But like all unnatural segregations of human beings from society, for which man was made, Monachism everywhere became eventually an excuse for indolence and misanthropy; a refuge for the melancholy, and for all who had become unfit to serve either the world or the Church. Its whole history in the Christian Church has justified the warning of St. Paul against artificial methods of attaining to saintliness. The vices which beset society never lost any of their power over the recluses of the desert or the inmates of the monastery, while many other vices were added to the host that assailed the solitary, undefended by his fellows.[[261]] “Woe to him that is alone, for when he falls there is not another to raise him up! Woe to him that is alone, for there is no one to keep him from falling!” are the lessons of this long mistaken attempt to realise an undemanded standard of excellence; and yet, just because of the consistency of its ideal with one side of Christian service, modern Christendom, though in altered and modified forms, has not parted with Monachism yet.
“The ideal of the Christian monk,” says Montalembert, “is that of manhood in its purest and most energetic form—manhood intellectually and morally superior, devoting itself to efforts greater and more sustained than are exacted in a worldly career; and this not to make earthly service a stepping-stone to heaven, but of life a long series of victories for man.”[[262]] Surely this is the ideal of every Christian minister truly consecrated to the service of man; yea, the ideal of every brother or sister who, married or single, in business or society, is trying to reach forward to the mark of our high calling. There is no code of disabilities in the service of Christ, and the way to the highest honours is open to all who wish to enter it, of whatever condition or rank or mental capacity they may be. When this common ideal was fallen from in the monastic orders, it was being realised by many private members of the Church; when the professional Church had falsified it, it was being upheld by so-called “men of the world”; and therefore, as a natural consequence, when the monastic orders of Christendom became corrupt, society, true to its better instincts, rose up and reformed them or swept them away. There was always a large volume of life outside the particular channel which these orders filled, to purify it when it became foul, or to force it onward, when stagnant, into the life of the Church.
But it was not so in Buddhism. Its lay associates, however numerous, were but the fringes of religious communities essentially and wholly monastic. When, therefore, deterioration or degradation in the Order set in, reformation of it by the people was hopeless. In the Order this deterioration showed itself earlier that its dominant ideal was lower than the Christian. In early Christian Monachism, fortitude and devotion all sprang from the immolation of self for the universal good. In Buddha’s Sangha, however, though there was both devotion and fortitude displayed, the goal to be reached was simply self-rescue. Its course of beneficence therefore was not only shorter but shallower. Unintentionally it wrought out social reforms, and perhaps political revolution. It restrained luxury, and checked the unbounded sensuality to which Indians are prone; it rebuked the earthly-minded, and witnessed nobly of the higher interests of life to peoples that sorely needed the testimony. It not only propagated morality, but promoted learning, and a love of the beautiful in nature and art, but its force was eventually exhausted. Very early it sank into the stagnation in which it has existed for centuries, and any advance registered by the nations among whom the institution has existed has been due, for more than a thousand years, to the influx of Christian ideas and sentiments.
Its own methods hastened its decay. Like all Eastern religious growths, it represented the piety of inertion. Manual labour of all kinds was placed under the ban, and beyond attending to the cleanliness of his person and of his lodging the Buddhist monk was not allowed to do anything save itinerate for his maintenance and the preaching of the law. He was instructed that every moment abstracted from meditation was serious loss. This was in direct contradiction to the very first rule of Christian solitary life, which even in the stifling heat of the desert demanded manual tasks, which fasting might be said to have doubled, continued through the long day till vespers summoned the labourers to worship. The Buddhist monk knew neither the healthy life of physical exertion nor the spiritual refreshment of worship. He might vindicate his idleness against the reproaches of the industrious by the assertion that he too in his quiet life was also “ploughing and sowing” to much better purpose,[[263]] but then the effect of his ploughing and the fruit of his sowing were all confined to himself, who alone was freed by it from suffering. He could not answer, as the Nicæan monk and quondam courtier replied to Valens, when challenged as to whither he was going, “I go to pray for your empire.”[[264]] Augustine has indeed assured us that “the less a monk labours in anything but prayer the more serviceable he is to men”; but the prayer which he had in view was not selfish. On the contrary, the tears and penitential exercises of men who had become strangers to all personal desires “were mighty to drown sin and purify the world.”