Buddhism in the Modern World

by Kenneth J. Saunders

3. It affords a Way of Escape from Sorrow.

In India Gotama had an easier task than he would have faced in the full-blooded and less thoughtful West. We Westerners do not need to be convinced of the pain of life, we are now wide awake to it; but to the Hindu of the sixth century before Christ a conviction of the emptiness of life was something in the nature of an obsession. The bright, naïve optimism of earlier ages, revealed, for example, in the Rig-Veda,[9] had passed away; a combination of circumstances, climate, speculative activities, disappointments and other causes, had combined to make India pessimistic. Chief of these causes was undoubtedly the belief in transmigration which has come more and more to occupy a central position in Hinduism. It represents man as doomed to wander from birth to birth, and to expiate every deed of his past. It is impossible for us in the West to realise how firm a hold this thought has upon India, or how great is the longing for a way of escape. Gotama's resolute attempt to find such a way of escape, his assurance that he had discovered it, and his enthusiastic preaching of "the Way" brought Buddhism into the world as a new religion, and became a veritable "gospel" to weary and jaded hearts.

4. It is a Practical Creed: Its Founder called Himself "A Physician of Sick Souls."

Born the son of a chieftain in Nepal in the foothills of the Himalayas, about 560 B.C., Gotama, the great founder of Buddhism, was sheltered from the sights and sounds of suffering, as we are told in the loving stories of Buddhist lore, until the gods, who had a higher destiny in store for him than that of an Indian princeling, revealed to him the facts of old age and decay and death. In a series of visions—of the old man tottering down to the grave, of the leper riddled with foul disease, of the corpse laid out for the burning, the great fact of human suffering came home to him. It made so deep an impression that he renounced his royal rights and went out as a mendicant ascetic to discover some way of escape. He was then twenty-nine years old. Not until he had reached the age of thirty-eight, and had honestly tried the various accepted paths for the attainment of holiness and the escape from the burdens of life laid down by Hindu sages, did he find what he was seeking. Sitting under the Indian fig-tree in the heat of the day, he meditated patiently and long until the vision dawned upon him, or, as we should say, until his sub-consciousness, which had long been working upon the problem presented to it, sent a complete and satisfying solution into the focus of his conscious mind. His solution, recognising the fact that Hindu practices had vainly attempted to drug the aching nerve of pain or to tear it out, offered a more positive remedy. The present writer believes that the Spirit of God had much to do with this discovery. There are, however, among missionaries, many who feel that this is a grievous heresy, and are bitterly opposed to any such view.

In order to understand the solution which Gotama offered to the world, which undoubtedly captured the enthusiasm of unnumbered millions of weary pilgrims in India and other lands, it may be well to consider Gotama's own description of himself as "a physician of sick souls." Just as the physician must first diagnose the disease and recognise the germ which is its secret cause, before he can give the right treatment, so Gotama set himself to discover the hidden cause of the world's suffering. He thought that he had found it in that universal clinging to life which he called tanhā, which means a "craving" for anything less austere than Nibbāna. "From tanhā springs sorrow; he that is free from tanhā is freed from sorrow and suffering."

This is the source of all the world's agony, says Gotama: and if we face the facts we shall see that egoism of men and nations, a form of tanhā, accounts for most of it! The modern world is full of tanhā.

5. It cultivates a Sense of the Worthlessness of Temporal Things.

It is because man clings to things which cannot fully satisfy him, such as the love of family, the desire for wealth and fame, the wish to be reborn in a heaven (all of which are classed together in Buddhism), that he has to go on being reborn. This is the Buddhist doctrine of Kamma. Hinduism, like much orthodox Christianity, thinks of a "soul" which dwells in the body. The Hindu thinks of it as passing from one body to another in the process of transmigration. The view of Buddhism is rather that the "ego" of man is a stream of mental energy, the direction of which is under his own control. If he dies full of tanhā, cleaving to the things of this world, he will surely be reborn to some sort of misery. If, on the other hand, he dies detached from human interests and open-eyed to the worthlessness of temporal things, he will eventually be set free from the entanglement of life, as we know it on earth, and will pass into Nibbāna. Of this goal one can only say with assurance that it is unlike anything known to mortal man,[10] and that its essence is moral purity.

6. Its Conception of Bliss is realisable in this Life.

But Gotama was not concerned with the next life so much as with this. He laid emphasis also upon the wonderful joy and peace which the fixed purpose to achieve Nibbāna had caused him to experience. This was the real relief from suffering, which he had in mind. "Whoso is pure from all tanhā, he is in Nibbāna." This he preached with great conviction and enthusiasm, declaring that men might aim in this life to attain the position of an arhat (saint) and actually enter into the preliminary experience of Nibbāna. It is this aspect of Buddhism which makes it a true religion. Its joy and power can be experienced in the midst of the world's pain. So it is called an "Island," a "Refuge," where the drowning man may escape, or a "Cool Retreat," whither one may fly from a world in flames.