The Religions of Japan Part 11

"In the beginning, G.o.d created the heavens and the earth."--Genesis.

"I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly."--Jesus.

CHAPTER VI - THE BUDDHISM OF NORTHERN ASIA

Pre-Buddhistic India.

Does the name of Gautama, the Buddha, stand for a sun-myth or for a historic personage? One set of scholars and writers, represented by Professor Kern,[1] of Leyden, thinks the Buddha a mythical personage.

Another school, represented by Professor T. Rhys Davids,[2] declares that he lived in human flesh and breathed the air of earth. We accept the historical view as best explaining the facts.

In order to understand a religion, in its origin at least, we must know some of the conditions out of which it arose. Buddhism is one of the protestantisms of the world. Yet, is not every religion, in one sense, protestant? Is it not a protest against something to which it opposes a difference? Every new religion, like a growing plant, ignores or rejects certain elements in the soil out of which it springs. It takes up and a.s.similates, also, other elements not used before, in order to produce a flower or fruit different from other growths out of the same soil. Yet whether the new religion be considered as a development, fulfilment, or protest, we must know its historical perspective or background. To understand the origin of Buddhism, one of the best preparations is to read the history of India and especially of the thought of her many generations; for the landmarks of the civilizations of India, as a Hindu may proudly say, are its mighty literatures. At these let us glance.[3]

The age of the Vedas extends from the year 2000 to 1400 B.C., and the history of this early India is wonderfully like that of America. During this era, the Hindus, one of the seven Aryan tribes of which the Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Sclav and Teutonic form the other six, descending from the mid-Asian plateau, settled the Punjab in Northwest India. They drove the dark-skinned aborigines before them and reclaimed forest and swamp to civilization, making the land of the seven rivers bright with agriculture and brilliant with cities. This was the glorious heroic age of joyous life and conquest, when men who believed in a Heavenly Father[4] made the first epoch of Hindu history.

Then followed the epic age, 1400-1000 B.C., when the area of civilization was extended still farther down the Ganges Valley, the splendor of wealth, learning, military prowess and social life excelling that of the ancestral seats in the Punjab. Amid differences of wars and diplomacy with rivalries and jealousies, a common sacred language, literature and religion with similar social and religious inst.i.tutions, united the various nations together. In this time the old Vedas were compiled into bodies or collections, and the Brahmanas and the Upanishads, besides the great epic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were composed.

The next, or rationalistic epoch, covers the period from 1000 B.C. to 320 B.C., when the Hindu expansion had covered all India, that is, the peninsula from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. Then, all India, including Ceylon, was Hinduized, though in differing degrees; the purest Aryan civilization being in the north, the less pure in the Ganges Valley and south and east, while the least Aryan and more Dravidian was in Bengal, Orissa, and India south of the Kistna River.

This story of the spread of Hindu civilization is a brilliant one, and seems as wonderful as the later European conquest of the land, and of the other "Indians" of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Beside the conquests in material civilization of these our fellow-Aryans (who were the real Indians, and who spoke the language which is the common ancestor of our own and of most European tongues), what impresses us most of all, in these Aryans, is their intellectual energy. The Hindus of the rationalistic age made original discoveries. They invented grammar, geometry, arithmetic, decimal notation, and they elaborated astronomy, medicine, mental philosophy and logic (with syllogism) before these sciences were known or perfected in Greece. In the seventh century before Christ, Kapila taught a system of philosophy, of which that of the Europeans, Schopenhaur and Hartmann, seems largely a reproduction.

Following this agnostic scheme of thought, came, several centuries later, the dualistic Yoga[5] system in which the chief feature is the conception of Deity as a means of final emanc.i.p.ation of the human soul from further transmigration, and of union with the Universal Spirit or World Soul. There is, however, perhaps no sadder chapter in the history of human thought than the story of the later degeneration of the Yoga system into one of b.l.o.o.d.y and cruel rites in India, and of superst.i.tion in China.

Still other systems followed: one by Gautama, of the same clan or family of the later Buddha, who develops inference by the construction of syllogism; while Kanada follows the atomic philosophy in which the atoms are eternal, but the aggregates perishable by disintegration.

Against these schools, which seemed to be dangerous "new departures,"

orthodox Hindus, anxious for their ancient beliefs and practices as laid down in the Vedas, started fresh systems of philosophy, avowedly more in consonances with their ancestral faith. One system insisted on the primitive Vedic ritual, and another laid emphasis on the belief in a Universal Soul first inculcated in the Upanishads.

Conditions out of which Buddhism Arose.

