MYSTICAL BUDDHISM. 13 
ance from the fires of passion and the flames of concupiscence. 
Yet it encouraged association and combination for mutual 
help. It established a universal brotherhood of celibate 
monks, open to persons of all castes and ranks, to rich and 
poor, learned and unlearned alike—a community of men which 
might, in theory, be co-extensive with the whole world—all 
bound together by the common aim of self-conquest, all 
animated by the wish to aid each other in the battle with 
carnal desires, all penetrated by a desire to follow the example 
of the Buddha, and be guided by the doctrine or law which 
he promulgated. 
Coenobitic monasticism, in fact, became an essential part of 
true Buddhism and a necessary instrument for its propagation. 
In all this the Buddha showed himself to be eminently 
practical in his methods and profoundly wise in his generation. 
Evidently, too, he was wise in abstaining at first from all 
mystical teaching. Originally Buddhism set its face against 
all solitary-asceticism and secret efforts to attain sublime 
heights of knowledge. It had no occult, no esoteric system 
of doctrine which it withheld from ordinary men. 
Nor did true Buddhism at first concern itself with any form 
of philosophical or metaphysical teaching, which it did not 
consider helpful for the attainment of the only kind of true 
knowledge worth striving for—the knowledge of the origin 
of suffering and its remedy—the knowledge that suffering 
and pain arise from indulging lusts, and that life is in- 
separable from suffering, and is an evil to be got rid of by 
suppressing self and extinguishing desires. 
In the Mahd-parimbbana-sutta (Rhys Davids, 11-32) is re- 
corded one of the Buddha’s remarks shortly before his decease. 
“What, O Ananda, does the Order desire of me? I have 
taught the law (desito dhammo) without making any distinc- 
- tion between esoteric and exoteric doctrine (anantaram aba- 
hiram karitva). In the matter of the law, the Tathagata 
(i.e., the Buddha) has never had the closed fist of a teacher 
(acariya-mutthi)—that is, of a teacher who withholds some 
doctrines and communicates others.” 
Nevertheless, admitting, as we must, that early Buddhism 
had no mysteries reserved for a privileged circle, we must not 
shut our eyes to the fact that the great importance attached 
to abstract meditation in the Buddhist system could not fail 
in the end to encourage the growth of mystical ideas. 
Furthermore, it is undeniable that such ideas were, in some 
countries, carried to the most extravagant extremes. Hfforts 
to induce a trance-like or hypnotic condition, by abstracting 
the thoughts from all bodily influences, by recitation of mys- 
