And now the Buddha went on to speak of how, according to the belief of our forefathers, Krishna, although himself the Supreme God, the Upholder and Preserver of the whole world, yet, moved by pity for all created beings, suffered a portion of his own divine personality to descend from high heaven, and to be born as a man among men. Passing to himself, the Master said that when, after ardent struggle, he had made perfect enlightenment, the blessed and abiding certainty of salvation, his own, the desire came to him to remain in the enjoyment of this blessed serenity, and not to declare the doctrine to others. “ ‘For this pleasure-loving generation’—thus I reasoned—‘will hardly comprehend the freeing itself from all the forms assumed by existence, the quenching of all desire for life, the blotting out of all delusion; and, for the declaring of the doctrine, my only reward will be labour and vexation of spirit.’ Thus did my nature incline to uncommunicativeness, and not to the proclamation of the doctrine. Then I looked with seeing eyes yet once again upon the world. And as in a lotus pond one sees some lotus flowers which develop in the waters and remain under the surface, others which force their way to the surface and float there, and, finally, others which rise above the waters and stand free from all contact with them; so also in this world I saw beings of a low type, beings of a noble type, and beings of the noblest type. And I reasoned thus: ‘If they do not hear the doctrine they will lose their way: these will understand the doctrine.’ And out of pity for these beings I decided to resign for a time the undisturbed possession of the blessed calm of Nirvana, and to proclaim the doctrine to the world.
“Thus does a perfect Buddha take up Krishna’s coming down from heaven and becoming man, give it inward force, illumine, and complete it.”
As he said this, there came to me a feeling of unspeakable joy; for I knew that the Buddha numbered me with the lotus flowers that had risen to the surface of the water, and that I, by his help, would one day raise myself above it, and would stand free, unsullied by material things.
Further, the Master told us of those heroic deeds of Krishna, by which he had freed the world from monsters and wicked rulers, and had added to the happiness of all created beings. How he had vanquished the water serpent Koliya, slain the bull-shaped demon Aristha, destroyed the ravaging monsters Dhenuka and Kishi, and the demon prince Naraka, had overcome and killed the villainous kings Kamsa and Paundraka, and other bloody tyrants who were the terror of helpless human beings, and had thus ameliorated in many a way the distressful fate of man.
But he, the Master, did not combat the foes that assailed men from without, but the monsters in their own hearts—greed, hate, insanity, love of self, the desire for pleasure, the thirst for the things that pass away; and he freed humanity, not from this or that evil, but from suffering.
Then the Blessed One spoke of suffering which everywhere and always follows life like its shadow. And I felt as though someone with gentle hand lifted the load of pain my love had brought me, bore it away, and cast it into the great maelstrom of suffering, where, in the general whirl, it disappeared from view. In my inmost soul, and deeply, did I feel that I had no right to enduring happiness where all suffer. I had enjoyed my happiness; it was born, had unfolded itself, and had passed, just as the Buddha taught that everything in this world comes from some source, and, after its time is fulfilled, must—sooner or later—again pass away. This very transitoriness, in which the unreality of every individual thing veiled itself, was, he told us, the final, the unavoidable source of suffering—unavoidable so long as the desire for existence was not uprooted—so long as it continued to flourish luxuriantly and forever to give rise to something new. And as each individual is, from the very fact of his existence, accessory to the suffering of the world, I should now be obliged—or so it seemed to me—if I had been spared pain, to feel myself doubly guilty, and to be filled with a desire to bear my part also.
I was no longer able to bewail my own lot; on the contrary, as I listened to the Master’s words, the thought awoke in me, “Oh, that all created beings were no longer obliged to suffer! that this holy man might so succeed in his work of salvation, that all—all—purified from sin and enlightened, might reach the end of all suffering.”
And the Master spoke also of this end of suffering and of the world, of the overcoming of every form of existence, of salvation in an even state of mind void of all desire, of the blotting out of all delusion, of Nirvana—strange, wonderful words telling of the only island in all this troubled sea of birth on whose rocky shore the breakers of death dash in impotent foam, and over to which the doctrine of the Perfect One sailed like a trusty ship. And he spoke of that blessed place of peace, not as one speaks who relates to us what he has heard from others—from priests—and also not as a song maker who lets his fancy rove, but like one who communicates what he has himself experienced and seen.
Much he said, it is true, in the course of it, which I, untaught woman, did not understand, and which would not have been easily understood by even the most
