from China to Japan and Ceylon, until Eastern Asia was filled with
pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some
eighty-five thousand existed in China alone. Buddha probably had as many
converts in China as Confucius himself. The Buddhists from time to time
were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of China, in which
their sacred books were destroyed; and in India the Brahmans at last
regained their power, and expelled Buddhism from the country. In the
year 845 A.D. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to
return to secular life in China, being regarded as mere drones,--lazy
and useless members of the community. But the policy of persecution was
reversed by succeeding emperors. In the thirteenth century there were in
China nearly fifty thousand Buddhist temples and two hundred and
thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the
professed adherents of the religion. Under the present dynasty the
Buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish.
Now, what has given to the religion of Buddha such an extraordinary
attraction for the people of Eastern Asia?
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 God
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 God. 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 passions 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 pass
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 worship of a personal
God is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the
charge of atheism. He even supposed that gods 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 impassive 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 God and immortal bliss. It would
thus seem that the true idea of God, 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 God 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
companionship,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease,
misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness! 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 nonentity, 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 God 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 certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to
consciousness,--certitudes recognized by the noblest 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 God and
immortality has failed. The idea of God 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 Siddârtha, 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 gods 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 compassionate 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 God 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 spaces 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 sexes as
well as the injustice of castes. He enjoins kindness to servants and
emancipation 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 surpassed 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 ennobling, 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 passions; 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, chastity 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 god to whom they can be offered;
but "he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the
fatherhood of God." 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 institutions 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 ennoble 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 worship any more than to the belief in a personal God.
"Buddhism," says the author of its accepted catechism, "teaches goodness
without a God, existence without a soul, immortality without life,
happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption
without a redeemer, and worship 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
superstitions of India and the godless 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 Japan, 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 classes. 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
Müller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; Rev. S. Seal's Buddhism
in China; Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys-Davids; Monier Williams's Sákoontalá;
I. Muir's Sanskrit Texts; Burnouf's Essai sur la Vêda; 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.
CLASSIC 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 gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. They
were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with
passions and appetites 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 worshippers,--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 gods 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.
They taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they
held in extraordinary reverence. They were not ascetics or enthusiasts;
among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal
class of the Jews or the Hindus. They had even no sacred books, and
claimed no esoteric knowledge. Nor was their office hereditary. They
were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people
themselves; they imposed no restraints on the conscience, and apparently
cared little for morals, leaving the people to an unbounded freedom to
act and think for themselves, so far as they did not interfere with
prescribed usages and laws. The real objects of Greek worship were
beauty, grace, and heroic strength. The people worshipped no supreme
creator, no providential governor, no ultimate judge of human actions.
They had no aspirations for heaven and no fear of hell. They did not
feel accountable for their deeds or thoughts or words to an irresistible
Power working for righteousness or truth. They had no religious sense,
apart from wonder or admiration of the glories of Nature, or the good or
evil which might result from the favor or hatred of the divinities
they accepted.
These divinities, moreover, were not manifestations of supreme power and
intelligence, but were creations of the fancy, as they came from popular
legends, or the brains of poets, or the hands of artists, or the
speculations of philosophers. And as everything in Greece was beautiful
and radiant,--the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the valleys,--so was
religion cheerful, seen in all the festivals which took the place of the
Sabbaths and holy-days of more spiritually minded peoples. The
worshippers of the gods danced and played and sported to the sounds of
musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and
imposing processions,--in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate
the senses. The gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in
sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be
adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. "Heaven was so near
at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods." Every
grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its
presiding deity; while every wonder of Nature,--the sun, the moon, the
stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,--was impersonated as an
awful power for good or evil. To them temples were erected, within which
were their shrines and images in human shape, glistening with gold and
gems, and wrought in every form of grace or strength or beauty, and by
artists of marvellous excellence.
This polytheism of Greece was exceedingly complicated, but was not so
degrading as that of Egypt, since the gods were not represented by the
forms of hideous animals, and the worship of them was not attended by
revolting ceremonies; and yet it was divested of all spiritual
aspirations, and had but little effect on personal struggles for truth
or holiness. It was human and worldly, not lofty nor even reverential,
except among the few who had deep religious wants. One of its
characteristic features was the acknowledged impotence of the gods to
secure future happiness. In fact, the future was generally ignored, and
even immortality was but a dream of philosophers. Men lived not in view
of future rewards and punishments, or future existence at all, but for
the enjoyment of the present; and the gods themselves set the example of
an immoral life. Even Zeus, "the Father of gods and men," to whom
absolute supremacy was ascribed, the work of creation, and all majesty
and serenity, took but little interest in human affairs, and lived on
Olympian heights like a sovereign surrounded with the instruments of his
will, freely indulging in those pleasures which all lofty moral codes
have forbidden, and taking part in the quarrels, jealousies, and
enmities of his divine associates.
Greek mythology had its source in the legends of a remote
antiquity,--probably among the Pelasgians, the early inhabitants of
Greece, which they brought with them in their migration from their
original settlement, or perhaps from Egypt and Phoenicia. Herodotus--and
he is not often wrong--ascribes a great part of the mythology which the
Greek poets elaborated to a Phoenician or Egyptian source. The legends
have also some similarity to the poetic creations of the ancient
Persians, who delighted in fairies and genii and extravagant exploits,
like the labors of Hercules The faults and foibles of deified mortals
were transmitted to posterity and incorporated with the attributes of
the supreme divinity, and hence the mixture of the mighty and the mean
which marks the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks adopted
Oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in
their own country in the earliest times. "The labors of Hercules
originated in Egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in
the zodiac. The rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the
Eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of Bacchus were all imported from
Egypt or Phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were
celebrated in the romantic annals of Persia. The oracle of Dodona was
copied from that of Ammon in Thebes, and the oracle of Apollo at Delphos
has a similar source."