158 THE REV. R. COhLINS, ON 



passed away under long meditation ; and the real nature 

 of things became clear to his ardent gaze. It is true that 

 this doctrine of " ignorance " assumed, perhaps, rather 

 ultimately than from the first, a decidedly metaphysical 

 aspect in the Buddhist teaching, not always easily grasped : 

 but we can have no hesitation in understanding the first 



Practical result of Buddha's new vision of the problem of 

 uman life; it was, as he early taught the five Brahman 

 monks at Benares, that " there are two extremes, which he 

 who has given up the w^orld ought to avoid, viz., a life 

 given to pleasures, devoted to pleasures and lusts, which is 

 degrading, sensual, vulgar, ignoble, and profitless : and a 

 life given to mortification, which is painful, ignoble, and 

 profitless. By avoiding," he says, " these two extremes, the 

 Tathagata (i.e., himself the Buddha) has gained the know- 

 ledge of the Middle Path, which leads to insight, which 

 leads to wisdom, which conduces to calm, to knowledge, to 

 the Sambodhi (that is, perfect knowledge, or Buddhahood), 

 to Nirvana." He then goes on to ask, "Which is this Middle 

 Path, the knowledge of which the Tathagata has gained? 

 It is the holy eight-fold path, namely. Right Belief, Right 

 Aspiration, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right means of 

 Livelihood, Right Endeavour, Right Memory, Right Medita- 

 tion (jMahdvagga, 17, 18). He condemns on the one hand, 

 the worldly, selfish, unholy life ; and, on the other, the life 

 of religious ritualism that existing devotees and ascetics were 

 engaged in, and on which he himself had once entered ; and 

 takes a new, and, as it is here called, a Middle Path, toward 

 the attainment of spiiitual emancipation, as he understood it. 

 This Middle Path is remarkable ; and is of a totally different 

 character from the line of religious duties laid down in any 

 previous Hindu writings that 1 have seen. The Upanishads, 

 for instance, are occupied with numerous sacrificial details 

 and theories,* and most abstruse meditations as to the great 



* It seems to be sometimes overlooked that the ancient Hindu sacri- 

 ficial system underlies the whole of the teaching of the Upanishads ; 

 {e.g.) the first disquisition on the syllable " Om " in the Chandogya-Upani- 

 shad, i, 1, is towards the perfecting of the sacrificial rites. The same is 

 the case as to other meditations : (c/. Chdndogya- Up. i, 5, 5 ; i, 11 ; ii, ^3 ; 

 ii, 24 ; iii, 17 ; iv, 16 ; &c.). " Let a man make him, who knows this 

 (teaching) his Brahman priest {i.e., for the purpose of ofi^ering sacrifice), 

 not one who does not know it." {Chand. iv, 17, 9). See also Aitareya- 

 dranyaka ii, 3, 3 ; ii, 3, 4, &c. ; and Kaushltaki- Up. ii, 3, 7, 8, &c. 



