Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

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Mr. Malcom goes on thus: "Many of these people have never seen a white man
before, but I am constantly struck with their politeness. They desist from
anything on the slightest intimation; never crowd around to be
troublesome; and if on my showing them my watch or pencil-case, or
anything which particularly attracts them, there are more than can get a
sight, the outer ones stand aloof and wait till their turn comes....

"I saw no intemperance in Birmah, though an intoxicating liquor is made
easily of the juice of a palm....

"A man may travel from one end of the kingdom to the other without money,
feeding and lodging as well as the people."

"I have seen thousands together, for hours, on public occasions, rejoicing
in all ardor, and no act of violence or case of intoxication....

"During my whole residence in the country I never saw an indecent act or
immodest gesture in man or woman.... I have seen hundreds of men and women
bathing, and no immodest or careless act....

"Children are treated with great kindness, not only by the mother but the
father, who, when unemployed, takes the young child in his arms, and seems
pleased to attend to it, while the mother cleans the rice or sits
unemployed at his side. I have as often seen fathers caressing female
infants as male. A widow with male and female children is more likely to
be sought in marriage than if she has none....

"Children are almost as reverent to parents as among the Chinese. The aged
are treated with great care and tenderness, and occupy the best places in
all assemblies."

According to Saint-Hilaire's opinion, the Buddhist morality is one of
endurance, patience, submission, and abstinence, rather than of action,
energy, enterprise. Love for all beings is its nucleus, every animal being
our possible relative. To love our enemies, to offer our lives for
animals, to abstain from even defensive warfare, to govern ourselves, to
avoid vices, to pay obedience to superiors, to reverence age, to provide
food and shelter for men and animals, to dig wells and plant trees, to
despise no religion, show no intolerance, not to persecute, are the
virtues of these people. Polygamy is tolerated, but not approved. Monogamy
is general in Ceylon, Siam, Birinah; somewhat less so in Thibet and
Mongolia. Woman is better treated by Buddhism than by any other Oriental
religion.

Sec. 6. Buddhism as a Religion.

But what is the religious life of Buddhism? Can there be a religion
without a God? And if Buddhism has no God, how can it have worship,
prayer, devotion? There is no doubt that it has all these. We have seen
that its _cultus_ is much like that of the Roman Catholic Church. It
differs from this church in having no secular priests, but only regulars;
all its clergy are monks, taking the three vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience. Their vows, however, are not irrevocable; they can relinquish
the yellow robe, and return into the world, if they find they have
mistaken their vocation.

The God of Buddhism is the Buddha himself, the deified man, who has become
an infinite being by entering Nirvana. To him prayer is addressed, and it
is so natural for man to pray, that no theory can prevent him from doing
it. In Thibet, prayer-meetings are held even in the streets. Huc says:
"There is a very touching custom at Lhassa. In the evening, just before
sundown, all the people leave their work, and meet in groups in the public
streets and squares. All kneel and begin to chant their prayers in a low
and musical tone. The concert of song which rises from all these numerous
reunions produces an immense and solemn harmony, which deeply impresses
the mind. We could not help sadly comparing this Pagan city, where all the
people prayed together, with our European cities, where men would blush to
be seen making the sign of the cross."

In Thibet _confession_ was early enjoined. Public worship is there a
solemn confession before the assembled priests. It confers entire
absolution from sins. It consists in an open confession of sin, and a
promise to sin no more. Consecrated water is also used in the service of
the Pagodas.

There are thirty-five Buddhas who have preceded Sakya-muni, and are
considered the chief powers for taking away sin. These are called the
"Thirty-five Buddhas of Confession." Sakya-muni, however, has been
included in the number. Some lamas are also joined with them in the sacred
pictures, as Tsonkhapa, a lama born in A.D. 1555, and others. The
mendicant priests of Buddha are bound to confess twice a month, at the new
and full moon.

