Ten Great Religions Part 15

The Buddhist a.s.serts Nirvana as the object of all his hope, yet, if you ask him what it is, may reply, "Nothing." But this cannot mean that the highest good of man is annihilation. No pessimism could be more extreme than such a doctrine. Such a belief is not in accordance with human nature. Tennyson is wiser when he writes:--

"Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death.

"'T is LIFE, whereof our nerves are scant, O life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want."

The Buddhist, when he says that Nirvana is _nothing,_ means simply that it is _no thing_; that it is nothing to our present conceptions; that it is the opposite of all we know, the contradiction, of what we call life now, a state so sublime, so wholly different from anything we know or can know now, that it is the same thing as nothing to us. All present life is change; _that_ is permanence: all present life is going up and down; _that_ is stability: all present life is the life of sense; _that_ is spirit.

The Buddhist denies G.o.d in the same way. He is the unknowable. He is the impossible to be conceived of.

"Who shall name Him And dare to say, '_I believe in Him_'?

Who shall deny Him, And venture to affirm, '_I believe in Him not?_'"[106]

To the Buddhist, in short, the element of time and the finite is all, as to the Brahman the element of eternity is all. It is the most absolute contradiction of Brahmanism which we can conceive.

It seems impossible for the Eastern mind to hold at the same time the two conceptions of G.o.d and nature, the infinite and the finite, eternity and time. The Brahmaus accept the reality of G.o.d, the infinite and the eternal, and omit the reality of the finite, of nature, history, time, and the world. The Buddhist accepts the last, and ignores the first.

This question has been fully discussed by Mr. Alger in his very able work, "Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life," and his conclusion is wholly opposed to the view which makes Nirvana equivalent to annihilation.

-- 8. Good and Evil of Buddhism.

The good and the evil of Buddhism are thus summed up by M. Saint-Hilaire.

He remarks that the first peculiarity of Buddhism is the wholly practical direction taken by its founder. He proposes to himself the salvation of mankind. He abstains from the subtle philosophy of the Brahmans, and takes the most direct and simple way to his end. But he does not offer low and sensual rewards; he does not, like so many lawgivers, promise to his followers riches, pleasures, conquests, power. He invites them to salvation by means of virtue, knowledge, and self-denial. Not in the Vedas, nor the books which proceed from it, do we find such n.o.ble appeals, though they too look at the infinite as their end. But the indisputable glory of Buddha is the boundless charity to man with which his soul was filled. He lived to instruct and guide man aright. He says in so many words, "My law is a law of grace for all" (Burnouf, Introduction, etc., p.

198). We may add to M. Saint-Hilaire's statement, that in these words the Buddha plainly aims at what we have called a catholic religion. In his view of man's sorrowful life, all distinctions of rank and cla.s.s fall away; all are poor and needy together; and here, too, he comes in contact with that Christianity which says, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden." Buddha also wished to cure the sicknesses, not only of the Hindoo life, but of the life of mankind.

M. Saint-Hilaire adds, that, in seeking thus to help man, the means of the Buddha are pure, like his ends. He tries to convince and to persuade: he does not wish to compel. He allows confession, and helps the weak and simple by explanations and parables. He also tries to guard man against evil, by establishing habits of chast.i.ty, temperance, and self-control. He goes forward into the Christian graces of patience, humility, and forgiveness of injuries. He has a horror of falsehood, a reverence for truth; he forbids slander and gossip; he teaches respect for parents, family, life, home.

Yet Saint-Hilaire declares that, with all these merits, Buddhism has not been able to found a tolerable social state or a single good government.

It failed in India, the land of its birth. Nothing like the progress and the development of Christian civilization appears in Buddhism. Something in the heart of the system makes it sterile, notwithstanding its excellent intentions. What is it?

The fact is, that, notwithstanding its benevolent purposes, its radical thought is a selfish one. It rests on pure individualism,--each man's object is to save his own soul. All the faults of Buddhism, according to M. Saint-Hilaire, spring from this root of egotism in the heart of the system.

No doubt the same idea is found in Christianity. Personal salvation is herein included. But Christianity _starts_ from a very different point: it is the "kingdom of Heaven." "Thy kingdom come: thy will be done on earth."

It is not going on away from time to find an unknown eternity. It is G.o.d with us, eternity here, eternal life abiding in us now. If some narrow Protestant sects make Christianity to consist essentially in the salvation of our own soul hereafter, they fall into the condemnation of Buddhism.

