"The religion of Buddha," says Professor Max Müller in his "Chips from a German Workshop," "was made for a madhouse."
"Buddha," says Sir Monier Williams in his "Buddhism," "altogether ignored in human nature any spiritual aspirations."
Having heard the dictum of Oxford, perhaps it is fair to listen to a real Buddhist. In a work called "Happiness," an anonymous writer sketches his religion.
The teaching of Buddha, as set forth by him, is simple and sublime. There are two states of the soul, call them ego and non-ego—the plane of matter and the plane of spirit—what you will. As long as we live for the ego and its greedy joys, we are feverish, restless, miserable. Happiness consists in the destruction of the ego, by the Bodhi, and Gnosis. This is that interior, that high state of the soul, attained by Fenelon and Wesley, by Mirza the Sufi and Swedenborg, by Spinoza and Amiel.
"The kingdom of God is within you," says Christ.
"In whom are hid the treasures of sophia and gnosis," says St. Paul.
"The enlightened view both worlds," says Mirza the Sufi, "but the bat flieth about in the darkness without seeing."
"Who speaks and acts with the inner quickening," says Buddha, "has joy for his accompanying shadow. Who speaks and acts without the inner quickening, him sorrow pursues as the chariot wheel the horse."
Let us give here a pretty parable, and let Buddha speak for himself:—