THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA: CHAPTER XVI – WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT HIM AND BUDDHISM
THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA: CHAPTER XVI – WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT HIM AND BUDDHISM
It is now over two thousand five hundred years since the passing away of the Lord Buddha. The teachings of the Buddha remain true, a monument to His greatness. This is what some well- known persons, who have studied His teachings, say about Him and His teachings.
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.” — Prof. Albert Einstein
“Buddhist or no Buddhist, I have examined every one of the great religious systems of the world; and in none of those have I found anything to surpass in beauty and comprehensiveness the Noble Eightfold Path of the Buddha. I am content to shape my life according to that path.” — Prof. Rhys Davids
“Alone of all the great world religions, Buddhism made its way without persecution, censorship or inquisition. In all these respects its record is enormously superior to that of Christianity, which made its way among people wedded to materialism and which was able to justify the bloodthirsty tendencies of its adherents by an appeal to the savage bronze-age literature of the Old Testament.” — Aldous Huxley
“Of the great religions of history, I prefer Buddhism, especially in its earliest forms, because it has had the smallest element of persecution.” — Lord Bertrand Russell
“To go to Him for refuge, to sing His praise, to do Him honour and to abide in His Dhamma is to act with understanding.” — Poet of ancient India
“Indian pacifism finds its complete expression in the teaching of the Buddha. Buddhism teaches ahimsa or harmlessness towards all beings. It forbids even laymen to have anything to do with the manufacture and sale of arms, with the making of poisons and intoxicants, with soldiering or the slaughtering of animals.” — Aldous Huxley
“In Gotama the Buddha we have a mastermind from the East second to none so far as the influence on the thought and life of the human race is concerned, and sacred to all as the founder of a religious tradition whose hold is hardly less wide and deep than any other. He belongs to the history of the world’s thought, to the general inheritance of all cultivated men, for, judged by intellectual integrity, moral earnestness and spiritual insight, he is undoubtedly one of the greatest figures of history.” — Sri Radhakrishnan (Gotama The Buddha)
“The Greatest Man ever born.” — Great Poet Tagore
“In the Buddha you see clearly a man, simple, devout, lonely, battling for light, a vivid human personality, not a myth. He too gave a message to mankind universal in character. Many of our best modern ideas are in closest harmony with it. All the miseries and discontents of life are due, He taught, to selfishness. Before a man can become serene he must cease to live for his senses or himself. Then he merges into a greater being. Buddhism in different language called men to self-forgetfulness 500 years before Christ. In some ways He was nearer to us and our needs. He was more lucid upon our individual importance in service than Christ and less ambiguous upon the question of personal immortality.” — H. G. Wells (Three Greatest Men in History)
“The more I know Him the more I love Him.” — Fausboll (Danish scholar)
“I know nothing more grand in this world than the figure of the Buddha. It is the perfect embodiment of spirituality in the visible domain.” — Count Kaiserling (Travel Diary of a Philosopher)
“The Buddhist moral code is one of the most perfect which the world has ever known.” — Prof. Max Muller
“The scriptures of the Saviour of the World,
Lord Buddha – Prince Siddaartha styled on earth –
In Earth and Heavens and Hells Incomparable,
All-honoured, Wisest, Best, most Pitiful (Compassionate);
The Teacher of Nirvaana and the Law.” — Sir Edwin Arnold (The Light of Asia)
“May the Dhamma last as long as my sons and grandsons and the sun and the moon will be, and may the people follow the Path of the Dhamma, for if one follows the path, happiness in this and in the other world will be attained.” — Emperor Asoka of India.
