Volume I Part 3 (1/2)
Buddhism has a twofold aspect,--_practical_ and _speculative_. In its most definite form it was a moral and philanthropic movement,--the reaction against Brahmanism, which had no humanity, and which was as repulsive and oppressive as Roman Catholicism was when loaded down with ritualism and sacerdotal rites, when Europe was governed by priests, when churches were damp, gloomy crypts, before the tall cathedrals arose in their artistic beauty.
From a religious and philosophical point of view, Buddhism at first did not materially differ from Brahmanism. The same dreamy pietism, the same belief in the transmigration of souls, the same pantheistic ideas of G.o.d and Nature, the same desire for rest and final absorption in the divine essence characterized both. In both there was a certain principle of faith, which was a feeling of reverence rather than the recognition of the unity and personality and providence of G.o.d. The prayer of the Buddhist was a yearning for deliverance from sorrow, a hope of final rest; but this was not to be attained until desires and pa.s.sions were utterly suppressed in the soul, which could be effected only by prayer, devout meditations, and a rigorous self-discipline. In order to be purified and fitted for Nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pa.s.s through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without conscious recollection,--innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and disease. And the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence.
Buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the wors.h.i.+p of a personal G.o.d is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the charge of atheism. He even supposed that G.o.ds were subject to death, and must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in Nirvana. Nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor death, where there is no sorrow or disease,--an impa.s.sive state of existence, absorption in the Spirit of the Universe. In the Buddhist catechism Nirvana is defined as the ”total cessation of changes; a perfect rest; the absence of desire, illusion, and sorrow; the total obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man.” This theory of re-births, or transmigration of souls, is very strange and unnatural to our less imaginative and subtile Occidental minds; but to the speculative Orientals it is an attractive and reasonable belief.
They make the ”spirit” the immortal part of man, the ”soul” being its emotional embodiment, its ”spiritual body,” whose unsatisfied desires cause its birth and re-birth into the fleshly form of the physical ”body,”--a very brief and temporary incarnation. When by the progressive enlightenment of the spirit its longings and desires have been gradually conquered, it no longer needs or has embodiment either of soul or of body; so that, to quote Elliott Coues in Olcott's ”Buddhist Catechism,”
”a spirit in a state of conscious formlessness, subject to no further modification by embodiment, yet in full knowledge of its experiences [during its various incarnations], is Nirvanic.”
Buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy religion. It is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease, misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided intellect to arrive at a knowledge of G.o.d and immortal bliss. It would thus seem that the true idea of G.o.d, or even that of immortality, is not an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain no clearer or more inspiring notions of the Being of infinite love and power, or of the happiness which He is able and willing to impart? What a feeble conception of G.o.d is a being without the oversight of the worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or anything corresponding to our notion of personality! What a poor conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy companions.h.i.+p,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease, misery, and death, a state of endless impa.s.siveness! What is Nirvana but an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no life,--a state of nonent.i.ty, where even consciousness is practically extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a dreamless rest? What a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final achievement of exalted virtue!
But if Buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true knowledge of G.o.d and the destiny of the soul,--the forgiveness and remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality, all which I take to be revelations rather than intuitions,--yet there were some great cert.i.tudes in its teachings which did appeal to consciousness,--cert.i.tudes recognized by the n.o.blest teachers of all ages and nations. These were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity, purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love. The human mind arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about G.o.d and immortality has failed. The idea of G.o.d may be lost, but not that of moral obligation,--the mutual social duties of mankind. There is a sense of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true admiration of virtue. No sage that I ever read of enjoined immorality.
No ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty.
Everybody detests a liar and despises a thief. Thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,--these are laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of Moses.
Obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations.
Hence the prince Siddartha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests, and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of deity. In all this he showed an enlightened mind, governed by wisdom and truth, and even a bold and original genius,--like Abraham when he disowned the G.o.ds of his fathers. Having thus himself gained the security of the heights, Buddha longed to help others up, and turned his attention to the moral instruction of the people of India. He was emphatically a missionary of ethics, an apostle of righteousness, a reformer of abuses, as well as a tender and compa.s.sionate man, moved to tears in view of human sorrows and sufferings. He gave up metaphysical speculations for practical philanthropy. He wandered from city to city and village to village to relieve misery and teach duties rather than theological philosophies. He did not know that G.o.d is love, but he did know that peace and rest are the result of virtuous thoughts and acts.
”Let us then,” said he, ”live happily, not hating those who hate us; free from greed among the greedy.... Proclaim mercy freely to all men; it is as large as the s.p.a.ces of heaven.... Whoever loves will feel the longing to save not himself alone, but all others.” He compares himself to a father who rescues his children from a burning house, to a physician who cures the blind. He teaches the equality of the s.e.xes as well as the injustice of castes. He enjoins kindness to servants and emanc.i.p.ation of slaves. ”As a mother, as long as she lives, watches over her child, so among all beings,” said Gautama, ”let boundless good-will prevail.... Overcome evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the false with truth.... Never forget thy own duty for the sake of another's.... If a man speaks or acts with evil thoughts pain follows, as the wheel the foot of him who draws the carriage.... He who lives seeking pleasure, and uncontrolled, the tempter will overcome.... The true sage dwells on earth, as the bee gathers sweetness with his mouth and wings.... One may conquer a thousand men in battle, but he who conquers himself alone is the greatest victor.... Let no man think lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'It cannot overtake me.'... Let a man make himself what he preaches to others.... He who holds back rising anger as one might a rolling chariot, him, indeed, I call a driver; others may hold the reins.... A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me.”
