THE CHRIST AND THE BUDDHA
The study of the life and the character of noted and noble men is the
most helpful and inspiring of all studies. It not only illustrates
life at its best, it also fills men with an ambition to pursue the
same noble purposes and to achieve the same lofty results in life. In
presenting a brief glimpse of the two most powerful personalities that
ever impressed themselves upon the world, I desire to place them side
by side that we may appreciate the assonances and the dissonances of
their wonderful lives and rise through the study into a true
conception and love of the most perfect Life ever breathed upon earth.
I have no apology to offer, as a Christian, for comparing the life of
our Lord with that of any human being; for, though Divine, He was also
supremely human; and human glory and achievement appear in their
fulness only when we gaze upon Him as one of the mighty human forces
of history.
[Illustration: THE GREATEST IMAGE OF BUDDHA (183 feet long)]
Christ and Buddha lived their brief lives upon earth many centuries
ago; and yet never did they grip so many by the magic of their
attraction as they do at present. Nearly two-thirds of the whole
population of the world to-day acknowledges the lordship of the one or
the other of these and loves to be called by their names. The
influence of the one dominates all the life of the West, while that of
the other is supreme in the East. And it is a curious and interesting
fact that Buddha has not only been exalted as the ninth incarnation of
Vishnu in the faith which he aimed to overthrow, he has also been
adopted into the Roman Catholic Calendar and is worshipped on the 27th
of November as a Christian saint under the title "Saint Josaphat."
I am also convinced that the influence of the lives and teachings of
Buddha and Christ will react upon each other with ever increasing
power during the coming years. Indeed, we are now witnessing this very
influence developing before our eyes.
I
Let us first observe the conditions under which these two lived their
earthly lives.
One was born into royal prerogatives and splendour and was surrounded
in youth with all the luxuries and blandishments of an Oriental
court. The other, though of royal lineage, was born in poverty,
cradled in a manger, earned a meagre subsistence as a carpenter, and
was able to say at the end of His brief career that the foxes had
holes and the birds of the air had nests, but that He had not where to
lay His head.
Sidhartthan early married and became a father, but later renounced all
the pleasures and responsibilities of a _grihastan life_. His great
renunciation is one of the most striking and impressive acts in the
history of mankind, and his subsequent asceticism was of the most
thorough and rigid type.
Jesus of Nazareth avoided the entanglements of married life and had a
supreme contempt for the wealth and the pomp of the world. Yet He was
not an ascetic. So freely did He associate with men, participating
even in their festivities, that His enemies falsely charged Him with
being a "glutton and a winebibber." He never countenanced the idea
that highest sainthood must come through asceticism.
He found His intimates not among the ascetic Essenes, but among
householders and men of affairs.
Both these great souls were similarly oppressed by the prevalence and
the tyranny of an exclusive ceremonialism. In the one case, it was
the innumerable bloody sacrifices and the all-embracing and crushing
ritual of the Brahmans which roused the anger and opposition of
Gautama; while, on the other hand, the myriad rites, the childish
ceremonies, and the hollow religious hypocrisy of the Scribes and
Pharisees filled Jesus with hatred and led Him to a denunciation of
that whole class. "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees," was the
oft-repeated expression of wrath which He heaped upon them.
Thus the religions which both established were, in part, reactions
from the religious excesses and errors of the days in which they
lived.
It is strange that neither Christ nor Buddha left any writings behind
them, even though writing was a known art in their times. Their mighty
influence was through oral teaching and example. This was different
from the method of other such world-leaders as Moses, Mohammed, and
Confucius. It proves that whenever any one has truths of saving power
to commit to the world, there are many who, as his messengers, are
ready to convey them. Better indeed than to convey one's thoughts by
printed page is it to impart them through the living voice to
disciples who will thrill the world by the message coloured by their
own mind and transfigured by their own enthusiasm. This was the method
of Christ and Buddha.
