"Complete" Nirvana or extinction cannot, of course, take place till death; but this state of preparation for it, called simply Nirvana, seems attainable during life, and was, in fact. attained by Gautatna himself. The process by which the state is attained is called Dhyana, and is neither more nor less than ecstasy or trance, which plays so important a part among mystics of all religions. The individual is described as losing one feeling after another, until perfect apathy is attained, and he reaches a region "where there are neither ideas, nor the idea of the absence of ideas!" The ritual or worship of Buddhism—if worship it can be called—is very simple in its character. There are no priests, or clergy, properly so called. The SM7lialla4 or Bik shun (mendicants) are simply a religious order—a kind of monks, who, in order to the more speedy attainment of 'Nirvana, have entered on a course of greater sanctity and austerity than ordinary men; they have no sacraments to administer or rites to perform for the people, for every Buddhist is his own priest. The only thing- like a clerical function they discharge, is to read the scriptures or discourses of the Buddha in stated assemblies of the people held for that purpose. They have also everywhere, except in China, a monopoly of education; and thus in Buddhist countries education, whatever may he its quality, is very generally diffused. In some countries, the monks are exceed ingly numerous, around Lhassa in Thibet. for instance, they are said to be one third of the population. They live in &rams or monasteries, and subsist partly by endowments, but mostly by charity. Except in Tibet, they are not allowed to engage in any secular occupation. The vow is not irrevocable. This incubus of monachism constitutes the great weakness of Buddhism in its social aspect. Further particulars regarding Bud dhist monks and monasteries, as well as the forms of Buddhist worship generally, will be given when speakingof thp eartiitrics where the religion prevails, See LAMAISM.
The adoration of the statues of the Buddha and of his relics is the chief external ceremony of the religion. This, with prayer and the repetition of sacred formulas, con stitutes the ritual. The centers of the worship are the temples containing statues, and the topes or tumuli erected over the relics of the Buddha, or of his distinguished apos tles, or on spots consecrated us the scenes of the Buddha's acts. The central object in a Buddhist temple, corresponding to the altar in a Roman Catholic church, is an image of the Buddha, or a dagoba or shrine containing his relics. Here flowers,* fruit, and incense are daily offered, and processions are made with singing of hymns. Of the relics of the Buddha, the most famous are the teeth that are preserved with intense ven eration in various places. Hiouen-Thsang saw more than a dozen of them in different parts of India; and the great monarch Ciladitya was on the eve of making war on the king of Cashmere for the possession of one, which, although by no means the largest, was yet an inch and a half long. The tooth of the Buddha preserved in Ceylon, a piece of ivory about the size of the little-finger, is exhibited very rarely, and then only with permission of the English government—so great is the concourse and so intense the excitement. See CEYLON.
There appears at first sight to be an inconsistency between this seeming worship of the Buddha and the theory by which he is considered as no longer existing. Yet the two things are really not irreconcilable; not more so, at least, than theory and practice often are. With all their admiration of the Buddha, his followers have never made a god of him. Gautama is only the last Buddha—the Buddha of the present cycle. lie
had predecessors in the cycles that are past (24 Buddhas of the past are enumerated, and Gautama could even tell their names); and when, at the end of the present cycle, all things shall be reduced to their elements, and the knowledge of the way of sal vation shall perish with all things else, then, in the new world that shall spring up, another Buddha will appear, again to reveal to the renascent beings the way to Nirvana. Gautatna foretold that Mitraya, one of his earliest adherents, should be the next Buddha t (the Buddha of the future), and he gratified several of his followers with a like prospect in after-cycles. The Buddha was thus no greater than any mortal may aspire to become. The prodigious and supernatural powers which the legends represent him as possessing, are quite in accordance with Indian ideas; for even the Brahmans believe that by virtue, austerities, and science a man may acquire power to make the gods tremble on their thrones.
The Buddha, then, is not a god; he is the ideal of what any man may become; and the great object-ef-Baddhist worship is to keep this ideal vividly in the minds of the believers. In the presence of the statue, the tooth, or the footprint, the devout believer vividly recalls the example of him who trod the path that leads to deliverance. This veneration of the memory of Buddha is perhaps hardly distinguishable, among the ignorant, from worship of him as a present god; but in theory, the ritual is strictly com memorative, and does not necessarily involve idolatry, any more than the garlands laid on the tomb of a parent by a pious child. See TOPE.
The prayers addressed to the Buddha are more difficult to reconcile with the belief in his having ceased to exist. It is improbable, indeed, that the original scheme of Buddh ism contemplated either the adoration of the statues of the Buddha, or the offering of prayers to him after his death. These are an after-growth—accretions upon the simple scheme of Gautama, and in a manner forced upon it during its struggle with other relig ions. For, a system of belief that seeks to supplant other systems, finds itself enticed to present something to rival and outdo them, if possible, in every point. Even the Christian church, in the middle ages, adopted with this view many of the rites and legends of paganism that were quite inconsistent with its own character; merely casting over them a slight disguise, and giving them Christian names. Prayer, too, is natural to man—an irrepressible instinct, as it were, and had to be gratified. And then the inconsistency in uttering prayers when there is no one to hear or answer, glaring as it appears to us, is by no means great to the eastern mind, Prayers, like other formulas, are conceived less as influencing the will of any superior being to grant the request, than as working in some magical way—producing their effects by a blind force inherent in themselves. They are, in short, mere incantations or charms. Even the prayers of a Brahman, who believes in the existence of gods, do not act so much by inclining the deity addressed to favor the petitioner, as by compelling him through their mysterious potency —through the operation of a law above the will of the highest gods. The Buddhist, then, may well believe that a formula of prayer in the name of " the venerable of the world " NM be potent for his good in this way, without troubling lihnself to think whether any conscious being hears it or not.