It has long been known that many analogies exist between Buddhism
and Christianity. The ceremonies, ritual, and rites of the Buddhists
strikingly resemble those of the Roman Catholic Church. The Buddhist
priests are monks. They take the same three vows of poverty, chastity,
and obedience which are binding on those of the Roman Church. They are
mendicants, like the mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic.
They are tonsured; use strings of beads, like the rosary, with which
to count their prayers; have incense and candles in their worship; use
fasts, processions, litanies, and holy water. They have something akin
to the adoration of saints; repeat prayers in an unknown tongue; have
a chanted psalmody with a double choir; and suspend the censer from
five chains. In China, some Buddhists worship the image of a virgin,
called the Queen of Heaven, having an infant in her arms, and holding a
cross. In Thibet the Grand Lamas wear a mitre, dalmatica, and cope, and
pronounce a benediction on the laity by extending the right hand over
their heads. The Dalai-Lama resembles the Pope, and is regarded as the
head of the Church. The worship of relics is very ancient among the
Buddhists, and so are pilgrimages to sacred places.
Besides these resemblances in outward ceremonies, more important ones
appear in the inner life and history of the two religions. Both belong
to those systems which derive their character from a human founder, and
not from a national tendency; to the class which contains the religions
of Moses, Zoroaster, Confucius, and Mohammed, and not to that in which
the Brahmanical, Egyptian, Scandinavian, Greek, and Roman religions
are found. Both Buddhism and Christianity are catholic, and not
ethnic; that is, not confined to a single race or nation, but by their
missionary spirit passing beyond these boundaries, and making converts
among many races. Christianity began among the Jews as a Semitic
religion, but, being rejected by the Jewish nation, established itself
among the Aryan races of Europe. In the same way Buddhism, beginning
among an Aryan people--the Hindoos--was expelled from Hindostan, and
established itself among the Mongol races of Eastern Asia. Besides its
resemblances to the Roman Catholic side of Christendom, Buddhism has
still closer analogies with the Protestant Church. Like Protestantism,
it is a reform, which rejects a hierarchal system and does away with
a priestly caste. Like Protestantism, it has emphasized the purely
humane side of life, and is a religion of humanity rather than of
piety. Both the Christian and Buddhist churches teach a divine
incarnation, and both worship a God-man.
Are these remarkable analogies only casual resemblances, or are they
real affinities? By affinity we here mean genetic relationship. Are
Buddhism and Christianity related as mother and child, one being
derived from the other; or are they related by both being derived from
some common ancestor? Is either derived from the other, as Christianity
from Judaism, or Protestantism from the Papal Church? That there can
be no such affinity as this seems evident from history. History shows
no trace of the contact which would be required for such influence.
If Christianity had taken its customs from Buddhism, or Buddhism from
Christianity, there must have been ample historic evidence of the fact.
But, instead of this, history shows that each has grown up by its own
natural development, and has unfolded its qualities separately and
alone. The law of evolution also teaches that such great systems do not
come from imitation, but as growths from a primal germ.
Nor does history give the least evidence of a common ancestry from
which both took their common traits. We know that Buddhism was derived
from Brahmanism, and that Christianity was derived from Judaism. Now,
Judaism and Brahmanism have few analogies; they could not, therefore,
have transmitted to their offspring what they did not themselves
possess. Brahmanism came from an Aryan stock, in Central Asia; Judaism
from a Semitic stem, thousands of miles to the west. If Buddhism and
Christianity came from a common source, that source must have antedated
both the Mosaic and Brahmanical systems. Even then it would be a case
of atavism in which the original type disappeared in the children, to
reappear in the later descendants.
Are, then, these striking resemblances, and others which are still to
be mentioned, only accidental analogies? This does not necessarily
follow; for there is a third alternative. They may be what are
called in science homologies; that is, the same law working out
similar results under the same conditions, though under different
circumstances. The whale lives under different circumstances from other
mammalia; but being a mammal, he has a like osseous structure. What
seems to be a fin, being dissected, turns out to be an arm, with hand
and fingers. There are like homologies in history. Take the instance of
the English and French revolutions. In each case the legitimate king
was tried, condemned, and executed. A republic followed. The republic
gave way before a strong-handed usurper. Then the original race of
kings was restored; but, having learned nothing and forgotten nothing,
they were displaced a second time, and a constitutional monarch placed
on the throne, who, though not the legitimate king, still belonged
to the same race. Here the same laws of human nature have worked out
similar results; for no one would suggest that France had copied its
revolutions from England. And, in religion, human nature reproduces
similar customs and ceremonies under like conditions. When, for
instance, you have a mechanical system of prayer, in which the number
of prayers is of chief importance, there must be some way of counting
them, and so the rosary has been invented independently in different
religions. We have no room to point out how this law has worked in
other instances; but it is enough to refer to the principle.
