The Message of Buddhism. The Buddha: The Doctrine: The Order

Therefore the Buddhist looks on these Three Gems full of confidence gratitude and reverence and says with a devout heart : All reverence to the Holy One the World-enlighteer the Buddha ; All reverence to the holy pure the liberating Doctrine ; All reverence to the Brotherhood of the Elect the noblest of mankind. [...] In fact the life of Jesus as related in the gospels corresponds so strikingly in many essential points with the life of the Buddha of which a short abstract only is given here that one is involuntarily driven to the conclusion that the life of the Buddha served as a model to the compilers of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. [...] He had obtained the pure spotless Eye of the Truth " as the books express it and He undestood not only the cause of the arising and passing away of beings the cause of suffering death and re-birth but also the means to put an end to all suffering to escape the continual rotation of birth and death and to reach deliverance—Nirvana. [...] Most difficult for it to understand will be the mdral constitution of the world the law of the cocatenation of cause and effect ; it will not want to hear the doctrine of the renouncement of the will-to-"t8 THE MESSAGE OF BUDDHISM live of the subduing of desires and passions and of the Path to deliverance. [...] Before the eastern gate of Kusinärk the chiefs of the Mallas cremated the Body of the Light of the World with all the honour due to a universal monarch." THE DOCTRINE (Dhamma) The Doctrine consists of the Truth as intuitively seen and proclaimed by the Buddha which has been preserved for us by tradition through the Arahans and recorded in the Scriptures.