Part 1

_STUDIES IN THE FAITHS._ I

BUDDHISM

BY ANNIE H. SMALL

AUTHOR OF ‘YESHUDAS,’ ‘SUWARTA,’ ‘STUDIES IN BUDDHISM,’ ETC.

[Illustration: Printer Logo]

1905 LONDON J. M. DENT & CO. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

[Illustration: TEMPLE OF THE SCARED TOOTH, KANDY.]

TO G. S. AND W. M. M. THIS LITTLE SERIES OF STUDIES IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

PREFACE

It is in the belief that it may be not unprofitable for us of the Christian Faith, that we should sit for a little space at the feet of the great Indian Sage and Teacher, to study some of the truths which he esteemed most highly, and to compare them with those already familiar to us but too little dwelt upon by us, and in the light of them once again to make real to our thinking those truths which are peculiarly ours in Christ Jesus our Lord, that this little book has been written. But no reader will mistake so slight a sketch for an attempt to tell the whole.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INDIA AND GAUTAMA 11

ISRAEL AND JESUS 27

THE UNIVERSAL LAW. BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY 39

THE UNIVERSAL LAW IN HUMAN LIFE: BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY 45

THE WAY OF EMANCIPATION: BUDDHISM 61

THE FORMULA OF CONFESSION 69

THE WAY OF SALVATION: CHRISTIANITY 75

THE TWO IDEALS 91

THE BUDDHA AND THE CHRIST 103

INDIA AND GAUTAMA

“_But lo! Siddharta turned_ _Eyes gleaming with divine tears to the sky, Eyes lit with heavenly pity to the earth; From sky to earth he looked, from earth to sky, As if his spirit sought in lonely flight Some far-off vision, linking this and that, Lost--past--but searchable, but seen, but known. Then cried he, while his lifted countenance Glowed with the burning passion of a love Unspeakable, the ardour of a hope Boundless, insatiate: ‘Oh! suffering world; Oh! known and unknown of my common flesh, Caught in this common net of death and woe, And life which binds to both! I see, I feel The vastness of the agony of earth, The vainness of its joys, the mockery Of all its best, the anguish of its worst; Since pleasures end in pain, and youth in age, And love in loss, and life in hateful death, And death in unknown lives, which will but yoke Men to their wheel again to whirl the round Of false delights and woes that are not false. Since pleasures end in pain, and youth in age, And love in loss, and life in hateful death, And death in unknown lives, which will but yoke Men to their wheel again to whirl the round Of false delights and woes that are not false._

* * * * *

_I would not let one cry_ _Whom I could save.’_”

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD.

♦The Story of India♦ Beyond other lands the great land of India has borne the burden of the havoc which has been wrought in this world of ours, and through it in the fair universe of God; and she has realized deeply that man has had some awful share in the tragedy. Her religious teaching is the expression of her sense of this fact, and of her yearning after the re-uniting of each several severed part with the original Oneness. To this end the appalling panorama presented to the view in such a city as Benares--the washings, the offerings and acts of worship, the pilgrim processions from temple to temple. To this end the fastings and austerities, the renunciations, the so-to-speak experiments in ways of salvation. And to this end the long thoughts and dreams of the centuries, and the missions of men like Gautama. The history of the Passion of India is, rightly understood, the most noble which the world has known, with one exception only. The huge blunders into which she has fallen take nothing from the grandeur of the story, they add much to its pathos. She has dreamed that man must seek God, and has never had the vision of God seeking man. She has failed to evolve the idea of a personal God, a living, speaking, loving God; and the pantheism into which she has drifted seems to us at best a poor thing, and at worst a bad thing. Life has failed of any moral significance. But the great heart of India is fundamentally right. Her mistakes are not, as has been so often affirmed, of the essence of her nature; they are only the best solution which her unaided mind and heart could discover, of the problem of the sorrow of the world. The greatest of her Masters was Gautama the Buddha, who proved, in one aspect of his teaching, too great for her acceptance, in another, too narrow; and he was rejected, not, however, before he made an ineffaceable mark upon her thought, and not before she had sent his influence far over the world.

♦Gautama♦ Gautama, known as the Buddha, was born at Kapila Wastu, on the river Rohini, about a hundred miles from Benares, some 550 years before Christ. He came of a noble family. Wonderful tales, most of them legends of a comparatively recent date, are told of his birth, childhood, and youth; little is really known. He was chivalrous and noble in character, and revealed very early a peculiarly sensitive temperament; the sight of suffering overwhelmed him; and his father, whose only child he was, brought him up in strictest seclusion, sheltering him, so far as might be, from contact with the darker aspects of life.