Whatever we may think of these schools of philosophy, or the connection with or indebtedness of Gautama, the Buddha, to them, they reveal to us the conceptions which his contemporaries had of the universe and the beings inhabiting it. These were honest human attempts to find G.o.d. In them the various beings or six conditions of sentient existence are devas or G.o.ds; men; asuras or monsters; pretas or demons; animals; and beings in h.e.l.l. Furthermore, these schools of Hindu philosophy show us the conditions out of which Buddhism arose, furnish us with its terminology and technical phrases, reveal to us what the reformer proposed to himself to do, and, what is perhaps still more important, show us the types to which Buddhism in its degeneration and degradation reverted. The strange far-off oriental words which today scholars discuss, theosophists manipulate, and charlatans employ as catchpennies were common words in the every-day speech of the Hindu people, two or three thousand years ago.

Glancing rapidly at the condition of religion in the era ushering in the birth of Buddha, we note that the old joyousness of life manifested in the Vedic hymns is past, their fervor and glow are gone. In the morning of Hindu life there was no caste, no fixed priesthood, and no idols; but as wealth, civilization, easy and settled life succeeded, the taste for pompous sacrifices conducted by an hereditary priestly caste increased.

Greater importance was laid upon the detail of the ceremonies, the attention of the worshipper being turned from the deities "to the minutiae of rites, the erection of altars, the fixing of the proper astronomical moments for lighting the fire, the correct p.r.o.nunciation of prayers, and to the various requisite acts accompanying a sacrifice."[6]

In the chapter of decay which time wrote and literature reflects, we find "grotesque reasons given for every minute rite, dogmatic explanation of texts, penances for every breach of form and rule, and elaborate directions for every act and moment of the worshipper."

The literature shows a degree of credulity and submission on the part of the people and of absolute power on the part of the priests, which reminds us of the Middle Ages in Europe. The old inspiring wars with the aborigines are over. The time of bearing a n.o.ble creed, meaning culture and civilization as against savagery and idolatry, is past, and only intestine quarrels and local strife have succeeded. The age of creative literature is over, and commentators, critics and grammarians have succeeded. Still more startling are the facts disclosed by literary history. The liquid poetry has become frozen prose; the old flaming fuel of genius is now slag and ashes. We see Hindus doing exactly what Jewish rabbis, and after them Christian schoolmen and dogma-makers, did with the old Hebrew poems and prophecies. Construing literally the prayers, songs and hopes of an earlier age, they rebuild the letter of the text into creeds and systems, and erect an amazing edifice of steel-framed and stone-cased tradition, to challenge which is taught to be heresy and impiety. The poetical similes used in the Rig Vedas have been transformed into mythological tales. In the change of language the Vedas themselves are unreadable, except by the priests, who fatten on popular beliefs in the transmigration of souls and in the power of priestcraft to make that transmigration blissful--provided liberal gifts are duly forthcoming. Idolatry and witchcraft are rampant. Some saviour, some light was needed.

Buddhism a Logical Product of Hindu Thought.

At such a time, probably 557 B.C., was born Shaka, of the Muni clan, at Kapilavastu, one hundred miles northeast of Benares. We pa.s.s over the details[7] of the life of him called Prince, Lord, Lion of the Tribe of Shaka, and Saviour; of his desertion of wife and child, called the first Great Renunciation; of his struggles to obtain peace; of his enlightenment or Buddhahood; of his second or Greater Renunciation; of merit on account of austerities; and give the story told in a mountain of books in various tongues, but condensed in a paragraph by Romesh Chunder Dutt.

"At an early age, Prince Gautama left his royal home, and his wife, and new-born child, and became a wanderer and a mendicant, to seek a way of salvation for man. Hindu rites, accompanied by the slaughter of innocent victims, repelled his feelings. Hindu philosophy afforded him no remedy, and Hindu penances and mortifications proved unavailing after he had practised them for years. At last, by severe contemplation, he discovered the long coveted truth; a holy and calm life, and benevolence and love toward all living creatures seemed to him the essence of religion. Self-culture and universal love--this was his discovery--this is the essence of Buddhism."[8]

From one point of view Buddhism was the logical continuance of Aryan Hindoo philosophy; from another point of view it was a new departure.

The leading idea in the Upanishads is that the object of the wise man should be to know, inwardly and consciously, the Great Soul of all; and by this knowledge his individual soul would become united to the Supreme Being, the true and absolute self. This was the highest point reached in the old Indian philosophy[9] before Buddha was born.

