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husband's family from Jainism to the true doctrine. The Vinaya recounts how after entertaining the Buddha
and his disciples she asked eight boons which proved to be the privileges of supplying various classes of
monks with food, clothing and medicine and of providing the nuns with bathing dresses, for, said she, it
shocked her sense of propriety to see them bathing naked. But the anecdotes respecting the Buddha and
women, whether his wife or others, are not touched with sentiment, not even so much as is found in the
conversation between Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi in the Upanishad. To women as a class he gave their due and
perhaps in his own opinion more than their due, but if he felt any interest in them as individuals, the sacred
texts have obliterated the record. In the last year of his life he dined with the courtezan Ambapali and the
incident has attracted attention on account of its supposed analogy to the narrative about Christ and "the
woman which was a sinner." But the resemblance is small. There is no sign that the Buddha, then eighty years
of age, felt any personal interest in Ambapali. Whatever her morals may have been, she was a benefactress of
the order and he simply gave her the same opportunity as others of receiving instruction. When the Licchavi
princes tried to induce him to dine with them instead of with her, he refused to break his promise. The
invitations of princes had no attraction for him, and he was a prince himself. A fragment of conversation
introduced irrelevantly into his deathbed discourses[367] is significant--"How, Lord, are we to conduct
ourselves with regard to womankind? Don't see them, Ananda. But if we see them, what are we to do?
Abstain from speech. But if they should speak to us what are we to do? Keep wide awake."
This spirit is even more evident in the account of the admission of Nuns to the order. When the Buddha was
visiting his native town his aunt and foster mother, Mahaprajapati, thrice begged him to grant this privilege to
women but was thrice refused and went away in tears. Then she followed him to Vesali and stood in the
entrance of the Kutagara Hall "with swollen feet and covered with dust, and sorrowful." Ananda, who had a
tender heart, interviewed her and, going in to the Buddha, submitted her request but received a triple refusal.
But he was not to be denied and urged that the Buddha admitted women to be capable of attaining saintship
and that it was unjust to refuse the blessings of religion to one who had suckled him. At last Gotama
yielded--perhaps the only instance in which he is represented as convinced by argument--but he added "If,
Ananda, women had not received permission to enter the Order, the pure religion would have lasted long, the
good law would have stood fast a thousand years. But since they had received that permission, it will now
stand fast for only five hundred years[368]."
CHAPTER VIII. LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 114
Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I.
He maintained and approved the same hard detached attitude in other domestic relations. His son Rahula
received special instruction but is not represented as enjoying his confidence like Ananda. A remarkable
narrative relates how, when the monk Sangamaji was sitting beneath a tree absorbed in meditation, his former
wife (whom he had left on abandoning the world) laid his child before him and said "Here, monk, is your little
son, nourish me and nourish him." But Sangamaji took no notice and the woman went away. The Buddha who
observed what happened said "He feels no pleasure when she comes, no sorrow when she goes: him I call a
true Brahman released from passion[369]." This narrative is repulsive to European sentiment, particularly as
the chronicler cannot spare the easy charity of a miracle to provide for the wife and child, but in taking it as an
index of the character of Gotama, we must bear in mind such sayings of Christ as "If any man come to me and
hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he
cannot be my disciple[370]."
4
Political changes, in which however he took no part, occurred in the last years of the Buddha's life. In
Magadha Ajatasattu had come to the throne. If, as the Vinaya represents, he at first supported the schism of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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