Daibatsu At Kamakura.
To return. After his enlightenment, it is said that Gautama was seized by the temptation to enter at once into Nirvana, without proclaiming his doctrine to the world. But putting the temptation from him, he began his ministry by announcing the tidings of release to the companions of his ascetic life, who, after scoffing for awhile, were at length convinced. In the course of this, his first sermon, Buddha proceeded to enunciate the eight steps on the path which leads to Nirvana—(i) Right faith, (ii) right resolution, (iii) right speech, (iv) right action, (v) right living, (vi) right effort, (vii) right thought, (viii) right self-concentration. As time went on, Gautama began to gather round him a number of disciples, who became his constant companions. Part of each year he spent in rest and retirement; teaching and training his disciples, and receiving such as, attracted by his growing reputation, sought him out. The remaining months he occupied in travelling from place to place, proclaiming the good news of deliverance in the towns and villages through which he passed. Soon we find him establishing a Society or Brotherhood; the members of which severed their connexion with all worldly things, handed over their property to the Order, adopted the tonsure and a distinctive dress, and, following the Master's doctrine with strictness themselves, devoted their lives to its propagation. Any member, however, was at [pg 041] liberty to leave the Brotherhood, should he wish to do so. It is noticeable that Buddha's earliest followers were chiefly drawn—not, as in the case of a Greater than he, from the ranks of the poor and simple—but from the upper classes. Indeed, Gautama seems to have regarded the weak and ignorant as incapable of receiving his teaching. Children are hardly mentioned in the early Buddhist writings; and with regard to women, it was only with great reluctance that Sakya-muni eventually consented to the formation of a Sisterhood, the members of which were, as far as possible, to observe the same rules as the men—together with several additional ones, chiefly concerned with their subjection to the Brethren. In the same way, it is still the teaching of Buddhism that it should be a woman's highest aspiration to be reborn as a man, in a future state of existence. When, however, the two Orders—for men and for women—had been formed, there still remained a large number of either sex, who, without leaving their places in the world, were desirous of being reckoned among Buddha's followers. These were admitted as lay-adherents, one of their chief obligations being to contribute to the maintenance of the Brethren.
Having exercised his public ministry for forty years—without, as would appear, encountering any great opposition—and having committed his work to the Brotherhood, to carry on after his decease, [pg 042] Buddha died, aged about eighty, and was buried with great pomp. It is recorded that, as the time of his departure drew nigh, he replied to his disciples' expressions of apprehension and sorrow, by saying that when he should no longer be with them in person, he would still be present with them in his sayings, in his doctrine. Another point on which he laid great stress before his death was that the Brotherhood should regularly assemble in convocation. Hence it came about that from very early times, the declaration, “I seek refuge in Buddha, Dharma (the Law), Samgha (the Brotherhood),” was adopted as the formula which any one, desirous of becoming a Buddhist, was required to profess. And it is the Trinity thus formed, which, represented to-day by the three great images above the altar of many a Buddhist temple, has its multitude of ignorant worshippers, who doubt not that three several divinities are the objects of their adoration and their prayer.
Such, then, as would appear, was the origin of Buddhism. Strictly speaking, and apart from its later developments, Buddhism is a religion which knows no God, which attaches no value to prayer, which has no place for a priesthood. Nowhere, perhaps, is its agnosticism more conspicuous than in the five main prohibitions, which are addressed alike to clergy and laity. The first of these forbids the taking of life,—human life chiefly, [pg 043] but other life as well; the second is against theft, whether by force or fraud; the third is against falsehood; the fourth forbids impurity, in act, word, or thought; the fifth requires abstinence from all intoxicants. The whole idea of GOD, it will be noticed, is entirely absent from the Buddhist Commandments. Infinitely removed above that other agnosticism, which cries, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” Buddhism starts with the idea of the entire abnegation of self. But a self-denial that is undertaken, not for God, and in God for man, but merely to secure one's own peace and well-being—what is this but selfishness after all? Enjoining a rule of life that is essentially negative—the natural product of that blank despair of the world and of human nature which led to the Great Renunciation—Buddhism, as a religious system, has yielded but scanty fruits of positive holiness, of active benevolence. And yet,—wholly inadequate as such a system as this, even at its purest and best, must be to meet the needs of humanity,—false and even debased as are sometimes its teachings,—the one great message that Buddhism proclaims is a message of undeniable, if most imperfect, truth: the truth that would have man cultivate self-reliance, and attain to self-deliverance by means of self-control. “Work out your own salvation” is the injunction of Christianity. “By one's self,” taught Sakya-muni, “the evil is [pg 044] one; by one's self must come remedy and release.” So far the two systems are at one; the difference between them lies in the fact that the one places in our hands those supernatural weapons which alone make real victory possible, and that these the other knows not how to supply.
Hitherto, we have made no reference to the relation of Buddhism to Brahmanism. And yet we can no more hope to understand the work of Sakya-muni, without observing its connexion with Brahmanism, than we could afford to omit all mention of the Jewish Law and of Jewish Pharisaism, in speaking of the liberation wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ. The work and doctrine of Gautama Buddha,—with their mean between an ascetic severity, on the one hand, and a licentious self-indulgence on the other—their disregard of caste distinctions—their rejection of burdensome and profitless traditions—may be said to bear to the heavy yoke of Brahmanism a relation not dissimilar to that which freedom has to bondage. Laying hold of that which was ready to his hand, if so be he might mould and purify it, Buddha was a liberator and reformer in respect to what had gone before. Let us take, for example, the doctrine of metempsychosis, or, as it is commonly called, the “transmigration of souls.” No doubt, there is a great deal connected with this doctrine in the Buddhist books that cannot but appear to us [pg 045] puerile and shocking; but still, we do not well, we do not justly, if, as do so many, we fasten such strange fancies on Buddha, or on Buddhism, as though it were from these that they sprang. So far from Sakya-muni being the originator of the theory of transmigration, a belief in it had, for centuries previously, been almost universal throughout the East; and his doctrine of Nirvana supplied an antidote to the belief in a practically interminable series of metempsychoses current at the time. With the theory of transmigration accepted on all sides, Buddha seems to have made use of it to the extent that he did, as affording a convenient solution of the difficulty presented by the unequal distribution of happiness in this life, and the absence of any satisfactory exercise of justice in the way of reward or punishment.
That the doctrine of metempsychosis should have been applied by Buddhists to their great Master himself, is only what we should expect to find. Gautama is accredited by Buddhists with some five hundred previous existences, in the course of which he passed through numerous stages of vegetable, animal and human life, until at length he attained to the highest degree of manhood. Throughout the changing circumstances of his being, he is said to have exhibited a transcendent and ever-increasing unselfishness and charity, which culminated in his freely giving himself to [pg 046] be re-born as Buddha for the world's deliverance. And it is this belief, probably, which has been the most potent factor in exalting the Philosopher and the Guide to a height, which is scarcely, if at all, distinguishable from the Throne of God.
I may conclude this chapter by quoting a passage from the late Dean Stanley's History of the Jewish Church, where he is referring to Gautama Buddha: “It is difficult for those who believe the permanent elements of the Jewish and Christian religion to be universal and Divine not to hail these corresponding forms of truth and goodness elsewhere, or to recognize that the mere appearance of such saint-like and god-like characters in other parts of the earth, if not directly preparing the way for a greater manifestation, illustrates that manifestation by showing how mighty has been the witness borne to it even under circumstances of such discouragement, and even with effects inadequate to their grandeur.”[15]