THE BUDDHA COMPARED WITH OTHER RELIGIOUS TEACHERS
The personality of the Buddha invites comparison with the founders of
the other world-religions, Christ and Mohammed. We are tempted to ask
too if there is any resemblance between him and Confucius, a
contemporary Asiatic whose influence has been equally lasting, but here
there is little common ground. For Confucius's interest was mainly in
social and ethical problems, not in religion. He laid stress on those
ties of kinship and society, respecting which the Indian monk (like
Christ) sometimes spoke harshly, although there is a strong likeness
between the moral code of the Buddhist layman and Confucianism: he was
full of humility and respect for antiquity, whereas Gotama had a good
share of that self-confidence which is necessary for all who propound to
the world a new religion.[396]
But with Mohammed comparison, or rather contrast, is easier. Both were
seekers after truth: both found what they believed to be the truth only
when of mature years, Gotama when about thirty-six, Mohammed when forty
or more: both lived to be elderly men and possessed great authority. But
there the analogy ends. Perhaps no single human being has had so great
an effect on the world as Mohammed. His achievements are personal and,
had he never lived, it is not clear that the circumstances of the age
would have caused some one else to play approximately the same part. He
more than Cæsar or Alexander was individually the author of a movement
which transformed part of three continents. No one else has been able to
fuse the two noble instincts of religion and empire in so perfect a
manner, perfect because the two do not conflict or jar, as do the
teachings of Christ and the pretensions of his Church to temporal power.
But it is precisely this fusion of religion and politics which
disqualifies Islam as a universal religion and prevents it from
satisfying the intellectual and spiritual wants of that part of humanity
which is most intellectual and most spiritual. Law and religion are
inextricably mixed in it and a Moslim, more than the most superstitious
of Buddhists or Christians, is bound by a vast number of ties and
observances which have nothing to do with religion. It is in avoiding
these trammels that the superior religious instinct of Gotama shows
itself. He was aided in this by the temper of his times. Though he was
of the warrior caste and naturally brought into association with
princes, he was not on that account tempted to play a part in politics,
for to the Hindus, then as now, renunciation of the world was
indispensable for serious religion and there is no instance of a teacher
obtaining a hearing among them without such renunciation as a
preliminary. According to Indian popular ideas a genius might become
either an Emperor or a Buddha but not like Mohammed a mixture of the
two. But the danger which beset Gotama, and which he consistently and
consciously avoided, though Mohammed could not, was to give
authoritative decisions on unessential points as to both doctrine and
practice. There was clearly a party which wished to make the rule of his
order more severe and, had he consented, the religious world of his day
would have approved. But by so doing he would have made Buddhism an
Indian sect like Jainism, incapable of flourishing in lands with other
institutions. If Buddhism has had little influence outside Asia, that is
because there are differences of temperament in the world, not because
it sanctions anachronisms or prescribes observances of a purely local
and temporary value. In all his teaching Gotama insists on what is
essential only and will not lend his name and authority to what is
merely accessory. He will not for instance direct or even recommend his
disciples to be hermits. "Whoever wishes may dwell in a wood and whoever
wishes may dwell near a village." And in his last days he bade them be a
light unto themselves and gave them authority to change all the lesser
precepts. It is true that the order decided to make no use of this
permission, but the spirit which dictated it has shaped the destinies of
the faith.
Akin to this contrast is another—that between the tolerance of Gotama
and the persecuting spirit of Islam. Mohammed and his followers never
got rid of the idea that any other form of religion is an insult to the
Almighty: that infidels should if possible be converted by compulsion,
or, if that were impossible, allowed to exist only on sufferance and in
an inferior position. Such ideas were unknown to Gotama. He laboured not
for his own or his Creator's glory but simply and solely to benefit
mankind. Conversion by force had no meaning for him, for what he desired
was not a profession of allegiance but a change of disposition and amid
many transformations his Church has not lost this temper.
When we come to compare Gotama and Christ we are struck by many
resemblances of thought but also by great differences of circumstances
and career. Both were truly spiritual teachers who rose above forms and
codes: both accepted the current ideals of their time and strove to
become the one a Buddha, the other Messiah. But at the age when Christ
was executed Gotama was still in quest of truth and still on the wrong
track. He lived nearly fifty years longer and had ample opportunity of
putting his ideas into practice. So far as our meagre traditions allow
us to trace the development of the two, the differences are even more
fundamental. Peaceful as was the latter part of Gotama's life, the
beginning was a period of struggle and disillusion. He broke away from
worldly life to study philosophy: he broke away from philosophy to wear
out his body with the severest mortification; that again he found to be
vanity and only then did he attain to enlightenment. And though he
offers salvation to all without distinction, he repeatedly says that it
is difficult: with hard wrestling has he won the truth and it is hard
for ordinary men to understand.
