The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons

by Henry Steel Olcott

This process of euhemerisation, as it is called, or the making of men into gods and gods into men, sometimes, though more rarely, begins during the life of the hero, but usually after death. The true history of his life is gradually amplified and decorated with fanciful incidents, to fit it to the new character which has been posthumously given him.

miracles he produces as other boys do soap-bubbles:

The real personage is all covered up and concealed under the embroidered veils of the romancer and the enthusiastic historiographer.

Pappus, in his Synodicon to that Council of Nicea, lets us into the secret that the Canon was not decided by a careful comparison of several gospels before them, but by a lottery. Having, he tells us, "promiscuously put all the books that were referred to the Council for determination under a Communion table in a church, they (the bishops) besought the Lord that the inspired writings might get up on the table, while the spurious writings remained underneath, and it happened accordingly".

What he taught may be summed up in a few words, as the perfume of many roses may be distilled into a few drops of attar:

The joy that he brought to the hearts of others, Buḍḍha first tasted himself. He found that the pleasures of the eye, the ear, the taste, touch and smell are fleeting and deceptive: he who gives value to them brings only disappointment and bitter sorrow upon himself.

He who can mount to a clear conception of Nirvāṇa will find his thought far away above the common joys and sorrows of petty men. As to one who ascends to the top of Chimborazo or the Himālayan crags, and sees men on the earth's surface crawling to and fro like ants, so equally small do bigots and sectarians appear to him.

Not one blessing that ever followed them from grateful lips throughout their earthly pilgrimage will be found to have been lost; but each will help to ease their way as they move from stage to stage of Being Unto Nirvāṇa where the Silence Lives.