The World’s Great Religions, II. Buddhism

Photo by C. R. Savage. Wasatch Mountains — Bridal Veil Fall?, Provo Canyon, Utah.

THE WORLD'S GREAT RELIGIONS. BY PROFESSOR LEVI EDGAR YOUNG, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH, 11. BUDDHISM. There is a strange mysticism to all oriental religions. The importance of the practical side of life is lost in the contemplation of the hereafter. Buddhism is thoroughly oriental. It has come down to us as a religion of the "Ego," and is devoid of that beautiful altruism that is the fundamental ethical doctrine of Christianity. Buddhism, however, has been the great rival of Christianity, and it numbers more followers today than any other religion known to man. It has been pushed from the land of its birth, and has become the religion of Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, and many other Asiatic nations. The founder of Buddhism was one Gautama or Siddhartha, a prince of the royal house of Oude, a province of India. He was born about 590 B.C., and tradition tells us that he was a precocious child, and grew up under the influence of kind and gentle teachers. His boyhood days were spent in communing with nature, and dreaming away the hours by the side of mountain streams and in the glens of the Himalayas. Manhood found him possessed of delicate feelings, and a fine sympathy for every living thing. But his soul was mystified and, like all great thinkers, he began to ponder on the meaning of life, and the end of human existence. He had that repose of life necessary for a great creative energy, and each day found him ready for a terrific struggle for that which, to him, was the solution of those questions that had long agitated his soul. He married young. After the birth of a boy, he left

292 IMPRO VEMENT ERA . the royal palace, sought the woods, and for six years, he lived a life of solitude. He had questioned the priests of Brahm, but their teachings only darkned his mind, and independent and alone, he threw himself into an ascetic state of mind, and after months of struggle, found himself in a state of enlightenment. He had become a Buddha.* Benares was then the principal city of India. It was a sacred place and there the Brahmans had built their temples and holy shrines. It was there that Gautama began his life's work of reform. He opposed bitterly the caste system among the Brahmans, and condemned their rituals and ceremonies. His was a pure ethics, teaching that the individual soul is finally absorbed into Nirvana, or the ultimate essence of the man. This is an extraordinary idea, and hard for us western people to understand. It was a sort of transcendentalism which at least tends to a purification of soul . Gautama died in the city of Benares, and though his body was burned, his ashes were sacredly kept for ages, and to this day, in one of the temples of Siam, the curious traveler is shown the silver casket that contains one of his teeth. Buddhism in one sense is not a religion. It is a system of ethics. While the Brahman taught that everything is God, and the ultimate outcome of existence is God, the Buddhist maintained that man himself becomes the supreme, or the Nirvana, through work and self-denial. The Buddhist practiced asceticism as a means to an end — emancipation, purification, knowledge. "But not the knowledge that means the recollection of outward facts," remarks Mr. Clarke, ''but intuitive knowledge, or the sight of eternal truth." He would at last see truth: he would be the man who knew, or the Buddha. Buddhism taught the existence of three worlds. First, the absolute world of eternal being, or the Nirvana, of which we know nothing. Second, the celestial world of the gods, Brahma, Indra, etc.; and third, the finite world, consisting of individuals and the laws of nature. To be emancipated from our * Mr. James Freeman Clarke, in his Ten Great Religions , points out the fact that Buddha is not a proper name, but an official title. Just as we ought not to say Jesus Christ, but always Jesus, the Christ, so we should say Gautama, the Buddha.

THE WORLD'S GREAT RELIGIONS. 293 material life o"n earth is to understand nature's laws, and to live in complete harmony with them. There are four sublime truths that lie at the foundation of Buddhism. "First. All existence is evil, because all existence is subject to change and will pass away. Second. The source of evil is the desire for things that are to decay and pass away. Third. Th\s desire, and the evil which follows it, are not inevitable; for if we choose, we can arrive at Nirvana, when both shall wholly cease. Fourth. There is a fixed and certain method to adopt, by pursuing which we attain this end, without possibility of failure." * Sublime faith is this last truth. In fact, faith is the fundamental of Buddhism, and has been the cause of its wonderful growth. Though Buddhism is very mystical and idealistic, it may be said to be practical as well. I am told by a Persian writer and lecturer, who was educated in the United States, that the Buddhists are very tolerant, and it is considered a great sin to speak ill of one's neighbor. The ideal of the Buddhist is purification, and a cleanliness of all words spoken or written. All this presupposes clean thought, for the religious devotee of this system believes that every act, thought, and word entails consequences in the world to come. This is Karma, or the law of consequences. Karma acts until the individual reaches Nirvana, or the perfect man. Professor Max Muller has translated many of the sermons of the old masters of Buddhism, sermons in which have been preserved the pure doctrines of Gautama himself. In the Dhammapada, or Collection oj Truths, we find many of the teachings which show us what the foundation of Buddhism is : All that we are is the result of what we have thought ; it is founded on our thoughts; it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him as the wheel follows the foot of an ox that draws the carriage, but if a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him. Earnestness is the path that leads to escape from death; thoughtlessness is the path that leads to death. Those who are in earnest do not die; those who are * From James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions. Much of this article ie also taken from Prof. Dr. Edmund Hardy's Buddha.

