§ 1

We are engaged in a survey of the distinctive conceptions of the good life for man which are found in possession among the different races of mankind in different ages, such, that is, as have been left on record in a more or less consistent and intelligible form, and have been based upon or have become the basis of an intelligible theory or philosophy of life. We have seen how out of the primitive Aryan polytheism there emerged in Eastern Irania the exceedingly definite moral construction of Zarathustra, and we have noted that the language in which it is expressed is closely akin to the language of the Aryan invaders of India in which the Vedas were composed. And it is obvious, when the Rigveda is studied (? 1500 to 1000 B.C.), that from the primitive customs of life and worship, based upon a primitive polytheism, disclosed in these hymns, there might have developed as definite a moral system based on as definite a theory of the universe as Zarathustra gave to Iran. The majestic Varuna might have taken the place of Ahura Mazdah; and, as he is the guardian and source of Right,1 the sovereignty of the moral law would have been secured in his person.

But Dr. Cave2 is probably right in telling us that the old polytheistic nature worship appears in the Rigveda as already “unstable and in decay”; and the thinkers and teachers of India did not in fact give themselves to ethical studies, but to the more abstract study of the nature of reality, and their metaphysical thinking was not such as to provide a basis for a consistent doctrine of the good life. It was, we may almost say, essentially unpractical. Everywhere, no doubt, mankind has experienced more or less deeply the sense both of the vanity and of the misery of life; but in India this sense appears to have become so strong as to overwhelm the sense of joy and hope in life, which found expression in the Vedas, and to have occupied the soul and thought of India with a permanent and profound pessimism of outlook over the world of present experience, as being both unreal and evil, such an outlook as, on the one hand, left them without any zest for the systematic study of experience, and, on the other, drove them to seek—not a redemption of life from its attendant evils but rather a redemption from life itself.

The causes which have hindered the development in India of the conception of the good life for man, other than physical and political causes, appear to have been specially three.

(1) The first is the doctrine of Karma, which is commonly translated “transmigration.” This appears for the first time in the earliest Upanishads as new knowledge—“which never before now dwelt with any Brahman”3; but it is definitely pre-Buddhist—certainly not later therefore than c. 600 B.C.

The word “transmigration” suggests the real existence of a persistent individual soul passing through different incarnations and carrying with it the consequences of its behaviour in its previous states. And such is the meaning assigned to the doctrine of Karma as it appears in the Upanishads and elsewhere—even in the Buddha’s popular teaching. But all the time the philosophers were expressing their disbelief in the reality of individual souls and of the world of common experience. Nothing is real but the one Self, unchangeable, inexpressible—the Self (Atman) which is identical with Being (Brahman). Thus original Buddhism, which is largely built upon the doctrine of Karma, refuses, as we shall see, to hold or to teach that there is any such thing as a permanent soul which could migrate from one body to another. What is popularly called a soul is a combination of elements which are dissolved at death. But there is a fatal force of desire, acting like a law of attraction among atoms, which tends to produce a new combination—a new individual life, human or divine or animal or vegetable, according to the summary result of past action. This is Karma. Strictly, then, it is the consequence of past actions, not the individual soul, which is permanent.4

This philosophical conception makes “transmigration” a seriously misleading rendering of Karma, which meant originally only “work” or “action.” However, whether in its popular or its philosophical form, the doctrine of Karma, which has seized and possessed the soul of India, is deeply hostile to the formation of any firm idea of the good life for man, which involves an acute sense of both personal and social responsibility. The doctrine of Karma undermines or weakens disastrously the sense of personal responsibility in the present individual, for it makes him think of his life as the bearing of the penance laid upon him by an irresistible fate for things done in some other existence of which at least he has no memory and for which he can feel no present responsibility. Thus it destroys, or if it cannot quite destroy it diminishes, the sense of moral freedom and obligation. But, much more, it must beget a fatal individualism, and the sense of social responsibility cannot grow under its shadow. The high-caste man contemplates the out-castes as individuals suffering—not the consequences of the selfishness and cruelty of society which a newly awakened conscience of man’s duty to his brethren can and ought to reverse, but as suffering by a law, which no efforts of ours can counteract, the inevitable consequences of unknown crimes committed by unknown persons in previous states of existence. From such a point of view it is a blind and irreversible law which makes men what they are; and it is not rightly described as a law of justice; for justice is a personal quality; and, if a divine justice exists, it must constantly be found appealing to the justice of man to rectify what only selfishness and injustice have brought into being. Thus it is that the doctrine of Karma, however understood, seems only calculated to lead to passivity under evil, and has in fact led to it.5

(2) The second tendency which seems to have affected deeply the whole development of life in India is that the mind of its best men and ablest thinkers has been dominated by an intellectualism of a highly abstract kind—a passion for the One, the Absolute, which has not applied itself to the interpretation of present-day experience or the scientific study of nature, but has tended to regard it all as illusion—as a baneful veil which hides the face of Reality and on which the wise man in his search for truth had better turn his back. This sort of intellectualism has brought it about that the best men have been for ever searching for some escape from life, and not for its improvement—the escape being by way of highly abstract thought or of mystical devotion based on ascetic practice.

