On Buddhism

"An English Buddhist," the author of a very valuable and lucid essay on the real nature of Buddhism in the Buddhist Annual of Ceylon, seems to me to be a rather disconcerting ally for most other English Buddhists. At least, he would hardly be popular with those English Buddhists who more often call themselves Theosophists. The nearest Theosophy can come to being a popular religion is a romance of reincarnation. In other words, it is a romance about the soul remaining immortally itself, through the disguises of many different lives. The "English Buddhist" not only denies this immortality of the soul, but he denies the very existence of the soul. Indeed he denies the very existence of the self. Existence is simply a destructive cataract of perpetually disappearing thoughts and feelings, at no moment of which can anybody be said to possess anything, least of all a personality. As nobody has any personality, naturally nobody has any personal immortality. Indeed, the writer begins with a series of spirited and trenchant negatives. They at least refreshingly remind us that the English Buddhist is a very English Buddhist. He is anxious to maintain that Buddhism did not begin with Asiatics, but with no

ON BUDDHISM iii

"men of the Aryan race"j and certainly there is something in his own tone of the fighting spirit of the European. I hope he will allow another man of Aryan race, who prefers to call himself a European and a Christian, to quote in order his clear statements about Buddhism, and to append to each of them the obvious comment of Christianity. First, he says of Buddhism, "It is not a worship of the Buddha": in other words, it does not give men anybody or anything to worship. Second, "It is not any form of Pantheism": that is, it is not any form of theism j it has no God and certainly none so healthy as Pan. Third, "It has nothing to do with any theories of the origin of the Universe": that is, it does not satisfy the immortal intellectual curiosity of man about the origin of the Universe. Fourth, "It is not a body of dogma to be received as faith, on the authority of the Buddha, or of anyone else": no, it is a body of doubts to be entertained about everybody, including the Buddha and everybody else. Fifth, "It contains no esoteric mysteries": that is, it contains nothing of what nearly all our Theosophists meant when they called themselves Esoteric Buddhists. Sixth, "It does not teach the transmigration of souls": that is, it does not teach the one thing which nearly all its teachers in this country have especially recommended it as teaching. Seventh, "It contains no system or college of ^priests,' for there are no priestly functions to perform": in other words, there are no practical functions to perform. There is nothing for anybody to give to anybody J nothing for anybody to do for anybody j no substance or support that anybody has in store for anybody j no daily bread, no pardon of trespasses, and no deliverance from evil.

Thus does the English Buddhist make a sweeping and ruthless clearance of the whole of Buddhism as commonly offered to the English. Of the extraordinary thing that he offers instead I will say something in a moment. But let me pause, before passing on, upon one of these very rapid but very rigid repudiations— the abrupt and absolute repudiation of the transmigration of souls. To twenty-nine men out of a hundred, being told that Buddhists do not believe in the transmigration of souls will be just like being told that Moslems do not believe in the Koran or that Spiritualists do not believe in spiritual communications from the dead. In short, it will be like being told that Calvinists never believe in Calvin or that Communists have a horror of Communism. It amused me to reflect what a vast number of novels of the occult sort were swept into the dustbin by that one swift gesture of the English Buddhist. At least, I fear they are not really swept into the dustbin, or even into the twopence-any-volume box. I fear that the fashionable and popular novelists who write best-sellers about Egyptian princesses reincarnated as English and American heroines will not suffer any serious decline in their sales in consequence of a metaphysical essay printed in a paper in Ceylon. I fear that Dorinda and Her Dead Selves will continue to appear on the bookstalls in a lurid cover representing a large idol with green eyes. I fancy that The Nine Lives of Norma Hellways will still be adorned with press-notices saying that he who opens the book will open the abyss of abysses. Only for a moment can we indulge in the beautiful and consoling vision in which books of this kind are never written any more, but dissolve into Nirvana and endless night. Dorinda and her dead selves are evidently not dead but only damned 3 and those acquainted with the character of Norma Hellways will concede that a cat is allowed to have nine lives. But whether or no Norma has nine lives, she is very likely to have nine editions. And whether or no the lady reincarnates herself in an endless series of bodies, the author will doubtless embody himself in an endless series of books. Whether or no the spirit of man can die, the spirit of man's credulity and vulgarity and love of tenth-rate hocus-pocus will not die, at any rate in our timej and whether or no these special spiritual personalities can return, things as mean and morbid and idolatrous and silly will return, until something happens that is not provided for in the transmigration of souls, and trash can no longer triumph over truth.

Anyhow, the English Buddhist in Ceylon has no use for that sort of nonsense. I congratulate him on his repudiation, if I cannot in all respects congratulate him on his substitute. Having given his definite and devastating summary of what Buddhism is not, he goes on to give a most interesting and even important summary of what it is. It is, so far as I can make out, simply a metaphysical meditation along the lines of fundamental scepticism. We are unhappy, it says, because we are continually acting or thinking or feeling on the assumption that something or other is actual and attainable and profitable. But instead of seeking for something, we should rather realize that there is no such thing as anything. Everything that seems to exist is in the very act of ceasing to exist j so that desire is literally another name for disappointment. "Life in its light becomes a never-ceasing passing, a flux, a changing, a thing in its very inner essence passing, never the same for two successive instants of its time... in all life, even in the highest sentient life, there is nothing that can be regarded as psychic substance, thing, or soul. This is the central doctrine of the teaching, it is the cardinal point of its enlightenment." The writer is quite clear and courageous on this point j he makes it perfectly plain that this creed does not say, as many creeds do say, that material things change but the soul survives them 5 it distinctly says that the soul has not an atom more survival than the material things, and indeed that there is no soul to survive. It is idle to talk about a personal identity in a future life, because there is no personal identity even in this life. Now, I am not going to develop in this place a philosophical criticism of this philosophy. I merely wish to point out what the philosophy is, according to one of its most lucid philosophers. I should like to draw attention to one or two points in the practical and moral question of consequences. The writer does indeed go on to maintain that the practical and moral consequences of this view involve the loftiest practice and the purest morality. But this latter part of his essay is certainly the cloudiest and least convincing part of it. I willingly believe that any number of Buddhists are very good men, but I cannot see that the theory itself, as here so lucidly enunciated, has any particular tendency to make men good.

For instance, the Buddhists call Buddha the Lord of Compassion J and I think I begin to understand what those who hold this theory mean by compassion. It seems to me almost the opposite of what Christians mean by charity. The rough, shorthand way of putting the difference is that the Christian pities men because they are dying, and the Buddhist ii6 GENERALLY SPEAKING pities them because they are living. The Christian is sorry for what damages the life of a man 5 but the Buddhist is sorry for him because he is alive. At any rate, he is sorry for him because he is himself. "The next principle is that Dukka, Suffering or, better, Dissatisfaction, is inherent and involved in life. This, of course, has been already stated in the first of the Four Holy Truths, in which we are not only reminded that the incidents which inevitably wait every living thing, birth, decay, sickness, death, are painful; but that the very conditions of individual existence are fraught with sorrow too." When a Christian saint healed a lame man, he assumed that legs are a legitimate satisfaction. When a Christian hospital cures a sick man, it assumes that life is a potential pleasure. I cannot see, on the argument, why a Buddhist saint or hospital should help a man to anything — except perhaps to Buddhism. And surely the disappointment of all desire is as applicable to benevolent desires as to selfish desires. If Faust can never say, "Oh still delay, thou art so fair," why should he say it any more when he is a philanthropist than when he was a philanderer?