BUDAPEST, HUNGARY. Few capitals of the world typify the life of the country as Budapest typifies the life of Hungary. As Paris is sometimes said to be France, Budapest may with even greater truth be said to be Hungary. In it centers the political, commercial, industrial, and intellectual life of the country, and its Many persons believed in his teachings while he lived.
After his death temples were built in his honor and his religion spread through a great part of Asia.
What the Great Teacher Found under the Bo Tree It would seem as if this young prince had at his com mand everything that his heart could wish—wealth and power, health and beauty, and a wife and young son whom he dearly loved. But his mind constantly turned from the pleasures and empty life of the court to the myster ies of life and death, of suffering and sin and sorrow. At length, at the age of 29, he fled from home and became a beg gar. Through all sorts of penances in flicted upon his body he sought to free himself from evil and attain unto holiness.
The solution — that ignorance is the source of all evil and of all desire— came to him while meditating in solitude under the bo tree, which the Buddhists call the tree of wisdom.
Different religions and peoples throughout history have had traditions of such " enlightened ones" or inspired leaders. It should also be said that this state of enlightenment, of finding oneself free from worldly sin, was the aim of the medieval monks, as it is today of the various kinds of fakirs (fah-keers') or ascetics that swarm in India and the rest of the Orient—who fast and perform useless penances, even when they are not (as many are) cunning imposters who live off the superstitious ignorant people.
When he had attained unto Enlightenment, Buddha cut off his hair and for 40 years preached up and down the valley of the Ganges. He found his fellow Hindus and their priests, the Brahmans, living worthless lives and not according to the Vedas or sacred books.
Buddha taught that the three great sins are self indulgence, ill will, and ignorance, and that by freeing oneself from all desire one gained a blissful state of abandonment of self called " Nirvana." He died about 488 B.C. near Benares, when 80 years old.
The Strange Doctrine of Transmigration The followers of Buddha have a vast literature in the ancient language Pali, which records Buddha's dis courses and conversations with his disciples. In
recent times archeologists have dug up in India and deciphered many memorials of his life, one of them being a casket which contained a bone of the Buddha.
His religion appeals to the oriental mind with its teaching that existence is in itself evil, and that the soul lives over and over again on earth—first in one person and then in another, at times even as an animal, insect, or plant—rising higher in the scale after each good life, and sinking lower with each evil one. For this reason Buddhists never kill animals or take life of any sort. As in their rival religion Jainism, which is closely akin, all space about the temples or pagodas is cleared of vegetation lest one should unknowingly tread upon some in sect, such as an ant, which is the habita tion of a soul. In India the Jains, a rich sect, go to the extent of supporting hospitals for injured or sick animals,which they buy and keep under their protec tion, and even hire poor natives to lie on beds that are in fested with vermin, so the vermin can feed! Buddhism preaches kindness to all living things and persons. There is no God in Buddhism, no Creator.
There is no beginning and so no end, or, if there is an end, it is in nothingness or " Nirvana." Thus there is no hope of a heaven. We may profitably compare Buddhism with the religion of the Greeks, who repre sent the thinking West that prepared the way for Christianity. The Buddhists stand for self-repression, suppressing all one thinks or wants to do. The Greeks stood for self-expression, for action, and changing what is bad into the good.
India is no longer the chief numerical center of Buddhism, but pilgrims come as in ancient times from all parts of the Orient to visit the places sacred to Buddha. The religion, as practiced today, has be come degraded and idolatrous, and its monks, as in Tibet, are often worthless imposters who live off the superstitious people. Its purest and most important home is in Ceylon. Altogether there are over a hun dred million Buddhists in the world, chiefly in China, so that this belief still ranks as one of the great historic religions of mankind.