Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) by Charles Eliot

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A comparison of Indian Mohammedans and Hindus suggests that the former
are more warlike and robust, the latter more intellectual and ingenious.
The fact that some Mohammedans belong to hardy tribes of invaders must
be taken into account but Islam deserves the credit of having introduced
a simple and fairly healthy rule of life which does not allow every
caste to make its own observances into a divine law. Yet it would seem
that the medical and sanitary rules of Hinduism deserve less abuse than
they generally receive. Col. King, Sanitary Commissioner of the Madras
Presidency, is quoted as saying in a lecture[84]: "The Institutes of
Vishnu and the Laws of Manu fit in excellently with the bacteriology,
parasitology and applied hygiene of the West. The hygiene of food and
water, private and public conservancy, disease suppression and
prevention, are all carefully dealt with."

Hinduism certainly has proved marvellously stimulating to the intellect
or--shall we put it the other way?--is the product of profound, acute,
and restless minds. It cannot be justly accused of being enervating or
melancholy, for many Hindu states were vigorous and warlike[85] and the
accounts of early travellers indicate that in pre-mohammedan days the
people were humane, civilized and contented. It created an original and
spiritual art, for Indian art, more than any other, is the direct
product of religion and not merely inspired by it. In ages when original
talent is rare this close relation has disadvantages for it tends to
make all art symbolic and conventional. An artist must not represent a
deity in the way that he thinks most effective: the proportions,
attitude and ornaments are all prescribed, not because they suit a
picture or statue but because they mean something.

Indian literature is also directly related to religion. Its extent is
well-nigh immeasurable. I will not alarm the reader with statistics of
the theological and metaphysical treatises which it contains. A little
of such goes a long way even when they are first-rate, but India may at
least boast of having more theological works which, if considered as
intellectual productions, must be placed in the first class than Europe.
Nor are religious writings of a more human type absent--the language of
heart to heart and of the heart to God. The Ramayana of Tulsi Das and
the Tiruvwcagam are extolled by Groase, Grierson and Pope (all of them
Christians, I believe) as not only masterpieces of literature but as
noble expressions of pure devotion, and the poems of Kabir and Tukaram,
if less considerable as literary efforts, show the same spiritual
quality. Indian poetry, even when nominally secular, is perhaps too much
under religious influence to suit our taste and the long didactic and
philosophic harangues which interrupt the action of the Mahabharata seem
to us inartistic, yet to those who take the pains to familiarize
themselves with what at first is strange, the Mahabharata is, I think, a
greater poem than the _Iliad_. It should not be regarded as an epic
distended and interrupted by interpolated sermons but as the scripture
of the warrior caste, which sees in the soldier's life a form of
religion.

I have touched in several places on the defects of Hinduism. They are
due partly to its sanction of customs which have no necessary connection
with it and partly to its extravagance, which in the service of the gods
sees no barriers of morality or humanity. But suttee, human sacrifices
and orgies strike the imagination and assume an importance which they
have not and never had for Hinduism as a whole. If Hinduism were really
bad, so many great thoughts, so many good lives could not have grown up
in its atmosphere. More than any other religion it is a quest of truth
and not a creed, which must necessarily become antiquated: it admits the
possibility of new scriptures, new incarnations, new institutions. It
has no quarrel with knowledge or speculation: perhaps it excludes
materialists, because they have no common ground with religion, but it
tolerates even the Sankhya philosophy which has nothing to say about God
or worship. It is truly dynamic and in the past whenever it has seemed
in danger of withering it has never failed to bud with new life and put
forth new flowers.

More than other religions, Hinduism appeals to the soul's immediate
knowledge and experience of God. It has sacred books innumerable but
they agree in little but this, that the soul can come into contact and
intimacy with its God, whatever name be given him and even if he be
superpersonal. The possibility and truth of this experience is hardly
questioned in India and the task of religion is to bring it about, not
to promote the welfare of tribes and states but to effect the
enlightenment and salvation of souls.

