The Ideal Brahman
Theosophical Quarterly, July, 1929
It has been suggested that the principal purpose of the Buddha, in all that he did and taught, was the founding of an Order which should train disciples, not for abstract or general ends, but for the definite goal of Chelaship. It may be added that every detail of his words and acts gains new light from the recognition of this primary aim.
It has also been said that the Buddha made a great and deeply considered effort to influence the Brahmans of his day, for several different yet harmonious reasons. First, in consonance with the principal purpose noted above, he clearly recognized that the Brahmans as a class offered exceptionally promising material for Chelaship. They were endowed with spiritual gifts of great value; they had a long spiritual heredity; many of them were blest with ardent aspiration and a burning desire for spiritual attainment, as the result of that spiritual heredity. To repeat a phrase that has been used before: the Brahmans as a class represented an immense spiritual investment; the Buddha ardently desired to aid this great investment to bear fruit, and to bear fruit abundantly.
This is the brighter side of the picture, and it is still, to a certain degree, a true account of the Brahmans. But there was also the darker side. The Buddha, seeing and knowing the universe face to face, clearly perceived certain long-standing dangers in the position of the Brahmans of his day; the danger of spiritual and temporal ambition; the danger that the Brahmans as a class, instead of giving spiritual and intellectual life to their land, might become a tyrannous despotism, entrenching themselves, not only through superior intellectual vigour, but by all the arts of superstition and priestcraft; so that, in spite of the genuinely spiritual minority among them, they might, as a class, become a burden and a menace to India, a source of darkness rather than light.
Seeing these menacing possibilities, the Buddha made a strong effort, sustained through a long series of years, to call the Brahmans back to the high ideals which were in their spiritual heredity, and which had been reinforced when the King Initiates of the Rajput race had accepted Brahmans as their disciples, as recorded in the great Upanishads; a strong and sustained effort at the same time to draw them back from the dangerous path, which, as a class, they were already entering. Unhappily, it must be added that, on the whole, this splendid and generous effort failed. Many spiritually gifted Brahmans were drawn to the Buddha, and therefore to the Lodge, by the splendour of his character and his teaching, as Brahmans have been drawn to the Lodge through the intervening centuries. But the Brahmans as a class went headlong forward on the dangerous path which the Buddha so clearly saw opening before them. They drove his teachings and his Order from India, and they have in fact become the most astute and oppressive priestcraft in the world.
So much in introduction to one of the Suttas, which shows, first, the way in which the Buddha made his potent effort to draw the Brahmans back again to their ancient ideals of a spiritual life; then, the high qualities, gifts and endowments of certain Brahmans, which so fully justified this effort; and, finally, the forces of reaction and obscurantism which were working in opposition to the Buddha’s effort, and which, so far as the whole Brahman caste is concerned, finally gained complete mastery over spiritual aspiration.
The Sutta, like so many of the Suttas, tells a story, and tells it well. And the story is suffused with that fine ironical humour which is characteristic of so many of these records of the Buddha’s teachings. The dramatic elements in the tale are brought out with finesse and skill, and with a delicate appreciation of their ironical colouring.
The Sutta follows a conventional form, and contains many repetitions, and much that is found in other Suttas. Rightly to estimate these qualities of iteration and convention, we should keep in mind that while we think 