw no
escape.
The new faith grew slowly, and it was not until it was embraced
by King Asoka (2727-232 B.C.) that it became a truly national re-
ligion. That monarch devoted himself with such tremendous en-
ergy to its propagation that legend has it he erected eighty-four
thousand stupas (relic mounds) in a single day, while his monastic
and temple foundations were on a scale which many a pious
Buddhist ruler has since tried to emulate. His missionary activities
brought the faith to Ceylon and to Gandhara in northwest India,
where it came in contact with the religious ideas and artistic forms
of the provincial Graeco-Roman world. It was probably in Gan-
dhara that, under these influences and encouraged by the great
conference organised by King Kanishka (second century A.D.) of
the Kushans, the first great development in Buddhist doctrine
took place. The core of the dogma remained unaltered, but the
new schools—who called themselves Mahayana ("greater vehi-
cle"), referring derogativcly to the more conservative sects as the
Hinayana ("lesser vehicle")—taught that salvation was open to all
men, through faith and works. Now the Buddha ceased to be an
earthly teacher, but was conceived of as pure abstraction, as the
universal principle, the godhead, from whom truth, in the form
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