Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 168
was the fourth one by the Mahayanan counting. . The king was so pleased with the outcome of its discussions that he paid great homage to the participants on its conclusion and then performed an unusual political deed: He handed over the complete administration of the kingdom of Kashmir to the co-operative sangha of Buddhist monks whose leader was the wise philosopher Nagardjuna. . What made him act like this? He might have been impressed by such a tolerant and democratic managing of the council and of its prompt solution of the problem how to unify the teaching of so many Buddhist sects. . But whence came the idea to hand over even the civil administration i. e. the political one, to a religious order? In this respect Buddha's view was quite apposite: He left his throne and family to be able to meditate in solitude. In Kosala he pondered on the question whether it was possible for a king to perform his duties with absolute justice. His solution is apparent from the fact, that, invited to take once more his own throne, he declined. No wish for power or dominance. His direction for his monks was also clear: When you enter a community to beg for your food, behave like a bee: Take your nectar from the bloom but do not harm its shape, colour or scent! Well, do not mingle with politics. . If not the Buddhist monks who then brought the idea of an ecclesiastical ruling of a kingdom to king Kanishka?. Was not it perhaps a man knowing the order of Jahwe:. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation! 2M. 19, 6? Was it not the man who had made an unsuccessful attempt to realize this in Palestine? A man who got by subjective and objective ways of perception a deep knowledge of the unlike effects of different ways of ruling and of different rulers. . Possibly was it the man who forged for his disciples the basic instruction of ruling in Luke 22, 25: "The kings of the. Gentiles exercise lordship over them but ye shall not be • so; but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that serves. " Did not Jesus recognise in Ashoka his own conception of the ruling business?. Was it the preacher of the "sower" in Kashmir, Yuz Asaf, who not only discussed the hinayanama teaching with Buddhists eager to acquire higher merits than having no desires, but to 173