CHAPTER XX
INDIA
III. Buddhism
In Buddhism the great movement of Indian religion works itself out to its ultimate conclusion and reaches a stage beyond which there can be no advance. Here we have a religion, if such it may be called, without a god, without prayer, without priesthood or worship; a religion which owes its great success, not to its theology, nor to its ritual, since it has neither, but to its moral sentiment and to its external organisation. Originating in the centre of India, and giving practical form to Indian ideas, it spread rapidly and widely both in the country of its birth and in neighbouring lands. It is now extinct in India, yet it numbers more adherents than any other religion. It has been divided since the Christian era into two great branches. Southern Buddhism is the religion of Ceylon, of Burmah, and of Siam; while Northern Buddhism extends over Tibet, China, and Japan, and the islands of Java and Sumatra.
The Literature.—These two branches of Buddhism have different literary traditions, though some works are common to both; and these literatures, differing from each other in language, also differ widely in contents and in spirit. The southern tradition, composed in Pali, the literary language of Ceylon, has recently been opened up to scholars, and has greatly changed their views of the origin and the true nature of this religion. The Canon of Southern Buddhism, which we might call the Pali Bible, is a literature about twice as large as the Bible of Europe, although if the repetitions in it were removed, it would be somewhat smaller than the Bible. It consists of three Pitakas, baskets or collections. The first is the Vinaya Pitaka, dealing with discipline, but including the Mahavagga, a history of the first beginnings of the order as the founder gathered it around him. The second is the Sutta Pitaka or collection of teachings. It contains the earliest account of the later life of the founder, books of meditation and devotion, collections of sayings by the Master, poems, fairy tales, and fables, stories about Buddhist saints, and so on. The third collection, the Abidhamma, contains speculations and discussions on various subjects. Much of these materials is not peculiar to Buddhism, there is much pre-Buddhistic speculation, and there are many stories which are not peculiar even to India. Along with all this, however, the books give us the earliest accounts of the life and of the death of the founder, and contain a representation written a century after his death, of what he was considered to have taught. The founder himself wrote nothing; but the work of composing books about him and his doctrine began early, and much of the canon is considered, especially by English scholars, to have been in existence during the first Buddhist century.1 For many centuries they were preserved by memory alone.
1 The Buddhist literature given in the Sacred Books of the East is as follows:
Vol. x. The Dhammapada, containing the quintessence of Buddhist morality, and the Sutta-nipata, giving teachings of Buddha on religion.
Vol. xi. Buddhist Suttas. Religious, moral, and philosophical discourses. Vol. xlix. Buddhist Mahayana Sutras.
Vol. xiii. Vinaya Texts. The Patimokha or order of discipline, and the beginning of the Mahavagga, containing an account of the opening of the ministry of the founder.
Vol. xvii. Vinaya Texts ii. Mahavagga continued. Kullavagga or discipline as established by the Master.
Vol. xx. Kullavagga continued.
Vols. xxii., xlv. contain Suttas of the religion of the Jainas.
Vols. xxxv., xxxvi. Questions of King Milinda.
Was there a Personal Founder?—Senart in his Essai sur la légende du Buddha, and Kern in his Het Buddhisme in Indie, both hold that we have here to do with a sun-myth, and interpret the various features of the legend in a very ingenious way in accordance with that theory. This view has made few converts. Many incidents in the story are natural, and appear to be due to a real tradition; there is literary evidence of the early existence of the books, and the religion can be best understood if regarded as the work of a real personality of commanding greatness.2
2 Recent archæological discoveries, of which an account is given by Mr. Rhys Davids in the Century Magazine, April 1902, place it beyond doubt that the Buddha really existed, and that pious offices were paid to his ashes after his cremation by the members of his own clan as well as by others. Inscriptions brought to light in 1898 show that the Sakhya clan, of which he was a member, dwelt at the time of his death in what is now a frontier district of Nepal. Three years before that event they were driven from their old capital Kapilavastu; but they formed a new one fifteen miles further south, just beyond the present frontier of Nepal, and there they erected a stupa or massive stone cairn, to guard the portion of the ashes of the Buddha which was committed to their keeping.
Scholars, however, are agreed as to the difficulty of drawing the line between what is history and what is legend. Even in the early Pali accounts the hero has become a religious figure, he wears titles which lift him above mankind, and he has supernatural powers at his command. A laborious critical process must be undertaken, comparing the various narratives with each other and testing them in other ways, before the real history can be regarded as made out beyond question. The slight sketch of the story which we give does not aim at such critical correctness; we merely indicate the outline of a narrative which is one of the principal sources of the strength of the religion.