Besides these resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity, there are
also some equally remarkable differences, which should be noticed.
The first of these is the striking fact that Buddhism has been unable
to recognize the existence of the Infinite Being. It has been called
atheism by the majority of the best authorities. Even Arthur Lillie,
who defends this system from the charge of agnosticism, says:[6] "An
agnostic school of Buddhism without doubt exists. It professes plain
atheism, and holds that every mortal, when he escapes from re-births,
and the causation of Karma by the awakenment of the Bodhi or gnosis,
will be annihilated. This Buddhism, by Eugène Burnouf, Saint-Hilaire,
Max Müller, Csoma de Körös, and, I believe, almost every writer of
note, is pronounced the original Buddhism,--the Buddhism of the South."
Almost every writer of note, therefore, who has studied Buddhism in
the Pâli, Singhalese, Chinese, and other languages, and has had direct
access to its original sources, has pronounced it a system of atheism.
But this opinion is opposed to the fact that Buddhists have everywhere
worshiped unseen and superhuman powers, erected magnificent temples,
maintained an elaborate ritual, and adored Buddha as the supreme ruler
of the worlds. How shall we explain this paradox? All depends on the
definition we give to the word "atheism." If a system is atheistic
which sees only the temporal, and not the eternal; which knows no
God as the author, creator, and ruler of Nature; which ascribes the
origin of the universe to natural causes, to which only the finite is
knowable, and the infinite unknowable--then Buddhism is atheism. But,
in that case, much of the polytheism of the world must be regarded as
atheism; for polytheism has largely worshiped finite gods. The whole
race of Olympian deities were finite beings. Above them ruled the
everlasting necessity of things. But who calls the Greek worshipers
atheists? The Buddha, to most Buddhists, is a finite being, one who has
passed through numerous births, has reached Nirvana, and will one day
be superseded by another Buddha. Yet, for the time, he is the Supreme
Being, Ruler of all the Worlds. He is the object of worship, and
really divine, if in a subordinate sense.
I would not, therefore, call this religion atheism. No religion which
worships superhuman powers can justly be called atheistic on account of
its meagre metaphysics. How many Christians there are who do not fully
realize the infinite and eternal nature of the Deity! To many He is no
more than the Buddha is to his worshipers,--a supreme being, a mighty
ruler, governing all things by his will. How few see God everywhere
in nature, as Jesus saw Him, letting his sun shine on the evil and
good, and sending his rain on the just and unjust. How few see Him in
all of life, so that not a sparrow dies, or a single hair of the head
falls, without the Father. Most Christians recognize the Deity only as
occasionally interfering by special providences, particular judgments,
and the like.
But in Christianity this ignorance of the eternal nature of God is the
exception, while in Buddhism it is the rule. In the reaction against
Brahmanism, the Brahmanic faith in the infinite was lost. In the
fully developed system of the ancient Hindoo religion the infinite
overpowered the finite, the temporal world was regarded as an illusion,
and only the eternal was real. The reaction from this extreme was so
complete as to carry the Buddhists to the exact opposite. If to the
Brahman all the finite visible world was only _maya_--illusion, to the
Buddhists all the infinite unseen world was unknowable, and practically
nothing.
Perhaps the most original feature of Christianity is the fact
that it has combined in a living synthesis that which in other
systems was divided. Jesus regarded love to God and love to man as
identical,--positing a harmonious whole of time and eternity, piety
and humanity, faith and works,--and thus laid the foundation of a
larger system than either Brahmanism or Buddhism. He did not invent
piety, nor discover humanity. Long before he came the Brahmanic
literature had sounded the deepest depths of spiritual life, and the
Buddhist missionaries had preached universal benevolence to mankind.
