ousands of years has been called the
Buddhist Holy Land. Wise men of all ages have believed in the faith as
he taught it, and even to-day and in modern European nations there are
those that profess to be of the Buddhist faith.

The order of monks that was founded by Buddha is the oldest existing
religious order in the world. For nearly two thousand five hundred
years these monks have practised renunciation and high thinking and
have worn the yellow robes of the holy man and the beggar.

Many tales and legends sprang up concerning Buddha even in his
lifetime. In fact it is only through legends that we know he was ever a
Prince at all. He had a marvelous faculty for controlling the anger of
wild beasts and once tamed an elephant that had killed many people,
simply by speaking to it in a quiet tone, at which the great animal,
which had been raging through the streets of Rajagha, followed him like
a dog. A tale of his great wisdom that is still told by his disciples,
is of a woman who had lost her child through Death and who came before
Buddha maddened with grief, begging him to bring the child back to life
or at least to provide some comfort from the sorrow that tortured her.
And Buddha told her to get mustard seed from a house that Death had
never visited and when she had done so to bring it to him and he would
bring the child back to life.

The poor woman went from door to door asking if Death had visited
there, and in every home the answer was "yes!" Nowhere could she find a
house that was free from the blight of Death. Then the woman saw that
the only happiness lay in renouncing the ties that bound her to other
human beings and in seeking the peace of Nirvana, for Buddha had taken
this way of teaching her that Death is the common lot of all; and she
entered the Buddhist sisterhood and found there the happiness that she
sought.

Buddha was supposed to have lived many times and there are many tales
of his deeds in previous lives. Some of them tell of happenings when he
was an animal and how he finally acquired the human form. Others tell
of his good deeds when his spirit had entered the human body but was
not yet ennobled sufficiently to become a Buddha.

There are hundreds of such tales in the Buddhist faith. Some deal with
Buddha himself; some with his disciples. In all the stories, however,
the virtue of self-sacrifice and of renunciation is strongly painted.
It is the cornerstone of the Buddhist religion.

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