The Story of the Founder.—The founder's family name was Gautama, and by that name he was commonly known during his lifetime. The personal name given him as a child was Siddartha. Those who wished after his death to speak of him with reverence called him Sakya-Muni, the Sage of the Sakyas. These were a tribe who dwelt, at the period of the story, i.e. half a millennium before Christ, in the country to the north of the sacred Ganges, a few days' journey from the city of Benares. Gautama's father, Suddhodana, was rajah (chief) of the Sakyas; his residence was Kapilavastu, near Oude. The future sage thus belonged to the Kshatriya class, and was accustomed to a position of rank and ease. We hear little of his youth; he had been married ten years, and his wife, whom he loved, had just brought him a son, when, at the age of twenty-nine, he suddenly and secretly left his home to devote himself to the religious life. He was led to this step by witnessing various painful sights which caused him vividly to realise the suffering which accompanies all existence, and made him scorn a life of luxury. It was a time when many were seeking a better way, and when a superior mind naturally turned to that retirement and absorption in which it was believed that the key to life's pains and mysteries was to be found. In the "Great Renunciation," as this act is called, there is nothing we cannot understand. This lofty act, however, was followed by a temptation; Mara, the spirit of evil, urged him, but urged him in vain, to give up the purpose he had formed. He then attached himself to Brahmanic ascetics, from whom he learned their philosophy; and after this he devoted himself for six years to a life of fasting and penance, the Brahmanic method for drawing nearer the goal of the religious life. After this period he gave up his fasting, not having profited by it as he had expected, and returned to an ordinary diet. This change cost him the adhesion of five disciples who had become attached to him, and had been filled with wonder at his mortifications. But the loss was a small one compared with the gain which was at hand. After a second great spiritual struggle and a renewal of the temptation, he at last reached that which he had long been seeking. Seated under a ficus religiosa, the tree afterwards called the tree of knowledge, or the Bo-tree, he rose in contemplation above all his temptations and doubts till he beheld at length the true nature of things. From this moment he was Buddha, Enlightened; he had the key of truth, and for himself he was assured that sorrow and evil had lost all hold on him. His doctrine had dawned in his mind. He had discovered the cause of the sorrow which is so closely intertwined in man's life, and had divined the way in which sorrow might be overcome. The method had been found by which one could escape from the unending succession of new lives, all painful, to which, according to the general belief of the time, men were condemned. The words placed in the mouth of the founder when he attained to Buddhahood tell their own tale. "Looking for the Maker of this tabernacle, I have to run through a course of many births so long as I do not find him; and painful is birth again and again. But now, Maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen; thou shalt not make up this tabernacle again. All thy rafters are broken; thy ridge-pole is sundered; the mind, approaching the eternal, has attained to the extinction of all desires."3
3 Dhammapada, S. B. E. x. 42.
The great discovery being made, and duly pondered and realised, the question arose, What was to be done with it? The Buddha shrinks from the work of preaching it to others. Brahma himself is brought into the story to encourage him to make his secret known to others, and to assure him that many will receive it with great joy. The Blessed One consents, and thus replies: "Wide open is the gate of the Immortal to all who have ears to hear; let them send forth faith to meet it. The teaching is sweet and good; because I despaired of the task, I spake not to men before."4 He turns his steps, guided by his own supernatural knowledge, to the city of Benares, to seek the five monks who had formerly abandoned him. On his way thither he meets a naked ascetic who asks the reason of his cheerful mien; he answers that he has overcome all foes, has reached emancipation by the destruction of desire, and has obtained Nirvana. "To found the kingdom of Truth I go to the city of the Kasis (Benares); I will beat the drum of the Immortal in the darkness of this world." The account which follows of the opening of the "kingdom of righteousness" presents many analogies to the early stages of other spiritual movements. The founder, immovably sure of himself and of his doctrines, goes from place to place, spending the rainy season in town, and preaching everywhere. It is at Benares that the "wheel of the law" is first set in motion; there the first sermon was preached. The circumstances are also narrated under which other sermons were delivered, details being given as to time, place, the persons who heard them, the incidents which occasioned them. His converts at first are few and their names are recorded, but by degrees they become more numerous. The more devoted of them become members of his order, Bhikkus (for Bhikshus), mendicants; they forsake domestic life, shave their heads, adopt the yellow dress and the alms-bowl. They also are sent out to preach. "Go ye, O Bhikkus, and wander, for the welfare of many, out of compassion for the world, for the gain and for the welfare of gods and men. Let not two of you go the same way. Preach, O Bhikkus, the doctrine which is glorious in the beginning, glorious in the middle, glorious in the end, in the spirit, and in the letter; proclaim a consummate, perfect, and pure life of holiness. There are beings whose mental eyes are covered with scarcely any dust, but if the doctrine is not preached to them they cannot attain salvation." The incidents narrated in this part of the story are mostly connected with persons seeking admission to the order, or persons requiring to be convinced; the doctrine and its spread are everything. That spread takes place, as it is desired by the Buddha, chiefly among the higher classes of society; a great triumph is reached when Bimbisara, king of Magadha, becomes a patron of the order, and some accounts tell of the conversion of the Buddha's own father and mother. The work of the mission is of a peaceful nature; the Buddha lives on good terms with the Brahmans and with other teachers and their pupils. The only formidable opposition he had to meet arose within the order. His cousin Dewadatta, who had become a monk, wished to found a new order with much stricter rules than those of the original one. The Buddha refused to attach importance, as was proposed, to matters of clothes and food, or living in the open air; to do so would have made his movement narrower and less universal than he desired.
