204. "Health is the greatest of gifts, contentedness the best riches; trust is the best of relatives, Nirvana the highest happiness."
The following quotations deserve the close attention of the Christian inquirer, for they not only contain sentiments almost identically the same as those found in the New Testament, but they are couched in the same language, as closely as the circumstances of the case allow. Both enunciate the opinion that it is injudicious to cultivate or even to permit the existence of those affections which we have in common with the lower animals, and that to attain perfection love and hatred must be trampled under foot. We give the Buddhist teaching priority, as it was promulgated first:--
210. "Let no man ever look for what is pleasant or what is unpleasant. Not to see what is pleasant is pain, and it is pain to see what is unpleasant."
211. "Let, therefore, no man love anything; loss of the beloved is evil. Those who love nothing and hate nothing have no fetters."
212. "From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear, he who is free from pleasure knows neither grief nor fear."
213-6. "From affection comes grief and fear, from lust comes grief and fear, from love comes grief and fear, from greed comes grief and fear." "He who is free from affection, lust, love, and greed, knows neither grief nor fear." "He that loveth either father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he that loveth son or daughter better than me is not worthy of me, and he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. x. 37-39). "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever" (1 John ii. 15-17).
"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it; for what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt, xvi. 24). See also Mark viii. 34, x. 21, and Luke ix. 23-25, in the last verse of which the saying is varied by the words being used "what is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose himself, or be cast away?" We are by habit more familiar with the style in which the Grecians wrote, than with that adopted by Sanscrit authors. But in both sets of writers the main idea is made strikingly apparent--viz., that to love anybody or anything on earth is prejudicial to our spiritual welfare, and that to act piously, it is necessary for the saint to free himself wholly from those instinctive affections which God has implanted in almost every one of his creatures. It is strange that any two ministers could have excogitated so monstrous a proposition, and that both should be called "Divine."