It will be seen that the most remarkable feature of the Buddha’s teaching, so far as it has been stated in the preceding Lectures, was that he altogether ignored the existence in human nature of any spiritual aspirations, affections, or instincts higher than or distinct from the natural aspirations, affections, and instincts of humanity; and of any force outside of human nature capable of aiding a man’s own efforts in his struggle for salvation. Not that he reviled, or poured contempt on the religion prevalent among his fellow-countrymen, but that he found no place in his system for an external Ruler and Controller of the Universe, and would have stultified his own teaching had he acknowledged a Supreme Creator, guiding and upholding all things by His will, and always at hand to co-operate with His creatures and listen to their supplications.
If it were possible, in short, to condense into a categorical statement the scattered utterances of a man whose teaching was rarely dogmatic, we might affirm that it was to the effect that for any man to depend on a Being higher than himself, or to centre the noblest affections of his nature on a merciful, just, and holy God, whose presence he yearned for, whose aid he prayed for, and to whose image he longed to be assimilated—was a mere delusion, though perhaps a harmless one. He therefore set aside every supposed supernatural revelation as useless and incapable of proof. He prescribed no prayer, he enjoined no form of worship, he established no real church, and instead of a priesthood or clergy, ordained to aid men in their progress heavenwards or to console them in the trials of life, he founded an Order of Monks pledged to denounce human life as not worth living, and bound to abstain from all participation in human affairs.
It is true that he deserves commendation for having substituted moral conduct for useless superstitious rites, but his moral code had no other aim than the suppression of lusts and desires ([p. 139, note 2]), and his peculiar stoical philosophy had no other object than the removal of the ignorance which obstructed the path to true knowledge—the knowledge that all life is fraught with pain and misery, and not worth perpetuating.
It is admitted, too, that its moral precepts were of a high order; but it promised man no divine aid in observing them, it supplied him with no motive power except the selfish hope of benefiting himself in future states of corporeal existence, and it provided no remedy in case his attempts to obey its injunctions ended in failure. How, indeed, could it do any of these things when its only idea of sin was not the infraction of God’s law, but the commission of an act fraught with evil consequences to the doer?
Furthermore, it was guilty of the inconsistency of bidding a man cherish a fellow-feeling for others and diligently engage in all good works, while it made his true salvation depend on his giving up all love for wife and children, and setting before himself, as his final goal, a condition of absolute indifference and inactivity.
What, therefore, I am at present concerned to point out is that, if the essential doctrines of primitive Buddhism were of the character thus summarized, a rebound from one extreme to another became inevitable, and that such a reaction was due to the very nature of the original teaching of its Founder. In point of fact it was not a development that took place, but a recoil—like the recoil of a spring held down for a time by a powerful hand and then released. And this resulted from the simple working of the eternal instincts of humanity, which insisted on making themselves felt notwithstanding the unnatural restraint to which the Buddha had subjected them; so that every doctrine he taught developed by a kind of irony of fate into a complete contradiction of itself.
Let us take a few examples:—
Buddhism, we know, started with the doctrine that all idea of marriage, or of happy home-life, was to be abandoned by wise men—by all who aimed at becoming true Buddhists (in direct contradistinction, we may note, to the primary Christian truth that it is not good for created man to be alone, and that therefore his Creator created a help meet for him—a truth confirmed in a remarkable manner by the Founder of the Christian Church when He gave the first sign of His divine commission at a marriage ceremony).
What, then, followed on the Buddha’s original unnatural teaching in regard to marriage?
Of course an immediate result was that, although according to the Buddha’s ordinance any one who aimed at perfect sanctity was bound to lead a celibate life, the rule against marriage was admitted to be inapplicable to the majority of human beings living in the world. The mass of the people, in short, were necessarily offenders against the primary law of Buddhism. Though called lay-Buddhists, they were not ‘wise men’ in the Buddhist sense of the term (pp. [86], [88]). There is even evidence that among certain monkish communities in Northern countries the law against marriage was soon relaxed. It is well known that at the present day Lamaseries in Sikkim and Tibet swarm with the children of monks, though called their nephews and nieces[62]. And far worse than this, Buddhism ultimately allied itself with Tāntrism or the worship of the female principle (ṡakti), and under its sanction encouraged the grossest violations of decency and the worst forms of profligacy.