(3) The third force has been the constant pressure of a priesthood powerful enough to maintain a religion, or an amalgamation of religions, which on the whole has been divorced from morality and indifferent to morality.

To these considerations, thus briefly indicated, we shall have to revert. But we must first apply ourselves to study what is, I suppose, the greatest product of India—the system of thought and life which we owe to Siddartha Gotama, the Buddha; for here at least we have a profound attempt to contemplate human life steadily, to analyse its meaning and interpret its secret, and, as a fruit of this concentrated intellectual effort to deal practically with human life, to show men the Way and to proclaim the Law. Here then, it may be said to me, you have precisely what you have been complaining of India for not producing. We shall see whether this is so. Certainly it is true that the Buddha turned his back decisively and deliberately on some of the most dominant forces and tendencies of Indian life—on its metaphysic, on its asceticism and on its priesthood.6

In considering Buddhism as a system we shall have to do what we did in considering Zoroastrianism—we shall have to distinguish between the system of the Founder and the ultimate and general outcome of his work. The broad consideration of the history of religion and morality among men leads to an interesting conclusion, that at each stage where conspicuous advance is made the best comes first. Religion and morality would no doubt have been the subject of some sort of development like all parts of human life, apart from the great creative founders. But in fact the main actual force, in promoting higher spirituality or morality among men, has been the apparition of prophetic souls whose teaching cannot be accounted for by what went before them, and who appear by their commanding influence to drive men by a new impulse in a new direction. This new impulse is, perhaps, never afterwards wholly exhausted or lost. But it becomes merged in the general channel with other currents, and though it adds something to the whole, it tends to become less and less distinctive. Thus the prophet Zarathustra’s teaching was something much nobler and much more distinctive than historical Zoroastrianism or Parseeism. And, as we shall find, the system of the Buddha was something far more distinctive and nobler of its kind than the Buddhist religion as it has appeared in the life of the nations reckoned as Buddhist. Thus it is Buddhism at its source that we must seek to appreciate first of all.7

§ 2

Siddartha Gotama8 was a son of the chieftain of the Sakyan tribe, whose home was within (what is now called) Nepal, about 100 miles north of Benares. He was probably born about 540 b.c. The story runs that his father brought him up surrounded by every kind of luxury and sensual indulgence, and endeavoured to screen him from all the evidences of “this life’s undelight.” But he found himself satiated with this protected life. In spite of the protective barriers he saw the evidences of human misery—a decrepit old man, a diseased man and a dead man. His soul came to be possessed with disgust of existence. Like many another in India, in his time and in subsequent ages, at his twenty-ninth year he renounced the world, and, kissing his wife and child, left them and his home for ever. “The air of India” at that time was already “full of intellectual effort and of the earnest search for deliverance from the ills of life.”9 He sought two of the wisest philosophers of his time and became their pupil, but in vain. They had nothing to teach him which really got at the root of human misery. But he appears to have become well acquainted with the current philosophy of an age marked by intense and widespread interest in the most highly speculative problems.10

Gotama, however, found no satisfaction in these speculations. Then he tried the most strenuous asceticism, all the possibilities of which he is said to have exhausted, under the guidance of five famous masters. But that way too seemed to him as fruitless as metaphysical enquiry, and the ascetics, who said that he had “given up his exertions and returned to an abundant life,” left him in disgust. He does not appear, however, to have returned to any mode of life which we should call “abundant,” but to have given himself, unassisted, to the profoundest efforts of thought, and at last, as he sat beneath a botree, illumination came to him. He saw the secret of human misery and found therewith the way of deliverance. Under that tree and other trees he is said to have passed four weeks in fasting and meditation. During this period of complete abstraction from the world he reviewed the series of causes which lead to suffering till all doubts and obscurities were dispelled and the true nature of things became clear to his mind. Thus “he enjoyed the bliss of emancipation.”

Then the tradition represents him as subject to a great temptation. His secret—the ultimate truth about life and the way of emancipation from its misery—was “profound, difficult to perceive and understand, unattainable by reasoning, abstruse, intelligible only to the wise.” He reflected, “If I proclaim the doctrine, and other men are not able to understand my preaching, there would result but weariness and annoyance to me … When the Blessed One pondered over the matter, his mind became inclined to remain in quiet and not to preach the doctrine.” But the great Lord of all the gods, Brahma, fearing for the world if it lost its one chance of hearing the truth, came and did homage to the Buddha on one knee, and thrice implored him not to withhold his doctrine from such as have ears to hear it; and at last the Buddha, “looking compassionately towards sentient beings over the world,” consented to his entreaty. Then Mara the Tempter—the ruler of the sixth and highest heaven of sensual pleasure—came and made a terrific attempt to divert him from his purpose, urging that “now was the time for the Blessed One to pass away.” But the Buddha answered him. “I shall not die until this pure religion of mine shall have become successful, prosperous, widespread and popular in all its full extent.”11 These stories, though in their present form they cannot be dated within two centuries of the actual events, and though they are fairly full of miraculous adornments which seem childish and absurd, may very well embody the historical truth.

