“He who is now the most degraded of the demons may one day rule the highest of the heavens: He who is at present seated on the most honorable of the celestial thrones, may one day writhe amidst all the agonies of a place of torment; and the worm that we crush under our feet may in the course of ages become a supreme Buddha.”[[15]]
“Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks,
And these are but the shattered stalks,
And ruined chrysalis of one.”[[16]]
This belief pervades the every-day thinking of the most ignorant Burmese. An English officer writes, that just[just] before the drop fell with a wretched murderer, he himself heard him mutter as his last word, “May my next existence be a man’s, and a long one!” An old woman, whose grown-up son had died, thought that she recognized that son’s voice in the bleating of a neighbor’s calf. She threw her arms about the animal, and purchasing it, cherished it until its death, as the living embodiment of her own child.
Faith in transmigration accounts for the pious Buddhist’s treatment of the lower animals. The priests strain the gnats out of the water they drink. “They do not eat after noon, nor drink after dark, for fear of swallowing minute insects, and they carry a brush on all occasions, with which they carefully sweep every place before they sit down, lest they should inadvertently crush any living creature.” Mr. Huxley tells us that a Hindoo’s peace of mind was completely destroyed by a microscopist who showed him the animals in a drop of water. The Buddhists often build hospitals for sick brutes. Perhaps this deep-seated and hereditary faith in transmigration may account for the singular apathy of the natives to the destruction of life caused by snakes and tigers. In fact, one of their legends represents the founder of their religion as sacrificing his life-blood to slake the parched thirst of a starving tigress.
Although Brahminism and Buddhism both agree in teaching transmigration, they differ widely in their views of God, and of the soul. Brahminism is pantheistic; Buddhism atheistic. According to Brahminism matter has no real existence. All physical forms are the merest illusions. The only real existences are souls. These are all parts of a great Divine soul, from which they emanate, and into which they will at last be reabsorbed, as when a flask of water is broken in the ocean. Buddhism denies the existence not only of matter, but of the soul and of God. It is a system of universal negation. There is no trace in it of a Supreme Being. All is mere seeming. Nothing is real in past, present, or future.
Again, Brahminism betrays a deep consciousness of sin. It teaches the necessity of doing painful penance and of offering animal sacrifices. Buddhism regards sin as cosmical. There is no such thing as blame or guilt. There is no mediation or pardon. The Buddhist brings no animal to the altar. His worship consists in offering up prayers, and perfumes, and flowers, in memory of the founder of his religion.
Again, Brahminism is aristocratic; Buddhism democratic. Brahminism is the religion of caste. It divides the nation into four classes: the priest, the warrior, the tradesman, and the serf. Besides these, but lowest of all, are pariahs, or outcastes—the offspring of intercourse that violated the law of caste. There can be no social mingling of the castes. The condition of the serfs is most wretched and humiliating. The laws of Menu ordain that their abode must be outside the towns, their property must be restricted to dogs and asses, their clothes should be those left by the dead, their ornaments rusty iron; they must roam from place to place; no respectable person must hold intercourse with them; they are to aid as public executioners, retaining the clothes of the dead. Now Buddhism rejected the system of caste. Gaudama taught: “The priest is born of a woman; so is the outcaste. My law is a law of grace for all. My doctrine is like the sky. There is room for all without exception, men, women, boys, girls, poor and rich.” The two beautiful stories that follow remind us of the spirit and behavior of our own blessed Lord.