| The teaching of the Buddha was essentially practical. | | | | in the monastic life which he recommended little but a |
| This statement may seem paradoxical to the reader | | | | useless sacrifice but it is evident that in the opinion of |
| who has some acquaintance with the Buddhist | | | | his contemporaries his disciples had an easy time, and |
| scriptures and he will exclaim that of all religious books | | | | that he had no intention of prescribing any cramped or |
| they are the least practical and least popular: they set | | | | unnatural existence. He accepted the current |
| up an anti-social ideal and are mainly occupied with | | | | conviction that those who devote themselves to the |
| psychological theories. But the Buddha addressed a | | | | things of the mind and spirit should be released from |
| public such as we now find it hard even to imagine. In | | | | worldly ties and abstain from luxury but he meant his |
| those days the intellectual classes of India felt the | | | | monks to live a life of sustained intellectual activity for |
| ordinary activities of life to be unsatisfying: they thought | | | | themselves and of benevolence for others. |
| it natural to renounce the world and mortify the flesh: | | | | His teaching is formulated in severe and technical |
| divergent systems of ritual, theology and self-denial | | | | phraseology, yet the substance of it is so simple that |
| promised happiness but all agreed in thinking it normal | | | | many have criticized it as too obvious and jejune to be |
| as well as laudable that a man should devote his life to | | | | the basis of a religion. But when he first enunciated his |
| meditation and study. | | | | theses some two thousand five hundred years ago, |
| Compared with this frame of mind the teaching of the | | | | they were not obvious but revolutionary and little less |
| Buddha is not unsocial, unpractical and mysterious but | | | | than paradoxical. |
| human, business-like and clear. We are inclined to see | | | | |