These are some of the sayings of the Indian reformer, which I quote from extracts of his writings as translated by Sanskrit scholars. Some of these sayings rise to a height of moral beauty surpa.s.sed only by the precepts of the great Teacher, whom many are too fond of likening to Buddha himself. The religion of Buddha is founded on a correct and virtuous life, as the only way to avoid sorrow and reach Nirvana. Its essence, theologically, is ”Quietism,” without firm belief in anything reached by metaphysic speculation; yet morally and practically it inculcates enn.o.bling, active duties.
Among the rules that Buddha laid down for his disciples were--to keep the body pure; not to enter upon affairs of trade; to have no lands and cattle, or houses, or money; to abhor all hypocrisy and dissimulation; to be kind to everything that lives; never to take the life of any living being; to control the pa.s.sions; to eat food only to satisfy hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection.
His fundamental principles are purity of mind, chast.i.ty of life, truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. He does not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no G.o.d to whom they can be offered; but ”he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the fatherhood of G.o.d.” He insisted on the natural equality of all men,--thus giving to caste a mortal wound, which offended the Brahmans, and finally led to the expulsion of his followers from India. He protested against all absolute authority, even that of the Vedas. Nor did he claim, any more than Confucius, originality of doctrines, only the revival of forgotten or neglected truths. He taught that Nirvana was not attained by Brahmanical rites, but by individual virtues; and that punishment is the inevitable result of evil deeds by the inexorable law of cause and effect.
Buddhism is essentially rationalistic and ethical, while Brahmanism is a pantheistic tendency to polytheism, and ritualistic even to the most offensive sacerdotalism. The Brahman reminds me of a Dunstan,--the Buddhist of a Benedict; the former of the gloomy, spiritual despotism of the Middle Ages,--the latter of self-denying monasticism in its best ages. The Brahman is like Thomas Aquinas with his dogmas and metaphysics; the Buddhist is more like a mediaeval freethinker, stigmatized as an atheist. The Brahman was so absorbed with his theological speculation that he took no account of the sufferings of humanity; the Buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of existence itself,--since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin misery. As a religion Buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. Its weak points, practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, the multiplication of lazy fraternities and useless retreats, reminding us of monastic inst.i.tutions in the days of Chaucer and Luther. The Buddhist priest is a mendicant and a pauper, clothed in rags, begging his living from door to door, in which he sees no disgrace and no impropriety.
Buddhism failed to enn.o.ble the daily occupations of life, and produced drones and idlers and religious vagabonds. In its corruption it lent itself to idolatry, for the Buddhist temples are filled with hideous images of all sorts of repulsive deities, although Buddha himself did not hold to idol wors.h.i.+p any more than to the belief in a personal G.o.d.
”Buddhism,” says the author of its accepted catechism, ”teaches goodness without a G.o.d, existence without a soul, immortality without life, happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption without a redeemer, and wors.h.i.+p without rites.” The failure of Buddhism, both as a philosophy and a religion, is a confirmation of the great historical fact, that in the ancient Pagan world no efforts of reason enabled man unaided to arrive at a true--that is, a helpful and practically elevating--knowledge of deity. Even Buddha, one of the most gifted and excellent of all the sages who have enlightened the world, despaired of solving the great mysteries of existence, and turned his attention to those practical duties of life which seemed to promise a way of escaping its miseries. He appealed to human consciousness; but lacking the inspiration and aid which come from a sense of personal divine influence, Buddhism has failed, on the large scale, to raise its votaries to higher planes of ethical accomplishment. And hence the necessity of that new revelation which Jesus declared amid the moral ruins of a crumbling world, by which alone can the debasing superst.i.tions of India and the G.o.dless materialism of China be replaced with a vital spirituality,--even as the elaborate mythology of Greece and Rome gave way before the fervent earnestness of Christian apostles and martyrs.
It does not belong to my subject to present the condition of Buddhism as it exists to-day in Thibet, in Siam, in China, in j.a.pan, in Burmah, in Ceylon, and in various other Eastern countries. It spread by reason of its sympathy with the poor and miserable, by virtue of its being a great system of philanthropy and morals which appealed to the consciousness of the lower cla.s.ses. Though a proselyting religion it was never a persecuting one, and is still distinguished, in all its corruption, for its toleration.
AUTHORITIES.
The chief authorities that I would recommend for this chapter are Max Muller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; Rev. S. Seal's Buddhism in China; Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys-Davids; Monier Williams's Sakoontala; I. Muir's Sanskrit Texts; Burnouf's Essai sur la Veda; Sir William Jones's Works; Colebrook's Miscellaneous Essays; Joseph Muller's Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy; Manual of Buddhism, by R. Spence Hardy; Dr. H. Clay Trumbull's The Blood Covenant; Orthodox Buddhist Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, edited by Prof. Elliott C. Coues. I have derived some instruction from Samuel Johnson's bulky and diffuse books, but more from James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions^ and Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World.
RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
CLa.s.sIC MYTHOLOGY.
Religion among the lively and imaginative Greeks took a different form from that of the Aryan race in India or Persia. However the ideas of their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life of the people, their G.o.ds were neither abstractions nor symbols. They were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes like ordinary mortals. They love, they hate, they eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures.
It was not their aim ”to raise mortals to the skies,” but to enjoy themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world, but to protect their particular wors.h.i.+ppers,--taking part and interest in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind.
The religion of Greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology.
Yet in some respects the G.o.ds of Greece resembled those of Phoenicia and Egypt, being the powers of Nature, and named after the sun, moon, and planets. Their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in India and Egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.