Then it is represented that the Buddha “breathed forth the solemn utterance which has never been omitted by any of the Buddhas”12:

Through birth and rebirth’s endless round,

Seeking in vain, I hastened on

To find who framed this edifice.

What misery!—birth incessantly!

O builder, I’ve discovered thee!

This fabric thou shalt ne’er rebuild!

Thy rafters all are broken now,

Thy pointed roof demolished lies!

This mind hath demolition reached,

And seen the last of all desire.13

His first thought was to impart his message to the two philosophers who had taught him in vain. But it was supernaturally communicated to him that they were dead; and his next thought was for the five ascetics who had witnessed his asceticism and mourned his relapse. After much reluctance they agreed to listen and were converted, and became the first five disciples—the first members of a definitely monastic and mendicant Order, with a precise doctrine and precisely defined methods of obtaining its end, and with the Buddha for its infallible teacher and head; and they were the first-fruits of a great harvest. Their ideal may be gathered from a reported saying of the Master: “So long as the brethren shall not engage in, or be fond of, or be connected with business … or be partakers in idle talk … or indulge in slothfulness or in society … nor fall under the influence of idle desires, nor become friends, companions or intimates of sinners, so long as the brethren shall not come to a stop on their way to [Nirvana], because they have attained to any lesser thing—so long may the brethren be expected not to decline but to prosper.”14

It should be observed that in one sense the mission of the Buddha was to all men, and that he recognized no distinctions. Thus he refused to recognize the authority of the Brahman priesthood—not yet grown to its height—and the distinctions of caste, in this matter acting probably like other contemporary ascetics15; but in fact his real message made no popular appeal, and it was in no sense aimed at relieving the miseries of the poor and oppressed by reforming the conditions of the common life. His appeal was in the highest degree intellectual, and such as the uneducated or those who were unversed in abstract speculation could not have understood. “The Buddhist texts tell us with some complacency that his converts were wealthy and of noble birth.” Very few low-caste people are represented as entering the order under his preaching; and he showed also the greatest reluctance in admitting women. He was in truth very suspicious of woman-kind. Ananda, his closest follower, asked him, “How are we to conduct ourselves with regard to woman-kind?” The reply was, “Don’t see them, Ananda.” “But if we should see them, what are we to do?” “Don’t speak to them, Ananda.” “But if they should speak to us, Lord, what are we to do?” “Keep wideawake, Ananda.”16 However, he yielded to pressure. But when he yielded and made rules for his nuns he prophesied that, if this had not been done, the pure religion would have stood fast for a thousand years, but now it would stand fast for only half that period.

Nevertheless, though the fundamental appeal was not what could be called popular, and seems to have been greatly hindered by acute divisions within the order, yet the converts were very many. The monks wore the yellow robes of the ascetic, had their heads tonsured, and lived the mendicant life in chastity, free from all earthly ties and without any recognition of distinctions of caste. Though their Master often went alone and was constantly passing from place to place, the brethren were stationary and went out always in pairs.17 Outside the Order were pious laymen who did not share the aspiration of the monks to win Nirvana, but did aspire to improve their lot in a future rebirth by obeying certain moral precepts, by works of charity, and especially by gifts to the Order.

It is plain that the success of the Buddha was due in great measure to the beauty and attractiveness of his character—to his patience, his courtesy—even to the courtesan18—and his gentleness. As one reads the dry formalism of his teaching as the tradition gives it us, one cannot but suspect that the aroma of sweetness must have been allowed to evaporate in the process of reducing it to a technical form, adapted to be a “memoria technica”; for there was no writing in the early centuries of Buddhism.

