CHAPTER X

THE TEACHING OF THE BUDDHA

1

When the Buddha preached his first sermon[402] to the five monks at Benares the topics he selected were the following.  First comes an introduction about avoiding extremes of either self-indulgence or self-mortification.  This was specially appropriate to his hearers who were ascetics and disposed to over-rate the value of austerities.  Next he defines the middle way or eightfold path.  Then he enunciates the four truths of the nature of suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the method of bringing about that cessation.  This method is no other than the eightfold path.  Then his hearers understood that whatever has a beginning must have an end.  This knowledge is described as the pure and spotless Eye of Truth.  The Buddha then formally admitted them as the first members of the Sangha.  He then explained to them that there is no such thing as self.  We are not told that they received any further instruction before they were sent forth to be teachers and missionaries:  they were, it would seem, sufficiently equipped.  When the Buddha instructs his sixth convert, Yasa, the introduction is slightly different, doubtless because he was a layman.  It treats of “almsgiving, of moral duties, of heaven, of the evil, vanity and sinfulness of desires, of the blessings which come from abandoning desires.”  Then when his catechumen’s mind was prepared, he preached to him “the chief doctrine of the Buddhas, namely suffering, its cause, its cessation and the Path.”  And when Yasa understood this he obtained the Eye of Truth.

It is clear, therefore, that the Buddha regarded practice as the foundation of his system.  He wished to create a temper and a habit of life.  Mere acquiescence in dogma, such as a Christian creed, is not sufficient as a basis of religion and test of membership.  It is only in the second stage that he enunciates the four great theorems of his system (of which one, the Path, is a matter of practice rather than doctrine) and only later still that he expounds conceptions which are logically fundamental, such as his view of personality.  “Just as the great ocean has only one taste, the taste of salt, so has this doctrine and discipline only one taste, the taste of emancipation[403].”  This practical aim has affected the form given to much of the Buddha’s teaching, for instance the theory of the Skandhas and the chain of causation.  When examined at leisure by a student of to-day, the dogmas seem formulated with imperfect logic and the results trite and obvious.  But such doctrines as that evil must have a cause which can be discovered and removed by natural methods:  that a bad unhappy mind can be turned into a good, happy mind by suppressing evil thoughts and cultivating good thoughts, are not commonplaces even now, if they receive a practical application, and in 500 B.C. they were not commonplaces in any sense.