Both were surrounded by an Oriental environment. Their antecedents and
their prepossessions were of the East, eastern; and at their births
they were introduced to scenes and began to breathe the atmosphere of
the Orient. All the great founders of the World Religions were men of
the East. This was doubtless because the East kept more closely than
the West in touch with deepest religious thought and was animated with
highest religious emotions and heavenly aspirations. Certainly the
world owes more to ancient Asia for its religious life and spiritual
attainments than to all the other continents put together. And Asia is
to be thanked, above all, because she gave to mankind the Christ and
the Buddha. For the eastern flavour of their messages and the Oriental
tints of their life we are deeply grateful. To those of the West,
these have always brought quiet restraint and a hallowed, peaceful
repose to counteract the hurry and worry of life to which they are so
much exposed and which are a part of their very being.
II
_The Common Principles which controlled their Lives_
Both were men of deepest sincerity. All sham and hypocrisy were
foreign to their nature; they held insincerity in any one to be the
meanest and most deadly sin. To this intense loyalty to the truth,
Jesus bore emphatic testimony by an early martyrdom; while Gautama
gave the same unwavering witness by a long and holy life. They both
stood in the midst of communities which were rotten with hypocrisy and
which were using religion as a sacred garb of duplicity and were
raising temples of dishonesty to enraged deity. They stood like
prophets in the wilderness and pronounced woe upon all hypocrites.
Moreover, both Christ and Buddha were profoundly ethical in their
teaching. They found that humanity was not only rotten with
insincerity, it was also deceiving itself with the vain delusion that
moral integrity and ethical nobility can be bartered for a
multitudinous ceremonial. Men have always been prone to exalt ritual
in proportion as they have neglected the eternal demands of conscience
and the ethical foundation of character. The myriad-tongued
ceremonial of the Brahmans of twenty-five centuries ago was the old
evasion of righteousness in human life. Gautama saw this, and his
noble soul rebelled against a faith which proclaimed that salvation
was a thing of outward religious forms and not of the heart within.
"To cease from all sin,
To get virtue,
To cleanse our own heart,
This is the religion of the Buddhas."
These were the words with which he enunciated his new principles and
carried forward his campaign of reaction against the faith of his
fathers. Nothing less than, or apart from, purity of the soul within
satisfied his requirement.
Indeed, he exalted so much the more highly this banner of heart purity
and holiness, the less he had to say of the spiritual claims upon the
soul. He had tried elaborate ceremonial and had found it wanting; he
had practised the most severe religious austerities, but they had
availed him little. In the quiet light which had dawned upon him under
the sacred Boh tree he found that nothing wrought so mightily and
beneficently as _Dharma_, or righteousness.
"The real treasure is that laid by man or woman,
Through charity or piety, temperance and self-control.
* * * * *
The treasure thus hid is secure, and passes not away;
... this a man takes with him."
"Let no man think lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'It cannot
overtake me.'"
These are only a few of the many noble ethical deliverances of this
great man's creed.
And during all his life, subsequent to the great renunciation, he
embodied in himself the ethical beauty of all that he had taught.
And what shall I say of Jesus, the Christ? In the noble integrity of
His heart, in the sublime ethical ideals which He ever exalted, in the
moral rectitude which He practised and enjoined upon all His
followers, who was like unto Him? In His day, also, men had forgotten
the true foundation of character; and the religious leaders of the
people were placing supreme emphasis upon human traditions and upon
man-made rites as the way of salvation.
They "tithed the mint and the cummin" and forgot the weightier matters
of the law. To eat with unwashed hands, to consort with a Samaritan,
to carry a load or raise a sheep from the ditch on the Sabbath,--this
was a sin which, to the Pharisees, would weigh a man down to hell
itself; while to lie or to use other foul language, or to trample
under foot the whole decalogue was, by comparison, a venial offence.
The whole moral code was rendered impotent by them, while ceremonial
cleansing was the be-all and end-all of their system. Christ was daily
thrown into conflict with these "blind leaders of the blind"; His soul
abhorred their whole religious system. He characterized them as
"whited sepulchres." He showed that it is the heart which defiles a
man, "for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." "Blessed," says He,
"are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "It was said to them
of old thou shalt not kill;" but Christ equally prohibited anger, the
cause of murder. He not only denounced adultery, but the lustful look
which is the source of adultery.
