Buddhism

miSTIAN RELIGIONS

BUDDHI

BY
F. E. THOTMAN, B.A.,

Vicar of Mere, formerly Chaplain to the Bishop of
Rangoon,

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BUDDHISM

BY
F. E. TROTMAN, B.A.,

Vicar of Mare, formerly Chaplain to the Bi.hop of
Rangoon,

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INTRODUCTION

Buddhism has developed with such luxuriance,
and has spread over so large a portion of the East,
that it is only possible for the writer of this pamphlet
to discuss it from that point of view with which he is
more familiar. He worked for five years in Burma
among Europeans, and such time as he could spare
to the study of Buddhism was largely spent in
meeting the special difficulties with regard to it,
which occupied the minds of his European
congregations.

These difficulties, and those who feel them, seem
to fall into two groups. There are those, in the
first place, who fancy that Christianity was very
largely indebted in early days to Buddhist
influences ; and then there are those who trouble
very little about this first difficulty (and indeed,
there is very little to be said for it) but who do feel
that Buddhism, in whole or in part, offers a very
reasonable attitude towards some of the problems
of life.

Our solution of these difficulties must emerge in
the course of the following pages, which are for the
most part compiled from papers written from time
to time in the course of editing the Rangoon Diocesan
Magazine, during the years 1904-8, and were also
published in the Lay Reader in 1911.

I should like to express my indebtedness to
many of my fellow-workers in Burma, but most
of all to the Rev. G. Whitehead, whose great
knowledge of Buddhists and Buddhism underlies
many of its statements.

F.E.T.

April 1913.

2011943

BUDDHISM

Before proceeding to discuss the History and
Doctrine of Buddhism, it may be well to face a
question which is very often found troubling the
minds of those who are interested in its origin.

Had Buddhism any influence in shaping the
doctrines and literature of Christianity ?

The influence has been so strenuously denied,
and by such scholars as Oldenburg, Rhys Davids,
Max Mtiller, and Monier Williams, that it seems
hardly worth while to raise the question. But we
so often hear that influence affirmed, that it may
be well to make it our starting point.

Such a starting point has its advantages, for it at
once raises the question of the content of Buddhism,
and of the books in which it is best to study it.

Many people who are attracted by Buddhism,
seem to be under the impression that anything
that is written on the subject, be it poetry or prose,
is equally valuable as a guide to the understanding
of it.

,To take a good example— how many owe their
knowledge of Buddhism to Sir Edwin Arnold'*

6 BUDDHISM

poem, " The Light of Asia." It is a fascinating
poem, but, as a text-book on Buddhism, it is about
as reliable as the so-called Apocryphal Gospels
would be as text-books of Christianity. For " The
Light of Asia " is based on the " Lalita Vistara," a
Sanscrit poem composed from 600 to 1,000 years
after the death of the Buddha, the contents of
which are, in the treatment of the subject, wide as
the poles asunder from early Buddhism. More-
over, to anyone who reads it closely, it is clear that
" The Light of Asia " owes many of its most
beautiful ideas and metaphors to those Christian
Scriptures with which we may suppose Sir Edwin
Arnold to have been well acquainted.

At times, the popular literature on Buddhism
takes on a rather ludicrous shape.

Some may have heard of " The Unknown Life of
Jesus Christ," which a Russian traveller, M.
Notovitch, claimed to have found in the monastery
of Himis in Little Tibet, in 1887—88. M.
Notovitch's story was this. While travelling he
broke his leg, and was taken in and tenderly nursed
by the monks of Himis. His stay, thus prolonged,
resulted in the discovery among Tibetan MSS. of
a " Life of Jesus of Nazareth," who, he declared,
under the name of " Issa," was well known, and
widely reverenced in Tibet. The life states that
Our Lord had resided in India, and derived much
of His teaching from Buddhism. Unfortunately
for M. Notovitch's find, a well-known Oriental
scholar, Professor Douglas of the Government

BUDDHISM 7

College, Agra, proceeded to Himis, obtained
entrance into the monastery, and with the help of a
Tibetan, Stahrmvell Joldan, ex-postmaster of
LaJakh. who acted as interpreter, was able to sift
the story. The Chief Lama declared that no sick
European had ever been nursed in his monastery,
and that in his long life as Lama, at Himis and
elsewhere, he had never heard of " Issa." If those
who are curious in the bye-paths of romance care
to follow up the matter, they will find an exhaustive
statement of it in the Nineteenth Century of
October 1894 and April 1896, where Professors
Douglas and Max Miiller expose M. Notovitch's
lie. The incident aroused much interest at the
time, and the French edition of M. Notovitch's
book ran through eleven editions.

Have such stories still a vogue for amateur
students of Buddhism ? It would seem they must
have, for I have before me a "Buddhist
Catechism " which has something very much like
it. It is written by " Subhadra Bhik^hu," one of
many Europeans who have donned the yellow robe
of the monk in Ceylon and Burma, and on page 58
is the following note : —

"It is very probable that Jesus of Nazareth, whose
teachings in some respects contain much intrinsic agreement
with those of Buddhism, was a pupil of Buddhist monks from
his twelfth to his thirtieth year, of which time the gospel*
have nothing to report about Him. He then returned to
His home to promulgate the doctrine to His people. Thif
doctrine of Jesus was subsequently mutilated and mixed with
passages from the law books of the Jews."