The mission of the Buddha—chiefly in the regions of which Benares was the centre—lasted for some fifty years, till he was eighty years old. In the “Sutta of the Great Decease” we have a moving account of his last days and death.19 Knowing himself to be very ill, he restrained his sickness by a deliberate act of his will (“I will bend this sickness down again, and keep my hold on life”) that he might take leave of the Order before he died. He refused the urgent request of Ananda that he would give some instruction for the Order in their future eareer. He reminded him that he had never made a mystery of his doctrine. He had explained it fully, making no distinction of esoteric and exoteric truth. He had never kept “a closed fist.” He had nothing else to leave them but the truth. “The Tathagata thinks not that it is he who should lead the brotherhood, or that the Order is dependent upon him. Why should he leave instructions on any matter concerning the Order? Therefore, O Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. And whosoever, Ananda, either now or after I am dead, shall be a lamp unto themselves, and a refuge unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the truth as their lamp, shall not look for refuge to anyone beside themselves … it is they, Ananda, who shall reach the very topmost height.”20

He would not refuse a meal of boar’s flesh which Chunda, the worker in metal, provided for him, though he recognized that it was unhealthy, and such as none but the Tathagata could digest; it caused, however, a painful dysentery, of which he very soon died. But in the interval before his death he showed a touching solicitude that Chunda should not experience any remorse. Before he died he questioned his monks as to whether they had any lingering doubts about his doctrine, but they were silent, and he bore witness that “even the most backward of these five hundred brethren has been converted, and is no longer liable to be born in a state of suffering and is assured of final salvation.” Then he addressed them: “Behold now, brethren, I exhort you, saying: Decay is inherent in all component things! Work out your own salvation with diligence! “This was the Tathagata’s last word. So he passed away. His body was cremated with the greatest reverence and his ashes divided among his kinsfolk and various nobles. The portion received by his kinsfolk was buried under a monument in an urn, which was discovered in 1898, claiming in an inscription to contain “the remains of the exalted Buddha of the Sakyan clan.”

§ 3

The centre of the Buddha’s doctrine—the secret which he had discovered in his intense meditation, after he had turned his back both on current metaphysical enquiries and on ascetic practices, as guides to the light of truth—was that what causes rebirth is the existence of desire. It is assumed that misery is inseparable from life, or in other words that life is an evil to be got rid of, if possible.21 Now at death the components of the individual life are dissolved. What brings them together again to form another individual life is the persistence of desire. Thus if once desire—not what we call lust merely, or misdirected desire in some form, but desire as such, every form of clinging to anything, divine, human or sub-human—is utterly eradicated, then there is nothing left which can bring about any re-collection of the components of life which have been separated by death. The individual person or being will have altogether ceased to exist.

The central heresy in the Buddha’s eyes was “the heresy of individuality” or “the doctrine of soul or self”—the notion “I am,” “This I exists,” “I shall, or I shall not, be,” or “have such and such qualities.” This is one of the three fatal delusions—the other two being belief in the efficacy of rites and ceremonies, and doubt as to the truth of the Buddha’s message—which must be abandoned at the very first stage of the path to perfection.22 Alike the early Buddhists and their Brahman opponents recognize in this doctrine something essential to Buddhism. The Buddhist must utterly purge himself from “the struggle to maintain his individuality”; and “the desire for a future life” is as pernicious as what we should call wrong desires.23 It is because a Tathagata is utterly free from desire as such that at death he passes entirely away “with that utter passing away in which nothing whatever is left behind.”24

It would appear that Nirvana is strictly speaking the name, not for the utter nothingness into which the life of the perfect passes away, but for the state of mind—the absolute tranquillity, or emancipation of heart and mind from all desire, which constitutes Aratship, and merits the final transition.25 It should be noted that the gods—even Brahma, reckoned the supreme deity by contemporary Brahmans—were, in Gotama’s view, like all other beings, “evanescent, bound by desire to the chain of existence, the result of ignorance, and could only find salvation by walking along the noble Eightfold Path.”26 He who attains Nirvana is thus superior to all the world of gods. And any disciple who retains a desire to belong to one or other of the divine or angelic hosts and who directs his conduct accordingly, is to be regarded as still bound in mental bondage.27

All the opinions of the philosophers, so eagerly discussed in his day,28 Gotama ranked as dilthi (“views” or “heresies”), of which sixty-two are enumerated in one of the Suttas. To the question, “What became of the enlightened man after death?” he answered “Where does the fire go, when it goes out?” To all possible questions about the eternity of the world or about the soul—“Do you hold” this, that or the other opinion? he answered merely “No.” All these “views” belong to “the jungle of mere opinion, the writhing of opinion, the bonds of heresy.” They involve pain, vexation, etc. They do not tend to dissatisfaction and the putting away of desire, and the real knowledge, and the absolute insight, and Nirvana.29 He equally repudiated all the science of his time—all astronomy, geography, astrology and occult investigations.30 The “knowledge” of his disciples was to include nothing that we should call culture—nothing that did not aim directly at the extinction of individuality by the extinction of desire.

He was equally in antagonism to religion—that is, to all that is associated with priesthoods and worship and prayer and sacrifice—what he called “the belief in the efficacy of outward acts.”31 Such practices are as vain and useless as metaphysical and scientific occupations. As to theology, no doubt Gotama accepted as a fact the existence of gods and spirits; but they all, like human “selves,” belonged to the world of the compounded and evanescent, and he was bound to regard speculation about them as a waste of time, to be deprecated.