The Buddhists have also nunneries for women. It is related that
Sakya-muni consented to establish them at the earnest request of his aunt
and nurse, and of his favorite disciple, Ananda. These nuns take the same
vows as the monks. Their rules require them to show reverence even to the
youngest monk, and to use no angry or harsh words to a priest. The nun
must be willing to be taught; she must go once a fortnight for this
purpose to some virtuous teacher; she must not devote more than two weeks
at a time to spiritual retirement; she must not go out merely for
amusement; after two years' preparation she can be initiated, and she is
bound to attend the closing ceremonies of the rainy season.

Sec. 7. Karma and Nirvana.

One of the principal metaphysical doctrines of this system is that which
it called Karma. This means the law of consequences, by which every act
committed in one life entails results in another. This law operates until
one reaches Nirvana. Mr. Hardy goes so far as to suppose that Karma causes
the merits or demerits of each soul to result at death in the production
of another consciousness, and in fact to result in a new person. But this
must be an error. Karma is the law of consequences, by which every act
receives its exact recompense in the next world, where the soul is born
again. But unless the same soul passes on, such a recompense is
impossible.

"_Karma_" said Buddha, "is the most essential property of all beings; it
is inherited from previous births, it is the cause of all good and evil,
and the reason why some are mean and some exalted when they come into the
world. It is like the shadow which always accompanies the body." Buddha
himself obtained all his elevation by means of the Karma obtained in
previous states. No one can obtain Karma or merit, but those who hear the
discourses of Buddha.

There has been much discussion among scholars concerning the true meaning
of Nirvana, the end of all Buddhist expectation. Is it annihilation? Or is
it absorption in God? The weight of authority, no doubt, is in favor of
the first view. Burnouf's conclusion is: "For Buddhist theists, it is the
absorption of the individual life in God; for atheists, absorption of this
individual life in the nothing. But for both, it is deliverance from all
evil, it is supreme affranchisement." In the opinion that it is
annihilation agree Max Muller, Tumour, Schmidt, and Hardy. And M.
Saint-Hilaire, while calling it "a hideous faith," nevertheless assigns it
to a third part of the human race.

But, on the other hand, scholars of the highest rank deny this view. In
particular, Bunsen (_Gott in der Geschichte_) calls attention to the fact
that, in the oldest monuments of this religion, the earliest Sutras,
Nirvana is spoken of as a condition attained in the present life. How then
can it mean annihilation? It is a state in which all desires cease, all
passions die. Bunsen believes that the Buddha never denied or questioned
God or immortality.

The following account of NIRVANA is taken from the Pali Sacred Books:--

"Again the king of Sagal said to Nagasena: 'Is the joy of Nirvana
unmixed, or is it associated with sorrow?' The priest replied that it
is unmixed satisfaction, entirely free from sorrow.

"Again the king of Sagal said to Nagasena: 'Is Nirvana in the east,
west, south, or north; above or below? Is there such a place as
Nirvana? If so, where is it?' Nagasena: 'Neither in the east, south,
west, nor north, neither in the sky above, nor in the earth below, nor
in any of the infinite sakwalas, is there such a place as Nirvana.'
Milinda: 'Then if Nirvana have no locality, there can be no such thing;
and when it is said that any one attains Nirvana, the declaration is
false.' Nagasena: 'There is no such place as Nirvana, and yet it
exists; the priest who seeks it in the right manner will attain it.'
'When Nirvana is attained, is there such a place?' Nagasena: 'When a
priest attains Nirvana there is such a place.' Milinda: 'Where is that
place?' Nagasena: 'Wherever the precepts can be observed; it may be
anywhere; just as he who has two eyes can see the sky from any or all
places; or as all places may have an eastern side.'"

The Buddhist asserts Nirvana as the object of all his hope, yet, if you
ask him what it is, may reply, "Nothing." But this cannot mean that the
highest good of man is annihilation. No pessimism could be more extreme
than such a doctrine. Such a belief is not in accordance with human
nature. Tennyson is wiser when he writes:--

"Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.

