Still, I seem to hear some one say: We acknowledge this; we admit the truth of what you have stated; nevertheless, for all that, you must allow that Buddhism conferred a great benefit on India by encouraging freedom of thought and by setting at liberty its teeming population, before entangled in the meshes of ceremonial observances and Brahmanical priestcraft.
Yes, I grant this; nay, I grant even more than this. I admit that Buddhism conferred many other benefits on the millions inhabiting the most populous part of Asia. It introduced education and culture; it encouraged literature and art; it promoted physical, moral, and intellectual progress up to a certain point; it proclaimed peace, good will, and brotherhood among men; it deprecated war between nation and nation; it avowed sympathy with social liberty and freedom; it gave back much independence to women; it preached purity in thought, word, and deed (though only for the accumulation of merit); it taught self-denial without self-torture; it inculcated generosity, charity, tolerance, love, self-sacrifice, and benevolence, even towards the inferior animals; it advocated respect for life and compassion towards all creatures; it forbade avarice and the hoarding of money; and from its declaration that a man’s future depended on his present acts and condition, it did good service for a time in preventing stagnation, stimulating exertion, promoting good works of all kinds, and elevating the character of humanity.
Then again, when it spread to outlying countries it assumed the character of a religion; it taught the existence of unseen worlds; it permitted the offering of prayers to Maitreya and other supposed personal saviours; it inculcated faith and trust in these celestial beings, which operated as good motives in the hearts of many, while the hope of being born in higher conditions of life, and the desire to acquire merit by reverential acts, led to the development of devotional services, which had much in common with those performed in Christian countries. Nay, it must even be admitted that many Buddhists in the present day are deeply imbued with religious feelings, and in no part of the world are the outward manifestations of religion—such as temples and sacred objects of all kinds—so conspicuous as in modern Buddhist countries.
But if, after making all these concessions, I am told that, on my own showing, Buddhism was a kind of introduction to Christianity, or that Christianity is a kind of development of Buddhism, I must ask you to bear with me a little longer, while I point out certain other contrasts, which ought to make it clear to every reasonable man, how vast, how profound, how impassable is the gulf separating the true religion from the false philosophy, and from the later religious systems developed out of it.
And first, observe that Buddhism has never claimed to be an exclusive system. It has never aimed at taking the place of other religions. On the contrary it tolerates all, and a Buddhist considers that he may be at the same time a Hindū, a Confucianist, a Tāoist, a Shintoist, and even, strange to say, a Christian.
A Christian, on the other hand, holds as a cardinal doctrine of his religion, that there is only one Name under heaven given among men, whereby any human being can be saved. To be at the same time a believer in Christ and a believer in Buddha implies an utter contradiction in terms.
Then it need scarcely be repeated here that Christ is before all things a majestic example of a great historic personality. Any really historical, matter-of-fact account of the life of Buddha, like that of the life of Christ by the four Evangelists, may be looked for in vain through all the Buddhist scriptures. The Buddha’s biography is mixed up with such monstrous legends, absurd figments, and extravagant fables, that to attempt the sifting out of any really historical element worthy of being compared with the pregnant simplicity—the dignified brevity of the biography of Christ, would be an idle task.
Still we may note two or three obvious points of comparison and contrast.
And perhaps the most important is, that Christ constantly insisted on the fact that He was God-sent, whereas the Buddha always described himself as self sent. How indeed could the Buddha have said ‘the great I AM hath sent me unto you[287]’ when he had no belief in the eternal existence of any Ego at all? Not even in the reality of his own individuality.
All that he affirmed of himself was that he came into the world to be a teacher of perfect wisdom, by a force derived from his own acts. By that force alone he had passed through innumerable bodies of gods, demi-gods, demons, men, and animals, until he reached one out of numerous heavens, and thence by his own will descended upon earth and entered the side of his mother in the form of a white elephant (see pp. [23], [477]). Let those who speak of his ‘virgin-mother’ bear this in mind.