The penance here alluded to is not the vague penance of austerities, but submission to the discipline of the monastery when exercised for a specific fault.

Later Buddhism made of Buddha a god.  Even less exaltation than this is met by Buddha thus:  S[=a]riputta says to him, “Such faith have I, Lord, that methinks there never was and never will be either monk or Brahman who is greater and wiser than thou,” and Buddha responds:  “Grand and bold are the words of thy mouth; behold, thou hast burst forth into ecstatic song.  Come, hast thou, then, known all the Buddhas that were?” “No, Lord.”  “Hast thou known all the Buddhas that will be?” “No, Lord.”  “But, at least, thou knowest me, my conduct, my mind, my wisdom, my life, my salvation (i.e., thou knowest me as well as I know myself)?” “No, Lord.”  “Thou seest that thou knowest not the venerable Buddhas of the past and of the future; why, then, are thy words so grand and bold?” (Mah[=a]parinibb[=a]na.)

Metaphysically the human ego to the Buddhist is only a collection of five skandhas (form, sensations, ideas, faculties of mind, and reason) that vanishes when the collection is dispersed, but the factors of the collection re-form again, and the new ego is the result of their re-formation.  The Northern Buddhists, who turn Buddha into a god, make of this an immortal soul, but this is Buddhism in one phase, not Buddha’s own belief.  The strength of Northern Buddhism lies not, as some say, in its greater religious zeal, but in its grosser animism, the delight of the vulgar.

It will not be necessary, interesting as would be the comparison, to study the Buddhism of the North after this review of the older and simpler chronicles.  In Hardy’s Manual of Buddhism (p. 138 ff.) and Rockhill’s Life of Buddha will be found the weird and silly legends of Northern Buddhism, together with a full sketch of Buddhistic ethics and ontology (Hardy, pp. 460, 387).  The most famous of the Northern books, the Lotus of the Law and the Lalita Vistara, give a good idea of the extravagance and supernaturalism that already have begun to disfigure the purer faith.  According to Kern, who has translated the former work again (after Burnouf), the whole intent of the Lotus is to represent Buddha as the supreme, eternal God.  The works, treating of piety, philosophy, and philanthropy, contain ancient elements, but in general are of later form.  To this age belongs also the whole collection of J[=a]takas, or ‘birth-stories,’ of the Buddhas that were before Gautama, some of the tales of which are historically important, as they have given rise to Western fables.[56] These birth-stories represent Buddha (often as Indra) as some god or mortal, and tell what he did in such or such a form.  It is in a future form that, like Vishnu, who is to come in the avatar of Kalki, the next Buddha will appear as Maitreya, or the ’Buddha of love.’[57] Some of the stories are very silly; some, again, are beautiful at heart, but ugly in their bizarre appearance.  They are all, perhaps, later than our era.[58]