In proclaiming that ethical distinctions mark an inferior stage of discipleship, for a “good man, though never against, is always above them,” Bôdiharma, the nominal founder of Esoteric Buddhism, simply formulated more clearly the teaching of Nâgârdjuna, the reputed founder of the Mahāyāna system. It was only another expression of that indefinable phase of thought, found in all religions as mysticism, and which, though commonly identified only with its extravagant outbursts, is really of the very essence of religion. The dominating thought in a religious man is that of a Supreme One in whom we live and move and have our being, and there are times in his worship when the balance of consciousness is disturbed, and self is lost in consciousness of the Divine. Man without the aid of prayer or sacramental grace finds in himself the revelation, and alas! as his consciousness is always imperfect, and very often confused, the revelation is too often distorted and the reverse of Divine.[[390]]
Mysticism, as was natural in a religion quickening both thought and emotion, appeared early in Christianity, and from the days of St. John it has never lacked a representative. In its manifold varieties and aberrations it presents many similarities to the mysticism of the East, but in reality it is as different from it in its nature as it is distant from it in its source. Eastern mysticism has always been more speculative than practical in character. Pantheistic in its origin, it assumes that all things are as divine as it is their nature to be, and aspires to get at the unity of being. Western mysticism, on the other hand, starts always from a sense of the disorder and alienation of things, and endeavours to get at man’s true life. The Eastern finds its object within, the Western generally without; the Eastern considers identity with Deity a natural state, the Western regards perfect fellowship with Deity as a goal of spiritual attainment. In Christianity mysticism has been occasional in its manifestations, and has always been regarded as an innovation; but in the East it is the normal deduction from Hindu Pantheism and Buddhist Nihilism.[[391]] Nâgârdjuna and Bôdiharma were the natural outcome of Gotama’s teaching. In Christianity it has often shown itself to be marvellously practical, and generally in revolt from some stereotyped system of dogma or form of worship. Though associated in our thoughts more with the sentimental than the intellectual aspects of religion,[[392]] it has manifested frequently a decidedly rationalistic tendency. Refusing to be dominated by authority or to be bound by antiquity, it has questioned fearlessly the dicta of Scripture, avowing that reason is not superseded, but divinely inspired and controlled as the organ of revelation. In Christianity its extravagances may be forgiven in consideration of the benefits which have flowed from it. It powerfully helped to bring about the Reformation, and since then, in the Churches, whether reformed or unreformed, it has tended to sweeten and intensify devotion. It has kept them mindful of their common lineage by insisting upon those essential and universal truths which are confessed to be vital in all religions, and especially by proclaiming the supremacy of the Holy Spirit as the fountain of all enlightenment and activity.
As manifested in St. Paul and St. John, mysticism is the recognition of the Holy Spirit as the Witness of Christ, and therefore the supreme lord over all man’s emotions and reasonings and purposes. Consequently the asceticism with which mysticism has always been associated has been in Christianity more kept under control. Occasionally it has lapsed into frightful excesses; indeed, the extravagances practised in the East to attain to insight have been equalled by the devices resorted to by many in the West to gain the vision of the Divine. In ingenious methods of self-torture the West certainly vied with the East, but at self-torture perverted Christianity stopped, while degenerate Buddhism went on to invent and put in practice most revolting methods of self-destruction as well. The law of Buddha prohibited this, and forbade even the mention of the advantages of death. It was an offence of the gravest kind, punished by the severest penalty which the Order could inflict,[[393]] for a monk to procure a weapon for the purpose of taking away his life, or to teach how death may be procured. Still, in India before Fa-Hian’s time, self-murder was practised, and in China Imperial edicts against self-mutilation and self-immolation were required to prevent fanatics evading the primitive law by the quibble, that while prohibiting suicide, Buddha enjoined the destruction of anger and lust, and that it was against these alone that they raised their hand, in order to complete their deliverance.[[394]]
