In the year 1881 Dr. Rhys Davids said, "There is not the slightest
danger of any European ever entering the Buddhist Order."[18] Yet a
recent writer was told by a Buddhist in Ceylon that his religion was
making its converts "chiefly amongst the Tamils and Germans," and in
each of the Buddhist countries there is to-day a small but active
group of converts from the European nations to Buddhism.
It would be difficult to say whether these groups are the product or
the cause of the undoubted revival which is taking place in the
Buddhist world: probably they are part product and part cause.
Buddhism is certainly in ferment. As Dr. Suzuki has said, "It is in a
stage of transition from a mediæval dogmatic and conservative spirit
to one of progress, enlightenment, and liberalism,"[19] and in other
ways, especially in Japan, it is approximating to a liberal
Christianity.
To this awakening there are several contributory causes, such as the
national spirit which has awakened in recent years, the works of
Eastern and Western students of Buddhism, the activities of the
Theosophical Society, and, it must be confessed, and unwise and, in my
opinion, illiberal and unfair attitude on the part of many
missionaries who, forgetting that they are sent to preach Christ, have
attacked, often without adequate knowledge, the religion of
Gautama.[20] From this criticism I do not wish to exempt myself; I
have gone through the unpleasant but salutary process of having to eat
my own words, and I am more anxious than I can say to foster a real
spirit of love and understanding between the followers of Gautama and
those of Jesus.
Of the founder of Buddhism I can honestly say with the great Danish
scholar Fausboll: "The more I know of him, the more I love him," and
it is the "fact of Gautama," emerging more and more clearly as the
Buddhist books are being edited and translated, which more than any
other single cause is responsible for the Buddhist revival.
"From such far distances the echo of his words returns that we cannot
but rank him amongst the greatest heroes of history," says the eminent
Belgian scholar de la Vallée Poussin, and from him, as from Gautama,
we shall all do well to learn the spirit of tolerance and courtesy.
Yet both of them speak out bluntly and shrewdly enough at times. It is
recorded that when the great teacher met men whose doctrines were
morally dangerous or intellectually insincere, he harried them
remorselessly till "the sweat poured from them" and they cried, "As
well might one meet an infuriated bull or dangerous snake as the
ascetic Gautama!" Of those whose teachings were sincere and earnest he
was wonderfully tolerant, even advising a soldier disciple to give
alms to them and their followers, no less than to the Buddhist monks.
In this spirit the Belgian scholar, probably the greatest living
authority upon Buddhism as a whole, is lovingly tolerant towards
Buddhism and honest Buddhists, but of Neo-Buddhism he says: "It is at
once frivolous and detestable--dangerous, perhaps, for very feeble
intellects." Even so, a vast Neo-Buddhist Church is not impossible!
European and American Buddhists, then, fall into these two classes:
those who are honest and sincere students of Buddhism and followers of
Gautama, and those of whom the most charitable thing that can be said
is that they lead astray "foolish women," and other sentimentalists.
To illustrate the methods of these two schools, who are unfortunately
at present often working in an unnatural alliance, let me describe two
recent experiences.
On Easter Day I went from the simple and exquisite beauty of our
Communion Service, in which the glamour of the Resurrection is ever
being renewed, to a Buddhist church within a stone's throw, here in
the heart of San Francisco. There, as in innumerable other centres of
Buddhist life, the birth of Gautama was being celebrated; and I could
unhesitatingly join in paying reverence to the memory of the great
Indian teacher. But it was certainly amazing and a little staggering
to find "Buddhist High Mass" being performed, the celebrant calling
himself a bishop and ordaining on his own initiative abbots and
abbesses.[21] Three altar candles representing the Buddha, the Law,
and the Order being lighted, the "bishop," preceded by seven or eight
American and British monks in yellow robes, and by the Abbess, known
as Mahadevi, ascended to the platform, which contains a beautiful
Japanese shrine of the Hongwanji sect. Several monks from Japan, to my
surprise, assisted in the strange service that followed, which began
with the invocation of Amida Buddha, and went on in an astonishing
hotch-potch of the cults of the primitive and the later Buddhism
derived indiscriminately from Ceylon, Tibet, and Japan.
Of this strange service, which the "bishop" claims to have modelled on
that in use in the Dalai Lama's palace at Lhassa, it must suffice to
say that if the Tibetan _Mantras_ were as inaccurately rendered as
were the five precepts in Pāli which are the Buddhist pentalogue,
then the general impression of Buddhism given was as misleading as it
is possible to conceive. The service included a processional hymn,
music by an organist announced as "late of the Golden Temple Shway
Dagon in Burma, and of St. Paul's Cathedral, London," an "Epistle"
read by an American Buddhist, a "gospel of the day," read by the
Abbess, several addresses by Japanese and Western Buddhists, and a
sermon by the "bishop," who claims to be ninety-five years old, to be
the son of a Persian prince, to have spent sixteen years at the feet
of the late Dalai Lama in Tibet, to have numerous degrees in arts,
medicine, science, and philosophy from Oxford, London, Paris, and
Heidelberg, and to have been seventy-five years a monk of the yellow
robe. His costume was as amazingly mixed as his liturgy, consisting of
a Hindu turban, a yellow Buddhist overmantle, a scarlet robe with
cincture and maniple of purple, and a rosary terminating in the
_Swastika_, with which sign he blessed the people at the end of the
service, saying: "May the face of the Truth shine upon you, and the
divine Wisdom of the Buddhas permeate you, and remain with you now and
throughout eternity. So mote it be."
