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This Classic work is now copyright expired and therefore in the public domain. Cosmic Consciousness by Ali NomadIV SELF-NESS AND SELFLESSNESS
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One of the most quoted of the translations of the Life of Buddha, reaches the English readers through devious ways, namely, from the Sanskrit into Chinese, and from the Chinese into English, and again edited by an English scientist who is also an Oriental scholar.
We must also consider the poverty of the English language when used to describe supra-conscious experiences, or what modern thought terms Metaphysics. Only within very recent times, approximating twenty-five years, there have been coined innumerable words in the English language.
The advances made in mechanical, scientific, ethical and philosophical thought, have made this a necessity, while, when it comes to an attempt at clarifying the meaning of mystical terms, a very wide range of interpretation is imperative.
Buddha, addressing his servant, says:
"Kandaka, take this gem and going back to where my father is, lay it reverently before him, to signify my heart's relation to him."
It is related that the gem mentioned was a beryl, which in the language of gems signifies purity and peace. It must be remembered that all Oriental languages give power to gems, perfumes and talismanic symbols. This fact makes direct translation of Oriental writings a difficult task for the Occidental scholar, who, until recently at least, gave no power to so-called "inanimate" things.
"And then for me request the king to stifle every fickle feeling of affection, and say that I, to escape from birth and age and death, have entered the forest of painful discipline.
"Not that I may get a heavenly birth, much less because I have no tenderness of heart, or that I cherish any cause of bitterness, but Only that I may escape this weight of sorrow; the accumulated long-night weight of covetous desire. I now desire to ease the load, so that it may be overthrown forever; therefore I seek the way of ultimate escape.
"If I should gain the way of emancipation, then shall I never need to put away my kindred, to leave my home, to sever ties of love. O grieve not for your son. The five desires of sense beget the sorrow; those held by lust themselves induce sorrow; my very ancestors, victorious kings, have handed down to me their kingly wealth; I, thinking only on eternal bliss, put it all away."
The meaning here conveyed is simple enough to understand. From a long line of ancestors who had ruled with the unquestioned authority of Oriental monarchs, the young prince felt that he had inherited much that would retard his soul's freedom. The examples of kings and emperors who have abandoned their possessions have been too few to cause us to believe that they have held these possessions as naught.
Through rivers of blood; through ages of despotism, and self-seeking, kings and emperors have maintained their vested rights bequeathing to their progeny the same desires; the same covetousness of worldly power; the same consideration for the lesser self; the same hypnotism that takes account of caste.
To escape from these fetters of the soul, into a realization of the Eternal Oneness of life, was no easy task for the inheritor of such desires and beliefs and appetites as an ancestry of rulers imposes.
And Prince Siddhartha was anxious to escape reincarnation--a theory or conviction inseparable from Oriental religion.
His reference to "fickle affection" means literally that selfish affection of the parent, which would retain the fleeting joy of a few short earthly years of companionship, while the larger and more perfect love would bid the child seek its birthright of godhood. The word "fickle" here would more properly be translated transitory.
Buddha's desire to escape from a continuous round of deaths and "leave-takings from kindred," does not necessarily imply an absorption into The Absolute; it may as logically be interpreted to mean, that liberation from the hypnotisms of externality _(mukti)_ insures the possession and power of the gods--power over physical life and death, and this power need not mean a cessation from individual consciousness, but rather, a full realization of individual _unity_ with the sum of all consciousness.
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