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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
341
rance, Avidya, is the cause of ideas, and is the remote cause of existence*.
The next subject of his meditations is the means by which this chain of causes is to be counteracted, and he concludes: "Birth being no more, old age and death are annihilated; and as ignorance is the ultimate cause of existence, then by the removal of ignorance all its consequences are arrested, and existence ceases, by which means old age, death, wretchedness, sorrow, pain, anxiety, and trouble, the whole mass of suffering, becomes for ever extinct **.” This is the summary of Buddhistic wisdom set forth in the popular stanza,
"Ye dharmá hetu-prabhavá." with which we have long been familiar ***
The Lalita Vistara is somewhat silent on the subject of Šákya's peregrinations, and represents him as chiefly engaged in discourses to his Bhikshus, or mendicant followers, or in intercourse with the Nágas and the Devas. He attains to the perfection of a Buddha at Bodhimanda t, which is apparently ancient Gaya, and resides there until he thinks it necessary to look out for some person who may succeed him as teacher of the law; he then proceeds to Benares, and on his way, having no inoney to pay for being ferried across the Ganges, he transports himself over it in the air.
* [1. l., p. 144.] ** [1. l., p. 145.] *** [Burnouf, Lotus, p. 521 ff. Journal R. A. Soc., Vol. XVI. 38 - 44. Koeppen, Religion des Buddha, I, 223.]
+ [Rgya tch'er rol pa, II, p. 47. Hiuen thsang, Mémoires, II, 456. Wassiljew, I, 46.]