Troubled as was the life of Christ, it contains no struggle of this
sort. As a youth he grew up in a poor family where the disenchantment of
satiety was unknown: his genius first found expression in sermons
delivered in the synagogue—the ordinary routine of Jewish ritual: his
appearance as a public teacher and his ultimate conviction that he was
the Messiah were a natural enlargement of his sphere, not a change of
method: the temptation, though it offers analogies to Gotama's mental
struggle and particularly to the legends about Mâra, was not an internal
revolution in which old beliefs were seen to be false and new knowledge
arose from their ashes. So far as we know, his inner life was continuous
and undisturbed, and its final expression is emotional rather than
intellectual. He gives no explanations and leaves no feeling that they
are necessary. He is free in his use of metaphor and chary of
definition. The teaching of the Buddha on the other hand is essentially
intellectual. The nature and tastes of his audience were a sufficient
justification for his style, but it indicates a temper far removed from
the unquestioning and childlike faith of Christ. We can hardly conceive
him using such a phrase as Our Father, but we may be sure that if he had
done so he would have explained why and how and to what extent such
words can be properly used of the Deity.
The most sceptical critics of the miracles recorded in the Gospels can
hardly doubt that Christ possessed some special power of calming and
healing nervous maladies and perhaps others. Sick people naturally
turned to him: they were brought to him when he arrived in a town.
Though the Buddha was occasionally kind to the sick, no such picture is
drawn of the company about him and persons afflicted with certain
diseases could not enter the order. When the merchant Anâthapiṇḍika is
seriously ill, he sends a messenger with instructions to inform the
Buddha and Sâriputta of his illness and to add in speaking to Sâriputta
that he begs him to visit him out of compassion[397]. He does not
presume to address the same request to the Buddha. Christ teaches that
the world is evil or, perhaps we should say, spoiled, but wishes to
remove the evil and found the Kingdom of Heaven: the Buddha teaches that
birth, sickness and death are necessary conditions of existence and that
disease, which like everything else has its origin in Karma, can be
destroyed only when the cause is destroyed[398]. Nor do we find ascribed
to him that love of children and tenderness towards the weak and erring
which are beautiful features in the portrait of Christ[399]. He had no
prejudices: he turned robust villains like Angulimâla, the brigand, into
saints and dined with prostitutes but one cannot associate him with
simple friendly intercourse. When he accepted invitations he did not so
much join in the life of the family which he visited as convert the
entertainment offered to him into an edifying religious service. Yet in
propaganda and controversy he was gracious and humane beyond the measure
of all other teachers. He did not call the priests of his time a
generation of vipers, though he laughed at their ceremonies and their
pretensions to superior birth.
Though the Buddha passed through intellectual crises such as the
biographies of Christ do not hint at, yet in other matters it is he
rather than Christ who offers a picture and example of peace. Christ
enjoyed with a little band of friends an intimacy which the Hindu gave
to none, but from the very commencement of his mission he is at enmity
with what he calls the world. The world is evil and a great event is
coming of double import, for it will bring disaster on the wicked as
well as happiness for the good. "Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is
at hand." He is angry with the world because it will not hear him. He
declares that it hates him and the gospel according to St John even
makes him say, "I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast
given me[400]." The little towns of Galilee are worse in his eyes than
the wicked cities of antiquity because they are not impressed by his
miracles and Jerusalem which has slighted all the prophets and finally
himself is to receive signal punishment. The shadow of impending death
fell over the last period of his ministry and he felt that he was to be
offered as a sacrifice. The Jews even seem to have thought at one time
that he was unreasonably alarmed[401].
But the Buddha was not angry with the world. He thought of it as
unsatisfactory and transitory rather than wicked, as ignorant rather
than rebellious. He troubled little about people who would not listen.
The calm and confidence which so many narratives attribute to him rarely
failed to meet with the respect which they anticipated. In his life
there is no idea of sacrifice, no element of the tragic, no nervous
irritability. When Devadatta meditated his assassination, he is
represented as telling his disciples that they need not be uneasy
because it was physically impossible to kill a Buddha. The saying is
perhaps not historical but it illustrates Indian sentiment. In his
previous existences, when preparing for Buddhahood, he had frequently
given his life for others, not because it was any particular good to
them but in order to perfect his character for his own great career and
bring about the selflessness which is essential to a Buddha. When once
he had attained enlightenment any idea of sacrifice, such as the
shepherd laying down his life for the sheep, had no meaning. It would be
simply the destruction of the more valuable for the less valuable. Even
the modern developments of Buddhism which represent the Buddha Amida as
a saviour do not contain the idea that he gives up his life for his
followers.
