PRAYER
'What is there that can justify tears and lamentations?'
_Saying of the Buddha._
Down below my house, in a grove of palms near the river, was a little
rest-house. It was but a roof and a floor of teak boarding without any
walls, and it was plainly built. It might have held, perhaps, twenty
people; and here, as I strolled past in the evening when the sun was
setting, I would see two or three old men sitting with beads in their
hands. They were making their devotions, saying to themselves that the
world was all trouble, all weariness, and that there was no rest
anywhere except in observing the laws of righteousness. It was very
pathetic, I thought, to see them there, saying this over and over again,
as they told their beads through their withered fingers, for surely
there was no necessity for them to learn it. Has not everyone learnt it,
this, the first truth of Buddhism, long before his hair is gray, before
his hands are shaking, before his teeth are gone? But there they would
sit, evening after evening, thinking of the change about to come upon
them soon, realizing the emptiness of life, wishing for the Great Peace.
On Sundays the rest-house, like many others round the village, was
crowded. Old men there would be, and one or two young men, a few
children, and many women. Early in the morning they would come, and a
monk would come down from the monastery near by, and each one would vow,
with the monk as witness, that he or she would spend the day in
meditation and in holy thought, would banish all thought of evil, and be
for the day at least holy. And then, the vow made, the devotee would go
and sit in the rest-house and meditate. The village is not very near;
the sounds come very softly through the trees, not enough to disturb the
mind; only there is the sigh of the wind wandering amid the leaves, and
the occasional cry of birds. Once before noon a meal will be eaten,
either food brought with them cold, or a simple pot of rice boiled
beside the rest-house, and there they will stay till the sun sets and
darkness is gathering about the foot of the trees. There is no service
at all. The monk may come and read part of the sacred books--some of the
Abidama, or a sermon from the Thoots--and perhaps sometimes he may
expound a little; that is all. There is nothing akin to our ideas of
worship. For consider what our service consists of: there is
thanksgiving and praise, there is prayer, there is reading of the Bible,
there is a sermon. Our thanksgiving and praise is rendered to God for
things He has done, the pleasure that He has allowed us to enjoy, the
punishment that He might have inflicted upon us and has not. Our prayer
is to Him to preserve us in future, to assist us in our troubles, to
give us our daily food, not to be too severe upon us, not to punish us
as we deserve, but to be merciful and kind. We ask Him to protect us
from our enemies, not to allow them to triumph over us, but to give us
triumph over them.
But the Buddhist has far other thoughts than these. He believes that the
world is ruled by everlasting, unchangeable laws of righteousness. The
great God lives far behind His laws, and they are for ever and ever. You
cannot change the laws of righteousness by praising them, or by crying
against them, any more than you can change the revolution of the earth.
Sin begets sorrow, sorrow is the only purifier from sin; these are
eternal sequences; they cannot be altered; it would not be good that
they should be altered. The Buddhist believes that the sequences are
founded on righteousness, are the path to righteousness, and he does not
believe he could alter them for the better, even if he had the power by
prayer to do so. He believes in the everlasting _righteousness_, that
all things work for _good_ in the end; he has no need for prayer or
praise; he thinks that the world is governed with far greater wisdom
than any of his--perfect wisdom, that is too great, too wonderful, for
his petty praise.
God lives far behind His laws; think not He has made them so badly as
to require continual rectification at the prayer of man. Think not that
God is not bound by His own laws. The Buddhist will never believe that
God can break His own laws; that He is like an earthly king who imagines
one code of morality for his subjects and another for himself. Not so;
the great laws are founded in righteousness, so the Buddhist believes,
in everlasting righteousness; they are perfect, far beyond our
comprehension; they are the eternal, unchangeable, marvellous will of
God, and it is our duty not to be for ever fretfully trying to change
them, but to be trying to understand them. That is the Buddhist belief
in the meaning of religion, and in the laws of righteousness; that is,
he believes the duty of him who would follow religion to try to
understand these laws, to bring them home to the heart, so to order life
as to bring it into harmony with righteousness.
Now see the difference. We believe that the world is governed not by
eternal laws, but by a changeable and continually changing God, and that
it is our duty to try and persuade Him to make it better.
We believe, really, that we know a great deal better than God what is
good, not only for us, but for others; we do not believe His will is
always righteous--not at all: God has wrath to be deprecated; He has
mercy to be aroused; He has partiality to be turned towards us, and
hence our prayers.
