The Metaphysic of Christianity and Buddhism: A Symphony

by D. M. Strong

Such texts seem to draw heaven and Nirvana very close together.

It is undoubtedly implied in some portions of the Christian Scriptures that the souls of the departed are asleep, and will not be disturbed till the coming of the Lord and the final judgment.

"Does not the testimony of the Bible lead us to this conclusion; from the cry of the tired spirit of Samuel, awakened from its sleep by the Witch of Endor, 'Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?' to the saying of the spirit in the Revelation, 'Yea, they rest from their labours.' In the case of Lazarus we have the words of Jesus to this effect: 'Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep'" (from Light).

Many are in love with the satisfying beauty of this sleep which has lasted since death began to be, and desire that it might never be disturbed. This is that yearning for the rest of Nirvana, for the peace that passeth understanding. The true mission of religious symbolism, of music, of poetry, and the plastic arts is, not to excite the physical emotions of man, not to crystallize appearances, but to translate his soul to this condition of delicious swooning, to turn his gaze inwards to what Brahmanic philosophy calls the fontal essence of things.

From a poetical point of view, it is perhaps melancholy to reflect that the seers of India are being rudely awakened from their reveries, to be at last, as seems probable, completely absorbed into the relatively sordid environment of Occidental progress—in fact, to dream no more. The West has murdered dreams.

Apart from the physical influences of climate and country, the strange yearning of the Indian for an ultimate heaven of unconsciousness may be accounted for by tracing it to a vague remembrance in the human organism of the happy condition from which it primarily emerged, before even animal existence had entered upon the fairly peaceful life-history of an amœba.

The process of transition from the condition of "are" to that of "are not," from the phenomenal to the noumenal, has been conceived by Buddhists and Christians alike to be gradual. As a parallel to the "house of many mansions," so often taken to mean by Christians a progressive ascent through a number of heavens to a heaven of heavens, I give below, in abbreviated form, the "spheres of formlessness" as described by Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, in his book entitled Gleanings from Buddha Fields.

"These," he says, "are four. In the first state all sense of individuality is lost, and there survives only the idea of infinite space or emptiness. In the second state this idea of space vanishes, and its place is filled by the idea of infinite reason. But this idea of reason is anthropomorphic, it is an illusion, and it fades out in the third state, which is called the 'state-of-nothing-to-take-hold-of.' Here is only the idea of infinite nothingness. But even this condition has been reached by the aid of the action of the personal mind. This action ceases; then the fourth state is reached, the state of 'neither-namelessness-nor-notnamelessness.' Something of personal mentality continues to float vaguely here—the very uttermost expiring vibration of Karma—the last vanishing haze of being. It melts, and the immeasurable revelation comes."

Professor Oldenberg says: "It is not enough to say that the final goal to which the Buddhist strives to pass as an escape from the sorrow of the world is Nirvana. It is also necessary to any delineation of Buddhism to note, as a fact assured beyond all doubt, that internal cheerfulness, infinitely surpassing all mere resignation with which the Buddhist pursues his end....

"Does the path, then, lead into a new existence? Does it lead into the nothing? The Buddhist creed rests in delicate equipoise between the two. The longing of the heart that craves the eternal has not nothing, and yet the thought has not a something, which it might firmly grasp. Further off the idea of the endless, the eternal could not withdraw itself from belief than it has done here, where, like a gentle flutter on the point of merging in the nothing, it threatens to evade the gaze."