Buddhism and Christianity: A Parallel and a Contrast

But Right Views or Belief, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Work, Right Livelihood, Right Exercise, Right Mindfulness, and Right Tranquillity, must be taken, not as we accept, but as Buddhists understand, the phrases. By right belief they unquestionably meant belief in Buddha and the Four Verities; right resolve included abandonment of all domestic and social duties; right speech was the recitation or publication of the dharma; right work was specially that of a monk; right livelihood that of living on alms; right exercise tended to the suppression of all individuality; right mindfulness was habitual contemplation upon the impurity and impermanence of human nature; and right tranquillity was ecstasy.[215] To have substituted even this in the Hindu mind for a righteousness only ceremonial and superstitious was indeed reformation; but as an idea of Perfection it is manifestly not only different from, but greatly inferior to, the Christian ideal. Perfection in the case of Buddhism meant extinction of feeling and consciousness; in Christianity it meant harmonious and full development of being and character. In Christianity perfection meant conformity to an Exemplar outside and above it, the likeness of a child to a Father in heaven; but Buddhism could conceive of no exemplar, and the man who would be perfect must strive in entire self-dependence to be so. In Buddhism the standard is purely human; in Christianity, while the measure required is relative, the standard is divine.

So in Buddhism the Arhat is content, and we never hear from him the confession, “I count not myself to have attained!” but in Christianity the more saintly the life, the greater the discontent with it. The higher we rise the more urgent is the desire to press on. Christianity therefore opens up the avenue to perpetual improvement, and inspiring us with a motive to progress which can never lose its power, it provides for the soul the only rest that will satisfy it. “In life,” says Pascal, “we are ever believing, we seek repose, but what we really crave is agitation.” “It is the contest that pleases us, and not the victory; the pursuit and not the possession.”[216] Absolute truth and goodness is the perfection of divine blessedness; the never-ceasing pursuit of it is human blessedness. The goal we can never reach, but the watchword, “Nearer, my God, to Thee!” seems to solve for us the problem of human destiny, for by directing us to the life of perpetual achievement, it assures us of a never-ending blessedness.

The Buddhist goal of perfection and the law or way that led to it, was by Buddha himself or his earliest disciples considered to be beyond the power of many to attain to. His followers were soon ranged into classes according to their ability to tread the paths which led to liberty. His law, therefore, unlike the Ten Commandments of the Bible, which are binding on all without distinction, was not a law for all men. Each one was at liberty to take on him as many or as few obligations as he pleased, according to his resolve to continue in the world, or to abandon it, and having abandoned it according to his resolve to seek after Arhatship and aspire to Nirvana.[217] Upon those who, conforming outwardly, yet remained in their secular callings, was enjoined abstinence from the five gross sins, of killing, theft, adultery, falsehood, taking intoxicating drinks—already, with the exception of the last, made binding on them by the Hindu religion. By refraining from these, and by serving and maintaining the monks, even the laity could win for themselves a happy re-birth into some world hereafter.

Those wiser ones, again,[218] who, convinced of the evil and danger of secular life, had abandoned their homes, and entered the Order that by meditation and abstraction they might further work out their deliverance, bound themselves, in addition to observance of these five commands, to eat only at stated times, to use neither perfume nor ornament, to sleep only on mats on the ground, to abstain from dancing, music, and worldly shows, to own and accept neither silver nor gold, and to be perfectly chaste. For those wisest of all, who had not only abandoned the world in order to lead the better life of the religious, but who had strenuously resolved, in following the religious life, to attain to Arhatship and Nirvana, there remained the much more severe observance of what was called the “Seven Jewels of the Law,”[219] the last and most important use to which the Noble Eightfold Way could be put. For by earnestly struggling, meditating, mastering their precepts, the “Ten Fetters” of Delusion, Doubt, Dependence on Ceremonial Rites, Sensuality, Hatred, Love of life on Earth, Craving for life in Heaven, Pride, Self-Righteousness, and Ignorance, would one by one be broken, and long self-abnegation involved in the process would work out its full reward.