But that is not the Christianity of Christ. Christ accepts the great prophetic idea of a Messiah who brings down G.o.d's reign into this life. It is the New Jerusalem coming down from G.o.d out of heaven. It is the earth full of the knowledge of G.o.d, as the waters cover the sea. It is all mankind laboring together for this general good.

This solitary preoccupation with one's own salvation causes the religious teachers of Buddhism to live apart, outside of society, and take no interest in it. There is in the Catholic and Protestant world, beside the monk, a secular priesthood, which labors to save other men's bodies and souls. No such priesthood exists in Buddhism.

Moreover, not the idea of salvation from evil,--which keeps before us evil as the object of contemplation,--but the idea of good, is the true motive for the human conscience. This leads us up at once to G.o.d; this alone can create love. We can only love by seeing something lovely. G.o.d must seem, not terrible, but lovely, in order to be loved. Man must seem, not mean and poor, but n.o.ble and beautiful, before we can love him. This idea of the good does not appear in Buddhism, says M. Saint-Hilaire. Not a spark of this divine flame--that which to see and show has given immortal glory to Plato and to Socrates--has descended on Sakya-muni. The notion of rewards, subst.i.tuted for that of the infinite beauty, has perverted everything in his system.

Duty itself becomes corrupted, as soon as the idea of the good disappears.

It becomes then a blind submission to mere law. It is an outward constraint, not an inward inspiration. Scepticism follows. "The world is empty, the heart is dead surely," is its language. Nihilism arrives sooner or later. G.o.d is nothing; man is nothing; life is nothing; death is nothing; eternity is nothing. Hence the profound sadness of Buddhism. To its eye all existence is evil, and the only hope is to escape from time into eternity,--or into nothing,--as you may choose to interpret Nirvana.

While Buddhism makes G.o.d, or the good, and heaven, to be equivalent to nothing, it intensifies and exaggerates evil. Though heaven is a blank, h.e.l.l is a very solid reality. It is present and future too. Everything in the thousand h.e.l.ls of Buddhism is painted as vividly as in the h.e.l.l of Dante. G.o.d has disappeared from the universe, and in his place is only the inexorable law, which grinds on forever. It punishes and rewards, but has no love in it. It is only dead, cold, hard, cruel, unrelenting law. Yet Buddhists are not atheists, any more than a child who has never heard of G.o.d is an atheist. A child is neither deist nor atheist: he has _no_ theology.

The only emanc.i.p.ation from self-love is in the perception of an infinite love. Buddhism, ignoring this infinite love, incapable of communion with G.o.d, aiming at morality without religion, at humanity without piety, becomes at last a prey to the sadness of a selfish isolation. We do not say that this is always the case, for in all systems the heart often redeems the errors of the head. But this is the logical drift of the system and its usual outcome.

-- 9. Relation of Buddhism to Christianity.

In closing this chapter, let us ask what relation this great system sustains to Christianity.

The fundamental doctrine and central idea of Buddhism is personal salvation, or _the salvation of the soul by personal acts of faith and obedience_. This we maintain, notwithstanding the opinion that some schools of Buddhists teach that the soul itself is not a constant element or a special substance, but the mere result of past merit or demerit. For if there be no soul, there can be no transmigration. Now it is certain that the doctrine of transmigration is the very basis of Buddhism, the corner-stone of the system. Thus M. Saint-Hilaire says: "The chief and most immovable fact of Buddhist metaphysics is the doctrine of transmigration." Without a soul to migrate, there can be no migration.

Moreover, the whole ethics of the system would fall with its metaphysics, on this theory; for why urge men to right conduct, in order to attain happiness, or Nirvana, hereafter, if they are not to exist hereafter. No, the soul's immortality is a radical doctrine in Buddhism, and this doctrine is one of its points of contact with Christianity.

Another point of contact is its doctrine of reward and punishment,--a doctrine incompatible with the supposition that the soul does not pa.s.s on from world to world. But this is the essence of all its ethics, the immutable, inevitable, unalterable consequences of good and evil. In this also it agrees with Christianity, which teaches that "whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap"; that he who turns his pound into five will he set over five cities, he who turns it into ten, over ten cities.

A third point of contact with Christianity, however singular it may at first appear to say so, is the doctrine of Nirvana. Nirvana, to the Buddhist, means the absolute, eternal world, beyond time and s.p.a.ce; that which is nothing to us now, but will be everything hereafter. Incapable of cognizing both time and eternity, it makes them absolute negations of each other.