The love of the Hindus for every form of argument and philosophizing is
well known but it is happily counterbalanced by another tendency.
Instinct and religion both bring them into close sympathy with nature.
India is in the main an agricultural country[86] and nearly
three-quarters of the population are villagers whose life is bound up
with the welfare of plants and animals and lies at the mercy of rivers
that overflow or skies that withhold the rain. To such people
nature-myths and sacred animals appeal with a force that Europeans
rarely understand. The parrots that perch on the pinnacles of the temple
and the oxen that rest in the shade of its courts are not intruders but
humble brothers of mankind, who may also be the messengers of the gods.

24. _Buddhism in Practice_

As I said above, it is easier to estimate the effects of Buddhism than
of Hinduism, for its history is the chronicle of a great missionary
enterprise and there are abundant materials for studying the results of
its diffusion.

Even its adversaries must admit that it has many excellent qualities. It
preaches morality and charity and was the first religion to proclaim to
the world--not to a caste or country--that these are the foundation of
that Law which if kept brings happiness. It civilized many nations, for
instance the Tibetans and Mongols. It has practised toleration and true
unworldliness, if not without any exception[87], at least far more
generally than any other great religion. It has directly encouraged art
and literature and, so far as I know, has never opposed the progress of
knowledge. But two charges may be brought against it which deserve
consideration. First that its pessimistic doctrines and monastic
institutions are, if judged by ordinary standards, bad for the welfare
of a nation: second that more than any other religion it is liable to
become corrupt.

In all Buddhist lands, though good laymen are promised the blessings of
religion, the monastic and contemplative life is held up as the ideal.
In Christendom, this ideal is rejected by Protestants and for the Roman
and Oriental Churches it is only one among others. Hence every one's
judgment of Buddhism must in a large measure depend on what he thinks of
this ideal. Monks are not of this world and therefore the world hateth
them. If they keep to themselves, they are called lazy and useless. If
they take part in secular matters, they meet with even severer
criticism. Yet can any one doubt that what is most needed in the present
age is more people who have leisure and ability to think?

Whatever evil is said of Buddhist monks is also said of Mt Athos and
similar Christian establishments. I am far from saying that this
depreciation of the cloistered life is just in either case but any
impartial critic of monastic institutions must admit that their virtues
avoid publicity and their faults attract attention. In all countries a
large percentage of monks are indolent: it is the temptation which
besets all but the elect. Yet the Buddhist ideal of the man who has
renounced the world leaves no place for slackness, nor I think does the
Christian. Buddhist monks are men of higher aspirations than others:
they try to make themselves supermen by cultivating not the forceful and
domineering part of their nature but the gentle, charitable and
intelligent part. The laity treat them with the greatest respect
provided that they set an example of a life better than most men can
live. A monastic system of this kind is found in Burma. I do not mean
that it is not found in other Buddhist lands, but I cite an instance
which I have seen myself and which has impressed most observers
favourably.

The Burmese monks are not far from the ideal of Gotama, yet perhaps by
adhering somewhat strictly to the letter of his law they have lost
something of the freedom which he contemplated. In his time there were
no books: the mind found exercise and knowledge in conversation. A
monastery was not a permanent residence, except during the rainy season,
but merely a halting-place for the brethren who were habitually
wanderers, continually hearing and seeing something new. Hermits and
solitary dwellers in the forests were not unknown but assuredly the
majority of the brethren had no intention of secluding themselves from
the intellectual life of the age. What would Gotama have done had he
lived some hundreds or thousands of years later? I see no reason to
doubt that he would have encouraged the study of literature and science.
He would probably have praised all art which expresses noble and
spiritual ideas, while misdoubting representations of sensuous beauty.

The second criticism--that Buddhists are prone to corrupt their faith--is
just, for their courteous acquiescence in other creeds enfeebles and
denaturalizes their own. In Annam, Korea and some parts of China though
there are temples and priests more or less deserving the name of
Buddhist, there is no idea that Buddhism is a distinct religion or mode
of life. Such statements as that the real religion of the Burmese is not
Buddhism but animism are, I think, incorrect, but even the Burmese are
dangerously tolerant.

