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INTRODUCTION.
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though always more or less foolish and ignorant. They were of course not worshipped any more, for they were much less worthy of reverence than any wise and good man. And they were not eternal,--all of them, even the very best or highest, being liable, like all things and all other creatures, to dissolution. If they had behaved well they were then reborn under happy outward conditions, and might even look forward to being some day born as men, so that they could attain to the supreme goal of the Buddhist faith, to that bliss which passeth not away, the Nirvana of a perfect life in Arahatship.
The duty of a Buddhist who had entered the Noble Path towards these light and airy shapes—for to such vain things had the great gods fallen-was the same as his duty towards every fellow creature; pity for his ignorance, sympathy with his weakness, equanimity (the absence of fear or malice, or the sense of any differing or opposing interest), and the constant feeling of a deep and lasting love, all pervading, grown great, and beyond measure.
No exception was made in the case of Brahmâ. He, like every other creature that had life, was evanescent, was bound by the chain of existence, the result of ignorance, and could only find salvation by walking along the Noble Eightfold Path. It must be remembered that the Brahmâ of modern times, the God of the ardent theism of some of the best of the later Hindus, had not then come into existence: that conception was one effect of the influence of Mohammadan and Christian thought upon Hindu minds. And it would be useless to conjecture how the Buddhist theory might have been modified by contact with that ideal.
While regarded however as essentially of the same class as all other external spirits, Brahmâ was still regarded as a superior spirit, as a very devout Buddhist, and as a kind of king among the angels. The Brahmâ of this world system, who was living in Gotama's time, and who is living now, acquired his present exalted position from his virtue in a previous birth as a Bhikkhu named Sahaka in the time when Kassapa Buddha's religion flourished
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| SR No. | 007674 |
| Book Title | Dhammapada |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Max Muller |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1881 |
| Total Pages | 2540 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 45 MB |