Questions of King Milinda Part 02

SR No.: 007682
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2240
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 90

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60
THE QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES
[DILEMMA THE FIFTY-FIFTH. ASCETICISM.]
IV, 6, 20.
20. 'Venerable Nâgasena, when the Bodisat was practising austerity 1, then there was found no other exertion the like of his, no such power, no such battling against evil, no such putting to rout of the armies of the Evil One, no such abstinence in food, no such austerity of life. But finding no satisfaction in strife like that, he abandoned that idea, saying:
"Not even by this cruel asceticism am I reaching the peculiar faculty, beyond the power of man, arising from insight into the knowledge of that which is fit and noble. May there not be now some other way to wisdom?"
'But then, when weary of that path he had by another way attained to omniscience, he, on the other hand, thus again exhorted and instructed his disciple in that path (he had left, saying):
[245]" Exert yourselves, be strong, and to the faith The Buddhas taught devote yourselves with zeal. As a strong elephant a house of reeds,
Shake down the armies of the Evil One."
1 See 'Buddhist Birth Stories,' pp. 90, 91; and Magghima Nikâya I, 240-246.
Alamariya-dassana-ñâna-visesam. I am not sure of the exact meaning of this compound. For alamariya the Simhalese has here (p. 343) sarvagñatâ, and renders the whole 'do I arrive at a superhuman condition, at the distinctive faculty which is able to see into omniscience,' and on IV, 8, 21 it gives a slightly different but practically identical rendering, 'I shall not reach that superhuman condition which can distinguish or which suffices for insight into the supreme omniscience.'
That is the wisdom of Buddhahood. The passage is from the Magghima Nikaya I, 246 (quoted also below, IV, 8, 21).
This is a very famous stanza. It is put into the mouth of
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