Mr Vincent A. Smith, in Asoka, Buddhist Emperor of India, suggested that the Chinese Hsiao (piety), and the Latin Pietas, coincide with the Sanscrit term Dharma.
[17] The Chinese phrase is “Fah-sing-chen-ru-hai.”
[18] See the Tao-Teh-Ching. Compare, also, the statement attributed to Confucius—“Nature and Truth cannot be adequately expressed.”
[19] Or Dharma.
[20] Compare The Light of Asia. Perhaps this aspect of the “Law” of Buddha may be conceived of as harmonising with Shakespeare’s idea of a “Divinity.”
[21] It may be interesting to observe that, according to our Chinese text, Sakyamuni Buddha evidently disclaimed any desire to formulate, or to perpetuate, a stereotyped system of “Law” or “doctrine.” Sakyamuni Buddha also made it plain, that the “Law” which he enunciated, was presented before the minds of his disciples in the simile of a “raft”—a thing to be abandoned when the mind “touched the further shore” of everlasting truth. It seems to be in this tentative sense that intellectual Buddhists regard all ecclesiastical institutions, priesthoods, dogmas, ordinances, etc.; and we have met monks who would classify belief in the “efficacy” of religious rites or ceremonies, with obnoxious forms of “heresy” and “immorality.” (Compare Rhys Davids’ Buddhism.) With regard to the Buddhist objection concerning the “efficacy” of religious “rites,” compare the noble sentiments expressed in the following lines, delightfully rendered by Sir Edwin Arnold from the Bhagavad-Gita (The Song Celestial):—
“Serenity of soul, benignity,
Sway of the silent spirit, constant stress
To sanctify the nature,—these things make
Good rite, and true religiousness of mind.”