♦His Story♦ ♦The Seeker♦ He was married early and happily, and ten years later a son was born to him. It was about this time that the knowledge of the world’s sorrow reached him. The story is told of his driving out beyond the palace gates, and meeting examples of suffering, old age, and death. He insisted upon an explanation, and the charioteer explained to his master how that these were the common lot of humanity. Gautama returned to the palace; but from that day was unable to settle into the old life. Unrest grew upon him, and at length he determined to leave his home, don the garb of the Seeker, and learn from those who had studied the problems of evil in human life, the lesson of their meaning and their remedy.

♦The Way of Religion♦ He went, as was natural, in the first place, to the religious teachers, the Brahmans, in order to learn from them how by religious service and ritual, evil had been mastered. It is significant that the time spent in this study was short, and that very little is told of it. The cruelty of the sacrifices repelled him, and he could discover no relation whatever between the elaborate symbolism of the worship, and the deeper needs of his awakened nature.

♦The Way of the ascetic Student♦ He left the sacred city, and retired with five companions of like mind with himself, that in the quiet of a forest retreat they might meditate together. The only way known to them was the way of severest self-discipline. Great thinkers of India had taught that the universe is one great Soul from which all other souls had broken away. These, separate from their true home, wander in misery, finding bodies as they may, according to their nature, and having no rest until they return to the original Soul. This is the doctrine of transmigration or re-incarnation. The soul is incarnated again and again, suffering in each new body the true recompense of the previous life. This process is repeated until the soul is purified from all evil, when it returns to the Mother Soul. The fewer the deeds, good or evil, the fewer the re-incarnations; and for those who would cut short the painful history, the life of the ascetic is the only true life. By austerity the power of the body may be vanquished, the selfish life (cause of all deeds, good or evil) may be subdued, and the soul may be set free.

To this life Gautama gave himself for six years, adding ever severer and severer tests; until he was regarded as the greatest of living saints. But for himself was no satisfaction; the answer to his problem was not yet found. At length he owned sorrowfully that the way of asceticism was not the way of release. He had not yet discovered the cause of life’s suffering, and although the body seemed vanquished, Self lived, and temptation and sorrow were still possible. With superb courage he confessed to his companions that for him the experiment was a failure, and withdrew.

* * * * *

♦Solitary Study♦ ♦Enlightenment♦ He retreated deeper into the forest, and spent the following year in profound meditation. Seated under the tree ever after known as the Bo tree (tree of wisdom) the light dawned upon him. He saw that earthly desire, the yielding to selfish aims, was the true cause of human misery. If men were free from these, suffering must cease. Not then in religious ceremonial, which is not even symbolic of the truth; nor in self-torture or bodily discipline; but in the strenuous and constant denial of the Self-life until the dominion of self is broken, and also, in the tenderest pity for the great world of suffering men and women, is salvation to be found.

_Towards self, discipline, Towards others, love_,--

this is the path of emancipation.

♦Temptation♦ It was while Gautama, now the Buddha, or Enlightened One, rested from the mental strain through which he had passed, and meditated upon his new-found Gospel, that the tempter came to him with subtle temptation. All earthly desires came before him, and he mastered them one by one, until at length he lay under the tree exhausted, but triumphant.

♦Service♦ Peace had been obtained for himself, and now the thought of the suffering world possessed him. It was not in the nature of Gautama to desire publicity; but he could not rest with this new-found gospel of release from misery through the conquest of Desire. He went in search of his old Brahman teachers; but they were dead. He then found the five companions of his ascetic life, who received him at first with doubt; but when he made plain to them in a wonderful sermon, the experience through which he had passed, they gladly received the new gospel. The rest of his busy life was spent in telling his gospel, and in sending out his disciples on preaching tours. Before many months had passed, he was able to send out sixty disciples; and in the course of a very few years his followers numbered many thousands. From the high and the low, and especially from the troubled, they gathered around him, and many entered upon the Way. For forty years he carried on his gentle and loving ministry; travelling from place to place, eating the food which the rich and the poor vied with each other in providing for his own and his followers’ need, and then teaching those who gathered around him. When the Rainy Season came round, he retired with his disciples to some quiet retreat, and talked with them of the great things of the “Kingdom of righteousness.”

♦Death♦ His long life was spent thus in the open air, a simple and sweet and unselfish life; and when he died, at Kusi-Nagar, his body was burned and the ashes were divided, and carried for reverent burial to those parts of the land where there were the largest number of his followers. Gautama died in the year 480 B.C.