So, looking at Buddhism in the perspective of Hindu history and thought, we may say that it is doubtful whether Gautama intended to found a new religion. As, humanly speaking, Saul of Tarsus saved Christianity from being a Jewish sect and made it universal, so Gautama extricated the new enthusiasm of humanity from the priests. He made Aryan religion the property of all India. What had been a rare monopoly as narrow as Judaism, he made the inheritance of all Asia. Gautama was a protestant and a reformer, not an agnostic or skeptic. It is more probable that he meant to shake off Brahmanism and to restore the pure and original form of the Aryan religion of the Vedas, as far as it was possible to do so.

In one sense, Buddhism was a revolt against hereditary and sacerdotal privilege--an attack of the people against priestcraft. The Buddha and his disciples were levellers. In a different age and clime, but along a similar path, they did a work a.n.a.logous to that of the so-called Anabaptists in Europe and Independents in England, centuries later.

It is certain, however, that Buddhism has grown logically out of ancient Hinduism. In its monastic feature--one of its most striking characteristics--we see only the concentration and reduction to system, of the old life of the ascetics and religious mendicants recognized and respected by Hinduism. For centuries the Buddhist monks and nuns were regarded in India as only a new sect of ascetics, among many others which flourished in the land.

The Buddhist doctrine of karma, or in j.a.panese, _ingwa_, of cause and effect, whereby it is taught that each effect in this life springs from a cause in some previous incarnation, and that each act in this life bears its fruit in the next, has grown directly out of the Hindu idea of the transmigration of souls. This idea is first inculcated in the Upanishads, and is recognized in Hindu systems of philosophy.

So also the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana, or the attainment of a sinless state of existence, has grown out of the idea of final union of the individual soul with the Universal Soul, which is also inculcated in the Upanishads. Yet, as we shall see, the Buddhists were, in the eyes of the Brahmans, atheists, because in the ken of these new levellers G.o.ds and men were put on the same plane. Brahmanism has never forgiven Buddhism for ignoring the G.o.ds, and the Hindoos finally drove out the followers of Gautama from India. It eventuated that after a millenium or so of Buddhism in India, the old G.o.ds, Brahma, Indra, etc., which at first had been shut out from the ken of the people, by Gautama, found their places again in the popular faith of the Buddhists, who believed that the G.o.ds as well as men, were all progressing toward the blessed Nirvana--that sinless life and holy calm, which is the Buddhist's heaven and salvation.

It is certainly very curious, and in a sense amusing, to find flourishing in far-off j.a.pan the old G.o.ds of India, that one would suppose to have been utterly dead and left behind in oblivion. As acknowledged devas or kings and bodhisattvas or soon-to-be Buddhas, not a few once defunct Hindu G.o.ds, utterly unknown to early Buddhism, have forced their way into the company of the elect. Though most of them have not gained the popularity of the indigenous deities of Nippon, they yet attract many worshippers. They remind one that amid the coming of the sons of Elohim before Jehovah, "the satan" came also.[10]

From another point of view Buddhism was a new religion; for it swept away and out of the field of its vision the whole of the World or Universal Soul theory. "It proclaimed a salvation which each man could gain for himself and by himself, in this world during this life, without the least reference to G.o.d, or to G.o.ds, either great or small." "It placed the first importance on knowledge; but it was no longer a knowledge of G.o.d, it was a clear perception of the real nature as they supposed it to be of men and things." In a word, Gautama never reached the idea of a personal self-existent G.o.d, though toward that truth he groped. He was satisfied too soon.[11] His followers were even more easily satisfied with abstractions. When Gautama saw the power over the human heart of inward culture and of love to others, he obtained peace, he rested on certainty, he became the Buddha, that is, the enlightened.

Perhaps he was not the first Buddhist. It may be that the historical Gautama, if so he is worthy to be called, merely made the sect or the new religion famous. Hardly a religion in the full sense of the word, Buddhism did not a.s.sume the role of theology, but sought only to know men and things. In one sense Buddhism is atheism, or rather, atheistic humanism. In one sense, also, the solution of the mystery of G.o.d, of life, and of the universe, which Gautama and his followers attained, was one of skepticism rather than of faith. Buddhism is, relatively, a very modern religion; it is one of the new faiths. Is it paradoxical to say that the Buddhists are "religious atheists?"

The Buddhist Millennium in India.

Let us now look at the life of the Founder. Day after day, the pure-souled teacher attracted new disciples while he with alms-bowl went around as mendicant and teacher. Salvation merely by self-control, and love without any rites, ceremonies, charms, priestly powers, G.o.ds or miracles, formed the burden of his teachings. "Thousands of people left their homes, embraced the holy order and became monks, ignoring caste, and relinquishing all worldly goods except the bare necessaries of life, which they possessed and enjoyed in common." Probably the first monastic _system_ of the world, was that of the Indian Buddhists.