All such enquiries, then, are met by a deliberate agnosticism. The dogma which is to be believed is strictly confined to the one central point—that what lies at the root of misery (which is inseparable from life) is desire, and that the total eradication of desire brings life or soul and all its attendant misery to an absolute end with death. All other dogmas of the metaphysicians Buddha insisted should be—not denied or discussed but ignored. He was the first thoroughgoing agnostic. On the basis of this fundamental “discovery,” he formulated “the Noble Eightfold Path” for all those who have the courage to walk in it, which formed “the Law” for his Order, and the Four Noble Truths.32

The system of the Noble Path is divided into eight sections: the first is Correct33 views, i.e. the steadfast holding of the fundamental Buddhist dogma, free from all superstition or delusion. The second is Correct aims, i.e. constant direction of the intention away from all vain things towards the one great end. The third is Correct speech, which means not only inflexible veracity, but also kindly speech which is unwilling to hurt or injure anyone. The fourth is Correct conduct, peaceful, honest and kind. The fifth is Correct occupation or livelihood. The sixth is Correct efforts in obtaining complete self-control. The seventh is Correct memory, or the constant having in mind of the fundamental doctrine. The eighth is Correct contemplation, that is constant meditation on the fundamentals. The aim of “the Path” is shown by the insistence under this last head upon regular and protracted meditation on all that sustains disgust with life, on all the degrading and foul aspects of physical life, on its diseases, its decay and its corruption. This permanent disgust with life is essential to keep alive in a man’s mind the Correct aim, viz. redemption from something so altogether and irremediably loathsome. “A man should do his best, when a good point of meditation has occurred to him, to keep it before his mind, such as the idea of a skeleton, a corpse eaten by worms, a corpse turning blue, etc.”34 He is also to meditate constantly on the dreary prospect of innumerable lives—the impression of their number being conveyed by every kind of incredible metaphor, such as that the tears which each individual has shed over his fathers in the succession of lives amount to more water than is in all oceans—until the sense of weariness generated by such an interminable succession arouses disgust and the resolution to have no more of it.35

It is plain that both the third and the fourth requirements of the Noble Path would produce a character in the Buddhist monk, who should follow it faithfully after his master’s example, in a high degree amiable and kindly, and in a true sense beneficent, even if no permanent or real remedies could be applied to the evils of human life. And truthfulness, honesty and kindliness were to be conspicuous features, outside the circle of the monks, in the laymen or attached disciples who did not aim at perfection, but only at a rebirth under good conditions.

The Four Noble Truths, which are the basis of the Noble Path, follow the lines of the medical science of the time which “dealt with disease under the categories of its symptom, its cause, its cure, and the way to obtain the cure.”36 Buddha, as the physician of souls, adopted these categories. The symptom of disease in humanity is the noble truth of suffering, which is the thing to be remedied; the noble truth of the cause of suffering is desire; the noble truth of the cessation of suffering is the thorough extinction of desire; the noble truth of the path which leads to the cessation of suffering is the Holy Eightfold Path already described.

We find in the Suttas a vast number of other numbered lists of requirements or hindrances or methods for the monastic life—there are the Eight Positions of Mastery, the Ten Fetters, the Thirteen Links in the Chain of Causation, etc., etc.,37 but it is the discourse delivered at Benares, later called The Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness, containing the eight divisions of the Noble Path and the Four Noble Truths, which we have the best right to ascribe to the Buddha himself and not to later tradition. Fundamentally it is by this discourse he must be judged.

§ 4

We must seek to form some estimate of the Buddha’s formulation of the best life for man, given, as it seems to have been, in a singularly dry and precise form—the life which in its perfection is possible only for the mendicant monk.38 He must get rid of all the vices—“lust, hatred, stupidity, fear,” or “greed, malice, sloth, pride and doubt.”39 Each vice is to be got rid of at the root, that is, in the thoughts as well as in the words and actions. The instructions on the overcoming of anger and pride are especially touching and edifying. More or less the same ground is gone over in the treatment of the virtues to be cultivated, but the virtue of loving-kindness is specially emphasized. The true monk “lets his mind pervade each quarter of the world with thoughts of love. And thus the whole wide world—above, below, around and everywhere—does he continue to pervade with heart of love, far-reaching, grown great and beyond measure,”40 and this love is interpreted as pity, sympathy and equanimity, which means a “quietude of heart which springs from within” and is bred of “the ecstasy of solitary contemplation, looking through things.” Much attention is paid to love of the brethren, or the spirit of unity among the monks dwelling or journeying together, and the temper of meekness necessary for such companionship is much dwelt upon. Moreover, the love insisted upon is extended to animals as well as men, and consideration for them is to reach far beyond the scrupulous refusal to take animal life. Thus the credit of having first founded hospitals—and even for animals—undoubtedly belongs to Buddhism.

