Part 4
Such, in bare outline, is Southern Buddhism--in its origin a stoical agnosticism which ignored the gods and bade men rely upon themselves in following the paths of goodness that lead to happiness. Because it thus ignored the deepest instincts of humanity, first by turning the thoughts of men away from God, and again by glorifying celibacy, these instincts, refusing to be snubbed, have taken a revenge, so that to-day Buddhism survives, largely because of the teachings it has been compelled to adopt in the process of moulding itself "nearer to the heart's desire." This may be illustrated in two ways. _Nibbāna_ at best, originally, an ideal of negative, solitary bliss, has been replaced by an ideal of social life hereafter. Moreover, faith in self-mastery has given place to prayers for help, or, among the most conservative, to the belief that there is a store of merit gained by the sacrificial lives of the Buddhas throughout the ages, which may be "tapped" by the faithful.
Buddhism has thus passed through an interesting history of adjustment. It is important for the student of religion to give close attention to this history, one of the most amazing and fascinating chapters in human thought.
[7] Sanskrit, _Bhikshu_. It means "mendicant."
[8] _Dhamma_ means "law" or "teaching."
[9] The _Rig-Veda_ is a great anthology of religion. The Vedas are early religious Books in which a joyous nature-worship predominates.
[10] _Nirvāna_ means to the Hindu reabsorption into the Absolute _Brahman_. To Buddhists it is variously expounded by their teachers as either (a) annihilation, or (b) a heaven of bliss, or (c) annihilation of evil desire, _i.e._ of all clinging to life. Western Buddhist writers call it usually by some such phrase as "The great Peace," which is vague enough to mean any of the three!
VI. THE MISSIONARY APPROACH TO MODERN BUDDHISM IN SOUTHERN ASIA
I have tried to show both the good and the bad sides of Buddhism in Southern Asia: and have laid emphasis upon those characteristics which demonstrate its continuing power. Southern Buddhists, however, need earnest and sympathetic missionaries, with a gospel of abounding life, of a Father God, and of communion with Him in Christ. Let all who contemplate this great service note the following points.
1. Modern Buddhism differs from the Theoretical Buddhism of Gotama.
There is a marked difference between the theoretical Buddhism of early days, reflected in the standard literature of Southern Buddhism, and the Buddhism of the present day in Southern Asia. The Buddhism which Western enthusiasts are eager to introduce into their own countries is something which they have learnt, not from the peoples of Buddhist lands, but from the ancient literature of Buddhism. Captivated at first, it may be, by the beauty of some isolated saying, or, possibly, deeply touched during some moonlight scene at the great golden pagodas of Burma or on the hillsides of Ceylon, they become eager and not infrequently learned students of the Buddhism of Gotama. They have to declare with sadness that the great bulk of the people who profess Buddhism have wandered very far from its true principles and practice, and that human nature, for the most part, needs something less austere.
This old Buddhism of the Books may be regarded and used as a kind of Old Testament for Buddhists; already they have passed away from its traditions.
2. The Central Emphasis of Buddhism varies in the Three Southern Countries.
Not only does Buddhism, as the missionary comes in contact with it, differ very markedly from theoretical Buddhism, but the central emphasis varies in different parts of Southern Asia. The student must know his country and his people in order to know their Buddhism, as well as _vice versâ_. Nothing can be further from the sunny temperament of the Burmese than the central "truth" of Buddhism that "all is sorrowful"; and it is a strange perversion of the truth which claims, as some of these Western writers have claimed, that the Burmese are optimistic because they are free from _tanhā_. The fact that they believe in a good Buddha as a living god, however, has much to do with it: and temperament has even more.
In Ceylon, while Buddhist ideals are better suited to the more melancholic temperament of the people, yet they are acutely conscious of their powerlessness to gain the victory over sin and sorrow unaided. As in Japan and China, so in a lesser degree in Burma and Ceylon, Buddhism has been constrained to die to itself (to substitute the idea of a saviour for the idea of earning one's own salvation) in a way that is full of encouragement and suggestion to the Christian. For, if the mythical Kwanyin and the far-off Metteya can so captivate hungry human hearts, how shall not the historic and living Christ be enthroned in their stead?
3. The Qualities of Missionaries to Buddhists.
The life of a missionary to Buddhist peoples is full of interest. Each people has many attractive qualities and the life has much of delight. Certain special qualifications may be worth mentioning:--
(a) _A Genuine Sympathy_.--A missionary will make very little impression upon the people and especially upon their leaders in Buddhist countries who is unable to think himself, to some extent, sympathetically, into their point of view, and to be friendly toward the better aspects of their life and beliefs. There are many things which are "lovely and of good report." The spirit of friendliness and of appreciation goes far toward establishing good relations with the people.