4 Mahavagga, S. B. E. xiii. 88.
The beginning of the ministry is told in some detail, but of a long period of the life only a few scattered incidents are given. There is a detailed account of the three last months of the life. The Buddha is now eighty years of age, and in the Maha-paranibbana Sutta5 the tale of his migrations and preachings is carried on according to the same scheme as in the accounts of his early days. During the rainy season, however, when he has reached the age of eighty, he has an illness, and sees he cannot live long. This he tells his monks, exhorting them with urgency to be true to the teaching and the order, and to shed the light abroad. His end is hastened by a meal of pork set before him by a goldsmith, a man of low caste, who hospitably entertained him. After this his face shines with a heavenly radiance, and as the end approaches many heavenly signs appear. The Buddha is fully conscious that he is about to leave the world, and that his death is an event of supreme interest to the heavenly powers, whom he believes to be thronging around to watch his last hours. He is solicitous, however, to soothe the grief of his friends, large numbers of whom also are around him, and to give them such counsels and such incentives to a faithful upholding of the cause as he yet may. They ask about his obsequies, and he claims that the remains of such an one as he is, of a Tathagata, "one who has attained perfection," should be treated as men treat the remains of a king of kings. He recognises the kindness of Ananda, his most intimate disciple, and tries to comfort him by encouraging him to be earnest in effort, so that he too may soon be free from evils. He directs his disciples generally not to mourn too much at his removal as if they were being deserted. The truths which he has set forth, and the rules of the order he has laid down for them, are to be their teacher after he is gone. He asks if any of them has any doubt or misgiving as to the Buddha, or the truth, or the faith, or the way. If so, they are to inquire freely, so that they may not reproach themselves afterwards for not having consulted him while still among them. The brethren, however, are silent, though addressed again and again in the same way. In the whole assembly there is not one who has any doubt or misgiving. Even the most backward of these brethren has become converted (lit. "entered into the current"); he is no longer liable to be born to a state of suffering, but is assured of eternal salvation.
5 S. B. E. vol. xl.
"Then the Blessed One addressed the brethren and said, 'Behold now, brethren, I exhort you,' saying, 'Decay is inherent in all things that have come into being. Work out your salvation with diligence!'
"This was the last word of the Tathagata!"
His death or Nirvana forms the era of Buddhist chronology, and the date has now been approximately fixed with some certainty; it took place somewhere in the decade 482-472 B.C.
Is Buddhism a Revolt against Brahmanism?—Before proceeding to discuss the religion to which this somewhat monkish narrative forms the preface, it is necessary to say a few words on the relation which that religion is now supposed to hold to the general history of Indian piety. It was customary, till recently, to regard Buddha as a great reformer, and his religion as a great revolt against that which it found prevailing in India. He is credited with having preached atheism as a reaction against the burdensome worship of too many gods, with having instituted a great social movement consisting in the abolition of caste, with having openly denied the authority of the Vedas, till then unchallenged, and with having rebuked the pride of Brahmanism by making his order of mendicants the representatives of his religion. None of these assertions can now be upheld. Instead of having been a tremendous reaction against Brahmanism it is seen that Buddhism was the natural outgrowth of that system. The closer knowledge of both, gained by the opening up of the sacred books of India, tends to show that much that was formerly thought distinctive of Buddhism was in reality inherited from Brahmanism. We saw in dealing with the earlier form of Indian religion that a form of piety had been struck out in it which made the ascetic independent of sacrifice, priesthood, even of the gods, all save the one God who is in all things. In that phase of Indian religion the authority of the Vedas had already been impugned, an inner discipline had taken the place of outward worship, the saint had learned to forsake the world. This turn of religious thought produced all the phenomena of Buddhism before the period of Gautama. The sannyasin (vide sup.) of Brahmanism is also called bhikku, mendicant; the rules of the older ascetics are closely similar to those of the Buddhist monk; their very outfit, their cloak and alms-bowl, are the same.
A circumstance which shows very clearly how far Buddhism was from bearing the character of a revolt, is the occurrence at the same time and in the same district of India of another movement of a very similar nature. Jainism is an Indian religion so like Buddhism as to have been considered by many to be a sect of the latter. It also has an order of monks with robes and with a rule like those of the Buddhist fraternity. It also has a human founder on whom many of the same titles are conferred as on Gautama, and who is afterwards deified and worshipped. Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, is, like Gautama, the son of a royal house; and the Jainist and the Buddhist legend have many features in common. Was the legend of Mahavira, then, a sectarian version of the legend of Gautama, did no such person exist, at least as the founder of a religious body? So it was formerly considered; but it has now been discovered that the Buddhist scriptures themselves bear witness to the actual existence of Mahavira in the lifetime of Gautama, who once had an encounter with him and confuted him. It appears then that two similar movements were going on close together at the same time. They were independent of each other; the two rules differ in important particulars. Jainism carries to a much greater length than Buddhism the "ahimsa," or prohibition of the destruction of life; the Jainists practise austerities which Buddhism discards, and in the philosophies of the two systems there are far-reaching discrepancies. On the other hand, both Buddhism and Jainism borrow from Brahmanism most of their practices and institutions; both are developments of the way of salvation struck out not by Brahmans alone, but by men of other castes and other views, when faith in the old national gods was growing dim.