[[265]] As long as monks were truly prayerful, and nuns, like vestals, kept alive the sacred fire for every hearth, they represented that side of the Church’s mediation which is most important and effective; for no one can be really effective in the service of man who is not frequent in the service of waiting upon God. The heroes of the Christian Church, who have evangelised and civilised the wild waste places of the world, who, like the apostle, laid aside every encumbrance to run their race, were, like the apostle, men of much meditation and prayer. We have no such examples in Buddhism, for it lacked the provision which alone could nurture them. In the life of the Buddhist monk there was probably more, and more intense meditation than in that of the Christian, but there was a vast difference in their respective themes of meditation. The Christian could draw his inspiration from a source far higher and purer than himself, and in communion with the Father, Redeemer, Sanctifier of his spirit gather a strength which astonished the world; but what possible inspiration for endeavour could come to a poor Buddhist monk who was chiefly occupied in contemplating the impurity of his perishable body, and whose very highest theme of meditation was simply “nothing whatever”?[[266]]
Another essential distinction between the two modes of life is disclosed in their relation to charity. We have seen that Buddhism had no conception of charity in the Christian sense, and that practical charity in it was represented from a pole quite opposite to that of Christianity. As if conscious of its defects, later Buddhism originated faith in and hope of Maitreya, the Buddha who is next to come, and who, as the son of love, will realise its unconscious prophecies, fulfil its longings, and perfect all things; but notwithstanding this the Buddhist monk continued to be the receiver, not the dispenser, of charity. His whole merit consisted in taking what it was the merit of the layman to offer him:[[267]] and the taking was all for himself and for his Order. He had no conception of the life suggested in the saying, “As poor, yet making many rich,” and he never could have said of his monastery that it was “l’infirmière des pauvres.” To offer charity to others was the last conception which he could form of his duty: yea, to clothe the naked, take the leper from the dunghill, and help the outcast, was the very reverse of his duty. His creed as to misery in this being the fruit of evil done in a former existence, cut him off from that service of the lost and fallen which in Christendom has been accounted glorious, and for the rendering of which, several of its monastic institutions have been spared the penalty of their corruption.
The charity which the Buddhist monk practised was in his preaching and exposition of the law for the deliverance of the multitudes. And that this may be the very highest form in which benevolence can express itself all Christians must admit, for the greatest gift which any man can bestow is the truth which makes one free. Buddhist monk and Christian missionary alike proclaimed a gospel for the redemption of men; and as the gospel of Christ’s salvation brings ever many blessings in its train, so the preaching of the mendicant Buddhist was attended with material beneficial results to those who heard and believed it. The Buddhist, however, while expounding the law for the rescue of the individual, never laboured, like the Christian missionary, for his temporal and social improvement. His message had no promise for the life that now is, and consequently he never seems to have played the part so nobly sustained by many of the monks of Christendom—that of defending the oppressed and befriending the helpless. He never, so far as can be gathered from the texts, proclaimed the equality of men in the same way and for the same purpose as a Christian reformer would preach it. Theoretically, he maintained the right of all classes to be admitted to the brotherhood, but Dr. Oldenberg has asserted that “in the composition of the Order a marked leaning to the existing aristocracy was observable.”[[268]] Buddha never had occasion to confess with the Christian apostle “that not many noble, not many mighty, were called,” nor had his Order ever to bear the reproach of the Church, that its members were recruited from the lowest strata of society. The references to his disciples from the first all indicate people of rank and wealth and education. It is not implied that persons of humble origin would have been rejected had they come, only that “the scriptures afford no evidence that they did come”; and yet they yield unmistakable evidence that, as the Order prospered, all lepers, cripples, blind, or one-eyed persons, all who were deaf and dumb, all who were consumptive or subject to fits, were rejected.[[269]] The Order was for the reputable, the noble, and especially for the religious, for the Brahman votary, and Sraman seeker after truth. These again were all attracted to it; they were not sought out as by the Christian Church. Not for one moment would Christ allow the Church to become select. He not only welcomed all penitents—for all men needed salvation, and the poorest and the guiltiest were most in need of it,—but He sent forth His apostles to seek and gather them, and in order to reason down all natural fears, based on the personal unworthiness of these outcasts of society, they were instructed to “compel them to come in.”[[270]]
Of propagandism in this sense the Buddhist Sangha knew nothing. It was moved by no enthusiasm of humanity; it felt nothing of that earnestness which from the days of the apostles has characterised the true propagators of the gospel. In no discourse that has come down to us is there any impassioned entreaty of men to repent and believe. There is no sorrow over the unbelieving who refuse their salvation, no burning indignation against those who despise or who scoff at the truth. In Buddha’s last view of the world there is no weeping as over Jerusalem, reprobate because of its wickedness, and in none of his successors do we find any trace of the apostle’s willingness to be anathema for the sake of his brethren.
