The Soul of the Far East

by Percival Lowell

The demon-worship of Korea is a mild form of the same thing with the hierarchy left out, every man there being his own spiritual adviser. An ordinary Korean is born with an innate belief in malevolent spirits, whom he accordingly propitiates from time to time. One of nobler birth propitiates only the spirits of his own ancestors.

We come, then, by a process of elimination to a consideration of Buddhism, the great philosophic faith of the whole Far East.

Not uncommonly in the courtyard of a Japanese temple, in the solemn half-light of the sombre firs, there stands a large stone basin, cut from a single block, and filled to the brim with water. The trees, the basin, and a few stone lanterns—so called from their form, and not their function, for they have votive pebbles where we should look for wicks—are the sole occupants of the place. Sheltered from the wind, withdrawn from sound, and only piously approached by man, this antechamber of the god seems the very abode of silence and rest. It might be Nirvana itself, human entrance to an immortality like the god's within, so peaceful, so pervasive is its calm; and in its midst is the moss-covered monolith, holding in its embrace the little imprisoned pool of water. So still is the spot and so clear the liquid that you know the one only as the reflection of the other. Mirrored in its glassy surface appears everything around it. As you peer in, far down you see a tiny bit of sky, as deep as the blue is high above, across which slowly sail the passing clouds; then nearer stand the trees, arching overhead, as if bending to catch glimpses of themselves in that other world below; and then, nearer yet—yourself.

Emblem of the spirit of man is this little pool to Far Oriental eyes. Subtile as the soul is the incomprehensible water; so responsive to light that it remains itself invisible; so clear that it seems illusion! Though portrayer so perfect of forms about it, all we know of the thing itself is that it is. Through none of the five senses do we perceive it. Neither sight, nor hearing, nor taste, nor smell, nor touch can tell us it exists; we feel it to be by the muscular sense alone, that blind and dumb analogue for the body of what consciousness is for the soul. Only when disturbed, troubled, does the water itself become visible, and then it is but the surface that we see. So to the Far Oriental this still little lake typifies the soul, the eventual purification of his own; a something lost in reflection, self-effaced, only the alter ego of the outer world.

For contemplation, not action, is the Far Oriental's ideal of life. The repose of self-adjustment like that to which our whole solar system is slowly tending as its death,—this to him appears, though from no scientific deduction, the end of all existence. So he sits and ponders, abstractly, vaguely, upon everything in general,—synonym, alas, to man's finite mind, for nothing in particular,—till even the sense of self seems to vanish, and through the mist-like portal of unconsciousness he floats out into the vast indistinguishable sameness of Nirvana's sea.

At first sight Buddhism is much more like Christianity than those of us who stay at home and speculate upon it commonly appreciate. As a system of philosophy it sounds exceedingly foreign, but it looks unexpectedly familiar as a faith. Indeed, the one religion might well pass for the counterfeit presentment of the other. The resemblance so struck the early Catholic missionaries that they felt obliged to explain the remarkable similarity between the two. With them ingenuous surprise instantly begot ingenious sophistry. Externally, the likeness was so exact that at first they could not bring themselves to believe that the Buddhist ceremonials had not been filched bodily from the practices of the true faith. Finding, however, that no known human agency had acted in the matter, they bethought them of introducing, to account for things, a deus ex machina in the shape of the devil. They were so pleased with this solution of the difficulty that they imparted it at once with much pride to the natives. You have indeed got, they graciously if somewhat gratuitously informed them, the outward semblance of the true faith, but you are in fact the miserable victims of an impious fraud. Satan has stolen the insignia of divinity, and is now masquerading before you as the deity; your god is really our devil,—a recognition of antipodal inversion truly worthy the Jesuitical mind!

Perhaps it is not matter for great surprise that they converted but few of their hearers. The suggestion was hardly so diplomatic as might have been expected from so generally astute a body; for it could not make much difference what the all-presiding deity was called, if his actions were the same, since his motives were beyond human observation. Besides, the bare idea of a foreign bogus was not very terrifying. The Chinese possessed too many familiar devils of their own. But there was another and a much deeper reason, which we shall come to later, why Christianity made but little headway in the Far East.

But it is by no means in externals only that the two religions are alike. If the first glance at them awakens that peculiar sensation which most of us have felt at some time or other, a sense of having seen all this before, further scrutiny reveals a deeper agreement than merely in appearances.

In passing from the surface into the substance, it may be mentioned incidentally that the codes of morality of the two are about on a level. I say incidentally, for so far as its practice, certainly, is concerned, it not its preaching, morality has no more intimate connection with religion than it has with art or politics. If we doubt this, we have but to examine the facts. Are the most religious peoples the most moral? It needs no prolonged investigation to convince us that they are not. If proof of the want of a bond were required, the matter of truth-telling might be adduced in point. As this is a subject upon which a slight misconception exists in the minds of some evangelically persuaded persons, and because, what is more generally relevant, the presence of this quality, honesty in word and deed, has more than almost any other one characteristic helped to put us in the van of the world's advance to-day, it may not unfittingly be cited here.

The argument in the case may be put thus. Have specially religious races been proportionally truth-telling ones? If not, has there been any other cause at work in the development of mankind tending to increase veracity? The answer to the first question has all the simplicity of a plain negative. No such pleasing concomitance of characteristics is observable to-day, or has been presented in the past. Permitting, however, the dead past to bury its shortcomings in oblivion, let us look at the world as we find it. We observe, then, that the religious spirit is quite as strong in Asia as it is in Europe; if anything, that at the present time it is rather stronger. The average Brahman, Mahometan, or Buddhist is quite as devout as the ordinary Roman Catholic or Presbyterian. If he is somewhat less given to propagandism, he is not a whit less regardful of his own salvation. Yet throughout the Orient truth is a thing unknown, lies of courtesy being de rigueur and lies of convenience de raison; while with us, fortunately, mendacity is generally discredited. But we need not travel so far for proof. The same is evident in less antipodal relations. Have the least religious nations of Europe been any less truthful than the most bigoted? Was fanatic Spain remarkable for veracity? Was Loyola a gentleman whose assertions carried conviction other than to the stake? Were the eminently mundane burghers whom he persecuted noted for a pious superiority to fact? Or, to narrow the field still further, and scan the circle of one's own acquaintance, are the most believing individuals among them worthy of the most belief? Assuredly not.