It is to be observed that in all these classes or stages the practice of virtue and the cultivation of purity were considered fundamental. In the preaching ascribed to Buddha great stress is laid on Enlightenment, and on Meditation, which leads to it; but at the base of all this system, as the first indispensable factor in securing perfection, was Uprightness. In the Suttas this formula constantly recurs: “Great is the advantage, great the fruit of earnest contemplation when set round with upright conduct. Great is the fruit, great the advantage of intelligence when set round with earnest contemplation. The mind set round with intelligence is free from the greatest evils, that is to say, from sensuality, from individuality, from delusion, and from ignorance.“ Again, “Righteousness, earnest thought, wisdom and freedom sublime: these are the truths realised by Gotama far-renowned.”[220] The uprightness, or righteousness required, presents, as the Moral Law of Scripture does, a much broader range of influence than the words would indicate. In prohibiting lying, Buddha enjoined avoidance of all offensive language, and of every word that could sever men. He also instructed his disciples not only to avoid showing enmity to those who hated them, but to overcome evil with good. Purity again in his regard meant purity not of word and deed alone, but of thought and feeling. In some respects his precepts go beyond the Moral Law. The command not to kill included respect not for human beings only, but for every creature that had life.

He not only condemned drunkenness, but demanded total abstinence as essential. The precept “Do not commit adultery” was understood in our sense of it only by the laity; for the religious, marriage was not an honourable estate, but one polluted and polluting. Unlike the Moral Law, which recognises everything that is natural and sanctifies it, the rule of Buddha in these respects was unnatural in its restrictions. It pronounced common and unclean what God Himself has cleansed; and, as always happens when men add to the commandments of God in one direction, they are sure to take away from them in another. So Buddha’s rule, though excellent in that it lays its control not on conduct only, but on thought and feeling, is essentially negative and defective. It does not cover man’s whole nature, nor provide for his every possible relation. Ignoring God, it is therefore interpreted by no positive and active principle of goodness. It is inspired by no sense of duty, for it recognises in the universe no superior to whom anything is due, and, unconscious of any benefit, it owns no gratitude. Consequently unrighteousness, as an offence to or an outrage upon a better or kinder being than self, is not in all its range of view. Unrighteousness is only a calamity to be avoided or an imprudence not to be repeated. Struggling to get out of the meshes of an evil net, the Buddhist might bewail his mistake, his folly, or his feeble or ill-directed effort, but he was totally unconscious of rebellion or ingratitude.[221]

Moreover, in a universe where Moi-même is the only god, and a man’s own Nirvana his only goal, the primary motive of action can rise no higher than fear or self-interest. Apparently strong, it is really essentially weak in regard to the maintenance of proper relations to others demanded by the second table of the Moral Law. The suffering caused to others through his failure to fulfil the law, or by conscious transgression of it, makes no impression on the Buddhist, except in as far as it interferes with his pursuit of perfection. Others are regarded only as occasions of acquiring merit. Instead of serving them as Christ enjoins us to do, the Buddhist serves himself of them. It is a religion of every man for himself. It has been likened to Positivism, but it falls far short of it, as lacking the altruism which Positivism has borrowed from Christianity.[222] Positivism refuses to do anything for the glory of God, but it lays great stress upon the duty of living for humanity. It makes the great mistake of supposing that the claims of God must be distinct from or antagonistic to the interests of humanity. It does not recognise that they are identical—that the more the life is reserved for God, the more of it is communicated to our fellow-men, and that we must love the Lord our God with all our hearts, before we can love our neighbour as ourselves.

The Positivist scheme of morals, however, is vastly superior to that of Buddhism, for in it the goal is Nirvana, without any reference to the good of any other, and the decided advantage of any action consists wholly and solely in the consequences to the actor himself.