To His followers He said "unless your righteousness exceed the
righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven." He prayed the Father that He would sanctify His
own, and added that for their sakes He sanctified Himself. Holiness
was a passion with Him, and at the basis of His teaching He enjoined
moral cleanness and ethical integrity. And His life in this, as in
other things, was a perfect exhibition of the virtues which He taught.
And from that day to this His precept and example have mutually
supported each other. In Him were wedded faith and conscience, piety
and character. So that, where Christ is best known and most loyally
followed to-day, there do we find a perfect sense of human relations
and a supreme desire after ethical perfection.
Furthermore, these two great souls were consumed with a broad and
universal charity. Their environment was perhaps the most averse to
general benevolence that the world could then show. In India, there
had already grown to great power the caste system with its multiplying
ramifications. Then, as now, it narrowed the sympathies of men, it
arrayed one class against another, it cultivated pride and fostered
mutual distrust and dissension.
When Sakya Muni came upon the scene, he saw the terribly divisive
system sending down its root like the banyan tree on all sides and
absorbing the life and thought of the people. It repelled him, and,
with all his mighty intellectual and moral energy, he attacked it. He
proclaimed all men brothers and worthy of human sympathy, love, and
respect. He opened the door of his faith to all classes on equal
terms. He vehemently opposed every effort to divide men except upon
the ground of character. He enjoined upon his disciples not only love
and kindness to all men, he also insisted upon a similar attitude
toward all forms of lower life.
The fact that Buddhism is to-day one of the three great Missionary
Faiths of the world, seeking all men that are in darkness, is the best
proof that the founder of that faith had a heart which embraced the
whole realm of life in its love. He felt that no man, however humble
or however far removed in ties of race and kinship, should be deprived
of the blessings of his love and sympathy. It is an interesting fact
that nearly all past religious reformers in India--both those inside
and outside the pale of Brahmanism--were anti-caste in their
sympathies and teaching. But it is only Buddha who consistently
maintained the broad foundation of a universal brotherhood and
incorporated it into his faith as a cardinal principle.
In like manner, Jesus of Nazareth lived His earthly life at a time of
narrow sympathies, and with people who were among the most exclusive
that ever lived on earth. The Jews believed themselves to be the
specially favoured sons of Heaven. And, what was more, they thought
that they were exalted because they were _worthy_, because they
excelled all other people. Hence, they stood aloof from other
nationalities and despised them as their inferiors, a social and
physical contact with whom would be pollution. There is in many
respects a strange correspondence between the Jewish social code of
twenty centuries ago and that of Hinduism to-day--the same haughty
mien and abjectness of spirit--the aloofness of pride and the cringing
meanness of social bondage--representing the two extremes of society.
Christ also turned His face like a flint against this mean artificial
classification of men. He had a burning contempt for the proud
Pharisee who lived upon the husks of his own contempt of others, and
who trampled under foot men that were infinitely superior to himself,
so far as character was concerned. But He consorted often with the
outcast Publican who revealed an aspiration after better things. And
He even chose men who were thus socially ostracized to enter His own
inner circle of disciples and to be the standard-bearers of His cause
upon earth. He taught that the most abject and socially submerged man
upon earth is a son of God, and that at his moral and spiritual
renovation there would be joy among the denizens of heaven. And it was
while thinking of this same class that He said unto His own, in
describing the judgment scene at the last great day, "Come, ye blessed
of my father, inasmuch as ye have treated kindly and lovingly one of
the least of my brethren ye have done it unto me, enter ye into the
joy of your Lord." Though He was born a Jew, He opened wide the
portals of His religion and invited all men of all conditions. "Come
unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you
rest." He sent forth His followers into all lands to disciple and
bring to the truth all nations. And in all lands His method of
procedure has been to reach first the lowest among the people and then
gradually to rise to the highest, until He has taken possession of the
whole land. His universal heart of love took in all men of all social
strata. All that He asked was that men should come to Him with purpose
sincere and with a longing for light and truth.
