The Life of Gautama Buddha 153 that whatever tnith a man may reach is reached best by a nourished brain in a healthy body. Such a conception was abso- lutely foreign to the ideas of the land and age. His disciples deserted him, and went off in a melan- choly state to Benares. Gautama wandered alone. When the mind grap- ples -with a great and intricate problem, it makes its ad^'ances step by step, with but little realization of the gains it has made, until suddenly, with an effect of abmpt illumination, it realizes its victory. So it hap- pened to Gautama. He had seated himself under a great tree by the side of a river to eat, when this sense of clear vision came to him. It seemed to him that he saw life plain. He is said to have sat all day and all night in profound thought, and then he rose up to impart his vision to the world. He went on to Benares and there he sought out and won back his lost disciples to his new teaching. In the King's Deer Park at Benares they built themselves huts and set up a sort of school to which came many who were seeking after wisdom. The starting point of his teaching was his own question as a for- tunate young man, " Why am I not completely happy ? " It was an introspective question. It was a question very different in quality from the frank and self -forgetful externalized curiosity with which Thales and Heraclitus were attacking the problems of the universe, or the equally self-forgetful burthen of moral obligation that the culminating prophets were imposing upon the Hebrew mind. The Indian teacher did not forget self, he concentrated upon self and THE DHAMEKH TOWER In the Deer Park at Sarnath. Sixth Century, A.D. {J^tvm a painting in the India Musctnii)