We now proceed to discuss the Buddhist system, taking it as it appears in the early books, which tell us at least what was believed in the fourth century B.C. to have been the ideas and intentions of the founder. The following is the formula in which the convert expressed his desire to be admitted to the order: "I take shelter in the Buddha, I take shelter in the Dhamma (doctrine), I take shelter in the Samgha (order)."
1. The Buddha.—This confession of faith is directed to a triad of which the Buddha is the first member. Now the title Buddha was not invented by Buddhism, but belongs to earlier Indian thought, which held that from time to time, in a specially favoured age, an Enlightened One and Enlightener, an omniscient and perfect teacher, visited the world. Of these there had been in former ages twenty-four, and the followers of Gautama held him to be the twenty-fifth, but not the last. The application to Gautama of this title removed him, to the believer, from the ranks of ordinary men, and was the signal for a constantly increasing exaltation of his person. In adhering to the Buddha, therefore, the convert is not bowing to a mere man, but to one in whom a new type of deity is on the way to be realised. He is a man; there is a record of his human life, in which he made a great renunciation, abandoning, out of compassion for men's sufferings, a position of lordly ease for that of the mendicant. In this way he is a saviour not too exalted for the pious heart to love and follow. Having found out in his own experience the way of peace, and opened up that way for others, he is a pattern and an encouragement as well as a lawgiver to the earnest soul; and the personal relation which may thus be enjoyed with the founder is one great secret of the success of the religion. On the other hand, he is more than a man. The belief grew up very early that he was not born in the ordinary way, but that his birth had been his own voluntary act, and that his great renunciation consisted in his choosing, out of compassion for men, to enter human life and to bear the burden of its sufferings. In this way a religion which originally had no gods and no worship began to supply itself with these. Some scholars hold that it was among the lay community, among men not thoroughly initiated into Buddhist thought, and failing to find in the new faith what their former religions had afforded, that the deification of the Buddha and the worship of him began; it may certainly be doubted whether the religion could have lived long or spread far if these deficiencies had not been early supplied.
2. The Doctrine.—The life of the founder gives us the key to his doctrine. We see at once that that doctrine was not negative but positive and constructive. Neither was it socially of a revolutionary character, nor did it deny any part of the existing religion. We never read that Gautama's teaching was assailed by the Brahmans as unsound; it was centuries after his death that antagonism broke out between the order and the upholders of other systems. Nor again did the teaching put forward a new philosophy. On certain points which we shall notice there is a development of thought in it; but this was not obtruded.
In fact the doctrine is not a speculation at all, but a way of salvation which is preached for its own sake, and carefully guarded from being mixed up with speculative or religious controversy. The Buddha is one who has found out a new way to be saved, and he comes forward to preach what he has discovered, and that alone. Other matters he leaves as they are. "All his discourses savour of redemption as all the sea is salt." Other men may draw inferences as to the relation his doctrine bears to the position of the Brahmans, or to the sacrifices, or to existing beliefs; he does not draw these inferences, he feels no need to do so.
The doctrine professes to be an answer to a definite problem—the problem of pain. It is the most characteristic thing about both the founder and the doctrine, that they start from the universal existence of pain, to seek a remedy for it; they are inspired therefore from the first by a dark view of human life, and by the sentiment of compassion. It was the impression made on the young prince, of the general prevalence of suffering, that drove him forth from the palace to be a sannyasin or devotee. In a striking sermon he uses the figure of fire to indicate how universal is the rule of pain in all parts of nature and of human life. "All is burning; the eye is burning, and all it looks on and all it remembers of what it has seen"; so it is with each of the senses, so also with the mind. The fire is that of passion, of malice, of illusion, of birth, of age, of death, of pain, despondency, and despair. But the nature of the complaint from which man suffers, and also the remedy for it, are described most clearly in the "Four Noble Truths" set forth in the opening sermon at Benares. In these memorable utterances the teacher expresses himself according to the rules of the medical art, first setting forth the nature of the disease, then its cause, then how it takes end, and lastly, the means to be adopted in order that it may do so.
1. The Noble Truth of Suffering. Birth is suffering, decay is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering. Presence of objects we hate is suffering, separation from objects we love is suffering, not to obtain what we desire is suffering. Briefly, the fivefold clinging to existence is suffering.
2. The Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering. Thirst that leads to rebirth, accompanied by pleasure and lust, finding its delight here and there. This thirst is threefold, namely, thirst for pleasure, thirst for existence, thirst for prosperity.
3. The Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering. It ceases with the complete cessation of this thirst, a cessation which consists in the absence of every passion, with the abandoning of this thirst, with the deliverance from it, with the destruction of desire.
4. The Noble Truth of the Path which leads to the Cessation of Suffering. The holy eightfold Path; that is to say, Right Belief, Right Aspiration, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Means of Livelihood, Right Endeavour, Right Memory, Right Meditation.
