The Metaphysic of Christianity and Buddhism: A Symphony

by D. M. Strong

In any attempt to appreciate the relationship of Christianity to Buddhism it is important to bear in mind, not only the differences which have characterized the process of their evolution, but also to recognize that the two religions are, in their origin, distinct as to time and locale; that they developed on different soils, and have borne fruit of very different kinds; and that the races which subsequently appropriated them as religious systems were in many respects dissimilar, and lived under widely divergent conditions. Only by regarding these religions as growing apart, and in no manner connected in this sense, can we ultimately arrive at a just and logical estimate of the character of the founders.

It is not by confounding their sources at the start, or by attempting to prove that the one system is a product of the other, that we can in the end draw closer the bonds which seem to unite them. A consideration of almost equal weight is that of the dual nature of the great personalities of Jesus and Gotama. We must not confuse the significance of the term "God" with the man Jesus, nor the mystical principle embodied in the title "Buddha" with the personal and human Gotama. Both Jesus as God and Gotama as Buddha are dual personalities, and combine in themselves tangible and intangible realities. The former is to be regarded as man and God, the latter as Gotama and Buddha.

But, while wishing to emphasize the fact of the independent origin of Christianity and Buddhism, I have no intention of combating the fact that a spurious Buddhism had, in the garb of Essenism, established a footing in Palestine at a date anterior to the Christian era, and that, under the influence of St. John the Baptist, the recognized leader of the Essenes, a way was prepared and made ready for the great light which was to shine forth afresh in the majestic humanity of Jesus. The presence of Essene Buddhists in Palestine at that date is a matter of history, and has been clearly established by prominent Oriental scholars. Moreover, the Church of England itself has, through the medium of some of its most reliable authorities, openly acquiesced in the fact.

The Essenes, who were, from the second century before Christ onwards, domiciled in the Holy Land, although virtually Buddhists, do not seem to have preserved intact the tenets of Gotama, though the ethics remained unadulterated. They retained many of the qualities of the monastic Buddhists, such as asceticism, brotherly love, a rare benevolence towards mankind in general, and the still rarer consideration for animal life. Nor was any departure made from the vows of chastity, the belief in the transitory nature of things, and in their attitude of non-resistance to evil. It was rather with regard to metaphysical obscurities that they wandered from the strict teaching of Gotama; and we cannot wonder that such was the case when we remember the doubts, difficulties, and uncertainties that must have beset the paths of these followers of Gotama when they had no longer the Enlightened One to point to them the way of truth.

Especially do they seem to have gone astray in the matter of the doctrine of the soul. This they described "as coming from the subtlest ether, and as lured by the sorcery of nature into the prison-house of the body." The Essenes derived their Buddhistic tenets and practices directly from Gnosticism, which is said to have prevailed in Alexandria two centuries before the birth of Christ, and its existence in that city owed its origin to the importation of Buddhism from India, constant communication having been established in those days between Egypt and the West Coast of India as far north as the mouths of the Indus.

Further, the edicts of King Asoka go to prove that at about this time he was on intimate terms and in frequent correspondence with the Greeks; also, that during his reign and under his royal patronage Buddhist missionaries found their way to Egypt, and there scattered the seed from which arose the Gnostics, or Therapeuts, and the kindred sect of the Essenes.

Mr. Arthur Lillie, in his Buddhism in Christendom, p. 75, writes: "The most subtle thinker of the modern English Church, the late Dean Mansel, boldly maintained that the philosophy and rites of the Therapeuts of Alexandria were due to Buddhist missionaries who visited Egypt within two centuries of the time of Alexander the Great. In this he has been supported by philosophers of the calibre of Schelling and Schopenhauer and the great Sanscrit authority Lassen. Renan, in his work Les Langues Sémétiques, also sees traces of this Buddhist propagandism in Palestine before the Christian era. Hilgenfeld, Mutter, Bohlen, King, all admit the Buddhist influence. Colebrooke saw a striking similarity between the Buddhist philosophy and that of the Pythagoreans. Dean Milman was convinced that the Therapeuts sprung from the 'contemplative and indolent fraternities' of India."

When we travel back from Essenism to Gnosticism we approach nearer geographically and conceptionally to the source from which they both originated. Gnosticism, however, presumes to tell us more than Gotama chose to reveal as to the beginnings of things, and enters into details about various spiritual emanations which are at variance with any inferences that can be legitimately drawn from early Buddhism.

In the Encyclopædia Britannica, under "Gnosticism," we read: "The Supreme Being, according to Gnosticism, was regarded as wholly inconceivable and indescribable; as the Unfathomable Abyss; the Unnameable. From this transcendant source existence sprang by emanation in a series of spiritual powers. It was only through these several powers that the Infinite passed into life and activity, and became capable of representation. To this higher world was given the name of Pleroma, and the divine powers composing it in their ever-expanding procession from the Highest were called Æons."