Dr. Oldenberg has pointed out to us that the much-vaunted charity of Buddhism, illustrated in the legends by the self-immolation of Buddha to satisfy the hunger of a wild beast, though it “sways toward does not even touch the law of Christian charity.”[223] Buddha’s Rule, though benevolent to the extent that it would harm no one, and beneficent in respect of doing good, knew nothing of Christianity’s enthusiastic passionate desire to help and work for others.[224] It was the interest of the true Buddhist to forgive his enemies and not to hate them,[225] but he never considered himself bound to love them. It was good policy for one pressing on to Arhatship to do good works, and he would go far out of his way to do them; but he never went about doing good as one who found his reward in the opportunity and power to do it. He was among men not as one who ministers and gives his life to ransom others. His very self-abnegation had egoism at its core. Between the Christian surrender of self to God for the sake of others, and the Buddhist surrender to others for the sake of self, there is a great gulf fixed. The first springs from a sense of indebtedness, a consciousness of mercy unmerited, but freely bestowed; but the other, having no sense of forgiveness received, has no real mercy to show. The mercy of God is the spring of all true human compassion, for he who truly receives it finds it impossible to withhold it.

It is, alas! bestowed upon many who are too full of themselves to take it in, and in all such cases it is lost, but in every heart that is conscious of it, it becomes a disposition to show kindness that cannot be counted by acts, and that never will ask, “How oft shall my brother offend me and I forgive him?” Buddhism was friendly in its benevolence, but it never was actively charitable, in taking upon it the infirmities and bearing the sicknesses of others. It has no passionate desire to gather the wrecked and blighted of humanity and to bind up their bleeding wounds and sores. On the contrary, in its pursuit of Nirvana it passed by all such in the path of life, precisely as the priest and Levite passed the wounded man on their way to Jericho. It not only was selfish, but even cruel in this pursuit, for a woman in difficulty or in distress was not to be helped by a passing monk. The poor and the diseased and the lost were not to be considered, for they were simply suffering the due reward of their deeds; but the yellow-robed monks, healthy and shining-faced, were to be the recipients of the bounty of the charitable and the proper objects of their attention. One of its beatitudes runs thus: “Not to serve the foolish, but to serve the wise; to honour those worthy of honour. This is the greatest blessing.”[226] Almsgiving was indeed encouraged; but alms were only to be bestowed upon the worthy—on the monk and Arhat—not on the outcast and the leper, whose miserable condition indicated their unworthiness.

If the animal creation profited by their charity, which they refused to their suffering fellow-men, it was from a selfish motive: for the parent, or wife, or child, whom by Buddha’s rule they were obliged to help, might be looking at them, for all they knew, out of the eyes of the beast, and not to fulfil the precept would bring to themselves both harm and loss.[227] Tested even socially, therefore, the Rule of Buddha is defective, and this because it is not founded on religion. The cause of God is eternally the cause of man. In the Fatherhood of God is essentially involved the universal brotherhood of man. Christ is before us as the representative of humanity, because He is the representative of Deity. Refusal to acknowledge His supremacy will disturb all human relationships and throw them into disorder. We learn to do to others as Christ hath done to us; the sense of our indebtedness will be the measure of our charity. For this end He has chosen the poorest and the most wretched as His memorials, and He has said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

To do justice to Buddha’s way, however, we must remember that the path of uprightness (sila) was only the first part of it. Without external rectitude, inward integrity would be impossible; but external rectitude, without self-concentration, would be a foundation without a structure. “A man must endeavour to keep constant watch over his thoughts, for our whole existence depends upon our thinking,”[228] was one of the noble maxims of Buddhism. It is to its credit as a religion that it recognised that only a small part of our real life can be expressed in words and deeds, that the true sphere of morality and human temptation was within, and that it instructed men to keep the heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Buddha seems to have felt, and to have in part at least expressed, the contrast and conflict between the seen and the unseen in our life. He recognised, it is true, no soul, and the warfare between the flesh and the spirit was not found in his philosophy, but he had to account for the antagonism which every one feels between our animality and our humanity, between what is pressing or dragging us down, and what in us struggles to be free. The mental and moral qualities were of far more value than the physical; the invisible was of more consequence, because more real, than the visible.

