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THE BUDDHIST DOCTRINES. He who has comprehended sorrow, whence it springs, how can he bend himself to desire ? He who knows that earthly existence is a fetter in this world, let him practise that which sets him free therefrom.” Then Mara, the Evil one, said, “The Exalted One knows me, the Perfect One knows me," and disconcerted and disheartened he rose and went away. Other narratives represent Mara as constantly watching the avenues of the senses that he may gain access to the mind; and this continual siege is only to be met by continual watchfulness, which will at last make Mara give up the hopeless task.
Dr. Oldenberg graphically describes the struggle between the individual soul and the sorrow-producing chain The struggle of suffering, and the tempter Mara, as pictured and victory by the early Buddhists. The struggle is of the soul. neither slight nor brief. From that moment forward, when first the conviction dawns upon a soul, that this battle must be fought, that there is a deliverance which can be gained—from that first beginning of the struggle up to the final victory, countless ages of the world pass away. Earth worlds and heavenly worlds, and worlds of hells also, pass away as they have arisen and passed away from all eternity. Gods and men, all animated beings, come and go, die and are born again, and amid this endless tide of all things, the beings who are seeking deliverance, now advancing and victorious, and anon driven back, press on to their goal. The path reaches beyond the range of the eye, but it has an end. After countless wanderings through worlds and ages the goal at last appears before the wanderer's gaze. And in his sense of victory there is mingled a feeling of pride for the victory won by his own power. The Buddhist has no god to thank, as he had previously no god to invoke during his struggle. The gods bow before him, not he before the gods."
The place of prayer in other religions is in Buddhism taken by abstraction, meditation, withdrawal as far as
States of possible from the world of sense. How far this abstraction. may proceed by an artificial system we may see later. Some portions of the Buddhist scriptures