Extensive lessons on vices and virtues are given in the process of elaborating the Five Precepts—against destroying life, against taking what is not given, against sexual offences (which are horribly detailed), against lying, and against drinking intoxicating liquors. (As regards the first of these precepts it must be remembered that the offence of personally taking the life of an animal did not extend to eating the flesh of an animal killed by someone else. Gotama himself habitually did so.41) Where the monk has offended against any of the precepts, he is required to make confession in Chapter, and is liable to excommunication. There is very little said about the life of the nuns, and it would appear that they were never an element of importance in the community.

In admiring this strenuous and exacting ideal it is necessary to entertain certain considerations.

1. The life contemplated is that of one who has absolutely separated himself from the world. The separation42 is to be not only from vices, not only from noxious practices, such as magic, not only from luxuries, but from amusements, games and athletic exercises of all kinds, from all kinds of business, buying and selling, etc., from all holding of property, except the necessary clothing and implements like the beggar’s bowl, from all adornment of the person, and from almost all subjects of conversation, as well as from “mean talk.” In the long lists of things from which the monk must abstain, the real vices are curiously mixed up with actions we should call innocent. It should be noticed that the Buddha is said to have prophesied that Rahatship (that is the higher practice for the attainment of which he founded his Order) would not exist for more than a century. And, as far as Southern Buddhism—the most primitive sort of Buddhism—is concerned, it does not ever appear in the tradition to have been believed to be possible among contemporaries. It appears only as a remote ideal.43
2. The only motive assigned for the pursuit of virtue and eradication of vice is the selfish motive, the escape from the chain of lives. This is quite explicit. It is so with those who are seeking Nirvana, and with those who minister to them—not themselves aiming so high but only aiming at rebirth in a better condition. The thing to be sought by either class is simply merit. Thus the laity are said to be injured when good monks leave a place, because “the opportunities of almsgiving are spoilt.” When a bodhisat (i.e. one on the way to become a Buddha) is represented as making monstrous sacrifices, such as leaping into the fire, as a hare, to be cooked for a Brahman’s dinner, he is made to say, “If I do not make this surrender, I shall not attain Buddhahood.” But this leads us on to notice what seems to be a blessed inconsistency in Gotama’s life and teaching. As we have seen, he is said to have deliberately abstained from “passing away” when he had obtained complete emancipation, in order that he might propagate his gospel in fifty years of laborious life for the love of men. And the description given of the universal love which every perfect man is to acquire and exercise treats it as a positive quality which goes far beyond the mere absence of the disturbing feeling of hate. We cannot but ask ourselves whether this noble charity can be interpreted with any reality on the basis of the utterly pessimistic estimate of life which Gotama preached. Must it not mean that positive love is a quality of human life, which subsists and deepens and broadens as selfishness and vice is conquered? And must not this mean, further, that there is something worth living for—some noble purpose that life can subserve—which must have its root in the innermost nature of things?
3. We have said that the infinite love for man and for the whole universe which Gotama preached was a positive thing and not a mere absence of hatred or anger. That is true. But it must also be observed that in the story of the Blessed One and his companions very little is said of works of mercy done to others.44 Their love is a disposition of mind which does not generally appear to prompt any kind of redemptive action. The blessedness of “giving” appears almost always to mean “giving to monks.” For the monks themselves the idea seems to be that “it is more blessed to receive than to give.” They stand before men regularly as the perpetual opportunity for the acquisition of merit by giving them good food.

When we pass from the monks to the laity and the “householders,” we find among the Suttas a very attractive outline picture attributed to the Buddha of the duties of parents and children, teachers and pupils, husbands and wives, friends and companions, masters and servants, laymen and religious.45 It is permeated by a thorough spirit of kindness and friendliness. In particular the tone of the Buddhist books towards women in the lay life is excellent. But the whole life of the married man is put on a decidedly lower level than that of the religious. Its aim is different. For example (in spite of the Five Precepts) it is assumed that by the necessity of killing animals for food, or by drinking intoxicating liquor, he will be constantly storing up demerit with its necessary consequences in a future life. He may, if he is good, even go to heaven; but he cannot “reach the end of sorrow.”46 The religious aim of the layman is, then, the acquisition of merit, available to procure him a better condition in the next life; and we cannot but notice how prominent a place in this process of acquisition is occupied by “giving” to the monks.47

Thus, whether we are considering the life of the Order or the life of the layman we are never allowed to forget, however carefully defined are the duties of life, and however thoroughly analysed are the vicious tendencies of mankind, that the sole motive for self-improvement is the selfish motive of obtaining a better future for oneself; and that the only really satisfying motive is the motive of getting utterly rid of individual life by the utter extinction of desire. All generations all the world over can join in veneration for Gotama, but his secret, his principle of enlightenment, must surely remain abhorrent.48