(b) _A Sense of Beauty and of Humour_.--They are lovers of beauty and enjoy humour, and respond readily to these qualities in the missionary. More over, without such gifts life in the tropics is very trying to oneself and to others.
(c) _Christian Convictions_.--Along with these qualities, the missionary must have a passionate loyalty to Christ, a clear understanding of the essential Christian message to such a people, and a firm conviction of the right of Jesus Christ to claim these attractive peoples for God, and to make them great.
(d) _A willingness to appreciate fresh truth_.--It is very desirable that the young missionary should face such people, themselves often creative in their thinking, with a belief that the Holy Spirit, who has guided the nations in their search for truth, is still seeking to lead them on, at least into fresh realisations of the power and meaning of the truths which have meant so much in past ages. Every such missionary will be thrilled in his contact with the inner "soul of the people" to whom he goes, by the hope that they will find in Christ hitherto undiscovered riches and by the desire on his own part to catch something of a continually enlarging vision of Christ and His Church.
4. A Great Opportunity.
The missionary to Buddhists may find encouragement and inspiration in the growing conviction that Oriental Christianity will definitely add strength to the universal Church in coming days. God's kingdom will not be complete without the peoples of Southern Asia. They are deeply religious. It may be far from being an idle dream that God should give to some missionary of to-day the privilege of training a St. Paul, an Origen or an Augustine of the East, who will give to the Church other great chapters of Christian interpretation, and a truly convincing apologetic of the gospel to the world.
II. BUDDHISM IN EASTERN ASIA
I. BUDDHISM IN JAPAN
From the Buddhism of Southern Asia to that of China and Japan is a far cry. It must be remembered that the monastic Buddhism, in which the _Arhat_ seeking his own salvation is the ideal, gradually gave place before Buddhism left India and entered Eastern Asia to the _Mahāyāna_, or Great Vessel, in which the _Bodhisattva_, or compassionate servant of humanity, became the ideal. Other important changes also took place in the religion of Gotama during the five or six centuries after his death. In the first place, in spite of all his teachings that men should not look to him for help the teacher was himself deified: He "mounts the empty throne of Brahmā." A little later there appeared a docetic tendency which explained him away, or attempted to show that he was without human feeling or passion, a kind of unreal adaptation of the eternal to the needs of time. Others conceived of him as an Eternal Being carrying on the work he had begun upon earth, and opening up salvation to all sentient beings, until finally a trinitarian doctrine was evolved which related the historical Gotama to the eternal Buddha, and conceived of him as having emptied himself of his glory for a season out of compassion for mankind, but as now enjoying it and manifesting it in pitiful and helpful ministries.
It is possible to see in this developing Buddhology evidence of Christian influence: the late Arthur Lloyd of Tokyo is the chief exponent of such a view. To me, however, it seems at once more scientific and more interesting to find in these parallels one more evidence alike of the similarity of human nature in all lands and ages, and of the indwelling Presence of the one Father of us all, guiding the nations in their search for Truth. The vitality and adaptability of Buddhism are evidences of His Spirit.
This vitality, even if at times adaptability has degenerated into compromise, is, as we have seen, great in Southern Asia, and amongst the sources of its strength we have noted its great influence as a civilising power and as a bond of social life: its appeal to the imagination and to the gratitude of the peoples: its philosophical explanation of the age-old problem of suffering, and the moderation and sanity of its ethical teachings. All these factors enter in differing degrees into the vitality of Buddhism in China and Japan: for it has done much to help the civilisation of these countries also, and to give them a popular philosophy of life and a pleasant social setting for religious faith.
Let us consider these facts in more detail as regards the Buddhism of Japan; for she is leading the Orient not only in matters of material progress, but in such spiritual things as a revival of the old faith which she is characteristically using to her own advantage. In 1918, for instance, a Pan-Buddhistic League was formed in Tokyo, and more remarkable has been the lead taken by the Buddhists of Japan in sending strong idealistic appeals to the Conferences at Versailles and Washington. The vital forces of Buddhism in Japan, then, are as follows:--
1. Buddhism has for twelve centuries rendered a unique service to the culture of the nation. Letters, architecture, painting, the discipline of the mind--in fact, the whole culture of Japan is shot through and through with Buddhist influence. It is significant that the two Western writers who entered most deeply into the spirit of Japanese culture, Lafcadio Hearn and Fenollosa, both became Buddhists and are buried in Buddhist cemeteries.
2. Buddhism is again a great bond of social union. Its great pilgrimages, for example, are the favourite recreation of the people, and its great festivals such as the _Bon Matsuri_, in which the spirits of the departed are honoured, are seasons of great sociability. Here, again, the "pessimistic" Buddhism is a cheerful and a pleasant thing.