"'T is LIFE, whereof our nerves are scant,
O life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want."

The Buddhist, when he says that Nirvana is _nothing,_ means simply that it
is _no thing_; that it is nothing to our present conceptions; that it is
the opposite of all we know, the contradiction, of what we call life now,
a state so sublime, so wholly different from anything we know or can know
now, that it is the same thing as nothing to us. All present life is
change; _that_ is permanence: all present life is going up and down;
_that_ is stability: all present life is the life of sense; _that_ is
spirit.

The Buddhist denies God in the same way. He is the unknowable. He is the
impossible to be conceived of.

"Who shall name Him
And dare to say,
'_I believe in Him_'?
Who shall deny Him,
And venture to affirm,
'_I believe in Him not?_'"[106]

To the Buddhist, in short, the element of time and the finite is all, as
to the Brahman the element of eternity is all. It is the most absolute
contradiction of Brahmanism which we can conceive.

It seems impossible for the Eastern mind to hold at the same time the two
conceptions of God and nature, the infinite and the finite, eternity and
time. The Brahmaus accept the reality of God, the infinite and the
eternal, and omit the reality of the finite, of nature, history, time, and
the world. The Buddhist accepts the last, and ignores the first.

This question has been fully discussed by Mr. Alger in his very able work,
"Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life," and his conclusion is
wholly opposed to the view which makes Nirvana equivalent to annihilation.

Sec. 8. Good and Evil of Buddhism.

The good and the evil of Buddhism are thus summed up by M. Saint-Hilaire.

He remarks that the first peculiarity of Buddhism is the wholly practical
direction taken by its founder. He proposes to himself the salvation of
mankind. He abstains from the subtle philosophy of the Brahmans, and takes
the most direct and simple way to his end. But he does not offer low and
sensual rewards; he does not, like so many lawgivers, promise to his
followers riches, pleasures, conquests, power. He invites them to
salvation by means of virtue, knowledge, and self-denial. Not in the
Vedas, nor the books which proceed from it, do we find such noble appeals,
though they too look at the infinite as their end. But the indisputable
glory of Buddha is the boundless charity to man with which his soul was
filled. He lived to instruct and guide man aright. He says in so many
words, "My law is a law of grace for all" (Burnouf, Introduction, etc., p.
198). We may add to M. Saint-Hilaire's statement, that in these words the
Buddha plainly aims at what we have called a catholic religion. In his
view of man's sorrowful life, all distinctions of rank and class fall
away; all are poor and needy together; and here, too, he comes in contact
with that Christianity which says, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and
are heavy-laden." Buddha also wished to cure the sicknesses, not only of
the Hindoo life, but of the life of mankind.

M. Saint-Hilaire adds, that, in seeking thus to help man, the means of the
Buddha are pure, like his ends. He tries to convince and to persuade: he
does not wish to compel. He allows confession, and helps the weak and
simple by explanations and parables. He also tries to guard man against
evil, by establishing habits of chastity, temperance, and self-control. He
goes forward into the Christian graces of patience, humility, and
forgiveness of injuries. He has a horror of falsehood, a reverence for
truth; he forbids slander and gossip; he teaches respect for parents,
family, life, home.

Yet Saint-Hilaire declares that, with all these merits, Buddhism has not
been able to found a tolerable social state or a single good government.
It failed in India, the land of its birth. Nothing like the progress and
the development of Christian civilization appears in Buddhism. Something
in the heart of the system makes it sterile, notwithstanding its excellent
intentions. What is it?

The fact is, that, notwithstanding its benevolent purposes, its radical
thought is a selfish one. It rests on pure individualism,--each man's
object is to save his own soul. All the faults of Buddhism, according to
M. Saint-Hilaire, spring from this root of egotism in the heart of the
system.