§ 5

I shall not attempt to trace the history of Buddhism. Between the time that Gotama died and the middle of the third century B.C.—some two centuries—his system received form and elaboration, and the “canonical literature” was for the most part compiled. This takes us to the epoch of the King Asoka, the great patron of Buddhism, which is the epoch of its glory. “In him Buddhism inspired perhaps the greatest effort, in scale at any rate, on behalf of good, than was ever made by man, outside of Christianity.” “He was not merely the Constantine of Buddhism, he was an Alexander with Buddhism for his Hellas.”49 He found in Buddhism—that is, the Buddhism of the third century which had already abandoned the pursuit of Rahatship and the stringent discipline which Gotama had established for his monks—both an ideal of personal life, especially in its emphasis on kindness and the refusal to take life, and also an instrument of justice for his kingdom. We know so little about the period subsequent to his death that we cannot tell what permanence his ideals had.

We owe to his son, Makinda, the conversion of Ceylon, and to Ceylonese Buddhism the preservation, so far as it has been preserved, of original Buddhism; Buddhaghosha (about A.D. 420) in that island has merited the name of “the second founder of the Buddhism of Ceylon”; and it was from Ceylon that Burma and Siam were converted. For the history of Southern Buddhism and for the present state and influence of Buddhism in Ceylon I can refer to no more candid and just estimate than Copleston’s.50

The Northern Buddhism diverged from the principles of the Founder more widely than the Southern, which in consequence condemned it and held it in abhorrence. It was the Buddhism of the Northern tradition51 which penetrated into China and Thibet, and thence to Korea, to Japan and elsewhere, in the early centuries of our era. In India it had a constant struggle with Brahmanism, and before the twelfth century it had been extirpated; but it still holds its ground in the other countries named, though in a form very far removed from the intentions of its founder. It has abandoned the extreme discipline which embodied his secret; it has become a religion of elaborate ceremonial in the worship of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, of gods and goddesses; it has associated itself with all sorts of magic. It appears to have retained very widely the beauty of tranquillity or passivity of character and the virtue of kindness. But the fundamental principle of its founder, from which it never can cut itself loose—that personal life is an evil, not a good—vitiates Buddhism at the core. We must content ourselves with having examined the fundamental Buddhism.

• 1.

  The Vedic Rita, which equals the Persian Arta or Asha in the Zend Gâthâs.

• 2.

  P. 22 (see above, p. 32, n. 1).

• 3.

  Cave, p. 32.

• 4.

  See Copleston’s Buddhism, pp. 71 ff.; Cave, p. 121.

• 5.

  It gained, as we shall see, a certain hold in Greece, but never to the same extent as in India.

• 6.

  See the Tevigga Sutta, S.B.E. (Sacred Books of the East), vol. xi, p. 168, and The Foundation, pp. 146 ff.

• 7.

  I should advise a student who desires as real acquaintance as possible with the original Buddhism to study some modern books first, especially Rhys Davids’ Buddhism (S.P.C.K.), R. S. Copleston’s Buddhism (Longmans, 1908), and Dr. Cave’s Living Religions of the East, pt. iii. He will also find illumination in Tolstoy’s estimate of Buddhism in his Confession (Aylmer-Maude’s trans., Oxford Press), pp. 42-4, and Lowes Dickinson’s in The Magic Flute, pp. 100-109. The modern books—and they are many—which, based on the principle that there is really only one religion under many forms, assimilate Buddhism to Christianity are uncritical and untrustworthy. And the student who studies modern books, whether the more or the less trustworthy, must at least revise his impressions by a careful reading of the Buddhist Suttas in the eleventh volume of the Sacred Books of the East (referred to in what follows as S.B.E.), which are among our earliest authorities for the teaching of the Buddha.

• 8.

  The names by which the founder of Buddhism is called are many. Gotama was the family surname. His personal name (which he is said to have renounced on leaving his home) was Siddartha. He was known later as the Buddha, “the enlightened one,” i.e. one of a class of illuminated beings. He speaks of himself as the Tathagata—“the one who has arrived,” while his disciples speak of him as Bhagavat, the blessed one. The names by which he is commonly known in China and Japan are derived from Sakyamouni, that is, “the Sage of the Sakyan race.”

• 9.

  Copleston, p. 8.

• 10.

  The first dialogue of the Sutta Pitaka, or Sermon Basket, one chief authority for the teaching of the Buddha, enumerates sixty-two “heresies,” that is, metaphysical doctrines contrary to Buddhism, many of a very subtle kind, but this may represent a later age than the lifetime of the historical Gotama.

• 11.

  S.B.E., p. 43.

• 12.

  The new Buddha, we must observe, frequently insisted on the novelty of his message. See S.B.E., pp. 147 and 150. “It was not among the doctrines handed down.” It was “discovered by the Tathagata.” And it is exclusive of all rival systems. “Void are the systems of other teachers” (p. 107).