III
_The Principles and Teachings which differentiate and separate Christ
and Buddha_
Thus far we have seen these two great leaders of men standing side by
side and revealing the same traits and principles.
But they also revealed fundamental differences which it were well for
us to consider.
Though much united them, and that when more than five centuries and
thousands of miles held them apart, we also discover that a gulf
wider than that of time or space opened between them.
Their lives and their doctrines and the faiths which they promulgated
reveal strangely diverse contentions and tendencies.
(1) First of all, and at the root of all, lies their attitude toward
the Divine Being. Jesus was preeminently a God-intoxicated Being,
while the most manifest mental attitude of Gautama was his
agnosticism. Christ never ceased speaking of and communing with His
Father in heaven. He was wont to retire regularly from human society
in order that He might enjoy the Heavenly Presence whose very radiance
shone in and upon Him daily. He declared that He did nothing without
consulting with and receiving direction from God. And this was natural
enough when we remember His declaration that He came into the world to
reveal the Father unto men. Listen to His words, "My meat is to do the
will of Him that sent me and to finish His work." "The Father that
dwelleth in me doeth the work." "The Father is glorified in the Son."
"I love the Father and go unto Him." "Believest thou not that I am in
the Father and the Father in me?" "Oh, righteous Father, the world
hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee." In all His expressions
of oneness with God, of His living unto God, and of His drawing His
daily strength from God, His experience was eminently unique. He lived
more in heaven than on earth in those days of His incarnation. Apart
from any consideration of His Divinity, He can truly be said to be a
man of God whose soul was in harmony with the Father.
How different the words and experiences of Gautama Rishi! Many have
spoken of him as an atheist. I do not believe that he denied the
existence of God. Yet it is evidently true that he has no use in his
philosophy, any more than in his religion, for a Divine Being. There
was doubtless reason for this in the conditions of his time; for it
may be regarded as the reaction of a strong mind against the extreme
spiritualism and polytheism of the day. For, in those days, the deep
spirituality of the Brahman had overflowed its banks and had created a
multitudinous pantheon which repelled this man of stern mind. It was
to him only a short step from a disbelief in the _many_ gods to a
doubt as to the existence of _any_ god. And in this agnosticism he was
doubtless aided by his fondness for the _Sankya_ school of thought,
which is Indian Agnosticism. In any case, his deliverances and his
established religion, if such it really can be called, are such a
reaction from the Theosophy of India as to lead one to wonder how,
even with all its other excellences, it could have become in India a
State Religion for any length of time. A religion without a God, a
sacrifice, a priest, or a prayer, is certainly a dreary wilderness to
a God-seeking soul. And yet, this is what the Buddha conceived and
promulgated among his disciples. Under the stress of a growing
consciousness of the ills of this life his mind did not, like that of
others, rise to heaven for relief; but his salvation was to be a
self-wrought one. With his own right arm of virtue he wished to carve
his way into eternal life--or, shall I say, eternal death? Is it
strange that under such a godless religious system its votaries should
react from this fundamental error and deify and worship that very
Buddha who had not a place for God in his whole scheme of life?
At any rate, Christ and Buddha stand before us in striking contrast in
this matter; the glory of the teaching of the one was that He caused
His adoring disciple to fall upon his knees with uplifted eye and to
say in filial reverence and trust, "Our Father who art in heaven."
While the other taught his followers to lean only upon self, and to
seek speedy relief from life itself, declaring that heaven returned
only an empty, mocking echo to the helpless wail of the human soul.
