Original
Nirvana meant death which ends all, extinction of existence.
Gautama's immediate purpose was to emancipate himself and his followers
from the fetters of Brahminism. He tried to leave the world of Hindu
philosophy behind him and to escape from it.
Did he succeed? Partially.
Buddha hoped also to rise above the superstitions of the common people,
but in this he was again only partially successful.[37] "The clouds
returned after the rain." The old dead gods of Brahminism came back
under new names and forms. The malarial exhalations of corrupt
Brahmanistic philosophy, continually poisoned the atmosphere which
Buddha's disciples breathed. Still worse, as his religion transmigrated
into other lands, it became itself a history of transformation, until
to-day no religion on earth seems to be such a kaleidoscopic
phantasmagoria. Polytheism is rampant over the greater part of the
Buddhist world to-day. In the larger portion of Chinese Asia, pantheism
dominates the mind. In modern Babism,--a mixture of Mohammedanism,
Christianity and Buddhism,--there are streaks of dualism. If Monotheism
has ever dawned on the Buddhist world, it has been in fitful pulses as
in auroral flashes, soon to leave darkness darker.
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