8 BUDDHISM

Those who embark on the serious study of
Buddhism, however, soon discover that a Higher
Criticism has been at work among the Buddhist as
well as among the Christian Scriptures. They soon
learn to distinguish between the many writers on
Buddhism, between those who, like De Bunsen and
Professor Seydel, have a very particular axe to
grind, and unbiassed scholars like Prof. Rhys
Davids and Dr. Oldenburg. They soon learn to
distinguish between what is conveniently called
Southern and Northern Buddhism, and find that
while the supposed resemblances to Christianity
are found almost entirely in the Northern Buddhism,
this Northern Buddhism developed so late that it
is as reasonable to postulate a Christian influence
upon Buddhism as a Buddhist influence on
Christianity. The researches of the late Professor
Lloyd, of Tokio, seem very clearly to show that
this was indeed the case.

But it is also quite possible that the student of
Buddhism will be content to avoid a tortuous bye-
path, and will be satisfied that all serious students
have categorically denied any influence of Buddhism
on Christianity. It will be sufficient to quote from
Professor Rhys Davids' Hibbert Lectures on the
" Origin and Growth of Religions." The derivation
of Christian ideas by Christian writers from Indian
sources has, he says, been often affirmed but, " more
often in popular lectures and in magazine articles
than in independent books, and more often by
those who are glad to throw discredit on

BUDDHISM 9

Christianity than by serious scholars." He goes
on to say that he has carefully sifted the evidence
but can find " no evidence whatever of any actual
and direct communication of any of the ideas from
the East to the West. Where the Gospel narratives
resemble the Buddhist ones, they seem to me to
have been independently developed on the shores of
the Mediterranean and in the valley of the Ganges,
and strikingly similar as they are at first sight, the
slightest comparison is sufficient to show that they
rest throughout on a basis of doctrine funda-
mentally opposed."

And so we pass to consider (a) the History, and
(b) the Doctrine of Buddhism.

(a) First as to the History.

We glean the story of the origin of Buddhism,
just as we shall have to glean the substance of its
doctrine, from the Pitakas, the sacred scriptures of
the Buddhists. They were composed and handed
down, not in Sanscrit, the sacred tongue of India,
but in the Prakrit, the language of everyday life, for
Buddhism ignored caste and made its appeal to all.
In the third century, B.C., Buddhism was carried
over into Ceylon, and it is in Ceylon and in Pali,
which would seem to have been the Prakrit of the
Deccan, that the Buddhist scriptures have been
preserved to us in their purest form.

But though writing was used in commerce, it was
as yet little valued in the schools of religion and

io BUDDHISM

philosophy ; the memory was regarded as the more
reliable vehicle, and the teachings of the Buddha
bear evident traces of the mnemonic system by
which they were handed down. It was not till the
last century B.C. in the reign of Vattagamini of
Ceylon that the scriptures were first committed to
writing. Moreover — in these Buddhist scriptures —
there is no life of the Buddha in the same way that
there is a life of Christ. There is no Buddhist
"gospel." It was the teaching, and not the
'person" of the Buddha that early Buddhists were
most concerned in transmitting, and the particulars
of the life which can be gleaned from the ancient
texts are scanty in the extreme. This is the
opinion of the most eminent writers on Buddhism.
Says Professor Oldenburg, " a biography of the
Buddha has not come down to us from ancient
times, from the age of the Pali Texts " and, he adds,
" we can safely say, no such biography was in
existence then." Again, " It is later centuries
which have built up a history of Buddhism with
wonders piled on wonders on a scale quite different
from older times and which first devoted them-
selves with special zeal to surrounding the blessed
child with the extravagant creations of a boundless
imagination."

What may we consider then that we know about
the Buddha's life?

He was born about 560 B.C. at Kapilavastu
on the borders of modern Nepaul about the time
when Cyrus the Great was raising Persia to

BUDDHISM iv

supremacy, and the Jewish captivity in Babylon
was drawing to its close. His father was Suddho-
dana, not king, but chief and wealthy landowner of
the clan of the Sakya. His mother, Maya, died
soon after his birth. He may have received the
name of Siddhattha, but it is by his family name of
Gauatma that he is generally known. He was
married early. His wife's name is uncertain, but
there was one child, the boy Rahula.

At the age of 29 or 30 he abandoned his home,
and became a wandering ascetic. Apparently he
wearied of earthly enjoyment, brooded over the
satiety and suffering of life, and, like many another
ascetically minded Indian of his day, went forth to
find the secret of deliverance and peace.

"The ascetic Gautama has gone from home into homeless-
ness, while still young, young in years, in the bloom of
youthful strength, in the first freshness of life. The ascetic
Gautama, although his parents did not wish it, although
they shed tears and wept, has had his hair and beard shaved,
has put on yellow garments, and has gone from his home
into homelessness. "

Again :

" Full of hindrance is this household life, the haunt of
passion. Free as the air is the homeless state. Thus he
considered, and went forth."

For many years he sought, and did not find.
He tried many teachers ; he experimented in the
severest self-discipline and asceticism, but found no
peace. At length, under the famous Bo-Tree, close
by where now stands the Temple of Buddha-Gaya,
he attained, as he believed, the enlightenment he

12 BUDDHISM

sought ; he became the Buddha, i.e. " the awakened
one." He saw the causes which keep beings
involved in the mazes of Trans-migration, the
causes of this suffering, the way to its extinction.
And though he feared that the truth, as it seemed
to him, would find few ready listeners, he over-
came the temptation to keep his knowledge to
himself, and spent forty gentle years proclaiming
the doctrine, and building up the brotherhood of
monks which was to continue his work. He
passed away, at the age of fourscore years, about