The Buddha preached the good news during forty-five years. After his death, five hundred of his followers a.s.sembled at Rajagriha and chanted together the teachings of Gautama, to fix them in memory. A hundred years later, in 377 B.C., came the great schism among the Buddhists, out of which grew the divisions known as Northern and Southern Buddhism.

There was disagreement on ten points. A second council was therefore called, and the disputed points determined to the satisfaction of one side. Thereupon the seceders went away in large numbers, and the differences were never healed; on the contrary, they have widened in the course of ages.

The separatists began what may be called the Northern Buddhisms of Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea and j.a.pan. The orthodox or Southern Buddhists are those of Ceylon, Burma and Siam. The original canon of Southern Buddhism is in Pali; that of Northern Buddhism is in Sanskrit. The one is comparatively small and simple; the other amazingly varied and voluminous. The canon of Southern scripture is called the Hinayana, the Little or Smaller Vehicle; the canon of Northern Buddhism is named the Mahayana or Great Vehicle. Possibly, also, besides the Southern and Northern Buddhisms, the Buddhism of j.a.pan may be treated by itself and named Eastern Buddhism.

In the great council called in 242 B.C., by King Asoka, who may be termed the Constantine of Buddhism, the sacred texts were again chanted.

It was not until the year 88 B.C. in Ceylon, six hundred years after Gautama, that the three Pitakas, Boxes or Baskets, were committed to writing in the Pali language. In a word, Buddhism knows nothing of sacred doc.u.ments or a canon of scripture contemporary with its first disciples.

The splendid Buddhist age of India lasted nearly a thousand years, and was one of superb triumphs in civilization. It was an age of spiritual emanc.i.p.ation, of freedom from idol worship, of n.o.bler humanity and of peace.[12] It was followed by the Puranic epoch and the dark ages. Then Buddhism was, as some say, "driven out" from the land of its birth, finding new expansion in Eastern and Northern Asia, and again, a still more surprising development in the ultima-Thule of the Asiatic continent, j.a.pan. There is now no Buddhism in India proper, the faith being represented only in Ceylon and possibly also on the main land, by the sect of the Jains, and peradventure in Persia by Babism which contains elements from three religions.[13] Like Christianity, Buddhism was "driven out" of its old home to bless other nations of the world. It is probably far nearer the truth to say that Buddhism was never expelled from India, but rather that it died by disintegration and relapse.[14]

It had become Brahmanism again. The old G.o.ds and the old idol-worship came back. It is in j.a.pan that the ends of the earth, eastern and western civilization, and the freest and fullest or at least the latest developments of Christianity and of Buddhism, have met.

In its transfer to distant lands and its developments throughout Eastern Asia, the faith which had originated in India suffered many changes.

Dividing into two great branches, it became a notably different religion according as it moved along the southern, the northern, or the eastern channel. By the vehicle of the Pali language it was carried to Ceylon, Siam, Burma, Cambodia and the islands of the south; that is, to southern or peninsular and insular Asia. Here there is little evidence of any striking departure from the doctrines of the Pali Pitakas; and, as Southern Buddhism does not greatly concern us in speaking of the religions of j.a.pan, we may pa.s.s it by. For although the books and writings belonging to Southern Buddhism, and comprehended under the formula of the Hinayana or Smaller Vehicle, have been studied in China, Korea and j.a.pan, yet they have had comparatively little influence upon doctrinal, ritualistic, or missionary development in Chinese Asia.

Astonishingly different has been the case with the Northern Buddhisms which are those of Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, China, Korea and j.a.pan. As luxuriant as the evolutions of political and dogmatic Christianity and as radical in their departures from the primitive simplicity of the faith, have been these forms of Buddhist doctrine, ritual and organization. We cannot now dwell upon the wonderful details of the vast and complicated system, differing so much in various countries. We pa.s.s by, or only glance at, the philosophy of the Punjaub; the metaphysics of Nepal--with its developments into what some writers consider to be a close approach to monotheism, and others, indeed, monotheism itself; the system of Lamaism in Tibet, which has paralleled so closely the development of the papal hierarchy; the possibly two thousand years' growth and decay of Chinese Buddhism; the varieties of the Buddhism of Mongolia--almost swamped in the Shamanistic superst.i.tions of these dwellers on the plains; the astonishing success, quick ripening, decay, and almost utter annihilation, among the learned and governing cla.s.ses, of Korean Buddhism;[15] and study in detail only Eastern or j.a.panese Buddhism.

We shall in this lecture attempt but two things:

I. A summary of the process of thought by which the chief features of the Northern Buddhisms came into view.

II. An outline of the story of j.a.panese Buddhism during the first three centuries of its existence.

The Development of Northern Buddhism