(2) Corresponding to this difference was another difference in their
conception of human life. Jesus maintained that the human soul came
from God, was made for God, and that God Himself was forever seeking
to bring it unto Himself. According to His theory of life, man is not
left alone at any stage in his career. He may decline to entertain God
in his life. He may lead a life of rebellion against his Maker and
Saviour; he may even deny the very existence of the Father of his
being. But God, in the riches of His infinite patience, does not
desert him to his own base thought and life. He follows him like a
shepherd searching for his lost sheep. He longs for his return like a
tender, forgiving father for the return of his prodigal son. Human
life, according to this view, may be mean and sordid and may be spent
in the grossest sin; but there is hope. All is not lost while there is
a spark of life left. God is still seeking and trying to bring the
soul to new life. The million agents of His loving will conspire to
help man; and so the possibilities of his life are still great. Thus,
to our Lord Christ, the vision of human life was a bright and
optimistic one. God will not leave man to himself. He will bring all
the resources of heaven and of earth to the work of saving him. "God
is in His heaven, All's right with the world." Yes, all is hopeful for
man because the Father is still seeking him.
How different from this was Gautama Rishi's view of human life.
According to him, man is a lone, helpless creature tossed on the sea
of destiny. He is the only captain and steersman of his barque, and
his own reason is his only compass; he must battle alone with the
waves of circumstances and find for himself the unknown harbour of
peace. There is no heaven above to hear his cry, no help or redemption
outside of self. Is it a wonder that life is a weariness, and
existence itself an unspeakable burden to such a man?
Thus the Buddha sought in vain for light and cheer in life, and
pessimism became to him, as it continues to be to his followers, the
very atmosphere of life. Even as in Dante's vision of the Inferno, so
in the Temple of Buddha's scheme of life there is inscribed above its
portals the words: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."
I care not who the man may be, I humbly maintain that his scheme of
life is seriously wrong if it be a cheerless, uninspiring one; and it
is perfectly natural that men should prefer to follow a confident,
buoyant leader rather than a heartless, despondent one. If God rules
over the destinies of man, we have a right to expect that success and
blessing will crown the efforts of the sincere seeker after a better
life. Man has received life not that he may destroy it, but that he
may cultivate it and find in it life abundant.
A young mother whose child had died carried the dead body to Buddha,
and, doing homage to him, said, "Lord and Master, do you know any
medicine that will be good for my child?" "Yes," said the teacher, "I
know of some. Get me a handful of mustard seed." But when the poor
girl was hurrying away to procure it, he added, "I require mustard
seed from a house where no son, husband, parent, or slave has died."
"Very good," said the girl, and went to ask for it, carrying still the
dead child astride on her hip. The people said, "Here is mustard
seed;" but when she asked, "Has there died a son, a husband, a parent,
or a slave in this house?" they replied: "Lady, what is this that you
ask? The living are few, but the dead are many!" Then she went to
other homes, but one said, "I have lost my son;" another, "I have lost
my parents;" another, "I have lost my slave." At last, not being able
to find a single house where no one had died, she began to think,
"This is a heavy task that I am on." And as her mind cleared she
summoned up her resolution, left the dead child in a house, and
returned to Buddha. "Have you procured the mustard seed?" he asked. "I
have not," she replied. "The people of the village told me, 'The
living are few, but the dead are many.'" Then Buddha said, "You
thought you alone had lost a son; the law of death is that among all
living creatures there is no permanence." Little comfort in these
words!
Of course, we can see how these two conflicting views of life found
acceptance and expression in these two great leaders of mankind. For,
to Jesus, the keyword of life was divine grace or atonement, while to
Gautama it was _Karma_--that word which has for so many centuries been
to all India the truest expression of its philosophy and of its life.
Christ taught that the grace of God was at the service of every man
for his success in this life and for his redemption in the world to
come. He ever emphasized the inspiring message that God's work and
man's effort constitute the warp and woof of the life of every man. In
His whole scheme of salvation there is no place for discouragement;
for, walking through the path of life hand in hand with God, man can
overthrow every enemy to his progress and achieve the best and highest
in God's purposes for him.
