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Mahavira & Buddha
enlightenment, which led him to preach the Middle Course. When faced with the severity of parisha-jaya (mortification which signifies cheerfully enduring all kinds of hardships incidental to asceticism, and finding them only leading to enfeeblement and emanciation, but not to the enlightenment that he sought) which requires spiritual discipline also, Buddha declared
“Not by this bitter course of painful hardship shall I arrive at that separate and supreme vision of all sufficing, noble (Aryan) knowledge, passing human ken. Might there be not another path to enlightenment?”10
He thenceforth began to look after the welfare of the body once more. At last the middle course that he was looking for occurred to him under the famous Bo tree. It was a compromise between rigid asceticism on the one hand and the life of unrestrained licentiousness under the guise of Karma yoga (the doing of all worldly actions, but without attachment to their fruits) on the other. 11 Thus Buddha preached his noble Middle Path which was his own finding and established his own Order to Bhikkhus. Dharma-Chakra set Rolling
After attaining omniscience Varddhamana Mahâvîra, like the Buddha, set rolling the Great Wheel of Truth, calleci dharmachakra, which was first started by Rsabha in a hoary antiquity and a fascimile of which in stone artistically completed existed since long at Taksasila12 Mathura13 and KhandagiriUdayagiri in Orissa."4 But even on his achievement as Kevala-inani (all seeing and allknowing teacher) under the Sal tree on the bank of Rijukula river near Jrambhika Mahâvîra remained silent for no less than sixty-six days. Though He appeared silent outwardly, but in fact, He was communicating in a psychological form with every phenomenon of the world. Mahâvîra, thus, vibrated a ray of spiritual light throughout the whole of universe. The occults realised it and the lord of the celestials hastened to come to him. Even by his silence Mahâvîra created miracles. He knew well that example is better than precept. So though observing silence. He always endeavoured to make the Truth shine in its nakedness in every walk of life. He then moved from Jrambhika to Rajgir. Indra, the lord of heavens,