THE FOURFOLD SACRED TRUTH.[1]

♦The sum of the teaching♦ “Now this, O recluses, is the noble truth concerning suffering. Birth is painful, and so is old age; disease is painful, and so is death. Union with the unpleasant is painful, painful is separation from the pleasant; and any craving that is unsatisfied, that, too, is painful....”

“Now this, O recluses, is the noble truth concerning the origin of suffering. Verily it originates in that craving thirst which causes the renewal of becomings, is accompanied by sensual delight, and seeks satisfaction now here, now there--that is to say, the craving for the gratification of the passions, or the craving for a future life, or the craving for success in this present life.”

“Now this, O recluses, is the noble truth concerning the destruction of suffering. Verily it is the destruction in which no craving remains over, of this very thirst; the laying aside of, the getting rid of, the being free from, the harbouring no longer of, this thirst.”

“Now this, O recluses, is the noble truth concerning the way which leads to the destruction of suffering. Verily it is this Eight-fold noble path; that is to say: Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Rapture.”

[1] From the Sermon preached at Benares to the five companions of his hermit life upon his return after attainment of Buddha-hood. From Prof. Rhys David’s translation, by permission.

ISRAEL AND JESUS

“_A great epoch was exhausted, and passing away to give place to another, the first utterances of which had already been heard in the north, and which awaited but the_ INITIATOR _to be revealed_.”

“_He came. The soul the most full of love, the most sacredly virtuous, the most deeply inspired by God and the future, that men have yet seen on earth; Jesus. He bent over the corpse of the dead world, and whispered a word of faith. Over the clay that had lost all of man but the movement and the form, He uttered words until then unknown_, LOVE, SACRIFICE, A HEAVENLY ORIGIN. _And the dead arose. A new life circulated through the clay, which philosophy had tried in vain to re-animate. From that corpse arose the Christian world, the world of liberty and equality. From that clay arose the true Man, the image of God, the precursor of Humanity._”--MAZZINI.

♦The Story of Israel♦ “Suff’rance is the badge of all our tribe” is the sum of the history of the isolated, unsuccessful,[2] little Semitic nation of Israel.

[2] Unsuccessful, that is to say, as a nation.

But she has been made great--against her will indeed--by the fact that she sheltered a unique succession of patriotic men who were impelled by the miserable little ideals and ambitions of their nation, to raise their voices in expostulation, or solemn warning, or hot indignation, each according to his time and his manner.

♦The Seers♦ There is nothing in the national character or circumstances to warrant it, but in the message spoken by these men, each in his turn, there was that power and significance, that forward look, which we describe as “vision.” In contradistinction to the Aryan SEEKERS, these were SEERS.

♦God♦ They had found God; this was their secret. They believed that God had spoken, and must yet speak to man more clearly still: in the hope of hearing that voice of God they lived, and that men might be prepared to recognize that Voice when it should speak, they toiled and suffered.

The case of the human race was, in their thinking, bad. It was not that man had suffered, but that he had sinned, this was the tragedy. For if the relation of man to the Unseen were a personal relation, then suffering became at once the effect of a moral cause. “Ah, sinful nation.... They have forsaken the Lord.” Therefore was “the whole head sick, and the whole heart faint.”

♦The Hope♦ The word of the Seer was nevertheless a word of hope. Hope was indeed their note. The God of their vision was a God Who must, by His very nature, right all wrong, end all evil, and speak the word which must reveal the way back to Himself as the only true rest of man.

The Hope grew stronger in all religious souls as its fulfilment seemed to be delayed, and every earnest young mother dreamed that the child she bore might be the Bearer of that final message from Jehovah.

* * * * *

♦The Silence♦ Four hundred years of silence might well have ended the Hope, but it lived on: a sordid, national Hope in the people at large, a high world-wide Hope in the hearts of the silent waiting few, who studied the writings of those old Seers, and looked out upon the great world in its darkness; and believed that not only should the Light come, but that it should be the true glory of Israel to enlighten through It all the nations.

* * * * * ♦Jesus♦ “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Many such questions must have been asked, even by those of the purest spiritual insight during the brief working life of Jesus. There was no human ideal of dignity or greatness which He did not ruthlessly deny.

♦Consecration♦ He gave Himself in solemn sacrament to His service, but used as the symbol of consecration a ceremony which usually typified repentance from sin on the part of man, remission on the side of God.

♦Method of Service♦ His human gifts and powers were unmeasurable, and He brought them to His life-work in all their perfection; but during a season of sore strain in solitary meditation, He set aside deliberately each well-tried human method which would have brought those powers and gifts into service; and chose to work out His purpose in a way startlingly new to human history, to the last inexplicable even to those who most deeply trusted Him.