But when the Buddha adopted the doctrine of _Karma_ as the foundation
of life, he and his system were doomed to despondency, gloom, and
discouragement. It is indeed a noble truth that every man must drink,
to its last dregs, the fruit of his own action--that the law of
_Karma_ works with relentless force in every life in the world. Only
let us understand that God may enter into each life to enable man to
face successfully that law, and it is all right. But condemn man to
everlasting isolation; cut away from him every ray of Divine help, and
the working out of his _Karma_ becomes a terrible and an almost
unending tragedy--a Sisyphean task with no hope of release save in the
wiping out of life itself. And this is what the great Soul of the East
believed and taught. He faced boldly the problem. He had, at the
beginning, ignored the very existence of God, and thus denied himself
the least hope of external aid in his own emancipation; and thus he
held that stern, cruel, relentless _Karma_ became the all-controlling
and universal law of life.
To a Christian, among the most pathetic words ever spoken are those
spoken by Buddha to his beloved cousin and disciple as death drew
near--"O! Anantha,... My journey is drawing to its close. I have
reached eighty years, and just as a worn-out cart can only with much
care be made to move along, so my body can only be kept going with
difficulty.... In future _be ye to yourselves your own light, your own
refuge; seek no other refuge.... Look not to any one but yourselves as
a refuge_."
And that which farther, and very naturally, widens the gulf which
separates them is their view of the adequacy or inadequacy of the
present human life to satisfy the laws of their being.
The law which Jesus believed to prevail, and which He constantly
promulgated and emphasized, was that of the finality of the human
life--that man has once only to pass through this earthly life and
that then comes death, which introduces him to an eternal future
corresponding with the character of his choices and life on earth.
According to Him, this brief earthly existence, which will not be
repeated, is a training school for the glorious life beyond. Blessed
is he who faithfully submits himself to this training and passes
through the gate of death prepared for an immortality of joy in God's
presence beyond.
Indeed, Jesus never gives the first intimation of any future birth or
life, save that which would be permanent and eternal in heaven or
hell.
He felt the adequacy of this life as a determiner of the eternal
destiny of all men. And He felt that the salvation which He wrought
and offered to all was able to carry man through the single portal of
death into unending bliss. Why another entrance into this world, if by
passing through the world God could bring into the life the seed and
power of His own grace and life which would blossom and bear fruit in
the soul throughout eternity? "Marvel not," He sayeth, "the hour
cometh in which all that are dead shall hear his voice and shall come
forth; they that have done good into the resurrection of life; and
they that have done evil into the resurrection of judgment." And as He
described the final judgment upon all men after one earthly life He
says that "these shall go away into eternal punishment, but the
righteous into eternal life." Moreover, in describing the condition of
the dead He makes the faithful Abraham say to the soul of a dead
sinner, "Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed that they who
would pass hence to you may not be able to pass and that you may not
cross from thence to us." That is, He claimed that the life which we
live here so fixes the destiny of men that eternity will carry its
impress. Hence the urgency and the supreme importance of this one life
to all men. The universal succession, according to His teaching, is
life, death, resurrection, judgment, and eternal reward.
To the Buddha, who, as we have seen, held that man is the only
architect of his own destiny and that he must therefore abide the
working of his _Karma_, a single brief apprenticeship in the school of
life seemed altogether inadequate as a test of character and as a
reliable foundation for the edifice of one's eternal destiny, or as a
basis for the one irrevocable judgment. It is but natural, therefore,
that this great Indian Rishi should have adopted as his own the
doctrine of metempsychosis, or transmigration, and that he should add
great emphasis to it. To him, life was a penitentiary rather than a
school, a place, or an occasion, for eating the fruits of past action
rather than a training for the future eternity which awaits every one.