In these statements there are some things which we can readily understand, but also some things which are not so easy. It is a thought with which Christians are familiar, that desire is the parent of all sorts of pain and disappointment, that the assertion of the self, the putting forward of personal wishes and claims, involves suffering. And we read in the Gospels that the way to escape from such suffering is to cease from desire, no longer to be anxious about what this world can give us or take from us, and not to lay up treasures. Buddhist doctrine has its moral basis in the perception of the vanity of all human effort and desire, and in the conviction that the true riches for man cannot consist in any of those goods to which the heart naturally clings. Where that perception does not exist, where the first of the Noble Truths is not accepted as beyond all question, Buddhism can have no hold. So far the doctrine is easy to follow. But in the second of the Truths we find that the cause of suffering is sought in the history of the human person as Indian thought conceives it. Man suffers because he has been born again, has suffered a rebirth, and the cause of his rebirth is the thirst which has been felt or even nourished in a previous existence. The thought that suffering is due to desire is not presented simply, as it is in our Gospels, but in connection with a doctrine of man's life and of the connection of one generation with another, which is quite strange to us, but apart from which primitive Buddhism held that its doctrine of suffering could not be understood. The Buddha, after discovering the doctrine, is at first in doubt whether or not he will preach it; and the cause of his doubt is that he is not sure if men will be able to understand the law of causality and the chain of existence, on which he himself meditated a whole night after his enlightenment, and his discovery of which he regards as a great part of his achievement. This chain of causation is stated in a long series of asserted processes, in which the connection between one generation and another, and the transmission from life to life of the melancholy heritage of desire and sorrow, is obscurely and enigmatically traced. The beginning of all is ignorance (of the four truths); from ignorance proceed the "samkharas" or forms of production, from these in turn consciousness, the senses, contact, sensation, thirst, and so on to birth and the miseries of life. Suffering is destroyed by tracing this sequence over again in a negative way, so that, the first member of it being destroyed, each subsequent member is destroyed in turn.
It is no wonder that the founder doubted whether this doctrine of causation would be generally understood; for it is in fact an attempt to reconcile two opposite views of the nature of the human person. In the first place we find in early Buddhism the thought that there is no such thing as a self in the human being; a man is made up of various bundles of attributes and sensations called skandhas, but he himself is none of these. There is no persistent substratum of a self under these activities and forms, any more than there is a carriage in addition to the wheels, shafts, nails, etc., of which a carriage is composed. The Buddhist is called on to give up the belief in a permanent ego; only where the various parts come together is the man there. This is the well-known denial of the soul in this religion; the soul is nothing but the "name and form" of a chance collocation of elements. It is hard to know where this doctrine came from; Kern says it is derived from the science of dissection, others compare it with the doctrine of Heraclitus, taught about the same time in Greece, that all things are in constant flux, nothing permanent. The last words of the Master assert that decay is universal; and the doctrine of the skandhas is a corollary from that principle; if all the elements of which the human person is made up are in process of decay, then the self cannot be a substantial and persistent thing. That doctrine, however, does not go well together with the belief in the universality and inexorableness of suffering. If there is no self, must not consciousness come to an end when the elements fall asunder which chance has brought together, and must not the hour of death be also the hour of complete emancipation? This, however, it was impossible to hold in India at the time of Gautama; the belief in transmigration was too firmly fixed, he never thought of disputing it. That belief indeed is what chiefly makes the suffering of the world so lamentable. To Indian eyes the pain actually in the world was magnified a hundred-fold by the dark imagination of its connection with the past and with the future. What a man suffered was the result of acts done in many former lives, all spent in the vain misery of desire; and the sad prospect was extended before him that death would not end his pains, but that he would be born again and again to suffer ever anew so long as desire continued. But if this is the case, then the soul would seem to be a durable and persistent thing which is able to go through many lives and much suffering without being brought to an end. On the theory of transmigration the soul is not a mere shadow-name of an aggregation of qualities, but the one durable thing which survives when all that is accidental and temporary falls away from it. The doctrine of the Skandhas and that of transmigration are thus opposed, and the doctrine of the nidanas or the chain of causation is the bridge which satisfied Gautama's own mind, but which he was doubtful about presenting to others, to bring them into harmony. He aimed at showing by his catalogue of these obscure processes how the actions done in a life set up a tendency to a corresponding existence in another life which begins after the former one ends. Though there is no soul to be transmitted, the moral effects of former lives are transmitted to their successors.
The essential doctrine of the Buddha, however, is determined by the belief in transmigration. His cry of triumph at the time of his enlightenment is to the effect that the long series of suffering existences through which he has passed has now come to an end, and that he will not be born again. And what he preaches with constant iteration is the misery of this awful succession of births to renewal of suffering, and the infinite blessedness of escaping from this cycle. The disciple, when converted, is to be able to say: "Hell is destroyed for me, and rebirth as an animal or a ghost or in any place of woe. I am converted, I am no longer liable to be reborn in a state of suffering, and am assured of eternal salvation."
Now it rests with a man's own acts to end his sufferings. The chain of causation which ends with suffering begins with ignorance. The ignorance which is meant is that of the four noble truths, of the way of salvation. Let a man cease from ignorance, let him accept the Noble Truths and the insight they convey into the cause of suffering, then by ceasing to thirst, or to burn, or in our own language by turning his mind away from all desire, believing that what he does will be effective for his salvation, he sets up a chain of causation in an opposite direction, and having destroyed ignorance he may rest assured that he has destroyed suffering too and is in the right way. The burden he has inherited he will not need to carry any farther, but will, when he dies, lay down for ever.
