Book Description

Excerpt from The Wheel of the Law: Buddhism, Illustrated From Siamese Sources by the Modern Buddhist, a Life of Buddha, and an Account of the Phrabat All Buddhists, throughout the wide range of countries where the doctrines of Buddha prevail, call their religion the doctrine of "The Wheel of the Law." I have adopted the name for this book, because it is peculiarly appropriate to a theory of Buddhism, which the book in some degree illustrates. I refer to the theory that all existence of which we have any conception is but a part of an endless chain, or circle, of causes and effects; that so long as we remain in that wheel there is no rest and no peace; and that rest can only be obtained by escaping from that wheel into the incomprehensible Nirwana. Buddha taught a religion of which the wheel was the only proper symbol; for his theory, professing to be complete, dealt with but a limited round of knowledge; ignored the beginning, and was equally vague as to the end. He neither taught of a God, the Creator of existence, nor of a heaven, the absorber of existence, but restrained his teaching within what he believed to be the limits of reason. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.