It is true that Gautama must have had some idea of the corrective
influence and disciplinary character of this earthly existence; for
there is a quiet assumption that in some unexplained and
unintelligible way the soul is improved by this multitudinous process
of reincarnation. And yet I fail to see any reason for expecting such
a development. Philosophically and morally, the _raison d'etre_ of the
doctrine of reincarnation is to explain the inequalities of life; and
it does it not, as Jesus would do it, by means of the doctrine of
heredity, but by the retributive power of _Karma_, or actions pursuing
the soul through successive births and compelling it to reveal by its
conditions and reflect by its experiences in each birth the
experiences of the previous birth. The moral influence of such a
doctrine is rendered all but impossible by the fact that there is no
consciousness (the true basis of moral continuity) to connect one
birth with another. I know of no one but Mrs. Besant who claims to
know what his previous, assumed birth was, and I have not yet met any
one who believes her claim in this matter. There is no moral
discipline for one in his being punished for a thing of which he has
absolutely no conscious knowledge.
We must further consider the character of Gautama's philosophy. It
was, as is well known, thoroughly materialistic--the antipodes of the
orthodox Hindu philosophy, which is highly spiritual. To Buddha, there
was no such thing as a soul apart from the body. What was there, then,
to connect one birth with another, according to his teaching? In
Brahmanism the doctrine of transmigration is at this point very clear,
for there is the eternal _Atma_, or self, to connect and unify all its
incarnations. But Gautama, who denied the separate existence of the
soul, maintained that it was not the self, but the _Karma_, which
passed from one birth to another; and thus there became the oneness of
_Karma_ without an identity of soul passing through and uniting the
myriad incarnations of the person involved. How can one substitute
here a sameness of _Karma_ for identity of soul? Behold, then, the
insuperable difficulties which such a materialism interposes to a
belief either in the possibility or in the wisdom of the doctrine of
reincarnation.
And yet let it be remembered here that so long as one accepts the
doctrine of _Karma_ he cannot evade the sister doctrine of
reincarnation. They belong to the same system, and must be accepted or
rejected together.
If, however, we emphasize divine grace as an element in the solution
of human problems and in the salvation of man, then it is natural to
conclude that one earthly life will suffice for God and man together
to prepare the soul for the consummation and beatification which
awaits it beyond death. But if the whole problem is to be solved and
the whole work of redemption achieved by man himself, apart from God,
then Buddha must have been justified in believing that an
inconceivable number of births and human lives are necessary in order
to accomplish this.
It was just at this point that Christ and Buddha faced the opposite
poles. And it is just here, for this very reason, that the faiths
which they promulgated represent, the one the perpetual buoyancy and
cheer of youth, and the other the weariness of discouraged age.
Christianity claims to do its work for the soul, so far as settling
its destiny is concerned, in the brief life of a few years; and under
the inspiring influence of this conviction the pulse quickens,
youthful hope and energy multiply, and the whole soul is kindled by a
close vision of its speedy triumph and release. The Buddhist, on the
other hand, knows that it is a long, lonely conflict--the interminably
long processions of births weary him and the dim vision of a release
which is far away brings no inspiration. Life palls upon him, courage
fails him, his steps grow shorter and his pace slackens.
(3) This brings us to the ideals which these two world-leaders
entertained. Often men's ideals are a better revelation of their life
and character than are their achievements. These ideals which I wish
to point out are two--that of inner attainment and that of final
consummation.
And what was the chief ambition for personal achievement sought by
Jesus and Gautama? I believe that the very names which they acquired
and which are at the head of this chapter answer this question for us.
"Christ" and "Buddha" are not the personal names given in infancy, nor
are they tribal designations. They primarily represent their official
titles. "Christ" means "the Anointed One," and "Buddha" signifies
"the Enlightened One"--the one is a term expressive of spiritual
powers for service, while the other means intellectual enlightenment
for communion. One sought and found the baptism of the spirit of God
which touched and transfigured His character; the other was seeking
more light on the problems of life; and for that light he sought with
a wonderful longing and perseverance until the dawn broke on that
remarkable day under the sacred Boh tree and he found the light and
was hence called "the Enlightened One."
Thus, in the Christ-life, the emphasis was upon ethical and spiritual
attainment, while, in Buddha, the thing sought was the clear vision
and transcendent illumination.
Let me not be misunderstood. There is a sense in which the
consecration and the vision are in the same line. It was Christ
Himself that said, "This is eternal life, to know Thee the only true
God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Spiritual knowledge is the
pathway to the highest life--it is life itself. It must be, in large
part, acquired through spiritual experience.
