‘One is one’s own refuge, who else could be the refuge?’ said the Buddha. Man is his own master, and there is no higher being or power that sits in judgment over his destiny. Man’s position, according to Buddhism, is supreme. He was so perfect in his ‘human-ness’ that he came to be regarded later in popular religion almost as ‘super-human’. We can call the Buddha a man par excellence. Every man has within himself the potentiality of becoming a Buddha, if he so wills it and endeavours. He attributed all his realization, attainments and achievements to human endeavour and human intelligence.Ī man and only a man can become Buddha. The Buddha was not only a human being he claimed no inspiration from any god or external power either. Other teachers were either God, or his incarnations in different forms, or inspired by him. Among the founders of religions the Buddha (if we are permitted to call him the founder of a religion in the popular sense of the term) was the only teacher who did not claim to be other than a human being, pure and simple.
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