ned there all day long, pondering what next to do. All
the attractions of the luxurious home he had abandoned rose up before
him most alluringly. But as the day ended his lofty spirit had won the
victory. All doubts had lifted as mists before the morning sun. He had
become Buddha, that is, enlightened. He had grasped the solution of the
great mystery of sorrow. He thought, having solved its causes and its
cure, he had gained the haven of peace, and believed that in the power
over the human heart of inward culture and of love to others he had
discovered a foundation which could never be shaken.

From this time Gautama claimed no merit for penances. A feeling of great
loneliness possessed him as he arrived at his psychological and ethical
conclusions. He almost despaired of winning his fellow-men to his system
of salvation, salvation merely by self-control and love, without any of
the rites, ceremonies, charms, or incantations of the Hindu religion.

The thought of mankind, otherwise, as he imagined, utterly doomed and
lost, made Gautama resolve, at whatever hazard, to proclaim his doctrine
to the world. It is certain that he had a most intense belief in himself
and his mission.

He had intended first to proclaim his new doctrine to his old teachers,
Alara and Udraka, but finding that they were dead, he proceeded to the
deer forest near Benares where his former disciples were then living. In
the cool of the evening he enters the deer-park near the city, but his
former disciples resolve not to recognize him as a master. He tells them
that they are still in the way of death, whereas he has found the way of
salvation and can lead them to it, having become a Buddha. And as they
reply with objections to his claims, he explains the fundamental truths
of his system and principles of his new gospel, which the aged Kondanya
was the first to accept from his master's lips. This exposition is
preserved in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Sutra of the
Foundations of the Kingdom of Righteousness.

Gautama Buddha taught that everything corporeal is material and
therefore impermanent. Man in his bodily existence is liable to sorrow,
decay, and death. The reign of unholy desires in his heart produces
unsatisfactory longings, useless weariness, and care. Attempted
purification by oppressing the body is only wasted effort. It is the
moral evil of the heart which keeps a man chained down in the degraded
state of bodily life, which bin