Avatâras, Annie Besant [first ebook reader txt] 📗

repeated over and over again, and is not yet completely learnt. A divine manifestation came in order that that lesson might be taught; and the Teacher was not a Kshattriya save by mother. A strange story, that story of the birth. Food given to two Kshattriya women, each of whom was to bear a son, the husband of one of them a Brâhmaṇa; and the two women exchanged the food, and that meant to bring forth a Kshattriya son was taken by the woman with the Brâhmaṇa husband. An accident, men would say; there are no accidents in a universe of law. The food which was full of Kshattriya energy thus went into the Brâhmaṇa family, for it would not have been fitting that a Kshattriya should destroy Kshattriyas. The lesson would not thus have been so well taught to the world. So that we have the strange phenomenon of the Brâhmaṇa coming with an axe to slay the Kshattriya, and three times seven times that axe was raised in slaughter, cutting the Kshattriya trunk off from the surface of the earth.

But while Parashurâma was still in the body, a greater Avatâra came forth to show what a Kshattriya king should be. The Kshattriyas abusing their place and their power were swept away by Parashurâma, and, ere He had left the earth where the bitter lesson had been taught, the ideal Kshattriya came down to teach, now by example, the lesson of what should be, after the lesson of what should not be had been enforced. The boy Râma was born, on whose exquisite story we have not time long to dwell, the ideal ruler, the utterly perfect king. While a boy He went forth with the great teacher Visvâmitra, in order to protect the Yogî's sacrifice; a boy, almost a child, but able to drive away, as you remember, the Râkshasas that interfered with the sacrifice, and then He and His beloved brother Lakshmana and the Yogî went on to the court of king Janaka. And there, at the court, was a great bow, a bow which had belonged to Mahâdeva Himself. To bend and string that bow was the task for the man who would wed Sîtâ, the child of marvellous birth, the maiden who had sprung from the furrow as the plough went through the earth, who had no physical father or physical mother. Who should wed the peerless maiden, the incarnation of Shrî, Lakshmî, the consort of Viṣhṇu? Who should wed Her save the Avatâra of Viṣhṇu Himself? So the mighty bow remained unstrung, for who might string it until the boy Râma came? And He takes it up with boyish carelessness, and bends it so strongly that it breaks in half, the crash echoing through earth and sky. He weds Sîtâ, the beautiful, and goes forth with Her, and with His brother Lakshmana and his bride, and with His father who had come to the bridal, and with a vast procession, wending their way back to their own town Ayodhya. This breaking of Mahâdeva's bow has rung through earth, the crashing of the bow has shaken all the worlds, and all, both men and Devas, know that the bow has been broken. Among the devotees of Mahâdeva, Parashurâma hears the clang of the broken bow, the bow of the One He worshipped; and proud with the might of His strength, still with the energy of Viṣhṇu in Him, He goes forth to meet this insolent boy, who had dared to break the bow that no other arm could bend. He challenges Him, and handing His own bow bids Him try what He can do with that. Can He shoot an arrow from its string? Râma takes this offered bow, strings it, and sets an arrow on the string. Then He stops, for in front of Him there is the body of a Brâhmaṇa; shall He draw an arrow against that form? As the two Râmas stand face to face, the energy of the elder, it is written, passes into the younger; the energy of Viṣhṇu, the energy of the Supreme, leaves the form in which it had been dwelling and enters the higher manifestation of the same divine life. The bow was stretched and the arrow waiting, but Râma would not shoot it forth lest harm should come, until He had pacified His antagonist; then feeling that energy pass, Parashurâma bows before Râma, diviner than Himself, hails Him as the Supreme Lord of the worlds, bends in reverence before Him, and then goes away. That Avatâra was over, although the form in which the energy had dwelt yet persisted. That is why I said it was a lesser Avatâra. Where you have the form persisting when the influence is withdrawn, you have the clear proof that there the incarnation cannot be said to be complete; the passing from the one to the other is the sign of the energy taken back by the Giver and put into a new vessel in which new work is to be done.

The story of Râma you know; we need not follow it further in detail; we spoke of it yesterday in its highest aspect as combating the forces of evil and starting the world, as it were, anew. We find the great reign of Râma lasting ten thousand years in the Dvapara Yuga, the Yuga at the close of which Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa came.