In his sermon he claimed to have founded no less than eighty missions
in the past ten years in California, and said some shrewd things in
criticism of the Christian Church, of which I am persuaded he was
himself once a member. For the rest it was a practical discourse
enough; he advised his followers, if they would live as long as he
(and he announced that he would still be going strong fifty years
hence), they must change their wrinkles into dimples, and learn the
secret of a serene mind. He gave notice that in the evening there
would be a banquet and a dance, in which he would join, if widows and
maidens pressed him, and immediately after the service he saluted them
all "with a holy kiss," which they seemed to enjoy as much as he.
There is something really attractive about this jovial monk, and he
has the energy, the ubiquity and the perseverance of another "Persian
prince" who is equally opposed to Christianity!
The "bishop's" disciples are fairly numerous, though one of his
colleagues expressed the conviction, on the authority of an English
professor, that the same wonderful teachings would draw thousands to
hear them in London, instead of scores in San Francisco. Be that as it
may, they are faithful disciples; attracted very largely by the fact
that he is rather expounding spiritualism, telling of the wonderful
_Mahatmas_ of Tibet, and luring them with the glamour of Eastern
mysticism than teaching Buddhism. When I chuckled at some of his
shrewd sallies, an elegantly dressed woman next to me said, "Hush!
Hush! You are not an initiate, you do not understand; all that he says
has a profound, inner meaning which only we who are initiated can
comprehend." To which I could not resist the reply: "I may not be
initiated into this business, but I know that this is not Buddhism any
more than that the organist who is playing those penny-whistle tunes
on the harmonium ever played them on the Shway Dagon, where music is
not allowed, or any more than the old sportsman who is speaking is a
bishop."
It is not by such means that Buddhism can be revived.
But there are others! Some years ago I had a delightful talk with one
of them in the shadow of the great pagoda from which our organist did
not come. He was a Scot, a scholar and scrupulously honest, and his
name is already widely known as the translator of both German and
Pāli works. Quite frankly he told me why he had taken the yellow
robe, and how, having lost his faith in Christianity, he found in the
Buddhist books something which saved his reason and probably his life:
then, turning to me, he said: "How glad you fellows would be if you
could get rid of the Old Testament."
Another friend of mine, an Englishman, was formerly trained as a Roman
Catholic priest, and is now a Buddhist missionary in California,
having been ordained in Japan, and having, with an American scholar,
now a professor in London, been responsible for the production of an
admirable and scholarly periodical, _The Mahayanist_. Its object is to
impart an accurate knowledge of the Buddhism of China and Japan, and
to investigate its history, doctrines, and present conditions in an
unbiased and scholarly way.
Such men as these three ought not to be associated with those who
claim to teach "esoteric" Buddhism.[22] There is really no such thing;
"I have preached the Law without making any distinction between
exoteric and esoteric doctrine," said Gautama, "for I have no such
thing as the closed fist of the teacher who keeps some things in
reserve."[23]
Now so long as these unequally yoked teams are drawing the Buddhist
chariot, there is bound to be a smash; when one studies, for instance,
the history of the propagandist literature they have put out, one
finds that it is one long story of fitful beginnings and spasmodic
effort, almost all of them failing to survive for more than a few
years. Of these periodicals, Professor Poussin writes as follows:
"Propagandist reviews like _Buddhism_ of Rangoon and the _Open Court_
of Chicago are useful when Mrs. Rhys Davids condescends to contribute
to them, but she finds in them strange neighbours indeed, fully worthy
of the indescribable Mahabodhi Society!"
Buddhists everywhere are finding new inspiration by going back to the
authority of Gautama; let the Christian Church go back to Jesus
Christ, and, taking Him as the full and perfect revelation of the
nature of God and man, rethink and restate its theology. And secondly,
let its missionaries study the great religion of Gautama--which is
still, after twenty-five centuries, a mighty power, with strong
capacity for revival, and which is still strangely misunderstood; and
let them see to it that they and the Christian "native" pastors and
catechists are as carefully trained as the Buddhist monks who each
year are receiving a more systematic preparation for the task of
defending and propagating the _Dhamma_.
[17] Reprinted from _The East and the West_.
[18] _Hibbert Lectures_, 3rd edition, p. 184.
[19] _The Zen Sect of Buddhism_, p. 11.
[20] There is fortunately a marked improvement in this respect in
missionary methods: but the old order has not yet given place to the
new. The present writer was recently classed, in a public address in
Rangoon, with the Kaiser and Antichrist--as a "Sign of the Times."
[21] The full form of service and a biographical sketch of its author
is published by the _Open Court_, Chicago, U.S.A.
[22] They are, fortunately, even now parting company: the "bishop,"
for example, has been obliged to start a rival "church" in San
Francisco.
[23] From the _Mahaparinibbana Sutta_, the oldest and most authentic
of the Buddhist scriptures.