This weakness is not due to any positive defect, since Buddhism provides
for those who lead the higher life a strenuous curriculum and for the
laity a system of morality based on rational grounds and differing
little from the standard accepted in both Europe and China, except that
it emphasizes the duties of mankind to animals. The weakness comes from
the absence of any command against superstitious rites and beliefs. When
the cardinal principles of Buddhism are held strongly these accessories
do not matter, but the time comes when the creeper which was once an
ornament grows into the walls of the shrine and splits the masonry. The
faults of western religions are mainly faults of self-assertion--such as
the Inquisition and opposition to science. The faults of Indian
religions are mainly tolerance of what does not belong to them and
sometimes of what is not only foreign to them but bad in itself.

Buddhism has been both praised and blamed as a religion which
acknowledges neither God nor the soul[88] and its acceptance in its
later phases of the supernatural has been regarded as proving the human
mind's natural need of theism. But it is rather an illustration of that
craving for personal though superhuman help which makes Roman Catholics
supplement theism with the worship of saints.

On the whole it is correct to say that Buddhism (except perhaps in very
exceptional sects) has always taken and still takes a point of view
which has little in common with European theism. The world is not
thought of as the handiwork of a divine personality nor the moral law as
his will. The fact that religion can exist without these ideas is of
capital importance[89]. But any statements implying that Buddhism
divorces morality from the doctrine of immortality may be misunderstood
for it teaches that just as an old man may suffer for the follies of his
youth, so faults committed in one life may be punished in another.
Rewards and punishments in another world were part of the creed of Asoka
and tradition represents the missionaries who converted Ceylon as using
this simple argument[90]. It would not however be true to say that
Buddhism makes the value of morality contingent on another world. The
life of an Arhat which includes the strictest morality is commended on
its own account as the best and happiest existence.

European assertions about Buddhism often imply that it sets up as an
ideal and goal either annihilation or some condition of dreamy bliss.
Modern Buddhists who mostly neglect Nirvana as something beyond their
powers, just as the ordinary Christian does not say that he hopes to
become a saint, lose much of the Master's teaching but do it less
injustice than such misrepresentations. The Buddha did not describe
Nirvana as something to be won after death, but as a state of happiness
attainable in this life by strenuous endeavour--a state of perfect peace
but compatible with energy, as his own example showed.

25. _Interest of Indian Thought for Europe_

We are now in a better position to answer the question asked at the
beginning of this introduction, Is Indian thought of value or at least
of interest for Europe?

Let me confess that I cannot share the confidence in the superiority of
Europeans and their ways which is prevalent in the west. Whatever view
we take of the rights and wrongs of the recent war, it is clearly absurd
for Europe as a whole to pose in the presence of such doings as a
qualified instructor in humanity and civilization. Many of those who are
proudest of our fancied superiority escape when the chance offers from
western civilization and seek distraction in exploration, and many who
have spent their lives among what they consider inferior races are
uneasy when they retire and settle at home. In fact European
civilization is not satisfying and Asia can still offer something more
attractive to many who are far from Asiatic in spirit. Yet though most
who have paid even a passing visit to the East feel its charm, the
history, art and literature of Asia are still treated with ignorant
indifference in cultured circles--an ignorance and indifference which are
extraordinary in Englishmen who have so close a connection with India
and devote a disproportionate part of their education to ancient Greece
and Rome. I have heard a professor of history in an English university
say that he thought the history of India began with the advent of the
British and that he did not know that China had any history at all. And
Matthew Arnold in speaking of Indian thought[91] hardly escaped meriting
his own favourite epithets of condemnation, Philistine and _saugrenu_.

Europeans sometimes mention it as an amazing and almost ridiculous
circumstance that an educated Chinese can belong to three religions,
Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. But I find this attitude of mind
eminently sensible. Confucianism is an admirable religion for State
ceremonies and College chapels. By attending its occasional rites one
shows a decent respect for Heaven and Providence and commits oneself to
nothing. And though a rigid Confucianist may have the contempt of a
scholar and statesman for popular ideas, yet the most devout Buddhist
and Taoist can conform to Confucianism without scruple, whereas many who
have attended an English coronation service must have wondered at the
language which they seemed to approve of by their presence. And in China
if you wish to water the aridity of Confucianism, you can find in
Buddhism or Taoism whatever you want in the way of emotion or philosophy
and you will not be accused of changing your religion because you take
this refreshment. This temper is not good for creating new and profound
religious thought, but it is good for sampling and appreciating the
"varieties of religious experience" which offer their results as guides
for this and other lives.