Gotama instituted a religious order and lived long enough to see it grow
out of infancy, but its organization was gradual and for a year or two
it was simply a band of disciples not more bound by rules than the
seventy whom Christ sent forth to preach. Would Christ, had he lived
longer, have created something analogous to the Buddhist _sangha_, a
community not conflicting with national and social institutions but
independent of them? The question is vain and to Europeans Christ's
sketch of the Christian life will appear more satisfactory than the
finished portrait of the Bhikkhu. But though his maxims are the perfect
expression of courtesy and good feeling with an occasional spice of
paradox, such as the command to love one's enemies, yet the experience
of nearly twenty centuries has shown that this morality is not for the
citizens of the world. The churches which give themselves his name
preach with rare exceptions that soldiering, financing and the business
of government—things about which he cared as little as do the birds and
the lilies of the field—are the proper concern of Christian men and one
wonders whether he would not, had his life been prolonged, have seen
that many of his precepts, such as turning the other cheek and not
resisting evil, are incompatible with ordinary institutions and have
followed the example of the great Indian by founding a society in which
they could be kept. The monastic orders of the Roman and Eastern
Churches show that such a need was felt.
There are many resemblances between the Gospels and the teaching of the
Buddha but the bases of the two doctrines are different and, if the
results are sometimes similar, this shows that the same destination can
be reached by more than one road. It is perhaps the privilege of genius
to see the goal by intuition: the road and the vehicle are subsidiary
and may be varied to suit the minds of different nations. Christ, being
a Jew, took for his basis a refined form of the old Jewish theism. He
purged Jehovah of his jealousy and prejudices and made him a spirit of
pure benevolence who behaves to men as a loving father and bids them
behave to one another as loving brethren. Such ideas lie outside the
sphere of Gotama's thought and he would probably have asked why on this
hypothesis there is any evil in the world. That is a question which the
Gospels are chary of discussing but they seem to indicate that the
disobedience and sinfulness of mankind are the root of evil. A godly
world would be a happy world. But the Buddha would have said that though
the world would be very much happier if all its inhabitants were moral
and religious, yet the evils inherent in individual existence would
still remain; it would still be impermanent and unsatisfactory.
Yet the Buddha and Christ are alike in points which are of considerable
human interest, though they are not those emphasized by the Churches.
Neither appears to have had much taste for theology or metaphysics.
Christ ignored them: the Buddha said categorically that such
speculations are vain. Indeed it is probably a general law in religions
that the theological phase does not begin until the second generation,
when the successors of the founder try to interpret and harmonize his
words. He himself sees clearly and says plainly what mankind ought to
do. Neither the Buddha, nor Christ, nor Mohammed cared for much beyond
this, and such of their sayings as have reference to the whence, the
whither and the why of the universe are obscure precisely because these
questions do not fall within the field of religious genius and receive
no illumination from its light. Argumentative as the Buddhist suttas
are, their aim is strictly practical, even when their language appears
scholastic, and the burden of all their ratiocination is the same and
very simple. Men are unhappy because of their foolish desires: to become
happy they must make themselves a new heart and will and, perhaps the
Buddha would have added, new eyes.
Neither the Buddha nor Christ thought it worth while to write anything
and both of them ignored ceremonial and sacerdotal codes in a way which
must have astounded their contemporaries. The law-books and sacrifices
to which Brahmans and Pharisees devoted time and study are simply left
on one side. The former are replaced by injunctions to cultivate a good
habit of mind, such as is exemplified in the Eightfold Path and the
Beatitudes, the latter by some observances of extreme simplicity, such
as the Pâtimokkha and the Lord's Prayer. In both cases subsequent
generations felt that the provision made by the Founders was inadequate
and the Buddhist and Christian Churches have multiplied ceremonies
which, though not altogether unedifying, would certainly have astonished
Gotama and Christ.
For Christ the greatest commandments were that a man should love God and
his neighbours. This summary is not in the manner of Gotama and though
love (mettâ) has an important place in his teaching, it is rather an
inseparable adjunct of a holy life than the force which creates and
animates it. In other words the Buddha teaches that a saint must love
his fellow men rather than that he who loves his fellow men is a saint.
But the passages extolling _mettâ_ are numerous and striking, and
European writers have, I think, shown too great a disposition to
maintain that _mettâ_ is something less than Christian love and little
more than benevolent equanimity. The love of the New Testament is not
eros but agape, a new word first used by Jewish and Christian writers
and nearly the exact equivalent of _mettâ_. For both words love is
rather too strong a rendering and charity too weak. Nor is it just to
say that the Buddha as compared with Christ preaches inaction. The
Christian nations of Europe are more inclined to action than the
Buddhist nations of Asia, yet the Beatitudes do not indicate that the
strenuous life is the road to happiness. Those declared blessed are the
poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry, the pure and the persecuted.
Such men have just the virtues of the patient Bhikkhu and like Christ
the Buddha praised the merciful and the peacemakers. And similarly
Christ's phrase about rendering unto Cæsar the things that are Caesar's
seems to dissociate his true followers (like the Bhikkhus) from
political life. Money and taxes are the affair of those who put their
heads on coins; God and the things which concern him have quite another
sphere.