But the angelic hymn which foretold the new religion as bringing at
once "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to
men" indicated the essence of the faith which was at the same time a
heavenly love and an earthly blessing. This difference of result in the
two systems came probably from the different methods of their authors.
With Jesus life was the source of knowledge; the life was the light of
men. With the Buddha, reflection, meditation, thought was the source
of knowledge. In this, however, he included intuition no less than
reflection. Sakya-muni understood perfectly that a mere intellectual
judgment possessed little motive power; therefore he was not satisfied
till he had obtained an intuitive perception of truth. That alone gave
at once rest and power. But as the pure intellect, even in its highest
act, is unable to grasp the infinite, the Buddha was an agnostic on
this side of his creed by the very success of his method. Who, by
searching, can find out God? The infinite can only be known by the
process of living experience. This was the method of Jesus, and has
been that of his religion. For what is faith but that receptive state
of mind which waits on the Lord to receive the illumination which it
cannot create by its own processes? However this may be, it is probable
that the fatal defect in Buddhism which has neutralized its generous
philanthropy and its noble humanities has been the absence of the
inspiration which comes from the belief in an eternal world. Man is
too great to be satisfied with time alone, or eternity alone; he needs
to live from and for both. Hence, Buddhism is an arrested religion,
while Christianity is progressive. Christianity has shown the capacity
of outgrowing its own defects and correcting its own mistakes. For
example, it has largely outgrown its habit of persecuting infidels and
heretics. No one is now put to death for heresy. It has also passed out
of the stage in which religion is considered to consist in leaving the
world and entering a monastery. The anchorites of the early centuries
are no longer to be found in Christendom. Even in Catholic countries
the purpose of monastic life is no longer to save the soul by ascetic
tortures, but to attain some practical end. The Protestant Reformation,
which broke the yoke of priestly power and set free the mind of
Europe, was a movement originating in Christianity itself, like other
developments of a similar kind. No such signs of progress exist in
the system of Buddhism. It has lost the missionary ardor of its early
years; it has ceased from creating a vast literature such as grew up in
its younger days; it no longer produces any wonders of architecture.
It even lags behind the active life of the countries where it has its
greatest power.
It is a curious analogy between the two systems that, while neither
the Christ nor the Buddha practiced or taught asceticism, their
followers soon made the essence of religion to consist in some form
of monastic life. Both Jesus and Sakya-muni went about doing good.
Both sent their followers into the world to preach a gospel. Jesus,
after thirty years of a retired life, came among men "eating and
drinking," and associating with "publicans and sinners." Sakya-muni,
after spending some years as an anchorite, deliberately renounced that
mode of religion as unsatisfactory, and associated with all men, as
Jesus afterward did. Within a few centuries after their death, their
followers relapsed into ascetic and monastic practices; but with this
difference, that while in Christendom there has always been both a
regular and a secular clergy, in the Buddhist countries the whole
priesthood live in monasteries. They have no parish priests, unless
as an exception. While in Christian countries the clergy has become
more and more a practical body, in sympathy with the common life, in
Buddhist lands they live apart and exercise little influence on the
civil condition of the people.
Nor must we pass by the important fact that the word Christendom
is synonymous with a progressive civilization, while Buddhism is
everywhere connected with one which is arrested and stationary. The
boundaries of the Christian religion are exactly coextensive with
the advance of science, art, literature; and with the continued
accumulation of knowledge, power, wealth, and the comforts of human
life. According to Kuenen,[7] one of the most recent students of these
questions, this difference is due to the principle of hope which exists
in Christianity, but is absent in Buddhism. The one has always believed
in a kingdom of God here and a blessed immortality hereafter. Buddhism
has not this hope; and this, says Kuenen, "is a blank which nothing can
fill." So large a thinker as Albert Réville has expressed his belief
that even the intolerance of Christianity indicated a passionate love
of truth which has created modern science. He says that "if Europe had
not passed through those ages of intolerance, it is doubtful whether
the science of our day would ever have arrived."[8] It is only within
the boundaries of nations professing the Christian faith that we must
go to-day to learn the latest discoveries in science, the best works
of art, the most flourishing literature. Only within the same circle
of Christian states is there a government by law, and not by will.