The “mindful and thoughtful man” was the man who “looked within and not without,” and so Buddha’s insistence upon the “noble earnestness of meditation” as indispensable to deliverance is a grand testimony to the truth, which no philosophy of materialism can falsify, that we are far more concerned with what we think and feel and imagine than with what we touch and we taste, and that our thoughts and feelings go far more into the weaving of our character than do our words and works.

It is alleged that in Pali literature the word for meditation (samadhi), by which alone inner purity can be attained, bears to the word for “uprightness” the same relation as that which faith in the New Testament bears to works.[229] By uprightness, delusion is cleared away, and by pondering constantly the five principal kinds of meditations—Love, Pity, Joy, the Impurity of the Body, and the state of Serene Indifference to what men think bad or good—the man was supposed to be redeemed from all attachment.[230] It is very pathetic to note this approach toward and yet rebound from the Christian conception of the function of faith: for faith is the victory that overcometh the world, with its lust of the flesh, its lust of the eye, and its pride of life. It is that too which, because it looks to the unseen and eternal, quenches all sordid or inordinate cleaving to life, which is the root of so much evil and the cause of so much suffering. The apostles, instructed of Christ, have taught us that God’s precious gift of life is ours to use: that to keep it, to will to save and to find it, as if it were an end and not a means, is to miss and to lose it; while to use it, be willing to lose it for some higher good, is to keep it unto life eternal. Now Buddha had a glimpse of this truth, that lust of existence was the root of bitterness in humanity.

He condemned as heresies the worldly lust which says, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” and the lust of other-worldliness which dreams that the life beyond will yield as good, or better pleasures than this one;[231] but the two last of his five principal meditations show how far apart and far short of the victory of faith was his idea of the victory of samadhi. The apostles’ aim was to get rid of lust; but his aim was to get rid of life. The apostles mortified the members which are upon the earth, anger, wrath, malice, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, just that the higher life, the life hid with Christ in God, might grow and brighten; but Buddha, in “cleansing himself from all impurity, little by little, moment by moment, piece by piece,”[232] sought to escape from the last shadow of personal existence into the blessedness of absolute unconsciousness, if not of utter extinction.

For this seems clearly revealed in the last or highest stage to which the paths of uprightness and meditation were supposed to conduct, that of enlightenment (panna) or spiritual abstraction, alleged to be equivalent to prayer in other religions. The highest Christian conception of prayer is that of communion with God; the highest Buddhist conception of panna is of a state of clairvoyance or ecstatic insight in which “men hear with clear and heavenly ear, surpassing that of men,” and “comprehend by their own hearts the hearts of other men,” and “recall their own various states in former existences,” and “see with pure and heavenly vision the procession of other beings as they pass from life to life.”[233] Buddha evidently was believed by his disciples to have possessed this power, and probably his own long fasting and severe austerities, practised in the beginning of his career, acting upon a highly nervous system, made him a believer in the reality of this perfect insight and ecstasy of contemplation, and that it might be acquired by all who were sufficiently persevering in pursuit of Arhatship.[234] It must be observed, however, that he does not appear to have regarded this as an experience to be enjoyed by the Arhat in perpetuity; on the contrary, it was the condition preceding final and eternal deliverance, and so it may be taken as the Buddhist conception of Euthanasia.

The Christian in the highest and supreme moment of life aspires, if conscious, after the beatific vision. It is no Brahmanic absorption into the absolute that he desires, but likeness to and communion with God. The consciousness of personality was never more intense, the conviction was never stronger that he has been divinely created and trained as a separate character. By long and prayerful use of the means of grace he has sought to bring, and to keep himself under the control of the Holy Spirit; and he hopes that the next change will completely free him from every trace of “sensuality, delusion, and ignorance,” and purge away from the soul the last taint of selfishness. By long and sore experiences he has learned that selfishness is the evil root whence spring all the suffering and sorrow that poison life. He can therefore understand and sympathise with the Buddhist anathema upon “individuality,” if by that is meant the endeavour to abstract our life from the solidarity of humanity, to use it for our own ends, and to grudge what of it God uses for the rest of His family. This is the Christian conception of the cause of death and all its woe, and from this a Christian saint ever prays and struggles to be free; but it is not from “individuality” in this sense that the Buddhist Arhat seeks deliverance. He is bent upon the very thing from which the Christian is anxious to escape.