But to the Buddhist the whole world is ruled by righteousness, the same
for all, the same for ever, and the only sin is ignorance of these laws.
The Buddha is he who has found for us the light to see these laws, and
to order our life in accordance with them.
Now it will be understood, I think, why there is no prayer, no gathering
together for any ceremonial, in Buddhism; why there is no praise, no
thanksgiving of any kind; why it is so very different in this way from
our faith. Buddhism is a wisdom, a seeking of the light, a following of
the light, each man as best he can, and it has very little to correspond
with our prayer, our services of praise, our meetings together in the
name of Christ.
Therefore, when you see a man kneeling before a pagoda, moving silent
lips of prayer, when you see the people sitting quietly in the
rest-houses on a Sunday, when you see the old men telling their beads to
themselves slowly and sadly, when you hear the resonant chant of monks
and children, lending a soul to the silence of the gloaming, you will
know what they are doing. They are trying to understand and bring home
to themselves the eternal laws of righteousness; they are honouring
their great teacher.
This is all that there is; this is the meaning of all that you see and
hear. The Buddhist praises and honours the Buddha, the Indian prince
who so long ago went out into the wilderness to search for truth, and
after many years found it in his own heart; he reverences the Buddha for
seeing the light; he thanks the Buddha for his toil and exertion in
making this light known to all men. It can do the Buddha no good, all
this praise, for he has come to his eternal peace; but it can arouse the
enthusiasm of the follower, can bring into his heart love for the memory
of the great teacher, and a firm resolve to follow his teaching.
The service of his religion is to try and follow these laws, to take
them home into the heart, that the follower, too, may come soon into the
Great Peace.
This has been called pessimism. Surely it is the greatest optimism the
world has known--this certainty that the world is ruled by
righteousness, that the world has been, that the world will always be,
ruled by perfect righteousness.
To the Buddhist this is a certainty. The laws are laws of righteousness,
if man would but see, would but understand. Do not complain and cry and
pray, but open your eyes and see. The light is all about you, if you
would only cast the bandage from your eyes and look. It is so wonderful,
so beautiful, far beyond what any man has dreamt of, has prayed for, and
it is for ever and for ever.
This is the attitude of Buddhism towards prayer, towards thanksgiving.
It considers them an impertinence and a foolishness, born of ignorance,
akin to the action of him who would daily desire Atlas not to allow the
heavens to drop upon the earth.
And yet, and yet.
I remember standing once on the platform of a famous pagoda, the golden
spire rising before us, and carved shrines around us, and seeing a woman
lying there, her face to the pagoda. She was praying fervently, so
fervently that her words could be heard, for she had no care for anyone
about, in such trouble was she; and what she was asking was this, that
her child, her baby, might not die. She held the little thing in her
arms, and as she looked upon it her eyes were full of tears. For it was
very sick; its little limbs were but thin bones, with big knees and
elbows, and its face was very wan. It could not even take any interest
in the wonderful sights around, but hardly opened its careworn eyes now
and then to blink upon the world.
'Let him recover, let him be well once more!' the woman cried, again and
again.
Whom was she beseeching? I do not know.
'Thakin, there will be Someone, Someone. A Spirit may hear. Who can
tell? Surely someone will help me? Men would help me if they could, but
they cannot; surely there will be someone?'
So she did not remember the story of Ma Pa Da.
Women often pray, I think--they pray that their husbands and those they
love may be well. It is a frequent ending to a girl's letter to her
lover: 'And I pray always that you may be well.' I never heard of their
praying for anything but this: that they may be loved, and those they
love may be well. Nothing else is worth praying for besides this. The
queen would pray at the pagoda in the palace morning and evening. 'What
did she pray for?' 'What should she pray for, thakin? Surely she prayed
that her husband might be true to her, and that her children might live
and be strong. That is what women pray for. Do you think a queen would
pray differently to any other woman?'
'Women,' say the Buddhist monks, 'never understand. They _will_ not
understand; they cannot learn. And so we say that most women must be
born again, as men, before they can see the light and understand the
laws of righteousness.'
What do women care for laws of righteousness? What do they care for
justice? What for the everlasting sequences that govern the world? Would
not they involve all other men, all earth and heaven, in bottomless
chaos, to save one heart they loved? That is woman's religion.