It may seem a far-fetched hypothesis to attribute part of the present degeneracy of the Buddhist monkhood in China to the teachings of a wall-gazing recluse who died nearly fourteen centuries ago. It might be urged that in searching for the cause of the present state of decay one need only point to the low orders of society from which the monks are recruited, the disfavour with which Buddhism is and always has been regarded by the orthodox Confucian, and the contempt which the thoroughly practical and worldly-minded Chinese layman almost invariably feels and expresses for the monastic profession. That these causes have powerfully assisted in accelerating the corruption that we witness to-day is unquestionably true; but there is a good deal of historical justification for the view that they are results rather than causes of Buddhist decay, and that the first and third would never have come into existence if Buddhism in China had not sunk into a state of intellectual torpor. If it had retained sufficient vigour and independence to reject all esoteric teachings and alien dogmas, even the great controversies with Confucianism would probably never have assumed the bitterness they did. Unfortunately, the extravagances of the later Mahayana doctrines and the foolish eclecticism which led the Buddhist Church to admit into its own system the crudities and banalities of corrupt Taoism, rendered the Buddhist position liable to attack at indefensible points, and compel us to admit that the controversial victories gained by Confucianism over its rival were the victories of light over darkness. It is strange that the repeated defeats and persecutions of Buddhism in China have not had the effect of bringing about either extinction or reform.
Chinese Buddhism is sui generis, and without a qualifying adjective it can scarcely be said to be Buddhism at all. This is no place to attempt a sketch of the history of that great religion in either its orthodox or its heretical aspects, but a few words may be necessary to enable the general reader to judge for himself whether Buddhism in China—quite apart from its present stagnant condition or the corruption of the monkhood—is entitled to the name it bears.
KARMA
If there is one tenet of real Buddhism—by which I mean the doctrines on religious, philosophical and ethical subjects taught or sanctioned by the historical Buddha—which is more characteristic of that system than any other, it is the doctrine of the non-existence of the attā (âtman) or "soul." It was this doctrine, among others, which made Buddhism a Brahmanical heresy, for it involved the rejection of the Vedas as the final and supreme authority on matters of religion. The crude impression of some people that Buddhism teaches the "transmigration of souls" is absurd, for the simple reason that in the Buddhist system "souls" in the Western sense do not exist. What survives the death of the individual and transfers itself to another living being is not his soul but the cleaving to existence, a tanha or thirst for life, an unconscious—or semi-conscious—"will to live"; and with this tanha is inevitably associated karma, the integrated results of action or character. Buddhism regards the cleaving to existence as the outcome of the worst kind of ignorance or delusion—the mistaking of the phenomenal for the real, the false for the true; and until this delusion has been completely removed and the character purified from all lusts and all evil tendencies, the reintegration of karma in a world of pain, sorrow, sickness and death cannot by any possibility be avoided. Karma,[38] apart from its technical connotation, signifies "action" or "deeds." In the Buddhist sense it represents the accumulated results of the past actions and thoughts which every individual has inherited from countless multitudes of dead men, and which he will hand on, modified by the newly-generated karma of his own life-span, to countless generations yet unborn. It is karma which forms the character of each individual, and determines the condition of life in which he finds himself placed. The man dies, and his conscious individuality ceases to be; but his karma continues, and determines the character and condition of life of another individual. Each individual may make or mar the karma that he has inherited: if he spoils it he may literally sink lower than the beasts; if he improves it he may literally rise higher than the gods. But to the Buddhist the final goal to be aimed at was not a continued personal existence, either in this world or elsewhere: it was the total extinction of reproductive karma by the attainment of Arahatship or Nirvana, and final release from the ever-circling wheel of existence, with its endless rotation of birth, disease, sorrow and death.[39]
NIRVANA
On the question of a primum mobile—the force which produced the conditions under which arose the will-to-live with its illusions, and which brought into being the first appearance of karma —Buddhism is agnostic or silent,[40] just as it is on the question of the existence of a supreme God. What Buddhism emphatically teaches is that karma once produced, continues ceaselessly to reproduce itself, carrying with it the modifications impressed upon it by the successive individuals through whom it has "transmigrated"; that the only way to release karma from the wheel of phenomenal existence is to eradicate the desire for a continuance or renewal of conscious personality; and that this end can only be attained by following the Noble Eightfold Path,[41] leading to Nirvana, which was pointed out by the Buddha. Mystical and fanciful interpretations of the meaning of Nirvana were forthcoming at an early date, but the canonical scriptures know nothing of such interpretations. It is quite clear that Nirvana was not the infinite prolongation of individual existence in a state of spiritual beatitude nor an absorption into a pantheistic Absolute; nor was the word intended to be a euphemism for death. It was simply a release from the thraldom of sense and passion; a "blowing-out" of personality and selfishness, of ignorance and delusion; an enfranchisement which in this present life would confer the boon of "the peace which passeth all understanding," and after this life would prevent rebirth, or rather reintegration of karma, in a world of pain and sorrow. To the Buddhist the whole world of sense, in which while subject to karma we live and move and have our being, is an illusion and unreal,—far more so than to the Platonist, to whom the phenomenal world is the reflexion, though an imperfect one, of an ideal archetype; and as the early Buddhist believed that the idea of self or personality was closely interwoven with the net of illusion, he was quite consistent when he held that the destruction of the one must involve the destruction of the other, and that release from the net is a desirable consummation. Nirvana may thus be described as full enlightenment as to the unreality and impermanence of phenomena, the removal of delusions about the self, and the eradication of the cleaving to life. Those who attained this enlightenment were the saints or "arahats" of primitive Buddhism.