The Buddhist Way of Life by Smith F. Harold;

Author:Smith, F. Harold; [F. Harold Smith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1189398
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

(i) The Great King of Glory

The first step in the pilgrimage to the Mahayana was the idealization of the Buddha. Consider for example the Hinayana picture of Gotama as the Great King of Glory. It is the story of one of the earlier lives of Gotama intended to reflect glory on him in his contemporaneous life. The fame of a Chandragupta or perhaps the renown of an Asoka suggested the legend of Sudassana the King of Kings in the Great Sudassana Sutta, an ideal monarch, a ‘Davidic’ Messiah, whose dominion and treasures are beyond all imagination, but who, at the same time, is so self-possessed that he neither covets nor clings to anything, and is a father to his subjects. ‘Drive on the chariot slowly, charioteer,’ he says, ‘that I may look upon my people for a longer time.’ The Sutta strangely represents this warm-hearted monarch as eventually going into deep jhana meditation, and thereby pervading the world with love, pity, sympathy and equanimity—the four jhana viharas, and when the King of Glory died he was reborn in the happy world of Brahma. In relating the narrative of this Messianic King to his disciples Gotama concludes: ‘I, at that time, was Sudassana the great King of Glory.’ The story occurs again with certain variations and omissions, in the Jataka Tales (Birth Stories) as a previous life of Buddha. Thus we see the initial attempt to glorify Buddha in the eyes of his disciples by attaching stories of earlier births to his person to illustrate his former greatness.

There is something delightfully human about this story, and yet there is something also other-worldly and typically Buddhist in it. The Ideal King is not only in the world bearing its burdens, but is clearly also not of it. He clings to nothing, and yet is compassionate to all. It is this attitude that Mahayana boldly maintains. And we cannot help feeling that, so far, it truly represents Gotama’s mission.

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