294 IMPROVEMENT ERA. thoughtless are as if dead already. T^ong is the night to him who is awake, long is the mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish. There is no suffering for him who has finished his journey and abandoned grief, who has freed himself from all sides, and thrown off the fetters. Some people are born again ; evil doers go to hell; righteous people go to heaven; those who are free from all earthly desires attain Nirvana. He who, seeking his own happiness, punishes or kills beings that also long for happiness, will not find happiness after death. Better than going to heaven, better than lordship over all worlds, is the reward of entering the stream of holiness. Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's mind, that is the teaching of the Buddhas . Let us live happily, not hating those who hate us; let us live happily, though we call nothing our own. We shall be like bright gods feeding on happiness.— Quoted by Dr. Edward Washburn Hopkins. Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology in Bryn Mawr College. Among the Buddhists as well as the Roman Catholics, there was developed a monastic system which has had a wonderful effect in preserving the original doctrines of Gautama. As stated before , the Buddhistic religion or system of ethics demanded a complete realization of self, and it therefore engenderd a love for one's self, and a desire to throw off the world and all materiality, and pass into a state of complete rest. Men became hermits or anchorites. They went to the forests and desert wastes, and lived a life of solitude. Some writers tell us that the monastic system of Europe originated among the Hindoo people. Life was realized in completely mastering the senses, and freeing the mind from carnal thoughts. As Professor Santayana, of Havard University, has put it: "The goal of Buddhism is not some more flattering incarnation, but escape from incarnation altogether. Ignorance is to be enlightened, passion calmed, mistaken destiny revoked; only what the inmost being desiderates, only what can really quiet the longings embodied in any particular will, is to occupy the redeemed mind."* The fanaticism of the priests and poor monks led to idolatry and superstition, and about the year 800, A. D., Buddhism was pushed out of India by the better doctrine of Hinduism, and made its way into more eastern nations, as China and Japan. * George Santayana, The Life of Reason.

THE WORLD'S GREAT RELIGIONS. 295 Buddhism has played a wonderful part in the history of the world. It was adapted to the people where it grew, and in one sense was divine. Those people of the Ganges and Indus valleys could not have seen and understood Christ and him crucified. Buddhism played its part, and is still acting as a great influence on the intellectual development of Asiatic peoples. The race is going to come to a knowledge of the truth in many diferent ways; and the clean, pure doctrine of Buddhism will prepare millions of people for the understanding of the laws of God. Edwin Arnold, author of The Light of Asia, tells us that "Buddhism has not only the sense for righteousness, but has even the 'secret of Jesus.'" Professor Santayana has also added: Buddhists seem to have shown a finer sense of their ministry, knowing how to combine universal sympathy with perfect spirituality. There was no browbeating in their call to conversion, no new tyranny imposed or sanctioned by their promised deliverance. If they could not rise to a positive conception of natural life, this inability but marks the well known limitations of oriental fancy, which has never been able to distinguish steadily that imagination which rests on and expresses material life from that which, in its import, breaks loose from the given conditions of life altogether, and is therefore monstrous and dreamful. But at least Buddhism knew how to sound the heart and pierce to the genuine principles of happiness and misery. If it did not venture to interpret reason positively, it at least forbade to usurp its inward and autonomous authority, and did not set up in the name of salvation, some new partiality, some new principle of distress and illusion. In destroying worldliness, this religion avoided imposture. The clearing it made in the soul was soon overgrown by the inexorable Indian jungle; but had a virile intellect been at hand, it would have been free to raise something solid and rational in the space so happily swept clean of all accumulated rubbish. - At the present time, we find the purest Buddhism in Ceylon. The monastic system there is well developed, and thousands of mendicants go about the country, and into other lands, teaching that through one's will, and faith in the power of one's soul, one may pass into the boundless "glory or light" of Nirvana. Salt Lake City, Utah.