Last Sunday I gave you a brief outline – a very brief one too – of the life of our Lord Buddha, up to the moment of his attainment of Buddhahood. I am going to tell you today what his teachings are. Buddhist teachings are preserved in what we call the Tipitakas, consisting of the Suttas (Discourses), the Vinaya (Laws of discipline for Sanghas, or monks ) and the Abhidhamma ( Philosophical Teachings). We have the Tipitakas in Pali in several volumes which will require an intelligent Pali scholar some months just to read through. I propose, therefore, to confine myself today only to essentials, that is to say, the fundamental Truths of Buddhism. Before Lord Buddha took upon himself the task of spreading his Dhamma (Teachings), he remained in silent meditation for a continuous period of 49 days, viz;, seven days under the Bo tree and seven days each in six other spots nearby, enjoying at times the peace of Supreme Nibbana and at another going deeper in investigation into the most delicate problems of Paramattha-Dhamma (Ultimate Realities). On his complete mastery of the law of Patthana (the Law of Relations), in which the infinite modes of relations between thought moments are also dealt with, there emerged from his body brilliant rays of six colours, which eventually settled down as a halo of six-coloured rays around his head. He passed through this seven times seven days meditation without food. It is all beyond us to be without food for 49 days. The fact remains that he was throughout the period on a mental plane as distinct from a physical plane, in which mankind normally is. It is not material food that maintains the fine-material existence and life-continuum of beings in the Fine-material Worlds of the Brahmas, but the Jhanic Piti, which in itself is a nutriment. So also was the case with the Buddha, whose existence during this long period was on a mental rather than physical plane. Our experiments in this line of research have firmly convinced us that for a man of such high intellectual and mental development as the Buddha, this is a possibility.