'Complete' Nirvana or extinction of desires, which, in the original meaning of the term, is attainable during life, was, in fact, attained by Gautama himself. The process by which the state is attained is called Dhydna, 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 state 'where there are neither ideas, nor the idea of the absence of le leas!' The ritual or worship of early Buddhism—if worship it can be called—is very simple in its character. There are no priests, or clergy, rroperly so called. The Sramanas or Bhikshus (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 wen; they have no sacraments to administer nor rites to perform for the people, for every Bud dhist is his own priest. The only thing like It clerical function they discharge is to read the scriptures or discourses of the Buddha in stated assemblies of the people held for that purpose. But in northern Buddhism there is a complete ritual, with rites and worship strangely like that of the Roman Catholic Church, through whose missionaries these traits may have been introduced. In sane countries the monks are exceedingly numerous; around Lhassa in Tibet, for instance, they are said to be one-third of the population. They live in riharas or and SlIbSiSt partly by but mostly by charity. Except in Tibet, they are not al lowed to engage in any secular occupation. The vow is not irrevocable. This incubus of monas ticism constitutes the great weakness of Bud dhism in its social aspect. Further particulars regarding Buddhist monks and monasteries, as well as the forms of Buddhist worship generally, will be given when speaking of the countries 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 repeti tion of sacred formulas, constitutes the ritual. The centres of the worship are the temples containing statues, and the topes or tumuli erected over the relics of the Buddha, or of his distinguished apostles, or they are located at spots which have become sacred as the scenes of the Buddha's nets. The central object in a Buddhist temple, corresponding to the altar in a Homan 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 veneration in various places. Ilionen-Thsang saw more than a dozen of them in different parts of India; and the great mon arch Siladitya was on the point of making war on the King of Kashmir 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 abort the size of the little finger, is exhibited very rarely, and then only with permission of the English Government—so great is the con course and so intense the excitement. See CEY LON.
There appears at first sight to be an inconsist ency between this seeming worship of the Bud dha and the theory by which he is considered as no longer existing. Yet the two things are really not irrceoncilable—not inure 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. He had predecessors in the cycles that are past (twenty-four Buddhas of the past are enumerated, and Gautama cold even tell their names) ; and when, at the end of the present cycle, all things shall be reduced to their ele ments. and the knowledge of the way of salva tion 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. Gautama foretold that Alaitreya, one of his earliest ad herents, should be the next Buddha; (the Bud dha 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 mor tal may aspire to become. The prodigious and supernatural powers which the legends represent him as possessing arc 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 of Buddhist worship is to keep this ideal vividly in the minds of the believers. In the presence of the statue, the tooth, or the foot print, 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 commemorative. 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 Buddhism contemplated either the adoration of the statues of the Buddha or the offering of prayers to him after his death. These are an aftergrowth—aceretions upon the simple scheme of Gautama, and in a manner forced upon it during its struggle with other religions. 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 ninny of the rites and legends of paganism that were quite inconsistent. with its own char acter: merely casting over them a slight disguise and giving them Christian names. Prayer, too, is natural to man—an irrepressible instinct, as it were, that has 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 mag ical 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 ad dressed to favor the petitioner, as by compelling him through their mysterious potency—through the operation of a law above the will of the high est gods. The Buddhist, then, may well believe that a formula of prayer in the name of 'the venerable of the world' will be potent for his good in this way. without. troubling himself to think whether any conseions being hears it or not.