The Skeptical Romancer by W. Somerset Maugham

Author:W. Somerset Maugham [Maugham, W. Somerset]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-94763-5
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

BUDDHA

IT SEEMED TO me that there was more of this in the humble little monasteries that I had passed on the road hither. With their wooden walls and thatched roofs and their small tawdry images there was a homeliness about them, but withal an austerity, that seemed to suit better the homely and yet austere religion that Gautama preached. It is, to my fancy, a religion of the countryside rather than of the cities, and there lingers about it always the green shade of the wild fig tree under which the Blessed One found enlightenment. Legend has made him out to be the son of a king, so that when he renounced the world he might seem to have abandoned power and great riches and glory; but in truth he was no more than the scion of a good family of country gentlemen, and when he renounced the world I do not suppose he abandoned more than a number of buffaloes and some rice fields. His life was as simple as that of the headman of any of the villages I had passed through in the Shan States. He lived in a world that had a passion for metaphysical disquisition, but he did not take kindly to metaphysics, and when he was forced by the subtle Hindu sages into argument he grew somewhat impatient. He would have nothing to do with speculations upon the origin, significance, and purpose of the Universe. “Verily,” he said, “within this mortal body, some six feet high, but conscious and endowed with mind, is the world and its origin and its passing away.” His followers were forced by the Brahman doctors to defend their positions with metaphysical arguments and in course of time elaborated a theory of their faith that would satisfy the keen intelligence of a philosophic people, but Gautama, like all the founders of religion, had in point of fact but one thing to say: “Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

Most of the gods that the world has seen have made a somewhat frantic claim that men should have faith in them, and have threatened with dreadful penalties such as could not (whatever their good will) believe. There is something pathetic in the violence with which they denounce those who thwart them in the bestowal of the great gifts they have to offer. They seem deep in their hearts to have felt that it was the faith of others that gave them divinity (as though, their godhead standing on an insecure foundation, every believer was as it were a stone to buttress it) and that the message they so ardently craved to deliver could only have its efficacy if they became god. And god they could only become if men believed in them. But Gautama made only the claim of the physician that you should give him a trial and judge him by results. He was more like the artist who does

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