At the same time, it is an interesting fact that Buddha laid, as India
has always laid, emphasis--_undue_ emphasis--upon knowledge as the
consummation to be sought. _Brahma Gnana_ is the _summun bonum_ of
life. To rightly know myself in my relationship, this, they say, is
the only qualification for beatification. On the other hand, Jesus
insisted always upon a right moral and spiritual attitude and
relationship to God as the highest point of human attainment in life.
Listen to the beatitudes which he uttered: "Blessed are the poor in
spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that
mourn; for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek; for they
shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness; for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful; for
they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall
see God. Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called sons of
God. Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness'
sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
These are the beatitudes of His Kingdom, and all refer to the
spiritual graces which He Himself exemplified and inculcated, and none
refer to enlightenment.
Thus in both we have, if not a contrast, a different outlook, which
has not only impressed the student with a sense of divergence; but
that which is more important--it has given to the devotees of these
two faiths widely different aspirations, and has given to the two
types of lives produced very dissimilar traits.
But, that which is of more consequence, in these ideals, is their
conception of what life tends to and must ultimately attain unto. The
final consummation of life meant nought else to Jesus than
God-likeness, which He called "Eternal Life." To have grown to the
perfection of those moral and spiritual characteristics which adorn
God Himself; to have the human will so subdued and directed until it
runs parallel with the Divine will; to have the soul consumed with a
love of all that He loves and with an abhorrence of all that He
hates,--this is life indeed and the highest realization of the human
soul. Yea, more, to pass out of this life into the conscious bliss and
eternal felicity of the life to come, to dwell with God--one with Him
in purpose and character, and yet living a separate conscious
existence, basking in the eternal sunshine of His Presence and
favour,--this is the fulness of blessing which Christ presented before
His own as the end to be sought and the consummation which God placed
within their reach.
On the other hand, Nirvana is the word which holds condensed the whole
realm of Buddha's ideals. It is not my purpose to discuss the original
meaning of this word. I gladly concede that it meant a state of moral
achievement when the powers of the soul were at equilibrium and when
resultant peace pervaded the life. But we also know that it meant,
preeminently, that state in which the soul had passed beyond contact
with body, in which contact alone it found consciousness and sensation
and human activity; when the soul, freed from births, had returned to
its elemental condition of semi-nothingness, with neither thought,
emotion, nor volition. This was a condition in which was found only
the negative blessing of release from the turbulence and surging
distresses of life. Without calling it non-existence, we claim that it
is wanting in every element that we connect, or can conceive
connected, with human existence.
There is nothing in it to inspire hope nor to invite cheer. All we can
do in its presence is to ask--is this all that man, the flower of
God's universe, is to arrive at? Is there nothing better for him than
to end his long, dreary existence in such an abject failure? Must he
descend from the plain of even a wretched human life to this the
lowest reach of existence, if such we must call it?
In the eyes of Christ, there issues out of the mighty conflict of life
a purified, glorified human being fit to dwell forever in the
presence of His Father and adopted to enjoy that presence for
evermore. To Buddha, this same human life ends in failure and must
rest forever under the dark pall of oblivion, and robbed by Nirvana of
all the possibilities of good and of joy that were implanted in it.
In the absence of higher satisfaction, all that Buddha could do was to
glory in his achievements, because of their pervasive influence upon
the lives of others during all future time. We might imagine him
joining with George Eliot in her noble aspiration:--
"O! may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the nightlike stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues ...
This is life to come."
But Christ gave us a larger hope and a loftier purpose than this, even
the conscious possession of abundant life ourselves and the growing
knowledge of the boundless good which our earthly life has done for
others. To live in men is joy indeed; but that involves an ability to
feel that joy; and this, again, is a part only of the Eternal Life
which He gives to all who believe in Him.
It is His disciple only who can say:--
"Beloved, now are we the Sons of God. But we know not what we shall
be; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we
shall see Him as He is."