Page:Ramakrishna - His Life and Sayings.djvu/24

6 after performing certain sacrifices. In the modern lan- guage vrStya has come to mean no more than naughty or unmanageable.

It is curious to observe how the Buddhist revolt was mainly based on the argument that if emancipation or spiritual freedom, as enjoyed in the third, and more par- ticularly in the fourth stage, was the highest goal of our life on earth, it was a mistake to wait for it till the very end of life. The Buddhists were in one sense Vrityas who declined to pass through the long and tedious discipline of a pupil, who considered the performance of the duties of a householder, including marriage and endless sacrifices, not only as unprofitable, but as mischievous. Buddha himself had declared against the penances prescribed for the BrShmanic ascetic as a hindrance rather than as a help to those who wished for perfect -freedom, freedom from all passions and desires, and from the many prejudices of BrShmanic society. It seems almost as if the early Buddhists, by adopting the name of Bhikshu, mendicant, for the members of their order (Saarcgha), had wished to show that they were all SawnySsins, carrying out the old Brihmanic principles to their natural conclusion, though they had renounced at the same time the Vedas, the Laws of tradition, and all BrShmanic sacrifices as mere vanity and vexation of spirit.

Saomy&sins or Saints.

Similar ideas existed already among the BrShmans, and we meet among them, even before the rise of Buddhism,