• 13.

  The translations of Pali texts in the above narrative are taken from S.B.E. or Cave or Copleston. There does not seem to be much disagreement as to the matters of importance.

• 14.

  See S.B.E., pp. 26, 223 f.

• 15.

  Cave, p. 110.

• 16.

  S.B.E., vol. xi, p. 91.

• 17.

  The form of their dismissal is given, “Go forth, mendicants, on your rounds.”

• 18.

  S.B.E., p. 80.

• 19.

  S.B.E., pp. 1 ff. The narrative is interspersed with miraculous incidents which have no interest and are easily detachable.

• 20.

  This is not easy to reconcile with the formula of admission to the Order—“I betake myself to the Blessed One as my refuge, to the Truth, and to the Order.”

• 21.

  Not, however, by suicide. That, presumably, was regarded as contrary to the state of passivity proper to the perfect.

• 22.

  See Rhys Davids’ Buddhism, pp. 95 f.

• 23.

  S.B.E., p. 148.

• 24.

  P. 48.

• 25.

  Rhys Davids’ Buddhism, pp. 111 f.; see S.B.E., p. 218.

• 26.

  See S.B.E., pp. 162 f.

• 27.

  Ibid., p. 227.

• 28.

  See Ibid., pp. 167 ff.

• 29.

  Copleston, p. 68.

• 30.

  S.B.E., pp. 196 ff., 299.

• 31.

  Ibid., pp. 10, 27, 169 ff. There was no prayer or praise in early Buddhism. See on prayer, Copleston, p. 269. There is an interesting comparison between the “learned men” whom the Buddha confronted and the “Scribes and Pharisees” of the Gospels made by Rhys Davids in S.B.E., p. 160.

• 32.

  In The Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness, the central discourse attributed to the Buddha (S.B.E., vol. xi, pp. 146-155), his doctrine appears as the Middle Way between licence and asceticism. Avoiding these, we follow the Noble Eightfold Path, based upon the Four Noble Truths. This teaching is addressed to the Five Ascetics, and produced their conversion.

• 33.

  I have preferred the word “correct” to the more common translation “right,” because it suggests the highly doctrinaire or dogmatic style of the Buddhist teaching and its sharp-cut edges. It would seem as if that quality must have belonged to the teaching of its founder.

• 34.

  Copleston, p. 82.

• 35.

  Ibid., p. 90.

• 36.

  Cave, p. 105.

• 37.

  See S.B.E., pp. 181, 213 f., 222; also Copleston, pp. 76 f., on the unintelligibility of the last of these enumerations.

• 38.

  Copleston, chaps, viii-xvii. The form of the teaching, which I have described as singularly dry and precise, may have been exaggerated in the tradition before it was written down. But we cannot doubt that the form was impressed upon it by the founder originally.

• 39.

  Cf. S.B.E., vol. x, p. 41: “Anger, intoxication, obstinacy, bigotry, deceit, envy, grandiloquence, pride, conceit, intimacy with the unjust—that is uncleanness, but the eating of flesh is not.”

• 40.

  S.B.E., pp. 201, 211, 273.

• 41.

  Buddhism, p. 76.

• 42.

  See especially the “paragraphs on conduct,” S.B.E., pp. 189-200.

• 43.

  Copleston, p. 267; cf. S.B.E., p. 245, referring to Northern Buddhism. 6

• 44.

  Copleston, pp. 99, 107. He notes one exception.

• 45.

  Rhys Davids, cap. v. The five fundamental precepts which monks and laymen alike must vow to observe are these: not to take life, not to steal, to abstain from impurity, not to lie, to abstain from intoxicating drinks. For the monk “impurity” meant all sexual intercourse. For the layman it meant “unlawful sexual intercourse.”

• 46.

  However, he is much better off than even the ascetic, who is not a Buddhist.

• 47.

  Copleston (pp. 136 f.) gives a very good account of the graduation of the Buddha’s teaching—how he first taught men to be good laymen, and when their hearts were opened, taught them the much higher blessings of the mendicant state. It is to be noticed (pp. 141 f.) that Gotama, though in principle he refused to put non-caste people under any taboo, and sternly rebuked Brahman pride, yet accepted the caste system as he found it and commended the observance of caste rules.

• 48.

  I have referred above (p. 64, n. 1) to the estimate of Buddhism by Tolstoy and Lowes Dickinson.

• 49.

  Copleston, p. 165.

• 50.

  Cap. xxvi-xxviii. Copleston’s great book contains some passages, written from the point of view of the Christian missionary, which one may wish away. But this point of view never seems to me to hinder the justness and generosity of his estimate either of original or of later Buddhism. It is the most illuminating account of Buddhism we have.

• 51.

  Called the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle (of Salvation); by contrast to the Hinayana, or Lesser Vehicle, which is the Southern Buddhism.