Chapter (অধ্যায়): CHAPTER III : MORNING TALKS AT ALMORA PAGE-347Page: 347 of 548
always embodied the rising, fetter‑destroying impulses of the nation. He could give excellent reason too for the faith that was in him that the Kâyasthas of modern Bengal represented the pre‑Mauryan Kshatriyas. He would portray the two opposing types of culture: the one, classical, intensive and saturated with an ever‑deepening sense of tradition and custom; the other, defiant, impulsive and liberal in its outlook. It was part of a deep‑lying law of the historic development that Râma, Krishna and Buddha had all arisen in the kingly, and not in the priestly caste. And in this paradoxical moment Buddhism was reduced to a caste‑smashing formula__"a religion invented by the Kshatriyas" as a crushing rejoinder to Brahminism!
That was a great hour indeed when he spoke of Buddha; for, catching a word that seemed to identify him with its anti‑Brahminical spirit, an uncomprehending listener said, "Why, Swami, I did not know that you were a Buddhist!"
"Madam", he said, rounding on her, his whole face aglow with the inspiration of that name, "I am the servant of the servants of the servants of Buddha. Who was there ever like him?__the Lord__who never performed one action for himself__with a heart that embraced the whole world! So full of pity that he__prince and monk__would give his life to save a little goat! So loving that he sacrificed himself to the hunger of a tigress!__to the hospitality of a pariah and blessed him! And he came into my room when I was a boy and I fell at his feet! For I knew it was the Lord Himself!"
Many times he spoke of Buddha in this fashion, sometimes at Belur and sometimes afterwards. And once he told us the story of Ambâpâli, the beautiful courtesan who feasted him. . . .
National feeling did not have it all its own way. For one morning when the chasm seemed to be widest, there was a long talk on Bhakti__that perfect identity with the Beloved that the devotion of Ray Ramananda, the Bengali nobleman, before Chaitanya so beautifully illustrates:
Four eyes met. There were changes in two souls.
And now I cannot remember whether he is a man
And I a woman, or he a woman and I a man!