The Melchizedek Teachings in the Orient

94:8.1To be­come a Bud­dhist, one merely made pub­lic pro­fes­sion of the faith by recit­ing the Refuge: “I take my refuge in the Bud­dha; I take my refuge in the Doc­trine; I take my refuge in the Broth­er­hood.”

94:8.2Bud­dhism took ori­gin in a his­toric per­son, not in a myth. Gau­tama’s fol­low­ers called him Sasta, mean­ing mas­ter or teacher. While he made no super­hu­man claims for ei­ther him­self or his teach­ings, his dis­ci­ples early be­gan to call him the en­light­ened one, the Bud­dha; later on, Sakya­muni Bud­dha.

94:8.3The orig­i­nal gospel of Gau­tama was based on the four no­ble truths:

94:8.41. The no­ble truths of suf­fer­ing.

94:8.52. The ori­gins of suf­fer­ing.

94:8.63. The de­struc­tion of suf­fer­ing.

94:8.74. The way to the de­struc­tion of suf­fer­ing.

94:8.8Closely linked to the doc­trine of suf­fer­ing and the es­cape there­from was the phi­los­o­phy of the Eight­fold Path: right views, as­pi­ra­tions, speech, con­duct, liveli­hood, ef­fort, mind­ful­ness, and con­tem­pla­tion. It was not Gau­tama’s in­ten­tion to at­tempt to de­stroy all ef­fort, de­sire, and af­fec­tion in the es­cape from suf­fer­ing; rather was his teach­ing de­signed to pic­ture to mor­tal man the fu­til­ity of pin­ning all hope and as­pi­ra­tions en­tirely on tem­po­ral goals and ma­te­rial ob­jec­tives. It was not so much that love of one’s fel­lows should be shunned as that the true be­liever should also look be­yond the as­so­ci­a­tions of this ma­te­rial world to the re­al­i­ties of the eter­nal fu­ture.

94:8.9The moral com­mand­ments of Gau­tama’s preach­ment were five in num­ber:

94:8.101. You shall not kill.

94:8.112. You shall not steal.

94:8.123. You shall not be un­chaste.

94:8.134. You shall not lie.

94:8.145. You shall not drink in­tox­i­cat­ing liq­uors.

94:8.15There were sev­eral ad­di­tional or sec­ondary com­mand­ments, whose ob­ser­vance was op­tional with be­liev­ers.

94:8.16Sid­dhartha hardly be­lieved in the im­mor­tal­ity of the hu­man per­son­al­ity; his phi­los­o­phy only pro­vided for a sort of func­tional con­ti­nu­ity. He never clearly de­fined what he meant to in­clude in the doc­trine of Nir­vana. The fact that it could the­o­ret­i­cally be ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing mor­tal ex­is­tence would in­di­cate that it was not viewed as a state of com­plete an­ni­hi­la­tion. It im­plied a con­di­tion of su­preme en­light­en­ment and su­per­nal bliss wherein all fet­ters bind­ing man to the ma­te­rial world had been bro­ken; there was free­dom from the de­sires of mor­tal life and de­liv­er­ance from all dan­ger of ever again ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­car­na­tion.

94:8.17Ac­cord­ing to the orig­i­nal teach­ings of Gau­tama, sal­va­tion is achieved by hu­man ef­fort, apart from di­vine help; there is no place for sav­ing faith or prayers to super­hu­man pow­ers. Gau­tama, in his at­tempt to min­i­mize the su­per­sti­tions of In­dia, en­deav­ored to turn men away from the bla­tant claims of mag­i­cal sal­va­tion. And in mak­ing this ef­fort, he left the door wide open for his suc­ces­sors to mis­in­ter­pret his teach­ing and to pro­claim that all hu­man striv­ing for at­tain­ment is dis­taste­ful and painful. His fol­low­ers over­looked the fact that the high­est hap­pi­ness is linked with the in­tel­li­gent and en­thu­si­as­tic pur­suit of wor­thy goals, and that such achieve­ments con­sti­tute true prog­ress in cos­mic self-re­al­iza­tion.

94:8.18The great truth of Sid­dhartha’s teach­ing was his procla­ma­tion of a uni­verse of ab­so­lute jus­tice. He taught the best god­less phi­los­o­phy ever in­vented by mor­tal man; it was the ideal hu­man­ism and most ef­fec­tively re­moved all grounds for su­per­sti­tion, mag­i­cal rit­u­als, and fear of ghosts or demons.

94:8.19The great weak­ness in the orig­i­nal gospel of Bud­dhism was that it did not pro­duce a re­li­gion of un­selfish so­cial ser­vice. The Bud­dhis­tic broth­er­hood was, for a long time, not a fra­ter­nity of be­liev­ers but rather a com­mu­nity of stu­dent teach­ers. Gau­tama for­bade their re­ceiv­ing money and thereby sought to pre­vent the growth of hi­er­ar­chal ten­den­cies. Gau­tama him­self was highly so­cial; in­deed, his life was much greater than his preach­ment.