It is certainly sacerdotal and
aristocratic in organization. As in any other system which has so vast a
hierarchy with so many grades of honor and authority, its theory of
democracy is now a memory. First preached in a land accursed by caste
and under spiritual and secular oppressions, it acknowledged no caste,
but declared all men equally sinful and miserable, and all equally
capable of being freed from sin and misery through Buddhahood, that is,
knowledge or enlightenment.[36]
The three-fold principle laid down by Gautama, and now in dogma,
literature, art and worship, a triad or formal trinity, is, Buddha, the
attainment of Buddha-hood, or perfect enlightenment, through meditation
and benevolence; Karma, the law of cause and effect; and Dharma,
discipline or order; or, the Lord, the Law and the Church. Paying no
attention to questions of cosmogony or theogony, the universe is
accepted as an ultimate fact. Matter is eternal. Creation exists but not
a Creator. All is god, but God is left out of consideration. The gods
are even less than Buddhas. Humanity is glorified and the stress of all
teaching is upon this life. In a word: a sinless life, attainable by
man, through his own exertions in this world, above all the powers or
beings of the universe, is the essence of original Buddhism.
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