He wants to isolate and withdraw his portion of life from the sum of humanity, to abstract himself from the mass, to save his own soul; and now that he nears the goal, his whole energies are directed, not to purify and strengthen and ennoble the personal self for better service, by minding what is pure and lovely, and by striving unceasingly after what is right and true, but by crushing out every feeling into apathy, every thought into vacuity, so as to get rid of personality, identity, and the very faintest germ of life.[235]

And this is the goal of a race that has extended not only over the whole range of the present, but over that of many existences; this is the victory which crowns a fight that has continued throughout untold ages. Truly there is something very pathetic in the conception of a struggle after sainthood so prolonged, by one who, now a god, now an animal, now a man, has never lost sight of his mark, and has ever pressed onwards to it.[236] Probably we may have something to learn from it, by way of correcting the idea that true moral and spiritual excellence, perfection, saintliness, is the growth of a single life; but when the goal is understood in its bare reality, as implying not destruction of selfishness, but extinction of being, surely the reproachful question is justified, “To what purpose is this waste?” After millennia of transformation the nebula has formed into a star, and just at the point when it can illumine an immensity, it disappears for ever from the firmament. Unreckonable energy and thought have been expended upon the production of a man, and just when he has reached the highest point of perfection, and is most serviceable to the universe, he becomes of less value than a vapour that vanishes away. Truly

And so while we ought to be profoundly thankful for the intellectual culture and moral earnestness that made Buddha, in spite of himself, the reformer of Eastern Asia, it is manifest that even his best doctrines represent very partial and one-sided truths, “dwelt upon with morbid intensity, to the exclusion of every fact which might have modified them.”[237] His fundamental error was his wild attempt to explain the life of man independently of Divine control, and to guide man safely through the perils and temptations of existence by an ethical system founded on no appeal to an eternal principle of goodness without, but solely to self-interest. The result, which has been to identify the nature of man with that of the animals,[238] surely shows conclusively that religion and morality can never be dissociated without damage to both. A religion without morality must degrade. A system of morality apart from religion will never upraise. Religion is for man simply indispensable. Deity is a necessity to him, and deity he must have, though he finds his god in a tree or makes it out of a stone. Man lives by faith, faith in his higher self, faith in a higher than himself, who alone can explain the conflict between his actual condition and the ideals which he conceives. The modern Buddhist assumes that “religion is the science of man, not the revelation of God, and he considers that comprehensions of deity are of far less consequence than just ideas of a man’s own self,”[239] but how can a man have a just idea of himself apart from some idea of God?

According to his idea of God will be his estimate of himself. Buddhism, by ignoring God and preaching morality, has certainly failed to make its adherents moral, and it has imparted to what is noble in their morality the melancholy of despair.[240]

Ignoring God, it could only form, or could not emancipate itself from, a false conception of man, as part of a material system of things; but man, though considerably involved in a material system, never can be interpreted by it. On the contrary, nature can only be interpreted or properly understood in man as the lower in the higher. Man is an antagonist of nature; he is for ever condemning its ways, coming into collision with its laws, refusing to live its life. Out of this collision emerges his religion, while his morality originates in the conflict between his own sense of duty and its life of animal instinct.[241] To conform to nature, he must become a brute, but he has in him ideals and capacities transcending it, and by exercising these capacities in pursuit of his ideals he finds his life. Buddha confessed to an ideal, and wrought hard to realise it, but alas for humanity when it finds no higher than self to reverence! Buddha’s theories of self-culture and self-deliverance reduced to practice have proved most miserable failures. It could not be otherwise; no man is likely to move the ship in which he sits by puffing away at the sails, or to lift himself out of the mire by simply pulling away at his boots; and no philosophy of self-culture, self-control, or self-rescue, can succeed, which ignores or refuses to acknowledge man’s instinct of worship. What he most needs is not law, not a system of morality, not even an example or model to copy, but inspiration.