3. Its appeal to the imagination is obvious. Splendid temples with their dim golden altars, gorgeous vestments, sonorous chanting, and all the splendour of an artistic ritual--all this leaps to the eye of the most casual visitor. What must it not be to the artistic Japanese worshipper with all its tender associations?
4. Nor does Japanese Buddhism appeal less to the mind. Its apologists constantly claim for it that it is a more philosophical and more scientific creed than any other. I have been many times impressed with the wide reading of Japanese Buddhists, and with the intellectual tone of Japanese Christianity. It is clear that the crude theology of some missionaries will not meet the acid test of modern scholarship, and is partly responsible for a widespread belief amongst the Japanese that Christianity is out of date. The chief Buddhist sects give their priests a better training in the History of Religion than our missionary societies. A stronger apologetic literature is needed.
5. The best apologetic, however, is in saintly lives; Tolstoi and Francis of Assisi especially make an immense appeal to the Japanese; there are Tolstoyan colonies, and a Buddhist Franciscan society. Yet it must be remembered that they find in the saints of Buddhism such as Honen and Nichiren, men worthy to compare with these great Christian souls. Mr. Takayama, whose influence on young Japan has been so great, was at once an ardent disciple of Tolstoy and a follower of Nichiren; Dr. Anesaki is no less a Buddhist of the Nichiren school because he is a devoted admirer of St. Francis. And these men believe that Buddhism and Christianity at their best are closely akin: "We see your Christ," says Dr. Anesaki, "because we have first seen our Buddha."
6. There is much to be said for this view; for Buddhism in Japan has developed a very noble idea of God; he is the Eternal Father who has compassion on all his sons; their salvation is won by faith, not by merit, and gratitude is the motive to good living. It is surely a misnomer to call the fair forms of Amida, the lord of the Western paradise, and of Kwannon the Compassionate, "idols." And Jīzo, the strong Conqueror of Death, the play mate and protector of little children--is he not a noble embodiment of divine strength and gentleness? If the Christian apologist argues that these are figments of the imagination, the Buddhist is right in replying that they owe their inspiration to the historic Sākyamuni and his early followers, and that there is as much evidence in the vision of a Buddhist saint as in that of an Old Testament prophet for the objective reality of the god who is worshipped. May we not see in the strivings of good and true men everywhere to know God a movement of the Spirit of God Himself? This is my own conviction--that the Spirit of God has been moving for long centuries amongst our Buddhist brethren and has led them far upon the path to Truth. It is, however, only right to say that this view is shared by comparatively few missionaries in Japan. Though the great Conference at Edinburgh in 1910 accepted it as an axiom that God had been at work in these ethnic faiths, and though it was specifically stated of Japanese Buddhism, yet it is a fact that this view is held at best as one of academic interest, and without enthusiasm. The leading authority upon the subject amongst the Protestant missionaries in Japan sums up his conviction in these weighty words and they are one tenable interpretation: "It may be said, then, that Mahāyāna Buddhism is a religion with a rather lofty idea of God among many conceptions of the divine, but without a real faith in the living God; a religion with the idea of a saviour, but without a historical saviour; a religion with a doctrine of divine grace paralysed by the old karma doctrine; a religion with a promise of a present salvation and a future life, which is nevertheless made obscure by the doubts of a recurrent agnostic philosophy that cuts the nerve of all vital ethics and beclouds the hopes of a better future."[11] The student must weigh these two interpretations: and can only do so by a sympathetic and patient study of the facts. And the outstanding fact is that Buddhism has been the civiliser of Asia, and a great bond of union between its peoples.
Japan is, in many ways, the best country for an intelligent study of its achievements.
She has been called the custodian of Asiatic civilisation: India, China, and Korea have all poured their rich gifts into her lap, and she has preserved them with wise discrimination. But she has always assimilated them till they are her own, and express her own genius. This is perhaps especially true of Buddhism, which is a very different thing in Japan even from what it is in China and Korea. Still more does it differ from that which we have studied in Ceylon and Burma. To turn away from these monastic expressions of the ancient faith to the elaborate Buddhism of Japan is to realise that a development has taken place not unlike that of Christianity, in its transition from the simplicity of Galilean hillsides and the upper chamber at Jerusalem to the pomp of high mass in St. Peter's at Rome or St. Mark's at Venice. Into each great process there have entered similar elements, the growth of a theology by which the historic founder is related to the eternal order, the absorption of ideas and rituals from peoples converted to the new faith and the making over of the faith in each new land till it becomes indigenous, and racy of the soil. The story of Buddhism as it developed its philosophical systems and its elaborate pantheon cannot be told here;[12] but we may attempt, as in the case of Ceylon and Burma, to give a few impressions of the Buddhism of Japan, which will indicate the processes of change and suggest what are the vital forces of this amazingly flexible religion, whose watchwords have been adaptation and compromise.