No doubt the same idea is found in Christianity. Personal salvation is
herein included. But Christianity _starts_ from a very different point: it
is the "kingdom of Heaven." "Thy kingdom come: thy will be done on earth."
It is not going on away from time to find an unknown eternity. It is God
with us, eternity here, eternal life abiding in us now. If some narrow
Protestant sects make Christianity to consist essentially in the salvation
of our own soul hereafter, they fall into the condemnation of Buddhism.
But that is not the Christianity of Christ. Christ accepts the great
prophetic idea of a Messiah who brings down God's reign into this life. It
is the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. It is the earth
full of the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea. It is all
mankind laboring together for this general good.

This solitary preoccupation with one's own salvation causes the religious
teachers of Buddhism to live apart, outside of society, and take no
interest in it. There is in the Catholic and Protestant world, beside the
monk, a secular priesthood, which labors to save other men's bodies and
souls. No such priesthood exists in Buddhism.

Moreover, not the idea of salvation from evil,--which keeps before us evil
as the object of contemplation,--but the idea of good, is the true motive
for the human conscience. This leads us up at once to God; this alone can
create love. We can only love by seeing something lovely. God must seem,
not terrible, but lovely, in order to be loved. Man must seem, not mean
and poor, but noble and beautiful, before we can love him. This idea of
the good does not appear in Buddhism, says M. Saint-Hilaire. Not a spark
of this divine flame--that which to see and show has given immortal glory
to Plato and to Socrates--has descended on Sakya-muni. The notion of
rewards, substituted for that of the infinite beauty, has perverted
everything in his system.

Duty itself becomes corrupted, as soon as the idea of the good disappears.
It becomes then a blind submission to mere law. It is an outward
constraint, not an inward inspiration. Scepticism follows. "The world is
empty, the heart is dead surely," is its language. Nihilism arrives sooner
or later. God is nothing; man is nothing; life is nothing; death is
nothing; eternity is nothing. Hence the profound sadness of Buddhism. To
its eye all existence is evil, and the only hope is to escape from time
into eternity,--or into nothing,--as you may choose to interpret Nirvana.
While Buddhism makes God, or the good, and heaven, to be equivalent to
nothing, it intensifies and exaggerates evil. Though heaven is a blank,
hell is a very solid reality. It is present and future too. Everything in
the thousand hells of Buddhism is painted as vividly as in the hell of
Dante. God has disappeared from the universe, and in his place is only the
inexorable law, which grinds on forever. It punishes and rewards, but has
no love in it. It is only dead, cold, hard, cruel, unrelenting law. Yet
Buddhists are not atheists, any more than a child who has never heard of
God is an atheist. A child is neither deist nor atheist: he has _no_
theology.

The only emancipation from self-love is in the perception of an infinite
love. Buddhism, ignoring this infinite love, incapable of communion with
God, aiming at morality without religion, at humanity without piety,
becomes at last a prey to the sadness of a selfish isolation. We do not
say that this is always the case, for in all systems the heart often
redeems the errors of the head. But this is the logical drift of the
system and its usual outcome.

Sec. 9. Relation of Buddhism to Christianity.

In closing this chapter, let us ask what relation this great system
sustains to Christianity.

The fundamental doctrine and central idea of Buddhism is personal
salvation, or _the salvation of the soul by personal acts of faith and
obedience_. This we maintain, notwithstanding the opinion that some
schools of Buddhists teach that the soul itself is not a constant element
or a special substance, but the mere result of past merit or demerit. For
if there be no soul, there can be no transmigration. Now it is certain
that the doctrine of transmigration is the very basis of Buddhism, the
corner-stone of the system. Thus M. Saint-Hilaire says: "The chief and
most immovable fact of Buddhist metaphysics is the doctrine of
transmigration." Without a soul to migrate, there can be no migration.
Moreover, the whole ethics of the system would fall with its metaphysics,
on this theory; for why urge men to right conduct, in order to attain
happiness, or Nirvana, hereafter, if they are not to exist hereafter. No,
the soul's immortality is a radical doctrine in Buddhism, and this
doctrine is one of its points of contact with Christianity.

