Gone were the temptations and the sorrows in a divine peace--a peace that became the reward of all disciples of the religion that he founded. This peace was called by him Nirvana and his disciples say he is the only man who attained it in his lifetime, for Nirvana is supposed to come only to the spirits of the dead, who have purified themselves not in one life, but in many. In Buddha's belief (for as Buddha we shall now know him), human beings live many times and receive the reward or the punishment of past existences in those that follow. This belief is known as "the transmigration of souls." It is the foundation of the faith of Buddha which is believed in to-day by millions of persons in India and China, as well as in other countries.
In the truth that Buddha had acquired he learned many things. Chief of them, as he believed, are four great facts of life and nature from which the soul cannot escape--that there will always be sorrow and suffering in the world; that these are caused by clinging to things that are always changing or dying; that the only way to obtain peace is to renounce these things and care for them no longer; and that the only way to live is to walk in the paths of righteousness, honesty, virtue, and to believe in the Buddhist faith.
Buddha also believed that animals have souls just as men do, and that by some good action these animal souls become the souls of men. Then the souls go through many existences. If they are righteous they approach the peace of Nirvana, which is attainable only when they are entirely purified; if they are unrighteous they are cast down again into lower forms of life and once more have to struggle upward toward the truth. There is no escape from the consequences of sin in the Buddhist faith. Just so certainly as a man sins he will be punished for it--if not in this life in the next one--and if his sin is sufficiently deadly he will lose again the form of a man and return to the shape of a snake or a lizard to expiate his wickedness through countless generations.
Heaven and Hell have a place in the belief of Buddha also. They are different from the Heaven and Hell that Christians know because in the Buddhist religion they are only temporary abodes for the spirit between its many existences on earth.