When Buddhism entered Japan in the seventh century A.D. it was already the religion of all Asia. It found amidst the semi-barbarous peoples of the islands certain deeply rooted ideas, such as the worship of heroes and especially of the Emperor, who was believed to be descended from the Sun-goddess Amaterasu. Within three centuries it had civilised the country, and had triumphantly identified this goddess with its own Sun-Buddha Vairochana, producing a blended faith made up of elements of the old Shinto (_Shen Tao_ or Way of the Gods, _Kami no michi_) and of highly philosophical Buddhism which saw in the sun the source of all cosmic energy. This new Buddhism or _Ryobu Shinto_ is different indeed from the faith of the founder, but it claims to be the logical and only legitimate evolution of his teachings.
Let us glance at it first in its great mountain fastness of Kōya San, where its founder Kobo Daishi lived and died, and where the faithful await with him the coming of Miroku--or Maitri--the next Buddha.
Koya San.
Like a great lotus of eight petals are the hills of Kōya San, and up their wooded slopes wind the pilgrim roads. It is the season of pilgrimage and they are thronged with pilgrims clad in white; here is a litter in which some invalid is being borne to the great temple where priests by the performance of mystic ritual and incantations will attempt to restore him to physical as well as spiritual health; here an aged couple are helping one another over steep parts of the way. As they approach the shrines they say a prayer to the pitiful Jizō, that he will be merciful to their dead; then as they pass the wooden octagonal library they turn it upon its axis in order that the merit of reading its voluminous scriptures may be theirs: and near by some afflicted person rubs the portion of the wooden figure of Binzuru which is affected in himself. Behind these somewhat childish superstitions is an elaborate philosophy, and if one is fortunate one may find a monk with leisure and ability to explain the elaborate _mandaras_, the pictures of this _Shingon_, or Trueword; Buddhism. Founded in the ninth century by the great scholar Kobo Daishi, it is a pantheistic worship of Dainichi, the great sun Buddha, the indwelling and pervading essence of the world. Present in all things, he is most present where men worship him, and so by mystic rite and incantation the worshipper is identified with this source of his being, and lays hold of certain secrets of bodily and spiritual health. Japan, like other countries, is eagerly looking for a religion which works, and which has a message for this life as well as for that beyond the grave. Amongst the great trees are innumerable tombs of the faithful, and here in their midst sits Kobo Daishi himself awaiting the coming of Miroku, the next Buddha. Nor is his spirit of loving-kindness, which is the essence of Buddhism, forgotten. Unique amongst the monuments of war stands this seventeenth-century pillar calling down the mercies of heaven upon all who fell in the war with Korea, both friend and foe.
In these temples, too, one will see the simple mirror, emblem at once of Amaterasu and of Dainichi, of Shinto and of Buddhism: are not the two now reconciled, and have they not become an integral part of the soul of Japan, _Yamato Damashii_? Here on Kōyasan mingle Japanese nature-worship, Indian idealistic philosophy, gods from central Asia, and the superstitions of needy human hearts. There is much that is fine as well as much that is corrupt, and it is noteworthy that the impatient reformer, Nichiren, called Kōbo "the prize liar" of Japan, and abominated the beliefs and practices of _Shingon_. Yet he was not unbiased in his judgments!
Hieisan and its Sects.
Another great mountain-fastness of Japanese Buddhism is Hieisan. Here amidst vast cryptomerias and redwoods a contemporary of Kōbo, named Saichō or Dengyō, established just eleven hundred years ago a synthetic Buddhism, which strove to reconcile the conflicting schools and to represent at once the founder Sākyamuni as he is revealed in the Lotus Scripture, seated in glory and opening a way for all to become Buddhas, and the eternal Amida Buddha of the Western Paradise. Side by side are preaching-halls for these two schools of Buddhist devotion, and from the parent stock of _Tendai_ have sprung the three great sects of _Jōdo_, _Shinshu_, and _Nichiren-Shu_. The two former are extreme developments of the Way of Faith in Amida, and the latter is a revolt from their pietism and vain repetitions to the historical Sākyamuni and the famous "Lotus Scripture," the _Hokkekyō_ which is found to-day in every Buddhist temple in Japan. At the foot of the great mountain clusters the old imperial city of Kyōto, or Miyako, with its thousand temples. Let us visit some of them.
A Shinshu Temple.