The peculiarity of Plato, according to Mr. Emerson and other Platonists was, that he was able to grasp and hold intellectually both conceptions,--of G.o.d and man, the infinite and finite, the eternal and the temporal. The merit of Christianity is, in like manner, that it is able to take up and keep, not primarily as dogma, but as life, both these antagonistic ideas. Christianity recognizes G.o.d as the infinite and eternal, but recognizes also the world of time and s.p.a.ce as real. Man exists as well as G.o.d: we love G.o.d, we must love man too. Brahmanism loves G.o.d, but not man; it has piety, but not humanity. Buddhism loves man, but not G.o.d; it has humanity, but not piety; or if it has piety, it is by a beautiful want of logic, its heart being wiser than its head. That which seems an impossibility in these Eastern systems is a fact of daily life to the Christian child, to the ignorant and simple Christian man or woman, who, amid daily duty and trial, find joy in both heavenly and earthly love.

There is a reason for this in the inmost nature of Christianity as compared with Buddhism. Why is it that Buddhism is a religion without G.o.d?

Sakya-muni did not ignore G.o.d. The object of his life was to attain Nirvana, that is, to attain a union with G.o.d, the Infinite Being. He became Buddha by this divine experience. Why, then, is not this religious experience a const.i.tuent element in Buddhism, as it is in Christianity?

Because in Buddhism man struggles upward to find G.o.d, while in Christianity G.o.d comes down to find man. To speak in the language of technical theology, Buddhism is a doctrine of works, and Christianity of grace. That which G.o.d gives all men may receive, and be united by this community of grace in one fellowship. But the results attained by effort alone, divide men; because some do more and receive more than others. The saint attained Buddha, but that was because of his superhuman efforts and sacrifices; it does not encourage others to hope for the same result.

We see, then, that here, as elsewhere, the superiority of Christianity is to be found in its quant.i.ty, in its fulness of life. It touches Buddhism at all its good points, in all its truths. It accepts the Buddhistic doctrine of rewards and punishments, of law, progress, self-denial, self-control, humanity, charity, equality of man with man, and pity for human sorrow; but to all this it adds--how much more! It fills up the dreary void of Buddhism with a living G.o.d; with a life of G.o.d in man's soul, a heaven here as well as hereafter. It gives us, in addition to the struggle of the soul to find G.o.d, a G.o.d coming down to find the soul. It gives a divine as real as the human, an infinite as solid as the finite.

And this it does, not by a system of thought, but by a fountain and stream of life. If all Christian works, the New Testament included, were destroyed, we should lose a vast deal no doubt; but we should not lose Christianity; for that is not a book, but a life. Out of that stream of life would be again developed the conception of Christianity, as a thought and a belief. We should be like the people living on the banks of the Nile, ignorant for five thousand years of its sources; not knowing whence its beneficent inundations were derived; not knowing by what miracle its great stream could flow on and on amid the intense heats, where no rain falls, and fed during a course of twelve hundred miles by no single affluent, yet not absorbed in the sand, nor evaporated by the ever-burning sun. But though ignorant of its source, they know it has a source, and can enjoy all its benefits and blessings. So Christianity is a full river of life, containing truths apparently the most antagonistic, filling the soul and heart of man and the social state of nations with its impulses and its ideas. We should lose much in losing our positive knowledge of its history; but if all the books were gone, the tablets of the human heart would remain, and on these would be written the everlasting Gospel of Jesus, in living letters which no years could efface and no changes conceal.

Chapter V.

Zoroaster and the Zend Avesta.

-- 1. Ruins of the Palace of Xerxes at Persepolis.

-- 2. Greek Accounts of Zoroaster. Plutarch's Description of his Religion.

-- 3. Anquetil du Perron and his Discovery of the Zend Avesta.

-- 4. Epoch of Zoroaster. What do we know of him?

-- 5. Spirit of Zoroaster and of his Religion.

-- 6. Character of the Zend Avesta.

-- 7. Later Development of the System in the Bundehesch.

-- 8. Relation of the Religion of the Zend Avesta to that of the Vedas.

-- 9. Is Monotheism or pure Dualism the Doctrine taught in the Zend Avesta?

-- 10. Relation of this System to Christianity. The Kingdom of Heaven.

-- 1. Ruins of the Palace of Xerxes at Persepolis.

In the southwestern part of Persia is the lovely valley of Schiraz, in the province of Farsistan, which is the ancient Persis. Through the long spring and summer the plains are covered with flowers, the air is laden with perfume, and the melody of birds, winds, and waters fills the ear.