480 B.C.

There were other teachers, other sects, in the
India of those days, seeking enlightenment, and
establishing their doctrines by much the same
means which Gautama tried. Such a teacher, such
a system was that of Nataputta, the founder of the
Jains, who still flourish in India ; and for two
centuries it does not appear that Buddhism obtained
any great predominance. Then about 260 B.C., it
conquered the heart of the great Asoka, third of
the Mauryan dynasty, which rose to power after the
invasion of Alexander. Under his patronage
Buddhism became the dominant religion of his
Indian Empire, and "the yellow robes shone over
the land." Missions were sent to neighbouring
lands. Edicts carved on pillars even claim that in
some way, not clearly defined, Greek kingdoms on
the Mediterranean were affected, but Professor
Rhys Davids regards this as very possibly only
royal rhodomontade. Certainly the Buddha is not

BUDDHISM 13

even mentioned in western records before iSox.D.,
and then in the pages of a Christian writer,
Clement of Alexandria. There is mention in a
Ceylon chronicle, a century after Asoka's time, of a
large Buddhist community at Alasadda in the
Yona country (i.e. Alexandria in the country of the
Greeks), but scholars almost unanimously regard
it as being one of the many Alexandrias in the
Graeco-Bactrian kingdom which then flourished in
what is now Afghanistan

It was long after Asoka's time, and about the
beginning of the Christian era, that Buddhism
broke asunder into the two great schools, which
are usually known as the Northern and Southern
Buddhism. The Buddhism of Asoka's day, the
Buddhism of the Pali Pitakas, which scholars
regard as the most authentic chronicle of the
history and doctrines of Buddhism, was gradually
confined to the monasteries of Ceylon. To this
Buddhism of the South, which issued centuries later
to become the Buddhism of more modern Burma
and Siam, the Northern Buddhists gave the name fo
"The Hinayana" or "The lesser Curricle." For
themselves, they arrogated the term of the
" Mahayana " or " The great Curricle." A good
deal of mystery hangs round the origin of Mahayanist
Buddhism. Its literature was written not in Pali,
but in Sanscrit, and is widely different in contents
and character from that of the Southern Buddhists.
Its ideals, too, were different, and led to more
imaginative legends, and to the practical deification

14 BUDDHISM

of the Buddha in those lands to which it ultimately
spread — for a time in Northern India and Burma,
and more permanently in China, Mongolia, and
Japan.

We cannot follow this part of our subject further.
It will suffice to say this. It is not in the works of
the Southern Buddhism, in the older Pali Rescen-
sion, but in the later Sanscrit works of the Northern
Buddhism, that we find that more elaborate
Buddhism which, by some, is supposed to be so
similar to the teachings of Christianity. Of these
works, the best known is the Lalita Vistara, written
in Nepaul, Rhys Davids thinks, about 200 — 600 A.D.
It is works of this kind which ascribe to the young
Gautama royal race and virgin birth, and describe
metamorphoses, and visits to heaven and hell,
which may possibly be twisted into resemblances
of our Lord's Transfiguration, Descent into Hell,
and Ascension, only with this notable difference,
that the modesty and restraint of the Christian
Gospels are quite absent from these later Buddhist
works. We may also note, in passing, that while
the documents which assert the Divinity of our
Lord are being by critics, even the unorthodox,
reassigned to the century in which He appeared on
earth, the documents which ascribe divine attributes
to the Buddha are shown to belong to a cycle of
literature which grew into shape five centuries after
the Buddha had passed away.

(b) We turn now to the Doctrines of Buddhism.

In studying Buddhism, we have to distinguish

BUDDHISM 15

between those teachings which are peculiar to it,
and those which it was content to take over, with
some modifications, from the older faiths of India ;
for, as behind Christianity there stands the back-
ground of Israel, so Buddhism, as a reforming and
Puritan movement, arises from the midst of the
India of that day.

We find, then, that Buddhism has retained two
older beliefs or ideas — Transmigration and Karma.

The idea underlying Transmigration is simplicity
itself. It is that at death the soul passes into other
bodies, men or beasts, or even gods. Possibly it
is a survival of the older animistic creed, which
peopled all things, sun and moon, trees and rocks,
men and beasts, with a soul or spirit.

In India, before the time of Gautama, another
doctrine had come to be associated with Trans-
migration, that of Karma. This had the result of
making Transmigration more ethical, for Karma
means " action," and the Transmigration-Karma
theory taught that a man's position in this life
(whether social or otherwise) was a result of his
actions in some former life, and that, according to
his actions in this life, his position in his next
existence, for weal or woe, was being determined.
If a man was born dumb it was due to misuse of
the tongue in a former life, and if, despite this
warning, he added cruelty to his faults, he might
become a tiger. In all cases the punishment was
supposed to fit the crime.

1 6 BUDDHISM

Such an explanation is purely hypothetical, nor
does it really solve the initial difficulty of the
inequalities in life ; it only throws the difficulty
further back ; but so far it seems simple enough.

Buddhism, however, introduced a further diffi-
culty by denying the Individuality of Man, the
Self or the Sou/,

That this is so, is clear to any one with the
most elementary knowledge of Buddhist literature.
We are, as the nun Vajira told Mara the Tempter,
or as the saint Nagasena told the King Milinda, a
mere bundle of sensations ("skandhas") or
changful conformations (" sankhara ") ; just as the
pole and axle and wheels and body make a chariot,
and when torn apart cease to be a chariot, so our
skin and bones, sensations and perceptions, and so
forth, make what we, for the time being, foolishly
imagine to be a person or subject ; but they have
only to break up and fall asunder in death to make
us realise there is none.

