the Buddha is an outstanding example of
a royal aesthetic. His natural
counterpart in dignity is a sovereign
who, like a Caesar, could claim that his
race comprehended the majesty of Kings
as well as the sacredness of the Gods
who hold even the rulers of men in their power. We
have seen that the ancient tradition has
this precise significance when it speaks
of the essential nature of individuals
who can only be either Imperial or
perfectly awakened. We are close to the
summits of the Aryan spiritual world.
Being himself awakened, the Buddha wished
only to encourage an awakening in those
who are capable of it. An awakening in the
first place
of a sense of dignity and of vocation, and
in the second of intellectual intuition.
a man who is incapable of intuition, it is
said, cannot approve.
the noble miracle "conforming to the Aryan
nature" (ariya-iddhi) as opposed to prodigies based on
extranormal phenomena, and considered to
be non-Aryan (anariya-iddhi) is concerned with this very point.
The "miracle of the teaching" stirs
the faculty of discernment and furnishes
and new and accurate measure of all values;
We can see that the effective aim
of Buddhism was to discriminate between
different nature's for which the
touchstone was the Doctrine of Awakening itself:
a discrimination that could not
do other than stimulate the spiritual
bases that originally had themselves
been the sole justification of the Aryan
hierarchy. in confirmation of this is the
fact that the establishment and
diffusion of Buddhism never in later centuries
caused dissolution of the caste system.
even today in Ceylon, the system continues
undisturbed side-by-side with Buddhism
while in Japan, Buddhism lives in harmony
with hierarchical, traditional, national
and warrior concepts. Only in certain
Western misconceptions is Buddhism
-considered in later and corrupted forms-
presented as a doctrine of universal
compassion encouraging humanitarianism
and democratic equality.
Buddhism is essentially aristocratic.
we can see this in the legendary story
in the canonical texts where the divinity
Brahma Sahampati, in order to induce
Prince Siddhattha not to keep to himself
the knowledge he had obtained, points out to
him the existence of "beings of a nobler
kind" capable of understanding it.
the Buddha himself finally recognizes
this in these terms : "And I saw, looking at
the world with the awakened eye, beings of
noble kind and of common kind, acute of
mind and obtuse of mind,
well endowed and ill endowed, quick to
understand and slow to understand, and
many who consider that enthusiasm for
other worlds is bad." There follows a
simile: "As some lotus flowers grow in
deep muddy water, as others push up
towards the surface of the water, yet
others "emerge from the water and stand
up, free from the water" -
thus there are, in contrast to the mass
of people, beings of a nobler kind.
Buddhism appeared in abnormal conditions
in a particular traditional civilization.
it is for this reason that Buddhism
placed emphasis on the aspect of action
and of individual achievement; and it is
also for this reason that the support
offered by tradition, in its most
restricted sense, was held of little account.
Prince Siddhartha stated
that he himself had attained knowledge
through his own efforts, without a master
to show him the way; so in the original
doctrine of awakening each individual
has to rely on himself and on his own
exertions, just as a soldier who is lost
must rely on himself alone to rejoin the
marching army. Thus Buddhism, if a
comparison of various traditions were being
made, could legitimately take its place
with the race that elsewhere we have
called heroic, in the sense of the Hesiodic
teaching on the four ages. We mean a
type of man in which the spirituality
belonging to the primordial state is no
longer taken for granted as something
natural, for this tradition is no longer
itself and adequate foundation.
Spirituality has become a named him, the
object of a reconquest, the final limit
of a reintegration to be carried out by
one's own virile efforts.
the recognition of that which is
beyond both being and non-being opens to
aesthetic realization possibilities
unknown to the world of theism. The fact
of reaching the apex, in which the
distinction between "Creator" and "creature"
becomes metaphysically meaningless,
allows of a whole system of spiritual
realization that, since it leaves behind
the categories of "religious" thought, is
not easily understood: and, above all, it
permits a direct ascent, that is, an
ascent of the bare mountain side, without
support and without useless excursions
to one side or another. this is the exact
meaning of the Buddhist ascesis; it is no
longer a system of disciplines designed
to generate strength, sureness and
unshakable calm but a system of
spiritual realization.
the test in Buddhism has various stages: from the
most immediate forms of experience the
disciple proceeds to high levels, to
supersensible horizons, to universality,
to celestial worlds where the question is
repeated: are you this? can you identify
yourself with this? can you satisfy
yourself in this? is this all that you
wish? the noble being always ends by
answering in the negative and then the
"revolution" occurs. The disciple leaves
his home , renounces the world, and takes
the ascetic path.
in Buddhism the importance of the moment
is stressed in everyway. Knowledge in a
text is likened to a flash of lightning.
One is exhorted to "rise and awaken"
when one perceives one's own passiveness,
one's own indolence, "without letting the
moment pass" - if the right moment is
allowed to pass, that moment when one
would have been able to overcome the
force to which both men and gods a
subject, the demon of death (Mara)
will reassert his power.
one who is still an "Aryan" spirit in a
large European or American city, with its
skyscrapers and asphalt, with its politics
and sport, with its crowds who dance and
shout, its exponents of secular culture and
of soulless science and so on...
among all this he may feel himself more
alone, detached and nomad than he would
have done in the time of the Buddha, in conditions of
physical isolation and actual wandering.
The greatest difficulty, in this respect,
lies in giving the sense of internal
isolation, which today may occur in many
almost spontaneously, a positive, full,
simple and transparent character, with
elimination of all traces of aridity,
melancholy, discord, or anxiety. Solitude
should not be a burden, something that is
suffered, that is born involuntarily, or
in which refuge is taken by force of
circumstances, but rather a natural,
simple and free disposition.
In a text we read:
"Solitude is called wisdom.
He who is alone will find that he is happy."