It was a small matter that He rejected all such aids to the personal life as would have won for Him the allegiance of the People, and that He would have none of the glory and dignity which hedges the king idea, and which upholds in that office even men of weakest calibre. But it is truly strange to find that His was not, in any way known to history, a _religious_ life; there was no apartness about it, no mystery, no sanctity.

He chose the simple, familiar open air life of the people. Until the pressure of work became too heavy, He maintained His family, He made friendships, He was the most brotherly of men. He entered keenly into every department of the life of the remote little country-side as it presented itself to Him; He was simply a Man among men.

His brothers were staggered by the waste of energy and power, and we cannot wonder at their remonstrance: “If Thou do these things, show Thyself openly.” For His method certainly involved the greatest amount of labour for the least visible return. He travelled on foot up and down the country roads, resting in the quietest spots, healing and aiding the poorest and sometimes the least deserving of the country folk. He taught also, wasting the loveliest of His exquisite word pictures upon groups of unappreciative fishermen and villagers.

♦The Cross♦ And in the end, as if to crown fittingly a career so utterly at variance with all previous conceptions of greatness, He set His face steadfastly to go to the capital, where were for Him nothing save cruel torture and shameful death--the punishment inflicted by men upon those who dare to subvert, and in so doing to condemn their own methods.

He died a young man, in defence of His chosen life; and to all appearance the strange little movement died with Him that day; for He had few followers, only one or two of whom were men of any promise.

♦Character♦ ♦Motive♦ ♦Selflessness♦ ♦Calm♦ “My Father worketh, and I work.” “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish HIS work.” Such words as these, so often upon His lips, reveal to us the secret of the life of Jesus. The Father-thought filled His heart to the exclusion of all memory or thought of His own great Name and Power. Jesus had, so to speak, no Self; His centre was God; with Whose will and purpose He found Himself in perfect accord. He was the first human being who was unconscious of the need of at-one-ment; He was, from the beginning, at one with His own nature, because at one with the Centre of the universe. There was no conflict in His life. “Christ’s life outwardly,” writes Professor Drummond, “was one of the most troubled lives ever lived. Tempest and tumult, tumult and tempest, the waves breaking over it all the time till the worn body was laid in the grave. But the inner life was a sea of glass. The great calm was always there. At any moment you might have gone to Him, and found rest.... There was nothing the world could do to Him that could ruffle the surface of His spirit. Such living as mere living is altogether unique. It is only when we see what it was in Him that we know what the word rest means. It is the mind at leisure from itself; it is the perfect poise of the will; the absolute adjustment of the inward man to the stress of all outward things; the preparedness against every emergency; the stability of assured convictions; the eternal calm of an invulnerable faith; the repose of a heart set deep in God.”

* * * * *

St. John, writing long years after Jesus’ bodily presence had been withdrawn, uses two words of Him, which better than any other serve to tell His character. He was “_full of grace and truth_.” Human qualities both, though rare; never indeed found in fulness and in balanced perfection even in the noblest human character; nevertheless, humanity is brought very near to the Unseen when we read that these qualities represent to the most seeing of all the Seers, “the glory of the only begotten of the Father.”

♦Grace♦ “Grace,” essence of all gentle, sympathetic, forth-going, self-effacing, womanly virtues.

♦Truth♦ “Truth,” essence of all strong, courageous, strenuous, manly virtues.

It has been as difficult to grasp the union of truth and grace in Jesus, as it has been to receive the divine and the human. The Mediæval Church, feeling after the “grace,” and failing to recognize it in Him, elevated the virgin mother to symbolize the character. The great artists--with truer insight--struggled to express the union on canvas, but the task was beyond even their art; the “Christs” have been, without exception, far short of the ideal. Grace may be womanly, it is never effeminate.

That “perfect poise,” whether of the divine and the human, or of the grace and the truth, alone explains, and alone represents to the Christian, the only Son of the Father, Jesus Christ our Lord.

THE UNIVERSAL LAW

“_The works of God are fair for nought, Unless our eyes in seeing, See hidden in the thing, the thought That animates its being._”

“_The outward form is not the whole, But every part is moulded To image forth an inward soul, That dimly is unfolded._”

* * * * *

“_Thus nature dwells within our reach; But though we stand so near her, We still interpret half her speech With ears too dull to hear her._”

“_Whoever at the coarsest sound Still listens for the finest, Shall hear the noisy world go round To music the divinest._”

“_Whoever yearns to see aright, Because his heart is tender, Shall catch a glimpse of heavenly light In every earthly splendour._”

THE LAW ACCORDING TO THE BUDDHA.

“The whole knowable universe forms one undivided whole.”