piness. Life was just as miserable,
as empty, as meaningless, as before.

All that he had done was in vain, and he must try again, must seek out
some new way, if he were ever to find that which he sought.

He rose from where he lay, and took his bowl in his hands and went to
the nearest village, and ate heartily and drank, and his strength came
back to him, and the beauty he had lost returned.

And then came the final blow: his disciples left him in scorn.

'Behold,' they said to each other, 'he has lived through six years of
mortification and suffering in vain. See, now, he goes forth and eats
food, and assuredly he who does this will never attain wisdom. Our
master's search is not after wisdom, but worldly things; we must look
elsewhere for the guidance that we seek.'

They departed, leaving him to bear his disappointment alone, and they
went into the solitude far away, to continue in their own way and pursue
their search after their own method. He who was to be the Buddha had
failed, and was alone.

To the followers of the Buddha, to those of our brothers who are trying
to follow his teachings and emulate his example to attain a like reward,
can there be any greater help than this: amid the failure and despair of
our own lives to remember that the teacher failed, even as we are doing?
If we find the way dark and weary, if our footsteps fail, if we wander
in wrong paths, did not he do the same? And if we find we have to bear
sufferings alone, so had he; if we find no one who can comfort us,
neither did he; as we know in our hearts that we stand alone, to fight
with our own hands, so did he. He is no model of perfection whom it is
hopeless for us to imitate, but a man like ourselves, who failed and
fought, and failed and fought again, and won. And so, if we fail, we
need not despair. Did not our teacher fail? What he has done, we can do,
for he has told us so. Let us be up again and be of good heart, and we,
too, shall win in the end, even as he did. The reward will come in its
own good time if we strive and faint not.

Surely this comes home to all of our hearts--this failure of him who
found the light. That he should have won--ah, well, that is beautiful;
but that he should have failed--and failed, that is what comes home to
us, because we too have failed many times. Can you wonder that his
followers love him? Can you wonder that his teaching has come home to
them as never did teaching elsewhere? I do not thin