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118 TIC UNKNOWN LIFT or resuS CHRIST. tlangers menacing him, he fled to the mountains of Nepal.
Buddhism had taken deep roots in this country at this period. This schismi was renarkable on account of its moral principles and ideas on the nature of divinity--idcas which brought man and nature, and mcı iniong thicmsclvcs ncarer together,
The founder of this sect, Shakya Muni, was born 1500 B3. C., at Kapila, the capital of his father's kingdom, nicar Nepal in the Himalayas. He belonged to tlic race of tlic Gautamides and to the ancient family of the Shakyas. From his infancy he displayed a great interest in religion, and, contrary to the wishes of his satlıcr, hic left the palace with all its alluring luxurics and began to preach against the Brahmins, purifying their doctrines. He died at Kushinagara surrounded by: many faithful disciples. Ilis body was burned and his ashes were distributed among the villages from which his new doctrine had driven Brahmanism,
According to the Buddhist doctrine, the Creator ilways remains in a condition of perfect inaction which nothing can disturb and from which He emerges, only at tinies determined by fate in order to create earthly Buddhas. To this end the Spirit separates itself from the sovereign Creator, and becomes incarnated in a Buddha and dwclls upon the carth for some time, wlicre it creates Bodhisattvas (masters), whose mission it is to preach the divinc law and to found new churches of believers, to whom they give laws and for wlioni they institute a new religious order, following the traditious of Buddhism.
An earthly Buddha is, in several ways, a reflection ul the sovereign Crcator Buddita, to whom he is united again after having ended his life upon eartlı; the Bohohisattvas, loo, as a reward for their labor and for the
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