This tolerant spirit of Buddhism, however, has been contrasted, as greatly in its favour, with that alleged intolerance which Christianity is supposed to have inherited from Judaism. We must remember that Christianity must be judged as it is presented in Christ, and not by His professing followers, who have often misrepresented Him. Of hypocrisy, cruelty, deceit, Christ was indeed intolerant, but toward error and misbelief, because of ignorance, He was very compassionate. Christianity would make no compromise, again, with false systems of heathendom. It would have no peace save through victory; it would not accept a place in the Pantheon for its Lord, and it was content to be persecuted till He was allowed to rule from the throne of the world. The alleged intolerance of Christianity, therefore, is simply its conviction of the infinite importance and value to all men of the truth which compels it to be propagandist. Now if Buddhism tolerates everything, it is because it is not sure about anything, but, on the contrary, is in doubt about everything. It is essentially sceptical, “raising the rejection of every affirmation to the rank of a principle.”[[271]] Earnestness in a preacher of sceptical quietism was an impossibility. He had no heart touched with the feeling of heavenly love, wounded by sin, impelling him to proclaim forgiveness, and he had no such hearts to appeal to. The Christian missionary appeals to soul and conscience in name of a Saviour crucified for sin; the Buddhist missionary only appealed through the intellect to self-interest. His preaching was purely didactic, expository, and advisory in character. He was at best a theologian or moral philosopher teaching the ignorant, and not a preacher aiming at the conviction of sinners, endeavouring, with his whole heart and strength and mind, to sway them to conversion.[[272]] He never experienced the almost consuming glow and fervour of inspiration which made the apostles agonise in their mission. “Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” “I pray you, in Christ’s stead, Be ye reconciled to God.” As might have been expected, the early enthusiasm of Buddhists for the enlightenment of others soon died out, and its missionary spirit, once spent, has never undergone a true revival. It can boast of many ecclesiastics and philosophers, but for hundreds of years it cannot point in its honour-roll to either a Xavier or a Livingstone. It has long ago ceased to be aggressive. At this day no Oriental Buddhist seriously contemplates becoming a missionary. Paris may add to its attractions and curiosities a real Buddhist temple,[[273]] but the priests who officiate in it, however devoted they may be to their cult, will certainly never dream of taking the trouble of preaching it in the streets.
In the Church of the middle ages, supposed to consist only of pope and bishops and clergy and monks and nuns, of which mediævalism a remnant survives in those who speak of “entering the Church,” not when as children they are baptized into its communion, but when they are to be ordained to service in it, we must look for any resemblance to the Buddhist Sangha. In ancient India, a church, meaning the fellowship of the faithful in its totality, was an impossibility. Brahmanism had no church, and never attempted a conversion, but Buddha in seeking to rescue others from evil, and in offering a place of escape which they were free to accept or reject, created not a church but a precursor of one.[[274]] Admission into his Brotherhood was at first open to all who requested it, but as disciples crowded around him, and parents complained that they were bereaved of their children, and masters that they were robbed of their slaves, and creditors that they were deprived of what was owing by their debtors, and even the judges that criminals escaped the prison; and when accusations grew frequent and loud that the new movement would ruin households, injure the State, and depopulate the country, restrictions were devised. Gradually conditions were imposed by which all who were diseased, or criminals, or soldiers, or debtors, or slaves, or children under fifteen years of age, or youths under twenty who had not received their parents’ consent, were disqualified.[[275]] At first the disciple was admitted without any ceremony, beyond that of shaving the whole head, and putting on the yellow robes which distinguished the ascetic and the recluse, but eventually a rite of initiation was adopted, which in Ceylon has continued substantially unaltered to this day.
It consisted of two stages;[[276]] the first that of the novitiate into which a candidate could be received by any fully accredited monk. The ceremony was called the Pabbagga, or “outgoing,” a word used from old time to describe the last act of a pious Brahman, when, warned by approaching age, he gave up his possessions to his family, and left them to enter upon the hermit life of meditation. The Buddhists naturally adopted it to mark the first step by which a layman at any age exchanged the secular for the religious life. It was a confession that he desired to be done with the world, to put off the old man with his deeds and to put on the new. So with head and face completely shaven, and holding three lengths of yellow cotton cloth, first torn to render them valueless, and then sewed together, he presented his petition three times, that “the reverend monks would take pity on him, and invest him with the robes, that, like them, he might escape sorrow.” The presiding monk then tied the clothes around his neck, repeating sentences regarding the perishable nature of the body, and the petitioner retired. When he reappeared he had laid aside the loin-cloth, generally the only article of raiment in tropical lands, and had assumed the new investiture of the two under-garments and the loose robe, which covered the whole body, except the right shoulder, of a Buddhist mendicant. Three times, thus clothed, in “robes of humility and religion,” in reverential salaam to the monk or monks present, he made public confession that he took refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and receiving instructions as to conduct and duty, he became a Sramanera, a bachelor as it were, a monk of lower degree.