When we look at the fourth Noble Truth, which tells what a man has to do in order to obtain this salvation, we are at first surprised. After the deep earnestness with which the nature of the disease and the cause and cure of the disease have been stated, we expect that stronger practical measures will be asked for than these eight forms of moderation. Christianity speaks of cutting off the right hand, plucking out the right eye, in order to cut off desire: and the Brahmanic method of union with the Deity was, as we have seen, that of the most extreme self-mortification united with contemplation. This Brahmanic method, the yoga by which the devotee sought to escape from all the accidents of being and to make himself one with the great Self, the Buddha had tried for six years; but he had given it up for a year when the hour of his enlightenment struck, and he explicitly condemns for others the path he had found unprofitable for himself. It is one of two extremes, both to be avoided, "The one extreme is a life devoted to pleasures and lusts; this is degrading, sensual, vulgar, profitless; the other is a life given to mortifications; this is painful, ignoble, and profitless. By avoiding these two extremes the Tathagata has gained the knowledge of the Middle Path, which leads to insight, wisdom, calm, to Nirvana." The way, therefore, to escape from the Karma, the moral retribution which works inexorably in one life the result stored up in previous lives, is that of a careful and unintermitted self-discipline, which does not run to extremes, but practices, with perfectly clear purpose and self-possession, the needful virtues mentioned in the fourth of the Noble Truths. What are these? There is to be—
1. Right belief, without superstition or delusion.
2. Right aspiration, after such things as the thoughtful and earnest man sets store by.
3. Right speech, speech that is friendly and sincere.
4. Right conduct, conduct that is peaceable, honourable, and pure.
5. Right means of livelihood, i.e. a pursuit which does not involve the taking or injuring of life.
6. Right endeavour, i.e. self-restraint and watchfulness.
7. Right memory, i.e. presence of mind, not forgetting at any time what one ought to remember; and
8. Right meditation, i.e. earnest occupation with the riddles of life.
This is the path; there are four stages of it—
1. The stage of him who has entered the path.
2. The stage of him who has yet to return once to life.
3. The stage of him who returns not again, but may be born again as a superior being; and
4. The stage of the worthy, holy one, the Arahat, who is free from desire for existence, and also from pride and self-righteousness, and who is saved and has obtained holiness, even in this life.
An Arahat is not equal to a Buddha; the former is himself saved, but the perfect Buddha is able by his perfect knowledge to save others. Of Buddhas, however, there are not many. One becomes an Arahat by a life of strenuous and untiring discipline. Ten fetters are to be broken by which a man is kept from freedom; self-deception is one of them, trust in sacrifice another, and the list embraces both sensual and intellectual weaknesses. One must watch and be sober; every act, however trivial, is to be done with full self-consciousness and earnestness. One must remember that he is engaged in a great and a hard work, and must resolutely "swim upstream," estimating at its proper value every affection and temptation that would hold him back. The body is to be contemned, and all natural ties; emotion is to be uprooted from the heart so that the proper state of entire calm and undisturbedness may be maintained. Then one is an Arahat, a true Brahman. This manner of life requires withdrawal from the world; the true salvation can only be attained by him who has left his home for the houseless life. But Buddhism has also a general moral code for those who have not taken this step; the keeping of it will not save them directly; from the life they are now leading that is impossible, but it is a beginning; it will make it easier for them to become Arahats and attain salvation in some future existence. For all it is good to be free from desire; as all desire contains in itself a germ of death, there is no approach to salvation except in this direction.
Buddhist Morality.—Towards fellow-men Buddhist morality is based on the notion of the equality of all; respect is to be paid to all living beings. The five rules of righteousness which are binding on all followers of the Buddha are:
1. Not to kill any living being.
2. Not to take that which is not given.
3. To refrain from adultery.
4. To speak no untruth.
5. To abstain from all intoxicating liquors.
To these are added five more for members of the order, who are also required to refrain from all sexual intercourse, viz.:
1. Not to eat after mid-day.
2. Not to be present at dancing, singing, music, or plays.
3. Not to use wreaths, scents, ointments, or personal ornaments.
4. Not to use a high or a broad bed.
5. To possess no silver or gold.
These commandments, like those of the Decalogue, are negative in form; but in the Buddhist scriptures a positive moral ideal is inculcated on all, which is grave and attractive in its character, and is sustained by a strong though quiet enthusiasm. We find here a delicate conscientiousness as to the relations to be cultivated with one's fellow-men; the widest toleration is enjoined, a toleration extending to all beings, to all opinions. Hatred is to be repaid by love, life is to be filled with kindness and compassion. The Dhammapada and the Sutta-nipata deserve to be read by all who care for the unseen riches of the soul. By their simple earnestness, their quaint use of parable and metaphor, and their mingling of the homeliest things with the highest truths, these books take rank among the most impressive of the religious books of the world. We give only a few jewels from this treasury.
From the Dhammapada.—Earnestness is the path of immortality (Nirvana), thoughtlessness the path of death. Those who are in earnest do not die, those who are thoughtless are as if dead already.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it is founded on what we have thought, it is made up of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
By oneself evil is done, by oneself one suffers; by oneself evil is left undone, by oneself one is purified. Purity and impurity belong to oneself; no one can purify another.