But if Buddhism denies the existence of the soul,
where, we ask, does it find the link between the
different lives in the long chain of Transmigration ?
What is it that ties my life on to some other past
life ? The Buddhist answers that it is " Tanha " or
Thirst. In the Buddhist adaptation of the
doctrines of Transmigration and Karma, no soul
or consciousness or memory goes over from one
body to the other. It is the grasping, the craving
still existing at the death of our body that causes

BUDDHISM 17

the new set of "Skandhas," that is, the new
body with its mental tendencies and capacities, to
arise, and attaches to them the Karma of the past
life.

We are now in a position to understand the
distinctive doctrine of Buddhism.

To Gautama, the Wanderer, who had left home
and kindred, one thing seemed uppermost, the
suffering of every form of life on earth. Suffering
had marked all the previous existegces through
which the Karma had acted ; it was to mark all
those which should arise in the future. How was
he to break the chain of suffering being, and find
peace?

Many were the paths he had followed, even to
the most rigid asceticism. At last, under the Bo-
Tree at Uruvela, comes to him, not by revelation
(for Buddhism knows nothing of divine aid) but by
intuition, the knowledge of four Noble Truths, the
knowledge of which, as the means of release from
sentient life, constitute him the Buddha, or the
Awakened One,

Here are Trie Four Noble Truths as they were
promulgated in the Buddha's first sermon at
Benares : —

" Now this is the Noble Truth as to suffering. Birth is
attended with pain, decay is painful, disease is painful.
Death is painful. Union with the unpleasant is painful ;
painful is separation from the pleasant ; and any craving
•nsatisfied, that, too, is painful. In brief, the fire aggregates
of clinging (that is, the conditions of individuality) are painfuL

BUDDHISM

Now this is the Noble Truth as to the origin of suffering.
Verily ! it is the craving thirst that causes the renewal of
becomings, that is accompanied by sensual delights, and seeks
satisfaction, now here, now there — that is to say, the craving
for a future life, or the craving for prosperity.

Now this is the Noble Truth as to the passing away of
pain. Verily ! it is the passing away so that no passion
remains, the giving up, the getting rid of it, the emancipatioa
from, the harbouring no longer of this craving thirst.

Now this is the Noble Truth as to the way that leads to
the passing away of pain. Verily ! it is this noble Eightfold
Path, that is to say, Right Views, Right Aspirations,
Conduct and Mode of Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mind-
fulness, and Right Rapture."

The Four Truths are the Creed of Buddhism.
They show us what it is. It does not profess to
enquire into the ultimate ground of things. It
addresses itself to man plunged in sorrow, teaches
him to understand his sorrow, and shows him the
way of escape. It may be summed up in two
words — suffering, and release.

" As the vast ocean, O disciples, is impregnated with one
taste, the taste of salt, so also, my disciples, this Law and
Doctrine is impregnated with but one taste, with the taste of
deliverance."

To the Buddha, says Oldenburg, sorrow is not
merely a cloud over human life which will pass
away, but " sorrow and death pertain inseparably to
every state of being," not only to that of men and
animals, but even to that of those gods, or Devas,
who lie at the back alike of the Buddhist and of
the Hindu conceptions of existence.

" What think ye, disciples, whether is more, the water
which is in the four great oceans, or the tears which have

BUDDHISM 19

flown from you and have been shed by you, while ye strayed
and v/andered on this long pilgrimage, and sorrowed and
wept, because that was your portion which ye abhorred, and
that which ye loved was not your portion ? A mother's

death, a father's death the loss of relations,

all this ye have experienced through long ages. And
while ye have experienced this through long ages, more tears
have flown from you and have been shed by you ....
than all the water which is in the four great oceans."

But on the Buddha, under the Bo-Tree, there
dawns a way of escape. And to all who grasp the
four Truths, and follow on the Eightfold Path,
there will come the same release. For they will
have overcome the thirst and clinging to existence,
through the force of which the Karma of their
Action would otherwise have taken root in some
other existence. In their case, at any rate, the
chain of Transmigration is snapped, and they can
peacefully await till death brings the end.

It is this peaceful waiting which is described as
Nirvana^ or the " dying out."

To Western students of Buddhism, accustomed
to the idea of the immortality of the soul, it has
often seemed as if Nirvana must mean " annihila-
tion of existence," and that this is the goal of the
Buddhist. The greatest scholars of Buddhism,
however, deny this. They point out that Buddhism
concerns itself with this life only. Nirvana means
the dying out of the three cardinal sins, sensuality,
ill-will, and stupidity. It is the state of those who
have put away from them the thirst of life, and
peacefully await the end. Of any life beyond this,

ao BUDDHISM

whether conscious or unconscious, or something
different from either, Buddhism does not speak.
"The Exalted One has not revealed it."

And the same scholars point out that the
atmosphere which surrounds the early Buddhists K
no mere resignation, but expresses itself in hymns
of deepest joy.

" It is in very bliss we dwell, we who hate not those who
hate us ;

Among men full of hate, we continue void of hate.

It is in very bliss we dwell, we in health among the ailing ;

Among men weary and sick, we continue well.

It is in very bliss we dwell, free from care among the care-
worn ;

Among men full of worries, we continue calm.

It is in very bliss we dwell, we who have no hindrances;

We will become feeders on joy, like the gods In their shining
splendour,*'

BUDDHISM 21

II.

So much for the History and Doctrine of
Buddhism. We go on now to consider some of the,
hnts on which the Church of Christ is to make its
answer to it.

Stated very briefly, our answer is this — that
Buddhism denies or ignores some of the most funda-
mental instincts of man, instincts which, on the
other hand, find recognition and satisfaction in
Christianity.

