[10]
From another point of view Buddhism was a new religion; for it swept
away and out of the field of its vision the whole of the World or
Universal Soul theory. "It proclaimed a salvation which each man could
gain for himself and by himself, in this world during this life, without
the least reference to God, or to gods, either great or small." "It
placed the first importance on knowledge; but it was no longer a
knowledge of God, it was a clear perception of the real nature as they
supposed it to be of men and things." In a word, Gautama never reached
the idea of a personal self-existent God, though toward that truth he
groped. He was satisfied too soon.[11] His followers were even more
easily satisfied with abstractions. When Gautama saw the power over the
human heart of inward culture and of love to others, he obtained peace,
he rested on certainty, he became the Buddha, that is, the enlightened.
Perhaps he was not the first Buddhist. It may be that the historical
Gautama, if so he is worthy to be called, merely made the sect or the
new religion famous. Hardly a religion in the full sense of the word,
Buddhism did not assume the role of theology, but sought only to know
men and things. In one sense Buddhism is atheism, or rather, atheistic
humanism.
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