From the Sutta-nipata.—To live in a suitable country, to have done good deeds in a former existence, and a thorough study of oneself, this is the highest blessing.
As a mother at the risk of her life watches over her own child, her only child, so also let every one cultivate a boundless friendly mind towards all beings.
A Bhikku who has turned away from desire and attachment, and is possessed of understanding in this world, has already gone to the immortal place, the unchangeable state of Nirvana.
Nirvana.—Our account of the doctrine would appear incomplete if we did not attempt to answer the question, What is Nirvana? It is, as the last extract shows, the state of salvation in Buddhism. As we have seen, it is the condition of the man who has escaped from the series of rebirths, and will never be born again. It is attained even in this life by the Arahat, in whom all desire and restlessness have come to an end. On the other hand, it is said of such an one that he enters Nirvana when he dies, as if it were a state not of this life, but of the period beyond. Thus it has been much debated whether the Buddhist (or rather Indian, for the notion is not peculiar to Buddhism) Nirvana is extinction, annihilation, of which the quenching of desire in this life is the prelude, or if it is a state of negative or quiescent blessedness, on which the saint can enter here and now, but which is only made perfect when he dies. But there are two Nirvanas;—that of entire passionlessness attained in this life, and the consummate Nirvana entered at death. The saint does not need to wait for death for his redemption, nor must he hasten his death in order to enjoy it fully; Buddha, by example and by precept, forbids any such anticipation. Death seals that which was already won, there is no return from the Nirvana of death to any further life. This, however, does not amount to an assertion that the dead Arahat has no life or knowledge in the beyond; he is freed from desire, but whether his consciousness is altogether extinguished, Buddhism does not decide, and regards as a vain speculation.
No Gods.—We shall speak afterwards of this view of redemption, which is the key to the nature of the Buddhist religion. We remark here that it is a redemption man achieves by his own efforts, without any outward prop or aid. In this system there is no occasion for any priests or sacrifices, for any prayers, or for any gods. There is no ritual, because there is no object of worship, there is no sin in the sense of offending a higher being. The gods are denied not because of any speculative doubt of their existence, but because in that inner world of moral effort which man has come to feel so supremely real and important, they have no part to play. As all the gods faded away in Indian speculation before Brahma, so Brahma's own turn has come to fade away. The Buddhist speaks of the gods as if they existed, and he makes no attack on the sacrifices; but no living god fills his heart. The Buddha is greater than all the gods; his teaching is for the benefit of gods as well as men. But the Buddha is not an object of worship. If the Buddhist can be said to worship any higher power, it is the moral order which never fails to reward men according to the deeds done in this or former existences. That is for him a real and tremendous, though impersonal power, and in contemplating it he may be said to worship after a fashion. But he has no aid to look for from any power in heaven or earth in working out his salvation. Buddhism is the most autosoteric of all religions; it declares more uncompromisingly than any other, that man must save himself by his own efforts, and that no one can possibly stand in his place or relieve him of any part of his great task. All that any one, even the Buddha, can do for another, is to enlighten him, to open his eyes to the true knowledge, and show him the narrow path on which he must thenceforth walk.
3. The Order.—There were monks before Buddhism. That religion made its appearance when Indian thought was at the stage of growth at which monastic communities may be expected to arise. When religion has ceased to be regarded as the affair of the nation or the tribe, and is cherished as the affair of the individual, when the mind turns from the sacrifices and ritual of public religion to cultivate relations with a power known chiefly in the heart and soul, and when religious duty has thus come to be recognised as a boundless and all-embracing thing, not a service the hands and feet can discharge, but the effort, never ending, still beginning, to make the whole personality with all its acts and aims conform to the ideal, then it is that men who are living for religion seek for such aid as they can give each other, and find it in an order and a discipline. The rules of the Buddhist Samgha or order are extant, and so are the rules of the contemporary Jainist fraternity. The Samgha resembled the Franciscan more than the other great Christian orders. The Bhikku on joining it abandoned his family and property, assumed the yellow robe and other scanty properties of the character, and lived thenceforth by begging, and in strict subjection to the rules, in which every detail of his food, his clothing, his residence, and his daily walk and conversation, were laid down. The two great objects of the society were mutual help in the religious life and the preaching of the doctrine. Under the first head come the frequent meetings of monks and the confessions they make to each other according to a fixed form. There is no vow of obedience; the monk obeys the law, not the human authority. In preaching they are to go one by one, and they are to preach to all. To all who would hear it was the gate open to this salvation. Here the Buddhist neglect of caste comes in. Buddhism makes no general or formal declaration of the equality of all men, nor is there any attack on the Brahman caste or any exaltation of the lower castes. The order drew its recruits at first from the ranks of the Brahmans. But the impelling motive of the new religion was compassion, and genuine compassion is not to be restrained in artificial limits. The salvation preached was fitted for all men. The disease to be cured was one from which all suffer, and the cure was one which all could at least begin to lay hold of. Thus Buddhism was fitted to break through the barriers of caste, and to gather into one religious community men of all castes alike. In the community, it was held, these distinctions disappeared. Not birth but conduct there made the true Brahman. The universalist tendency of the religion also fitted it to spread to other lands. It was not limited by anything in its teaching to the soil of India, nor to the territory of any particular set of gods. So wide indeed is its toleration, that a man may embrace it without giving up the faith in which he lived before. One can add it without incongruity to one's former beliefs and practices. The believer in Shang-ti can be a Buddhist as well as the believer in Brahma.6 The absence of any hierarchy or centralised organisation enabled it to spread freely, and the very meagreness of its doctrine, and its freedom from ritual, were also in its favour.
