value on the pleasures of the eye,
is not in practice disdainful of beauty, as witness the many allusions
to the Buddha's personal appearance, the persistent love of art, and the
equally persistent love of nature which is found in such early poems as
the Theragatha and still inspires those who select the sites of
monasteries throughout the Buddhist world from Burma to Japan. The
example of the Buddha, if we may believe the story, shows that he felt
the importance of scenery and climate in the struggle before him and his
followers still hold that a holy life is led most easily in beautiful
and peaceful landscapes.

2

Hitherto we have found allusions to the events of the Buddha's life
rather than consecutive statements and narratives but for the next
period, comprising his struggle for enlightenment, its attainment and
the commencement of his career as a teacher, we have several accounts,
both discourses put into his own mouth and narratives in the third
person like the beginning of the Mahavagga. It evidently was felt that
this was the most interesting and critical period of his life and for
it, as for the period immediately preceding his death, the Pitakas
provide the elements of a biography. The accounts vary as to the amount
of detail and supernatural events which they contain, but though the
simplest is perhaps the oldest, it does not follow that events
consistent with it but only found in other versions are untrue. One
cannot argue that anyone recounting his spiritual experiences is bound
to give a biographically complete picture. He may recount only what is
relevant to the purpose of his discourse.

Gotama's ascetic life at Uruvela is known as the wrestling or struggle
for truth. The story, as he tells it in the Pitakas, gives no dates, but
is impressive in its intensity and insistent iteration[318]. Fire, he
thought to himself, cannot be produced from damp wood by friction, but
it can from dry wood. Even so must the body be purged of its humours to
make it a fit receptacle for illumination and knowledge. So he began a
series of terrible fasts and sat "with set teeth and tongue pressed
against the palate" until in this spiritual wrestling the sweat poured
down from his arm pits. Then he applied himself to meditation
accompanied by complete cessation of breathing, and, as he persevered
and went from stage to stage of this painful exercise, he heard the
blood rushing in his head and felt as if his skull was be