[42] The Buddha himself, it must be remembered, never laid any claim to godhead or even to personal immortality. His disciples reverenced him as the Fully Enlightened Sage, the Blessed One, the Teacher of gods and men, and he was the expounder of truths by the grasp of which men would be enabled to realise the condition of arahatship; but in the last resort it was to themselves and not to Buddha that men must look for salvation. "Therefore, O Ananda," said the Buddha in one of his last discourses, "be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold fast as a refuge to the truth. Look not for refuge to any one besides yourselves."[43]
AMITABHISM
How vastly different are the teachings of Chinese Buddhists from those of the simple creed promulgated by the Buddha is obvious to all who have visited a Chinese monastery, or glanced at the wearisome sutras, in which the unorthodox dogmas are so elaborately set forth. The Brahmanical belief in the âtman or "soul" is practically reintroduced; arahatship is no longer the ideal to be aimed at by the virtuous man; Nirvana ceases to have any intelligible meaning; faith takes the place of works as a means to salvation. Celestial (Dhyâni) Buddhas are invented as heavenly reflexes of the various human Buddhas that are supposed to have lived on earth, and some of them receive worship as immortal gods; arahats are regarded as inferior to a class of mythical Bodhisattvas, who purposely refrain from entering into the state of Buddhahood in order that they may continue to exercise a beneficent influence among the beings who are still bound to the wheel of existence; the most glorious lot attainable by the ordinary man is held to be not a release from delusion and the pains of birth, sickness, and death, but a final rebirth in the glittering Paradise of the West. In this Paradise reigns the Lord of Eternal Life and Boundless Light, the great Dhyâni Buddha Amitabha; on his right and left are enthroned the Bodhisattvas Mahâsthâma and Avalokiteçvara,[44] the lords of infinite strength and pity, the saviours of mankind. To win utter happiness in Sukhâvatî, the Western Paradise, is the object of the longings and prayers of the devout Chinese Buddhist. The name of Sakyamuni Buddha means little to him, and he may even be ignorant of who the Buddha was, and where he lived; but the names of "O-mi-to-fo" (Amitabha Buddha)[45] and of Kuan Yin P'u Sa (the Bodhisattva Avalokiteçvara) stand to him for everything that is holiest and most blissful. To such an extent have Amitabha and his attendant Bodhisattvas taken the place of the "Three Refuges"[46] of orthodox Buddhism that one almost feels justified in suggesting that the prevailing (though not the only) form of Buddhism in China should once and for all be differentiated from that of Burma and Ceylon, by the adoption of the name of Amitabhism, just as the corrupt religion of Tibet has rightly been given the special name of Lamaism.
If the Mahayana teachers in China had been satisfied with substituting the doctrine of a more or less sensual heaven for that of the orthodox arahatship or Nirvana on the ground that it was more suited to the comprehension of the ordinary layman, and would be more effective in teaching the people to lead virtuous lives, their distortion of the early teachings might, perhaps, to some extent be justified; but unfortunately the form which the new doctrine took at a very early stage shows that no such theory was in their minds. Instead of exhorting to strenuous lives of virtue and good works, they went out of their way to teach that nothing was really necessary to salvation but loud and frequent appeals to the name of Amitabha Buddha and zealous repetitions of the appropriate sutras. One of the principal sutras of this class contains the following emphatic statement:—"Beings are not born in that Buddha country of the Tathâgata Amitâyus as a reward and result of good works performed in this present life. No, whatever son or daughter of a family shall hear the name of the blessed Amitâyus, the Tathâgata, and having heard it, shall keep it in mind, and with thoughts undisturbed shall keep it in mind for one, two, three, four, five, six or seven nights,—when that son or daughter of a family comes to die, then that Amitâyus, the Tathâgata, surrounded by an assembly of disciples and followed by a host of Bodhisattvas, will stand before them at their hour of death, and they will depart this life with tranquil minds. After their death they will be born in the world Sukhâvatî, in the Buddha country of the same Amitâyus, the Tathâgata. Therefore, then, O Sâriputra, having perceived this cause and effect, I with reverence say thus, Every son and every daughter of a family ought with their whole mind to make fervent prayer for that Buddha country."[47] Numerous Buddhist tracts are in existence and widely circulated among the people, in which it is explicitly stated that if a man calls sufficiently often on the name of Kuan Yin, he will be delivered from any danger or difficulty in which he may be placed, quite regardless of his deserts. There are popular stories in which it is told that even if a man be guilty of grave crimes for which he has been imprisoned and condemned to death, the knife of the executioner will break in pieces and do him no hurt provided only he has, with a believing heart, summoned to his aid the "Goddess of Mercy." Stories of this kind, even if educated men do not believe in them, can hardly have a beneficent effect upon morality, and hardly redound to the credit of the monks who invented them.