6 Millions of Buddhists in China and Japan are also adherents of the other religions of these countries.
Buddhism made Popular.—Buddhism proved able to spread over many lands because it was so simple, and in its essence so moral and so broadly human. But, like other faiths which have spread to many lands, it assumed very different forms in different countries, and the later form is often very different from the early simplicity. Even at the outset it was not free from a strong infusion of magic; the Arahat, like the Brahmanic ascetic before him, was believed to obtain influence over the gods by his virtues, and thus a claim to supernatural power is brought in, which agrees but ill with the ethical doctrine. The religion, which at first ignored the gods and bade each man trust to his own efforts for his highest good, became, ere long, what a popular religion at the stage of progress prevailing at that time necessarily was, namely, a worship of superior beings and a method of obtaining benefits from them. The national gods were discarded, but the deification of the founder early furnished a being who could be worshipped. Legend grew luxuriantly round his birth and early career; and he obtained the rank of the greatest of all the gods. Former Buddhas who had lived in former ages still lived as gods; and the divine family, being once founded, admitted of various additions; even a popular deity, such as Indra, could be joined to the growing circle. The chief scenes of the life of the founder became holy places and objects of pilgrimage, where relics were exposed for adoration. The growth of legend and of magic proceeded more rapidly, and went to greater lengths, in Northern than in Southern Buddhism; but in the land of its birth, too, Buddhism proved unable to serve as a working religion without additions and modifications entirely foreign to its true character. The profession of Buddhism was combined even with the savage worship of the non-Aryan tribes; Siva was identified with Buddha and then worshipped instead of him, as also was Vishnu, and the perversion and degradation of the religion prepared for its expulsion from the country of its birth. That expulsion was probably brought about more immediately by the advance of Mohammedanism in India, and took place in the period of the early Middle Ages. We cannot speak here of the strange guise Buddhism has assumed in the north of India, notably in Tibet. The Lamaism of that country, with its perpetual living incarnation of the divine Buddha in a succession of human representatives, its hierarchical church strongly resembling in many of its features the Church of Rome, and the prayer-flags and wheels for the mechanical discharge of religious acts, have long been the wonder of the world.
Conclusion.—It is not from what Buddhism is now in any of the countries where it flourishes, and where it has votaries who profess other religions also, that we can judge of what it really is, or estimate its value as a product of the human mind. It is to early Buddhism that we must look for this. What are we to judge of this religion without gods, and based on the assertion that all life is suffering, and that the chief good is altogether to escape from life? It is not true to characterise it as a religion in which there is no joy, and which deliberately refuses to have anything to do with joy. The Arahat, in whom desire is vanquished, and who has no further birth to anticipate, is filled with a deep joy and triumph as of a victor who has conquered every foe; and those who are less advanced in the path yet have their share in this enthusiasm, and are inspired by it to continue the struggle. Still Buddhism is a sad religion. It arrives in India when the Deity there believed in has deserted the world, and tells man he is alone in it. There is no one to help him, no one to assure him that the good cause in a wider sense—a cause extending beyond his own personal life—is destined to succeed; there is no upholder of any moral order beyond that which works itself out in each individual experience. The result is that the believer does not trouble himself about the world, but only about his own personal salvation. This religion is not a social force, it aims not at a Kingdom of God to be built up by the united efforts of multitudes of the faithful, but only at saving individual souls, which in the act of being saved are removed beyond all activity and all contact with the world. Buddhism, therefore, is not a power which makes actively for civilisation. It is a powerful agent for the taming of passion and the prevention of vagrant and lawless desires, it tends, therefore, towards peace. But it offers no stimulus to the realisation of the riches which are given to man in his own nature: it checks rather than fosters enterprise, it favours a dull conformity to rule rather than the free cultivation of various gifts. Its ideal is to empty life of everything active and positive, rather than to concentrate energy on a strong purpose. It does not train the affections to virtuous and harmonious action, but denies to them all action and consigns them to extinction. This condemnation it has incurred by parting with that highest stimulus to human virtue and endeavour, which lies in the belief in a living God. By so doing it ceased to fulfil the office of a religion for men, and though, for historical purposes, we may class it among the religions of the world, a system which leaves its adherents free not to worship at all, or to find satisfaction for their spiritual instincts in the worship of beings whom it regards with indifference, comes short of the notion of religion, and is not properly entitled to that name.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
Monier Williams, Buddhism, in its connection with Brahmanism and Hinduism, and in its contrast with Christianity, 1889.
Rhys Davids, Buddhism (S.P.C.K.).
Oldenberg's, Buddha, his Life, his Doctrine and his Order, 1882 (out of print). (Third German Edition, 1897.)
Spence Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, 1860.
E. Hardy, Der Buddhismus.
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