extinction of personal identity, the sole reward to those who have wholly conquered desire in the struggle of human existence. Our sins shall punish another entity than that which is the present ego ; our virtues shall ultimately help the separated drop to sink again into the untroubled ocean, not to sparkle for ever in some iridescent beam of personal happiness. Nor can this return of the troubled part to everlasting peace in the undivided whole be accomplished here in our life, save by an ascetic course which lies far beyond the power of the usual man. He, however, by strict virtue in the common life, as father, brother, husband, neighbour, may happily reflect that the Kharma of his life, the resultant moral force of it, shall permit some other man, later born, to start his course nearer to the goal, which ever is extinction of desire and of separated self. Truly this is too hard for rough mountain barbarians.
Even the corrupted doctrines which came to the Tibetans a thousand years after Gautama died have by them been yet further corrupted. A vast system of Aberglaube (extra belief of Matthew Arnold) has overgrown the Buddha's original impersonal generalisations. Moral qualities have grown into gods. " Emanations" have become persons.
Myths of virgin birth, giving sanctity to Gautama's mother; of infantile wisdom and heavenly prodigies leading to worship of the babe by wise men ; of superhuman strength in human contest with spear and bow, —all these had been added to the Buddhist arsenal of argument before the Great Vehicle was taken up to Tibet from Northern India. Doubtless they were of great avail in making converts. Weaker
IIIF Color HighRes
