"
The meaning here conveyed is simple enough to understand. From a long line
of ancestors who had ruled with the unquestioned authority of Oriental
monarchs, the young prince felt that he had inherited much that would
retard his soul's freedom. The examples of kings and emperors who have
abandoned their possessions have been too few to cause us to believe that
they have held these possessions as naught.
Through rivers of blood; through ages of despotism, and self-seeking, kings
and emperors have maintained their vested rights bequeathing to their
progeny the same desires; the same covetousness of worldly power; the same
consideration for the lesser self; the same hypnotism that takes account of
caste.
To escape from these fetters of the soul, into a realization of the Eternal
Oneness of life, was no easy task for the inheritor of such desires and
beliefs and appetites as an ancestry of rulers imposes.
And Prince Siddhartha was anxious to escape reincarnation--a theory or
conviction inseparable from Oriental religion.
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