Christianity is the Gospel of the Love of God.
God has made and controls all things, and made
them with a purpose ; man, that he might find his
highest happiness and usefulness in knowing God,
the world to be man's schooling-place, and life
man's opportunity for choosing God. If sin has
brought discord into the scheme of things, there is
yet hope, for God has entered into conflict with sin,
and the end will be victory.

Such a gospel is, in its very nature, universal.
We know not yet what it portends for the human
race, but we must proclaim it, and in proclaiming
it we find that certain assumptions or postulates
which lie at the back of Christianity lie also, how-
ever inarticulate, at the back of men's minds, and
make, as it were, a sort of common language, which
makes it possible for us to give and them to under-
stand our message. These assumptions are a belief
in God and a belief in the soul. God speaks to us
»nd we can speak to Him.

22 BUDDHISM

But when we turn to Buddhism, we find B
knows nothing of this common language ; knows
nothing of God, or the soul, or of the possibility of
intercourse between them.

It is quite possible that a Buddhist might object
to our argument, and say that we have no right to
speak of such beliefs as God, or the soul, as among
the fundamental instincts of the human race, for
they are not held by the Buddhists, and the
Buddhists are said to number a third of the human
race.

But this is just the point where we join issue —
not, indeed, with Buddhists, but with Buddhism.
The abstract Buddhism, thought out and taught by
Gautama, knows nothing of God, or soul, or sin, or
prayer, or sacrifice, but Buddhists, though swayed
and attracted by the gentle figure of Gautama, have
so widely rebelled against his negations that, to use
the words of Professor Rhys Davids, " not one of
the five hundred millions who offer flowers now and
then on Buddhist shrines, and who are moulded
more or less by Buddhist teaching, is only or
altogether a Buddhist." And we shall perceive, as
we go on, that the points, on which the Buddhist
rebels, are just those truths of God and the soul to
which we have referred, and which would seem to
be part of man's make or nature. It is not, *>., a
revolt of sinful wills, averse to noble ideals, though
no doubt there is plenty of such revolt in Buddhism
as there is in Christianity, but it is a revolt against
negations which would seem to be contrary to
men's nature.

BUDDHISM 23

Let us consider how some of these negations of
the Buddha fare among Buddhists.

(i) First — The negation of God.

It is true that the Gods or Devas of Hinduism
have found a place in Buddhism and figure in its
literature, but to none of them can we ascribe the
title of God in a Christian or theistic sense. They
are merely beings of a higher order than man, sub-
ject to all men's faults and miseries, and as depen-
dent as man for ultimate deliverance on following
the Buddha's method. They are, after all, but
" supers " in the play, and it is possible, in dis-
cussing the drama, to leave them out of considera-
tion altogether.

Are we wrong in suggesting that one feature in
Buddhism which recommends it to some Western
minds in this negation of God ? Certainly it seems
to be one of the points on which Europeans who
have capitulated to Buddhism and assumed the
yellow robe of the Buddhism monk lay particular
stress.

Writing in the sixth number of "Buddhism," the
Rangoon Magazine of the " Buddhasasana
Samagana," Sasanavamsa wrote as follows : —

" The Buddha does not deny the gods ; he has no reason
for doing so ; he merely ignores them, as indeed he could
not help but do. From this point of view the only thing of
interest is to find one's way out of the burning house of

sentient life .... the law of change is universal

it rules in >he Heavens as well as upon the earth ; and
whercsoeve- change is, there also is there suffering and
sorrow. "

24 BUDDHISM

The creed which reduces " God " to a nonentity
is as truly atheistic as that which denies Him out-
right, and in the same magazine the Bhikku Ananda
Metteya, leader of the Buddhist mission to
England in 1908, chooses the latter course. For
him the problem of pain clinches the matter. After
describing nature as "contrived for inflicting on
living creatures the greatest possible torment," he
concludes that if a man —

" Had once faith in God, in some great Being, who had
designed the Universe, he can no longer hold it ; for any
Being, as now he clearly sees, who would have contrived a
Universe wherein lies all this wanton war, this piteous mass
of pain co-terminous with life, must have been a Demon and
not a God."

So, again, in the first two numbers of the
" Buddhist Review," first published in England in
1909, there is the same insistence on the fact that
in Buddhism a religion is offered to mankind that
dispenses with " Belief."

But this very negation of God, which recom-
mends it to the Western agnostic, also explains the
loose hold of Buddhism on the Eastern mind.
Statistical returns of religions talk of the five
hundred millions of Buddhists, but there are few,
indeed, who do not supplement their creed with
some other system of belief. Burma is said to be
the land where Buddhism is most strongly operative,
and yet there, as in China or Japan, it has been
unable to crush out the older animistic faiths of the
people. " A thin veneer of philosophy laid over

BUDDHISM 25

the main structure of Shamanistic belief" was the
verdict of the Census Report of Burma in 1891.

Those who know the Burmese intimately testify
to the fact that, swayed as he is by the older
Animism, there is something yet more alien to
Buddhism at the back of his mind, and that is an
underlying conviction of the existence of God.
For illustration, we would refer our readers to an
article entitled " Buddhism in Burma " by the
Rev. G. Whitehead, in " The East and the West "
for January, 1907. Twice during the last 120
years have sects arisen in Burma to teach a theism
which is utterly opposed to Buddhism, and both
have had to be put down forcibly — the " Sodi," to
whom Father San Germane refers in his " Burmese
Empire," and the " Paramats," whose leader,
Maung Po, was impaled by the enlightened
Mindohn Min, father of Theebaw. Many of the
latter have found their way into the Christian
Church.