He knows already enough to condemn himself, and he has examples which, though far from perfect, quite suffice to confound him. The command to be perfect mocks him as truly as a command to see would mock a man stone-blind. What he does want is a powerful moral energy within him, for lack of which he has to confess that he cannot do the good he would, but is ever doing the evil which he would not. His real wretchedness is not his suffering and death, not even his ignorance, as Buddha thought, but the continual and seemingly ineffectual struggle between the animal and the man, the flesh and the spirit. And Buddhism was powerless to help him here. It lacked the steady support of the sense of duty to the highest and best, the inspiration that comes from the faith that the highest and best is for us, and is with us, and in us. Belief in God, as Bacon reminds us, is “essential to the consciousness of our nobility and dignity, for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body, and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.” So Buddhism in unduly exalting man to the level of deity has in reality degraded him. It has indeed lifted wild races out of barbarism, but it has failed to civilise them. It has certainly not destroyed ignorance, and the worship of intelligence has not tended to its development and diffusion among the peoples whom it has swayed.

Judged even by an ordinary standard, the monks of either Southern or Northern Buddhism are rarely found to be enlightened men, while the vast portion of the peoples among whom these monks are found are about the most ignorant of all. And just as certainly has it failed to make men free; for religion is the guarantee of freedom. “Where there is no place left in human thought for deity, there will soon be none found for human liberty.”[242] The basis of individual right is the recognition of a divine and purely moral government of man. If there be no higher than the highest man regarding us, we have only the right to live under the power of the strongest, and the reign of terror must succeed to that of order and law. The history of Buddhism and the miserable governments associated with it are telling comments upon and confirmation of the truth that belief in God is necessary to secure the rights of man.[243]

The progress of the human race will ever be in proportion to the strength of its conviction that it is governed and considered and sustained by a Power of infinite goodness ever making for righteousness. Such a conviction means inspiration, stimulating endurance and hope, and resolute struggle with evil in all its forms. In it is implied the assurance that resistance can never be in vain, that failure at the very worst is only partial success, and that all things work together for good. The time for this gospel had not come when Buddha called upon the people of India to “save themselves from this condition of wretchedness,” and the result of his mighty and benevolent efforts shows convincingly how urgent in human nature is the demand for a Faith which will not only enlighten but enliven, which, recognising fully not only the sufferings but the whole necessities of man, and creating strong discontent with the world as we find it, and even disgust of human life as it is, will quicken in us persevering and deathless efforts to reform the one and to improve the other. Such a faith it is our privilege and awful responsibility to communicate. Our religion is higher than our grasp, for it is always above us. Alas! in too many cases it is higher than our aim, for we are too inclined to let it slip, and drift on the tides of things as they are; but mankind will never be satisfied with a lower. “Après l’invention du blé ils ne veulent pas encore vivre du gland.” “We needs must love the highest when we see it,” and we needs must strive to become like the highest when we love it.

The gospel preaches consolation and hope to a suffering world, and promises grace upon grace to every endeavour to heal and amend its condition. Christ purifies and improves the life which we have by destroying only what is evil, and by preserving and training and ennobling all that is truly natural. Inexorably He demands the extinction of selfishness in all its forms, and He will not even permit us in our prayers to think and ask for ourselves. He reminds us that God is our Father in heaven, and what He gives is for all His family. Sternly He denounces as sinful the attempt to secure our own happiness here or in a better world hereafter; but He offers the heaven and Nirvana which He found in assuming the burdens of others, and in bearing their cross. So He assures us that it is worth our while to live, even in a world groaning and travailing with suffering, and that it will be worth our while, even in agony if we must, to die. It is indeed a very evil world, but as long as we draw our inspiration from Him we can live in it not only without damage but with great profit. When we offer ourselves in His strength for its salvation we will be saved from its sins. In the times of our deepest distress we will have the peace which He left us, and when most severely beset and cast down with sorrow because of what seems baffled endeavours, we have only to think of that hope of ultimate victory which made Him to endure to the end, to rise into