Only within these boundaries have the rights of the individual been
secured, while the power of the state has been increased. Government
by law, joined with personal freedom, is only to be found where the
faith exists which teaches that God not only supports the universal
order of natural things, but is also the friend of the individual soul;
and in just that circle of states in which the doctrine is taught that
there is no individual soul for God to love and no Divine presence in
the order of nature, human life has subsided into apathy, progress has
ceased, and it has been found impossible to construct national unity.
Saint-Hilaire affirms[9] that "in politics and legislation the dogma
of Buddhism has remained inferior even to that of Brahmanism," and
"has been able to do nothing to constitute states or to govern them by
equitable rules." These Buddhist nations are really six: Siam, Burma,
Nepaul, Thibet, Tartary, and Ceylon. The activity and social progress
in China and Japan are no exceptions to this rule; for in neither
country has Buddhism any appreciable influence on the character of the
people.
To those who deny that the theology of a people influences its
character, it may be instructive to see how exactly the good and evil
influences of Buddhism correspond to the positive and negative traits
of its doctrine. Its merits, says Saint-Hilaire, are its practical
character, its abnegation of vulgar gratifications, its benevolence,
mildness, sentiment of human equality, austerity of manners, dislike of
falsehood, and respect for the family. Its defects are want of social
power, egotistical aims, ignorance of the ideal good, of the sense of
human right and human freedom, skepticism, incurable despair, contempt
of life. All its human qualities correspond to its doctrinal teaching
from the beginning. It has always taught benevolence, patience,
self-denial, charity, and toleration. Its defects arise inevitably
from its negative aim,--to get rid of sorrow and evil by sinking into
apathy, instead of seeking for the triumph of good and the coming of a
reign of God here on the earth.
As regards the Buddha himself, modern students differ widely. Some, of
course, deny his very existence, and reduce him to a solar myth. M.
Emile Senart, as quoted by Oldenberg,[10] following the Lalita Vistara
as his authority, makes of him a solar hero, born of the morning cloud,
contending by the power of light with the demons of darkness, rising in
triumph to the zenith of heavenly glory, then passing into the night of
Nirvana and disappearing from the scene.
The difficulty about this solar myth theory is that it proves too
much; it is too powerful a solvent; it would dissolve all history. How
easy it would be, in a few centuries, to turn General Washington and
the American Revolution into a solar myth! Great Britain, a region of
clouds and rain, represents the Kingdom of Darkness; America, with more
sunshine, is the Day. Great Britain, as Darkness, wishes to devour the
Young Day, or dawn of light, which America is about to diffuse over the
earth. But Washington, the solar hero, arrives. He is from Virginia,
that is, born of a virgin. He was born in February, in the sign of
Aquarius and the Fishes,--plainly referring to the birth of the sun
from the ocean. As the sun surveys the earth, so Washington was said to
be a surveyor of many regions. The story of the fruitless attempts of
the Indians to shoot him at Braddock's defeat is evidently legendary;
and, in fact, this battle itself must be a myth, for how can we suppose
two English and French armies to have crossed the Atlantic, and then
gone into a wilderness west of the mountains, to fight a battle? So
easy is it to turn history into a solar myth.
The character of Sakya-muni must be learned from his religion and from
authentic tradition. In many respects his character and influence
resembled that of Jesus. He opposed priestly assumptions, taught the
equality and brotherhood of man, sent out disciples to teach his
doctrine, was a reformer who relied on the power of truth and love.
Many of his reported sayings resemble those of Jesus. He was opposed
by the Brahmans as Jesus by the Pharisees. He compared the Brahmans
who followed their traditions to a chain of blind men, who move on,
not seeing where they go.[11] Like Jesus, he taught that mercy was
better than sacrifices. Like Jesus, he taught orally, and left no
writing. Jesus did not teach in Hebrew, but in the Aramaic, which was
the popular dialect, and so the Buddha did not speak to the people in
Sanskrit, but in their own tongue, which was Pâli. Like Jesus, he seems
to have instructed his hearers by parables or stories. He was one of
the greatest reformers the world has ever seen; and his influence,
after that of the Christ, has probably exceeded that of any one who
ever lived.