Christianity demands that an ἄσκησις shall be practised by all who desire the illumination of the Spirit, for all that is vile must be purged out of life, and all that is animal in it must be subdued. The discipline, however, is always moral as well as religious, and it aims only at controlling, never, like Stoicism or Cynicism, at stifling or violating natural affection. Unlike Plato, who regarded matter as evil, Christ and His apostles recognised it as the creature of God, and taught us to seek the seat of evil, not in the body, but in the perverted will. In the spirit is the true fons et origo mali; but as the occasion of sin directly or indirectly often originates in some desire for bodily indulgence or some dread of bodily pain, temperance and fortitude demand that the body, if not inured to hardness, should be at least kept under control. So bodily exercise,[[395]] though in itself profiting little, profiteth much as moral discipline, a means to a spiritual end. Consequently the fast in its literal sense has its place in the Christian system as an expedient generally most required in the times when we are inclined to despise it. The fanaticism which would destroy or injure what is natural is condemned by Christianity as severely as is the sensuality which would unduly strengthen it. What it demands is that the whole nature be educated and ennobled by loving surrender to the control of an infinitely holy Will. Enjoyment of the vision beatific, communion with the Divine Being, is the summum bonum of Christianity, and that is the portion only of the sanctified. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
Bôdiharma’s mystic or esoteric Buddhism had no such influences to steady and sober it, and its aberrations were wilder than the fancies of our delirium. The supernatural pretensions of mysticism have always been disallowed or condemned in Christianity by overwhelming healthy-minded majorities, but the consequence of the practice of Esoteric Buddhism was believed by all to be supernatural power. An adept in it professed to see through all ages and worlds, and move through space by a sheer exercise of will. All the phenomena of modern spiritualism may have been witnessed in India and China two thousand years ago—yea, centuries perhaps before Buddha appeared. The first pretenders to these mysteries were the Indian Yogis and the medicine-men of savage and barbarous races.[[396]] The “Neo-Buddhism” and “Theosophy” of to-day simply confront us in the cast-off yellow rags of these pitiful superstitions. Their disciples attempt to warm themselves and to walk in the light of the unhallowed flames which the deluded followers of Bôdiharma believed they could kindle. In whatever way the phenomena of spiritualism are to be explained—and one cannot say what phenomena may emerge when the human mind is abandoned to vacuity, and the human will to an ungoverned fancy—we may be certain that investigation of them will never disclose the reality of benign supernatural power. What capabilities may be dormant in humanity no one can tell. Christ who redeemed us is the prophecy of what He can make us. He had supernatural power because His being accorded perfectly with the Heavenly Father’s will; but supernatural power as manifested by Christ is very different indeed from the ludicrous exhibitions of the “spiritualists.” Christ’s supernatural power was not manifested just in their ways, and certainly not by their methods; will it ever be acquired?[[397]]
It is not compatible with our space to trace the parallels between Esoteric Buddhism and some nineteenth-century forms of speculation in which the finite is again seen to be going back to the absolute, and the reality of everything but the self is denied. On the religious side, however, it is interesting to notice a later stage of it in a system which, originating not long after Bôdiharma, took some four centuries to establish itself. The T’ien-t’ai or Chi-Che school differed from Bôiharma’s theory of pure mental abstraction to be gained through complete withdrawal from all sensible surroundings, in that it sought to aid contemplation by sensuous exercises. Worship of gay idols, music of many persons chanting in unison, postures of kneeling and standing, exercises of continued and loud recitation, with intervals of profound silence and intense meditation, were supposed to produce the desired illumination. It seemed to be the first recognition of feeling in the Buddhist religion, and the first attempt to employ it to produce ecstasy. The same attempt has often been repeated in the history of Christianity, sometimes in very grotesque and extravagant forms. In every outburst of religious enthusiasm we may see rude examples of it, but it is also the principle on which æsthetic worship is generally defended. It is a reminder, therefore, to some very superior people, of our common human nature, and a warning that when left to itself, or indulged, even the æsthetic, like all other instincts, will just run the same round of extravagance in manifold and ever-recurring variety.
The tendency in human nature to pervert a religion is as strongly manifested in Christianity as in Buddhism; but there is this outstanding distinction between them, that while a survey of Buddhism shows that everywhere it has run its course, and has exhausted its intellectual and moral and spiritual resources, Christianity upon examination appears to be only in an early stage of development. In spite of the perversions of the Church, and its repeated resistance to Christian movements, Christianity has always produced what has condemned and corrected and vanquished them. It is the recuperative power of Christianity which most distinguishes it. There is nothing in the history of Buddhism which at all corresponds with the Reformation. To-day all over the world it is stereotyped and unprogressive, whereas everywhere in Christendom there is ferment of thought and stirring of life, plainly indicating that whatever power may claim the past, Christianity has the sure promise of the future.