For religion is systematized religious experience and this experience
depends on temperament. There can therefore be no one religion in the
European sense and it is one of the Hindus' many merits that they
recognize this. Some people ask of religion forgiveness for their sins,
others communion with the divine: most want health and wealth, many
crave for an explanation of life and death. Indian religion accommodates
itself to these various needs. Nothing is more surprising than the
variety of its phases except the underlying unity.

This power of varying in sympathetic response to the needs of many minds
and growing in harmony with the outlook of successive ages, is a
contrast to the pretended _quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab
omnibus_[92] of Western Churches, for in view of their differences and
mutual hostility it can only be called a pretence. Indians recognize
that only the greatest and simplest religious questions can be asked now
in the same words that came to the lips more than two thousand years ago
and even if the questions are the same, the answers of the thoughtful
are still as widely divergent as the pronouncements of the Buddha and
the Brahmans. But nearly all the propositions contained in a European
creed involve matters of history or science which are obviously affected
by research and discovery as much as are astronomy or medicine, and not
only are the propositions out of date but they mostly refer to problems
which have lost their interest. But Indian religion eschews creeds and
will not die with the spread of knowledge. It will merely change and
enter a new phase of life in which much that is now believed and
practised will be regarded as the gods and rites of the Veda are
regarded now.

I do not think that there is much profit in comparing religions, which
generally means exalting one at the expense of the others, but rather
that it is interesting and useful to learn what others, especially those
least like ourselves, think of these matters. And in religious questions
Asia has a distinct right to be heard.

For if Europeans have any superiority over Asiatics, it lies in
practical science, finance and administration, not in thought or art. If
one were collecting views about philosophy and religion in Europe, one
would not begin by consulting financiers and engineers, and the
policeman who stands in the middle of the street and directs the traffic
to this side and that is not intellectually superior to those who obey
him as if he were something superhuman. Europeans in Asia are like such
a policeman: their gifts are authority and power to organize: in other
respects their superiority is imaginary.

I do not think that Christianity will ever make much progress in Asia,
for what is commonly known by that name is not the teaching of Christ
but a rearrangement of it made in Europe and like most European
institutions practical rather than thoughtful. And as for the teaching
of Christ himself, the Indian finds it excellent but not ample or
satisfying. There is little in it which cannot be found in some of the
many scriptures of Hinduism and it is silent on many points about which
they speak, if not with convincing authority, at least with suggestive
profundity. Neither do I think that Europe is likely to adopt Buddhist
or Brahmanic methods of thought on any large scale. Theosophical and
Buddhist societies have my sympathy but it is sympathy with lonely
workers in an unpopular cause and I am not sure that they always
understand what they try to teach. There is truth at the bottom of the
dogma that all Buddhas must be born and teach in India: Asiatic doctrine
may commend itself to European minds but it fits awkwardly into European
life.

But this is no reason for refusing to accord to Indian religion at least
the same attention that we give to Plato and Aristotle. Every idea which
is held strongly by any large body of men is worthy of respectful
examination, although I do not think that because an opinion is
widespread it is therefore true. Thus the idea that in the remote past
there was some kind of paradise or golden age and that the span of human
life was once much longer than now is found among most nations. Yet
research and analogy suggest that it is without foundation. The fact
that about half the population of the world has come under the influence
of Hindu ideas gives Indian thought historical importance rather than
authority. The claim of India to the attention of the world is that she,
more than any other nation since history began, has devoted herself to
contemplating the ultimate mysteries of existence and, in my eyes, the
fact that Indian thought diverges widely from our own popular thought is
a positive merit. In intellectual and philosophical pursuits we want new
ideas and Indian ideas are not familiar or hackneyed in the west, though
I think that more European philosophers and mystics have arrived at
similar conclusions than is generally supposed.

