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 91

UNITY
IV, 6, 22.
OF MILINDA THE WING.
61
Now what, Nagasena, is the reason that the Tathagata exhorted and led his disciples to that path which he had himself abandoned, which he loathed?'
21. 'Both then also, O king, and now too, that is still the only path. And it is along that path that the Bodisat attained to Buddhahood. Although the Bodisat, o king, exerting himself strenuously, reduced the food he took till he had decreased it to nothing at all?, and by that disuse of food he became weak in mind, yet when he returned little by little to the use of solid food, it was by that path that before long he attained to Buddhahood. And that only has been the path along which all the Tathagatas reached to the attainment of the insight of omniscience. Just as food is the support of all beings, as it is in dependence on food that all beings live at ease, just so is that the path of all the Tathagatas to the attainment of the insight of omniscience. The fault was not, O king, in the exertion, was not in the power, not in the battle waged against evil, that the
Tathagata did not then, at once, attain to Buddhahood. But the fault was in the disuse of food, and the path itself (of austerity) was always ready for use.
22. 'Suppose, O king, that a man should follow a path in great haste, and by that haste his sides
Abhibhū at Thera Gâthâ, verse 256, and in the Samyutta Nikaya VI, 2, 4, $$ 18 and 23; and also, in its Sanskrit form, into the mouth of the Buddha at the Divyavadana, p. 300, and into the mouth of the gods at ibid. p. 569. It is possibly another instance of our author having Sanskrit, and not Pali, authorities in his mind, that he ascribes it here to the Buddha, and not to Abhibhů, the Elder.
1 The Simhalese has here six pages of description of the austerities not found in the Pâli text.
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