In China, two hundred and seventy years ago, originated a sect whose adherents, scattered through the villages of the Eastern Provinces, and belonging principally to the lower classes of society, may be called Protestant or Reformed Buddhists. They are described by Dr. Edkins[[398]] as opposed to idolatry in all its forms, as having no temple, but only plain meeting-houses, signalised with only the common tablet to heaven, earth, king, parents, and teachers, as their symbol of reverence. Their worship consists not in ceremonies, but in quiet meditation, and inner adoration of the all-pervading Buddha. They are called the “Do-Nothing Sect,” not because they are idle, like the ignorant inmates of the monasteries—for they are really industrious and virtuous,—but because they hold that the highest virtue is never intentional, but wholly unconscious of self. Like M. Aurelius,[[399]] they consider that to ask to be “paid for virtue is as if the eye demanded a recompence for seeing.” In thinking of them, the words of the Lord Jesus recur to us: “Do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again.” George Fox, and the quiet and charitable Society which he founded, and which still continues in formal garb his protest against all formalism in worshipping God, not by clamouring to Him, but in silently waiting till He speaks, seems to be the realisation of what these good Wu-wei-Kiau aspire to in their religion. They have not been able to free themselves from Buddhism or Taoism. Buddha, though not worshipped, is believed in by them, and they have found an object of adoration in Kîn-mu, the Golden Mother of the soul, who can protect and deliver from calamity, and even save those that have died from misery. They have four principal festivals, two of which celebrate the birth and death of Lo-tsu, their founder. On these occasions three small cups of tea and nine tiny loaves of bread are placed on the tables, according to the appointment of Lo-tsu himself. On this account they are nicknamed “the Tea and Bread Sect.” They are strict vegetarians, but in no other sense ascetics, honouring marriage and family life, and having no monastic institute among them. They aver that one of their leaders during a persecution was crucified, and their great hope is that the world will soon come to an end, and that the Golden Mother will appear, to take all her children—all who believe in her as they do—home to her beautiful heaven.
This can hardly be called a reformation of Buddhism according either to its original form or its fundamental principles. It is a departure from, and an immense improvement upon it, which is manifestly due to foreign and probably Christian influence. The Nestorians entered China in the seventh, and the Jesuits in the sixteenth century, while Reformed Christianity only came in contact with China in the present generation. If it be denied that Christianity helped to produce the Do-Nothing Sect, it will be difficult to disprove the claim that, directly or indirectly, it has done much to produce the latest forms in which, in China and Japan, Buddhism is now presented to the world. In both countries Reformed Buddhists are found differing in much from one another, but generally agreeing in rejecting polytheism for the worship of one divinity: in China, Kwan-yin, who for long has changed sexes, and is now the goddess of mercy; in Japan, Buddha, whose attribute is Amita, the infinite. One sect, called the “Salvation without Works Sect,” has progressed greatly in Japan, under the title of Shin-Shin, “the true religion.” The worshipper renounces all merit, and trusts for salvation in nothing but the mercy of Amita.[[400]] The soul is brought into a state of salvation by an act of faith, and though sure of salvation, the faithful must not abandon the struggle with evil, for holiness is not the beginning, but the result of salvation. In Kioti, a Buddhist sect has a college quite Western in its curriculum and arrangements. There too the Japanese newspapers not only record the successes of able Buddhist preachers in spreading their doctrine, and in founding schools, they advertise a Buddhist propaganda for the conversion of Europe and America. Its only organ as yet is a little magazine called the Bijou of Asia, but it is printed in English for the enlightenment of all who believe in the moribund creeds of the West, and for the rescue especially of souls from the snare of that Christian superstition which “happily all over the world is rapidly declining in power”!
If this be not impure Christianity, no one will dare to call it pure Buddhism. Surely it is a hopeful indication for the future of Japan, as being evidently a movement somewhat similar to that inaugurated in India by Rammohun Roy, and greatly furthered in our days by Chunder Sen. The first professed to trace his reform to the Upanishads rediscovered, and expounded, and applied; and the second to the Vedas as the primitive fountains of the faith. Both reformers and their work would have been impossible two thousand years ago; yea, they would have been equally impossible to-day, had not the West given of its thoughts to the East, and Christendom communicated to it something of its better life. It is one thing to read the Vedas and Upanishads, as the Rishis recited or the Brahmans expounded them long ago, and quite another to have them interpreted by natives of India, around whose forefathers for several generations all the influences of Christian civilisation have been playing. So is it with the reforming Buddhists of China and Japan, who have enterprise to send their sons to study at our British Universities. They are reading their old literature—even when rejecting our systems of belief—with minds unconsciously saturated with Christian intelligence, and no doubt they often find there what the Gospel has put in themselves.