The evidence might be indefinitely multiplied if
the writer had more knowledge of the Northern
Buddhism of China, Japan, and Corea, for there
the atheism of Buddhism has been frankly cast
aside, and the Buddha himself has, to all intents
and purposes, become divine — worshipped as
Kwan-Yin, Goddess of Mercy, or as Amitabha
Buddha, who sits eternally enthroned in heaven,
and emanating from whom the Buddhas appear
from time to time on earth.

26 BUDDHISM

Or note, again, the strange disappearance of
Buddhism from India. We hear of but little
persecution, yet Buddhism vanishes from the land.
Either the early histories exaggerate the extent to
which Asoka constrained the people to Buddhism,
or else we have here a further witness to the fact
that the negations of Buddhism altogether fail to
hold the hearts of men. Can it be said of any
other great religion that it has been tried by a great
land like India, and, after experience, cast aside ?

In an article in the first number of " Buddhism "
1903, the Rangoon Magazine alluded to above,
there is an apposite illustration of what we are
trying to prove. The writer, Maung Po M6, is
seeking to show that the Burman is altogether a
Buddhist, but, in endeavouring to smile away the
Animism of his people, he only provides us with a
clearer illustration of its power. "If," he says,
"in times of sorrow, of calamities, we see the
Burmese Buddhist act otherwise [i.e., than in
accordance with Buddhist law and custom], we
must know that he has been faced by a riddle of
the universe and he cannot find a solution ; in his
performance of an old-time rite he may seek
consolation, but that does not mean that he has
found a solution of the riddle. He has merely
done that which is human and which he thinks
right."

Maung Po Me's last sentence is suggestive. In
ignoring the fundamental instincts of mankind,

BUDDHISM 27

Buddha has made it certain that his followers will
deny their faith whenever their deepest thoughts
are stirred. It is not that they are bad but simply
that they are " human."

(2) Next take the negation of the soul.

Here is a thoughtful English Buddhist's descrip-
tion of the doctrine of the soul, or rather, of the
non-soul, as taught by his new faith. It is taken
from " Buddhism,''' No. i : —

' ' There is nothing whatever, according to Buddhist ideas,
which re-incarnates, a term which implies the existence of a
ghost or soul in the being, which (as the Hindus believe)
passes over from body to body as a man changes his clothes.
Buddhism denies the existence of anything to re-incarnate ;
so Buddhism does not teach re-incarnation ; all that passes
over from life to life, according to our views, is this evolved
energy of the tendencies. A good simile of the idea
intended to be conveyed is that of the transmission of energy
commonly used in text books on physics. You place a
number of billiard balls in a line, each in contact with his
neighbour, and strike the end one ; the balls all along the
line cannot appreciably move because each has another in
front of it, but they transmit the energy, and the ball at the
other end of the row flies off, after a small interval of time."

But this belief of the learned Buddhist, well
versed in the Pali Texts, has very little influence on
the ordinary Buddhist crowd. The Burman goes
dutifully to the Pagoda, and ejaculates " Anicca,
Dukka, Anatta" — i.e. " impermanence, trouble,
unsubstantiality (or 'no soul,' 'no ego')," but
nevertheless, in his daily thoughts, he postulates a
soul, or " butterfly," which, when he dies, departs

28 BUDDHISM

to find some other bodily home, and they believe
that the " Karma " of their action goes along with
the soul, so that the next existence will be the
existence of their own soul, and not merely the
existence of some other being who merely inherits
their Karma. So, too, in the Jataka, the " Birth
Stories" of the Buddha, the popular tales which
describe all the existences through which he
passed before he achieved Buddhahood. It is
everywhere taken for granted that it is the same
personality which lives and loves, suffers and
rejoices in the ancient tales. And, after all, it is
the Jataka, and not the Pitaka, which are the
literature of the Burmese.

(3) Yet a third negation.

Buddhism fails to concern itself with that which
is the main trouble of mankind — its sin. To the
theist, God is the object of religion, and the main
obstacle to the realising of fellowship with God,
and, through fellowship, the happiness for which
man is made, is sin. But, just as Buddhism
ignores the object of religion, so it knows very
little of the obstacle. And here, again, Buddhism
runs counter to the instincts of mankind, for, as
Professor F. B. Jevons tells us : " If the facts of
comparative religion are to be interpreted, if any
meaning whatever is to be put upon them, they
show what we know, that the whole world groaneth
and travaileth in pain together under the sense of
sin, for an escape from sin, and for a means of
reconciliation with its God."

BUDDHISM 29

It is not that Buddhism altogether ignores sin.
Of sin conceived as a misery, as an evil which wrecks
man's life, as a burden which he helplessly and
hopelessly tries to fling off, Buddhism is full. ]Jut
while it pathetically describes the symptoms, it fails
to diagnose the cause, for the simple reason that it
knows not God. To the Buddha it is folly rather
than sin, and the chiefest of sins is ignorance.
There is none of that personal relation between
Creator and created, Heavenly Father and earthly
prodigal son, to throw light upon the problem.
Existence, for the Buddha, is a great casual
machine, grinding out results. Every act produces
its result, and so on from eternity to eternity. Of
the personal love which inspires men to repent, and
which promises to repentance, and to the change of
character which ever accompanies real repentance,
forgiveness, of that there is nothing in Buddhism.
An earthly father forgives his son, and the son is
thereby heartened and inspired to do better, and
this simple everyday occurrence helps us to accept
the great mystery of the Atonement, and to under-
stand, in part, the love of God. But of this the
Buddha knows nothing ; for him there is none to
hear, and none to answer.