Indian religions have more spirituality and a greater sense of the
Infinite than our western creeds and more liberality. They are not
merely tolerant but often hold that the different classes of mankind
have their own rules of life and suitable beliefs and that he who
follows such partial truths does no wrong to the greater and
all-inclusive truths on which his circumstances do not permit him to fix
his attention. And though some Indian religions may sanction bad
customs, sacrifice of animals and immoral rites, yet on the whole they
give the duty of kindness to animals a prominence unknown in Europe and
are more penetrated with the idea that civilization means a gentle and
enlightened temper--an idea sadly forgotten in these days of war. Their
speculative interest can hardly be denied. For instance, the idea of a
religion without a personal God may seem distasteful or absurd but the
student of human thought must take account of it and future generations
may not find it a useless notion. It is certain that in Asia we find
Buddhist Churches which preach morality and employ ritual and yet are
not theistic, and also various systems of pantheism which, though they
may use the word God, obviously use it in a sense which has nothing in
common with Christian and Mohammedan ideas.

India's greatest contribution to religion is not intellectual, as the
mass of commentaries and arguments produced by Hindus might lead us to
imagine, but the persistent and almost unchallenged belief in the
reality and bliss of certain spiritual states which involve intuition.
All Indians agree that they are real, even to the extent of offering an
alternative superior to any ordinary life of pleasure and success, but
their value for us is lessened by the variety of interpretations which
they receive and which make it hard to give a more detailed definition
than that above. For some they are the intuition of a particular god,
for others of divinity in general. For Buddhists they mean a new life of
knowledge, freedom and bliss without reference to a deity. But apart
from such high matters I believe that the mental training preliminary to
these states--what is called meditation and concentration--is well worth
the attention of Europeans. I am not recommending trances or catalepsy:
in these as in other matters the Hindus are probably prone to exaggerate
and the Buddha himself in his early quest for truth discarded trances as
an unsatisfactory method. But the reader can convince himself by
experiment that the elementary discipline which consists in suppressing
"discursive thought" and concentrating the mind on a particular
object--say a red flower--so that for some time nothing else is present to
the mind and the image of the flower is seen and realized in all its
details, is most efficacious for producing mental calm and alertness. By
such simple exercises the mind learns how to rest and refresh itself.
Its quickness of apprehension and its retentive power are considerably
increased, for words and facts imprinted on it when by the suppression
of its ordinary activities it has thus been made a _tabula rasa_ remain
fixed and clear.

Such great expressions of emotional theism as the Ramayana of Tulsi Das
are likely to find sympathetic readers in Europe, but the most original
feature of Indian thought is that, as already mentioned, it produces
systems which can hardly be refused the name of religion and yet are
hardly theistic. The Buddha preached a creed without reference to a
supreme deity and the great Emperor Asoka, the friend of man and beast,
popularized this creed throughout India. Even at the present day the
prosperous and intelligent community of Jains follow a similar doctrine
and the Advaita philosophy diverges widely from European theism. It is
true that Buddhism invented gods for itself and became more and more
like Hinduism and that the later Vedantist and Sivaite schools have a
strong bent to monotheism. Yet all Indian theism seems to me to have a
pantheistic tinge[93] and India is certainly the classic land of
Pantheism. The difficulties of Pantheism are practical: it does not lend
itself easily to popular cries and causes and it finds it hard to
distinguish and condemn evil[94]. But it appeals to the scientific
temper and is not repulsive to many religious and emotional natures.
Indeed it may be said that in monotheistic creeds the most thoughtful
and devout minds often tend towards Pantheism, as witness the Sufis
among Moslims, the Kabbalists among the Jews and many eminent mystics in
the Christian Church. In India, the only country where the speculative
interest is stronger than the practical, it is a common form of belief
and it is of great importance for the history and criticism of religion
to see how an idea which in Europe is hardly more than philosophic
theory works on a large scale.