But, beside such real resemblances between these two masters, we are
told of others still more striking, which would certainly be hard to
explain unless one of the systems had borrowed from the other. These
are said to be the preëxistence of Buddha in heaven; his birth of a
virgin; salutation by angels; presentation in the temple; baptism by
fire and water; dispute with the doctors; temptation in the wilderness;
transfiguration; descent into hell; ascension into heaven.[12] If
these legends could be traced back to the time before Christ, then it
might be argued that the Gospels have borrowed from Buddhism. Such,
however, is not the fact. These stories are taken from the Lalita
Vistara, which, according to Rhys Davids,[13] was probably composed
between six hundred and a thousand years after the time of Buddha, by
some Buddhist poet in Nepaul. Rhys Davids, one of our best authorities,
says of this poem: "As evidence of what early Buddhism actually was,
it is of about the same value as some mediæval poem would be of the
real facts of the gospel history."[13] M. Ernest de Bunsen, in his work
on the "Angel Messiah," has given a very exhaustive statement, says
Mr. Davids, of all the possible channels through which Christians can
be supposed to have borrowed from the Buddhists. But Mr. Davids's
conclusion is that he finds no evidence of any such communications of
ideas from the East to the West.[14] The difference between the wild
stories of the Lalita Vistara and the sober narratives of the Gospels
is quite apparent. Another writer, Professor Seydel,[15] thinks, after
a full and careful examination, that only five facts in the Gospels
may have been borrowed from Buddhism. These are: (1) The fast of Jesus
before his work; (2) The question in regard to the blind man--"Who did
sin, this man, or his parents"? (3) The preëxistence of Christ; (4) The
presentation in the Temple; (5) Nathanael sitting under a fig-tree,
compared with Buddha under a Bo-tree. But Kuenen has examined these
parallels, and considers them merely accidental coincidences. And, in
truth, it is very hard to conceive of one religion borrowing its facts
or legends from another, if that other stands in no historic relation
to it. That Buddhism should have taken much from Brahmanism is natural;
for Brahmanism was its mother. That Christianity should have borrowed
many of its methods from Judaism is equally natural; for Judaism was
its cradle. Modern travelers in Burma and Tartary have found that the
Buddhists hold a kind of camp-meeting in the open air, where they pray
and sing. Suppose that some critic, noticing this, should assert that,
when Wesley and his followers established similar customs, they must
have borrowed them from the Buddhists. The absurdity would be evident.
New religions grow, they are not imitations.
It has been thought, however, that Christianity was derived from the
Essenes, because of certain resemblances, and it is argued that the
Essenes must have obtained their monastic habits from the Therapeutæ
in Egypt, and that the Therapeutæ received them from the Buddhists,
because they could not have found them elsewhere. This theory, however,
has been dismissed from the scene by the young German scholar,[16]
who has proved that the essay on the Therapeutæ ascribed to Philo was
really written by a Christian anchorite in the third or fourth century.
The result, then, of our investigation, is this: There is no
probability that the analogies between Christianity and Buddhism have
been derived the one from the other. They have come from the common and
universal needs and nature of man, which repeat themselves again and
again in like positions and like circumstances. That Jesus and Buddha
should both have retired into the wilderness before undertaking their
great work is probable, for it has been the habit of other reformers
to let a period of meditation precede their coming before the world.
That both should have been tempted to renounce their enterprise is
also in accordance with human nature. That, in after times, the simple
narratives should be overlaid with additions, and a whole mass of
supernatural wonders added,--as we find in the Apocryphal Gospels and
the Lalita Vistara,--is also in accordance with the working of the
human mind.
Laying aside all such unsatisfactory resemblances, we must regard the
Buddha as having been one of the noblest of men, and one whom Jesus
would have readily welcomed as a fellow worker and a friend. He opposed
a dominant priesthood, maintained the equal religious rights of all
mankind, overthrew caste, encouraged woman to take her place as man's
equal, forbade all bloody sacrifices, and preached a religion of peace
and good will, seeking to triumph only in the fair conflict of reason
with reason. If he was defective in the loftiest instincts of the soul;
if he knew nothing of the infinite and eternal; if he saw nothing
permanent in the soul of man; if his highest purpose was negative,--to
escape from pain, sorrow, anxiety, toil,--let us still be grateful for
the influence which has done so much to tame the savage Mongols, and to
introduce hospitality and humanity into the homes of Lassa and Siam. If
Edwin Arnold, a poet, idealizes him too highly, it is the better fault,
and should be easily forgiven. Hero-worshipers are becoming scarce in
our time; let us make the most of those we have.