Then comes the Mighty One, Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa Himself, of whom I speak not to-day; we will try to study that Avatâra to-morrow with such insight and reverence as we may possess. Pass over that then for the moment, leaving it for fuller study, and we come to the ninth Avatâra as it is called, that of the Lord Buddha. Now round this much controversy has raged, and a theory exists current to some extent among the Hindus that the Lord Buddha, though an incarnation of Viṣhṇu, came to lead astray those who did not believe the Vedas, came to spread confusion upon earth. Viṣhṇu is the Lord of order, not of disorder; the Lord of love, not the Lord of hatred; the Lord of compassion, who only slays to help the life onward when the form has become an obstruction. And they blaspheme who speak of an incarnation of the Supreme, as coming to mislead the world that He has made. Rightly did your own learned pandit, T. Subba Row, speak of that theory with the disdain born of knowledge; for no one who has a shadow of occult learning, no one who knows anything of the inner realities of life, could thus speak of that beautiful and gracious manifestation of the Supreme, or dream that He could take the mighty form of an Avatâra in order to mislead.

But there is another point to put about this Avatâra, on which, perhaps, I may come into conflict with people on another side. For this is the difficulty of keeping the middle path, the razor path which goes neither to the left nor to the right, along which the great Gurus lead us. On either side you find objection to the central teaching. The Lord Buddha, in the ordinary sense of the word, was not what we have defined as an Avatâra. He was the first of our own humanity who climbed upwards to that point, and there merged in the Logos and received full illumination. His was not a body taken by the Logos for the purpose of revealing Himself, but was the last in myriads of births through which he had climbed to merge in I´shvara at last. That is not what is normally spoken of as an Avatâra, though, you may say, the result truly is the same. But in the case of the Avatâra, the evolving births are in previous kalpas, and the Avatâra comes after the man has merged in the Logos, and the body is taken for the purpose of revelation. But he who became Gautama Buddha had climbed though birth after birth in our own kalpa, as well as in the kalpas that went before; and he was incarnated many a time when the great Fourth Race dwelt in mighty Atlantis, and rose onward to take the office of the Buddha; for the Buddha is the title of an office, not of a particular man. Finally by his own struggles, the very first of our race, he was able to reach that great function in the world. What is the function? That of the Teacher of Gods and men. The previous Buddhas had been Buddhas who came from another planet. Humanity had not lived long enough here to evolve its own son to that height. Gautama Buddha was human-born. He had evolved through the Fourth Race into this first family of the A´ryan Race, the Hindu. By birth after birth in India He had completed His course and took His final body in A´ryâvarta, to make the proclamation of the law to men.

But the proclamation was not made primarily for India. It was given in India because India is the place whence the great religious revelations go forth by the will of the Supreme. Therefore was He born in India, but His law was specially meant for nations beyond the bounds of A´ryâvarta, that they might learn a pure morality, a noble ethic, disjoined--because of the darkness of the age--from all the complicated teachings which we find in connection with the subtle, metaphysical Hindu faith.

Hence you find in the teachings of the Lord Buddha two great divisions; one a philosophy meant for the learned, then an ethic disjoined from the philosophy, so far as the masses are concerned, noble and pure and great, yet easy to be grasped. For the Lord knew that we were going into an age of deeper and deeper materialism, that other nations were going to arise, that India for a time was going to sink down for other nations to rise above her in the scale of nations. Hence was it necessary to give a teaching of morality fitted for a more materialistic age, so that even if nations would not believe in the Gods they might still practise morality and obey the teachings of the Lord. In order also that this land might not suffer loss, in order that India itself might not lose its subtle metaphysical teachings and the widespread belief among all classes of people in the existence of the Gods and their part in the affairs of men, the work of the great Lord Buddha was done. He left morality built upon a basis that could not be shaken by any change of faith, and, having done His work, passed away. Then was sent another great One, overshadowed by the power of Mahâdeva, Shrî Shankarâchârya, in order that by His teaching He might give, in the Advaita Vedânta, the philosophy which would do intellectually what morally the Buddha had done, which intellectually would guard spirituality and allow a materialistic age to break its teeth on the hard nut of a flawless philosophy. Thus in India metaphysical religion triumphed, while the teaching of the Blessed One passed from the Indian soil, to do its noble work in lands other than the land of A´ryâvarta, which must keep unshaken its belief in the Gods, and where highest and lowest alike must bow before their power. That is the real truth about this much disputed question as to the teaching of the ninth Avatâra; the fact was that His teaching was not meant for His birthplace, but was meant for other younger nations that were rising up around, who did not follow the Vedas, but who yet needed instruction in the path of righteousness; not to mislead them but to guide them, was His teaching given. But, as I say, and as I repeat, what in it might have done harm in India had