Hence for the Buddhist the main problem is not
"sin," but "suffering." That "life is suffering'*
is the first Noble Truth.

To us this seems like thinking awry, for, believing
as we do in a God of Love, though suffering
remains in great part a dark cloud over life, yet
that cloud has a silver lining.

3°

BUDDHISM

Character, to the Christian, is the great end of
life, and the problem of life is the formation of
character in the face of the moral evil or sin which
has sprung up in rebellious wills, and in the solu-
tion of that problem pain has a place and does a
work which nothing else can do. It is not only
that pain tends to restrain man from sin, but it is
one of the strongest factors in the spiritual progress
of the race.

The Christian does not believe that God invented
pain, but he does believe that God uses it, and
that, in becoming incarnate, He subjected Himself
to the test, and showed men how to bear and use
it. To the Christian it seems much truer to say
that "Life is," not suffering, but "discipline," and
over against the first Noble Truth of Buddhism, lie
sets the words of Christ : " Blessed are they that
mourn." It is not an easy thing to say, but the
saints of God have taught us to say it, and that the
men of sorrow have lifted the world to higher
things is an assured truth of human experience as
well as of theological science.

So much then for the negations of Buddhism.
It would seem as if the mission of the Church
towards Buddhism is not so much to throw down
as to build up, not to attack the figure of Gautama
— who indeed does not feel its gentle spell ?— not
to attack its ethical ideals, though those ideals
disclose Hie essentially monastic character of
Buddhist morality ; but rather to address itself to
those presuppositions of religion which lie at the

BUDDHISM

base even of the Buddhist mind and lead many a
Buddhist to rebel at the negations of his master.
The Christian writer, Tertullian, spoke of the
witness of the soul " naturally Christian," meaning
that deep down within us all are already laid the
foundations of theism, and the yearnings which
predispose us to accept the love of God in Christ.
Augustine's oft-quoted words are appropriate here
too — " Our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee."
It is to such fundamental instincts that the
Christian missionary addresses himself, and he
rarely fails to find them, even in the Buddhist.

BUDDHISM

III.

Before closing this paper, it would be well to
make a few observations on Buddhist Ethics, No
one can deny that there is great beauty in much of
Buddhist ethical teaching. What especially appeals
to the Christian is on the one hand the refusal of
the Buddha to make the highest and best thoughts
on religion the property of one caste only, and on
the other his insistence that the outward observ-
ances of religion are as nothing compared with
inward purity of life. But as the true value of a
person lies not so much in what he is, but in what
he is becoming, so the true value of a system of
ethical teaching, and the place we are to assign it
as compared to other systems, lies in the motive
power which it offers to the moral life, and the
ideal to which it endeavours to lift men. If we
bear this in mind can we ever be in doubt as to
the relative value of Christian and Buddhist ethics?
The good Buddhist no doubt does often put the
Christian to shame, but we hold that there is in
Christianity a far higher motive power to goodness
than there can ever be in Buddhism.

For the Christian the motive, which is to inspire
him to the moral life, is gratitude ; gratitude to God
for creating him for endless life, for redeeming him
from the sin which would render him incapable of.
that life, and for sanctifying him and preparing him
for it. That lower motives often prevail among
Christians we do not deny, but a religion must be

BUDDHISM 33

judged by the motive which its founder supplies,
and the motive which Christ gave His followers
was gratitude to God. It is the same motive as
that which inspires children in a happy home to
love and serve their parents and each other.

What, on the other hand, is the motive ivhich
the Buddha sets before his disciples ? Can we say
it is anything more elevated than a desire to escape
from the suffering of life 1 What higher motives
could he offer, knowing as he did nothing of God
or of the value of the human soul ? He could not
speak of a more abundant life, or bid his disciples
covet earnestly the best gifts. He could only
teach them to distrust life and quench desire.

Consequently the Buddha's ideal is essentially
monastic. He does not teach men to live in the
world and make it something worthy of life, but
rather to separate from it.

Not that he ignored the laity ; for the laity, too,
Gautama had his precepts, and by following them
the laity could live a good life, and their " karma "
would ensure a better position in some other
existence for those who inherited it ; but the
highest salvation of all, the Nirvana, was only
possible for those who had renounced the ties
of home and the cares of life and donned the
yellow robe. Just as the Master himself had
been able to find peace only by leaving his home
and loved ones in Kapilavastu, so to reach the end
of sorrow must his followers embrace the life of
the mendicant.

34 BUDDHISM

Removing the character of a householder, like a tree,
whose leaves are cut off. clothed in a yellow robe, let one
wander alone as a rhinoceros.

There is none of that assurance that we find in
Christianity, that in whatever path of life our lot is
cast we may find salvation, and opportunities
enough of consecrating life to God : no assurance
that—

The trivial round, the common task

Will furnish all we need to ask,

Room to deny ourselves, a road

To lead us daily nearer God.

Nowhere is the monastic character of Buddhist
ethics clearer than in its conception of Love.
Buddhist love occasionally approaches Christian
love, but never really touches it ; it is benevolence
rather than beneficence, always characterised by a
certain aloofness from the joys and sorrows of men,
as different as can be from the love which touched
the leper and embraced the Cross.

On the one hand you find expressions in
Buddhist literature which seems almost an echo of
the New Testament.

Let a man overcome evil with good ; let a man overcome
the parsimonious with generosity ; let a man overcome the
liar with truth.