Another point of contact is its doctrine of reward and punishment,--a
doctrine incompatible with the supposition that the soul does not pass on
from world to world. But this is the essence of all its ethics, the
immutable, inevitable, unalterable consequences of good and evil. In this
also it agrees with Christianity, which teaches that "whatsoever a man
soweth that shall he also reap"; that he who turns his pound into five
will he set over five cities, he who turns it into ten, over ten cities.

A third point of contact with Christianity, however singular it may at
first appear to say so, is the doctrine of Nirvana. Nirvana, to the
Buddhist, means the absolute, eternal world, beyond time and space; that
which is nothing to us now, but will be everything hereafter. Incapable of
cognizing both time and eternity, it makes them absolute negations of each
other.

The peculiarity of Plato, according to Mr. Emerson and other Platonists
was, that he was able to grasp and hold intellectually both
conceptions,--of God and man, the infinite and finite, the eternal and the
temporal. The merit of Christianity is, in like manner, that it is able to
take up and keep, not primarily as dogma, but as life, both these
antagonistic ideas. Christianity recognizes God as the infinite and
eternal, but recognizes also the world of time and space as real. Man
exists as well as God: we love God, we must love man too. Brahmanism loves
God, but not man; it has piety, but not humanity. Buddhism loves man, but
not God; it has humanity, but not piety; or if it has piety, it is by a
beautiful want of logic, its heart being wiser than its head. That which
seems an impossibility in these Eastern systems is a fact of daily life to
the Christian child, to the ignorant and simple Christian man or woman,
who, amid daily duty and trial, find joy in both heavenly and earthly
love.

There is a reason for this in the inmost nature of Christianity as
compared with Buddhism. Why is it that Buddhism is a religion without God?
Sakya-muni did not ignore God. The object of his life was to attain
Nirvana, that is, to attain a union with God, the Infinite Being. He
became Buddha by this divine experience. Why, then, is not this religious
experience a constituent element in Buddhism, as it is in Christianity?
Because in Buddhism man struggles upward to find God, while in
Christianity God comes down to find man. To speak in the language of
technical theology, Buddhism is a doctrine of works, and Christianity of
grace. That which God gives all men may receive, and be united by this
community of grace in one fellowship. But the results attained by effort
alone, divide men; because some do more and receive more than others. The
saint attained Buddha, but that was because of his superhuman efforts and
sacrifices; it does not encourage others to hope for the same result.

We see, then, that here, as elsewhere, the superiority of Christianity is
to be found in its quantity, in its fulness of life. It touches Buddhism
at all its good points, in all its truths. It accepts the Buddhistic
doctrine of rewards and punishments, of law, progress, self-denial,
self-control, humanity, charity, equality of man with man, and pity for
human sorrow; but to all this it adds--how much more! It fills up the
dreary void of Buddhism with a living God; with a life of God in man's
soul, a heaven here as well as hereafter. It gives us, in addition to the
struggle of the soul to find God, a God coming down to find the soul. It
gives a divine as real as the human, an infinite as solid as the finite.
And this it does, not by a system of thought, but by a fountain and stream
of life. If all Christian works, the New Testament included, were
destroyed, we should lose a vast deal no doubt; but we should not lose
Christianity; for that is not a book, but a life. Out of that stream of
life would be again developed the conception of Christianity, as a thought
and a belief. We should be like the people living on the banks of the
Nile, ignorant for five thousand years of its sources; not knowing whence
its beneficent inundations were derived; not knowing by what miracle its
great stream could flow on and on amid the intense heats, where no rain
falls, and fed during a course of twelve hundred miles by no single
affluent, yet not absorbed in the sand, nor evaporated by the ever-burning
sun. But though ignorant of its source, they know it has a source, and can
enjoy all its benefits and blessings. So Christianity is a full river of
life, containing truths apparently the most antagonistic, filling the soul
and heart of man and the social state of nations with its impulses and
its ideas. We should lose much in losing our positive knowledge of its
history; but if all the books were gone, the tablets of the human heart
would remain, and on these would be written the everlasting Gospel of
Jesus, in living letters which no years could efface and no changes
conceal.

