uction, we gather, was oral. Gotama assimilated it thoroughly
and rapidly but was dissatisfied because he found that it did not
conduce to perfect knowledge and salvation[314]. He evidently accepted
his teachers' general ideas about belief and conduct--a dhamma, a vinaya,
and the practice of meditation--but rejected the content of their
teaching as inadequate. So he went away.

The European mystic knows the dangers of Quietism[315]. When Molinos and
other quietists praise the Interior Silence in which the soul neither
speaks nor desires nor thinks, they suggest that the suspension of all
mental activity is good in itself. But more robust seekers hold that
this "orison of quiet" is merely a state of preparation, not the end of
the quest, and valuable merely because the soul recuperates therein and
is ready for further action. Some doctrine akin to that of the quietists
seems to underlie the mysterious old phrases in which the Buddha's two
teachers tried to explain their trances, and he left them for much the
same reasons as led the Church to condemn Quietism. He did not say that
the trances are bad; indeed he represented them as productive of
happiness[316] in a sense which Europeans can hardly follow. But he
clearly refused to admit that they were the proper end of the religious
life. He felt there was something better and he set out to find it.

The interval between his abandonment of the world and his enlightenment
is traditionally estimated at seven years and this accords with our
other data. But we are not told how long he remained with his two
teachers nor where they lived. He says however that after leaving them
he wandered up and down the land of Magadha, so that their residence was
probably in or near that district[317]. He settled at a place called
Uruvela. "There" he says "I thought to myself, truly this is a pleasant
spot and a beautiful forest. Clear flows the river and pleasant are the
bathing places: all around are meadows and villages." Here he determined
to devote himself to the severest forms of asceticism. The place is in
the neighbourhood of Bodh-Gaya, near the river now called Phalgu or
Lilanja but formerly Neranjara. The fertile fields and gardens, the
flights of steps and temples are modern additions but the trees and the
river still give the sense of repose and inspiration which Gotama felt,
an influence alike calming to the senses and stimulating to the mind.
Buddhism, though in theory setting no