And then on the other hand, you find such
expressions as the following : —

Let no man ever look for what is pleasant or what is
unpleasant. Not to see what is pleasant is pain, and it is
pain to see what is unpleasant

Let no man therefore love anything : loss of the beloved
is evil. Those who love nothing have no fetters.

BUDDHISM 35

From love comes grief, from love comes fear ; he who is
free from love knows neither grief nor fear.

The attitude to life, which Gautama would seem
to have set before his followers as ideal, would
seem to be an indifference to life, and an aloofness
not only from the evil but also from those who are
struggling to do good, which at times seems
indistinguishable from selfishness.

Those who cause me pain and those who cause me joy, to
all I am alike ; affection and hatred I know not. In joy and
sorrow I remain unmoved, in honour and in dishonour ;
throughout I am alike. That is the perfection of my
equanimity.

In the " Wethandaya," the last of the Jataka
tales, there is a striking illustration which bears on
what we have said. The Wethandaya describes
among other things the culminating act of charity
by which in his last existence but one on earth the
future Buddha qualified for Buddhahood ; it was
the giving up to an old Brahmin, who wanted
them for his slaves, first his two children, and then
his wife. On being asked for the latter, says the
story —

He did not reply, "Yesterday I gave away my children
to the Brahmin, how can I give Maddi to you to be left
alone in the forest"? No! he was as though receiving a
purse of gold of a thousand pieces of gold ; indifferent,
unattached, with no clinging of mind he gave her up.

An English student of Buddhism would perhaps
take exception to the Jataka as a text-book on
Buddhism, but among Buddhists generally, and
certainly in Burma, it is the Jataka and not the

36 BUDDHISM

Pitaka which are the literature of the people, and
the great renunciation of the Prince Wethandaya
is the popular conception of Buddhist charity. It
is no doubt a caricature, but it comes perilously
near the truth.

Men are sometimes better, and sometimes worse
than their creed, and the Buddhist often excels
the Christian, and yet I think it would be fair to
say that while the grandest examples of Christian
love fall far behind the love of Christ, on the
other hand the grandest examples or ideas of self-
sacrificing love in the history of Buddhism lie
rather at the door of disciples of the Buddha who
have modified the teaching of their master.

Here again it seems to be the revolt of the
fundamental instincts. Human love will out.
The atmosphere of Gautama's benevolence has
been at times too cool for his warm-hearted
followers. So it is that while in the southern and
purer Buddhism the ideal of Arahatship and the
attainment of Nirvana, has ever been the ideal, the
northern and more corrupt Buddhists have set
before themselves the ideal of becoming Boddhi-
satvas or embryo Buddhas, that so they might live
on from age to age in a suffering world and help
mankind. And it is this northern Buddhism
which has made the greatest conquests.

Pure Buddhism has the thoroughness of a
system of abstract thought, but also its weakness.

BUDDHISM 37

The Buddha, wrapt in meditation beneath the Bo-
Tree, weaves his scheme of life, and from it
excludes all thought of God, or soul, or purpose in
the world. Aloofness from life, distrust of life and
its concerns, characterize all his attitude to it. But
we believe that that other Teacher, who toiled in
the carpenter's shop at Nazareth, on whose ear fell
daily the hum of life, who was seen at wedding
feasts, and wept at the graveside of a friend, and
over the doom of a city, knows more of the hearts
of men, and has for them a truer message.

With one other reflection we would close. It is
sometimes claimed that Buddhism has a more
acceptable message for an intellectual age like our
own. Before starting in 1908 on his Mission to
England, the Bhikku Ananda Metteya gave
expression to this idea in the pages of the Rangoon
Buddhist Magazine. Alluding to the strange
cessation of Buddhist expansion about the begin-
ning of the Christian era, he assigned it to the fact
that Buddhism demands for its acceptance a certain
degree of " mental and moral progress." " It
became the religion of the civilized third of the
human race, and thereafter entered upon a period
of cessation from outward activity, waiting these
centuries till another third of mankind should be
far enough advanced to accept the thinking world's
inheritance."

38 BUDDHISM

Whether Buddhism is a religion which will
attract many thinking Europeans remains to be
seen. There seem to be too many gaps in its
system ; its assumptions are too great ; and we do
not think many people will find " Karma " a
reasonable doctrine ; or will be prepared to assign
to tanha, or thirst, the power, which hitherto they
have ascribed to God, of calling new lives into
existence.

But we cannot help thinking that Ananda
Metteya probes for us the secret at once of
Buddhist failure and stagnation in the past, and
the reason why it never will be (in a pure,
unadulterated state) one of the world's religions.
Mankind, being what it is, does not want a religion
which presupposes "a certain degree of mental and
moral progress." It wants one which will take it
as it is, sinful and ignorant, and by so condescend-
ing to its misery, raises it out of its ignorance and
sin to better things. To the poor the Gospel is
preached," says the Christ ; " To the wise be-
longeth the law, not to the foolish," says the
Buddha. "Very unlike," says Oldenburg, most
dispassionate of writers on Buddhism, alluding to
this latter passage, " Very unlike the word of that
Man who suffered little children to come into
Him, for of such is the Kingdom of God. For
children, and those who are like children, the arms
of Buddha are not opened " ; and again, " to reach
the humble and wretched, the sorrowing, who
Indured yet another sorrow than the great universal

BUDDHISM 39

sorrow of impermanence, was not the province of
Buddhism."

Buddhism is attractive in its gentleness, but it
runs counter to the deeper thought of humanity,
and we do not wonder that it died out in the land
of its birth. Nor do we wonder that among the
470,000,000 votaries of the Buddha, there are few
who do not supplement their hopeless creed by
some other system of belief.

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A 000020761 3

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