Excerpt from Mystical Buddhism in Connexion With the Yoga Philosophy of the HindusIn all this the Buddha showed himself to be eminently practical in his methods and profoundly wise in his generation. Evidently, too, he was wise in abstaining at first from all mystical teaching. Originally Buddhism set its face against all solitary asceticism and secret efforts to attain sublime heights of knowledge. It had no occult, no esoteric system of doctrine Which it Withheld from ordinary men.Nor did true Buddhism at first concern itself with any form of philosophical or metaphysical teaching, which it did not consider helpful for the attainment of the only kind of true knowledge worth striving for - the knowledge of the origin of suffering and its remedy - the knowledge that suffering and pain arise from indulging lusts, and that life is in separable from suffering, and is an evil to be got rid of by suppressing self and extinguishing desires.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis 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.