Beacon Lights of History, Volume 01: The Old Pagan Civilizations. John Lord
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.
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