Chapter V.

Zoroaster and the Zend Avesta.

Sec. 1. Ruins of the Palace of Xerxes at Persepolis.
Sec. 2. Greek Accounts of Zoroaster. Plutarch's Description of his Religion.
Sec. 3. Anquetil du Perron and his Discovery of the Zend Avesta.
Sec. 4. Epoch of Zoroaster. What do we know of him?
Sec. 5. Spirit of Zoroaster and of his Religion.
Sec. 6. Character of the Zend Avesta.
Sec. 7. Later Development of the System in the Bundehesch.
Sec. 8. Relation of the Religion of the Zend Avesta to that of the Vedas.
Sec. 9. Is Monotheism or pure Dualism the Doctrine taught in the Zend
Avesta?
Sec. 10. Relation of this System to Christianity. The Kingdom of Heaven.

Sec. 1. Ruins of the Palace of Xerxes at Persepolis.

In the southwestern part of Persia is the lovely valley of Schiraz, in the
province of Farsistan, which is the ancient Persis. Through the long
spring and summer the plains are covered with flowers, the air is laden
with perfume, and the melody of birds, winds, and waters fills the ear.
The fields are covered with grain, which ripens in May; the grapes,
apricots, and peaches are finer than those of Europe. The nightingale (or
bulbul) sings more sweetly than elsewhere, and the rose-bush, the national
emblem of Persia, grows to the size of a tree, and is weighed down by its
luxuriant blossoms. The beauty of this region, and the loveliness of the
women of Schiraz awakened the genius of Hafiz and of Saadi, the two great
lyric poets of the East, both of whom resided here.

At one extremity of this valley, in the hollow of a crescent formed by
rocky hills, thirty miles northwest of Schiraz, stands an immense
platform, fifty feet high above the plain, hewn partly out of the mountain
itself, and partly built up with gray marble blocks from twenty to sixty
feet long, so nicely fitted together that the joints can scarcely be
detected. This platform is about fourteen hundred feet long by nine
hundred broad, and its faces front the four quarters of the heavens. You
rise from the plain by flights of marble steps, so broad and easy that a
procession on horseback could ascend them. By these you reach a landing,
where stand as sentinels two colossal figures sculptured from great blocks
of marble. The one horn in the forehead seems to Heeren to indicate the
Unicorn; the mighty limbs, whose muscles are carved with the precision of
the Grecian chisel, induced Sir Robert Porter to believe that they
represented the sacred bulls of the Magian religion; while the solemn,
half-human repose of the features suggests some symbolic and supernatural
meaning. Passing these sentinels, who have kept their solitary watch for
centuries, you ascend by other flights of steps to the top of the terrace.
There stand, lonely and beautiful, a few gigantic columns, whose lofty
fluted shafts and elegantly carved capitals belong to an unknown order of
architecture. Fifty or sixty feet high, twelve or fifteen feet in
circumference, they, with a multitude of others, once supported the roof
of cedar, now fallen, whose beams stretched from capital to capital, and
which protected the assembled multitudes from the hot sun of Southern
Asia. Along the noble upper stairway are carved rows of figures, which
seem to be ascending by your side. They represent warriors, courtiers,
captives, men of every nation, among whom may be easily distinguished the
negro from the centre of Africa. Inscriptions abound, in that strange
arrow-headed or wedge-shaped character,--one of the most ancient and
difficult of all,--which, after long baffling the learning of Europe, has
at last begun yielded to the science and acuteness of the present century.
One of the inscriptions copied from these walls was read by Grotefend as
follows:--