BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY.*
THE comparison between the religions of Christ and of Buddha is fascinating to minds of various orders. We have before us two books which make this comparison from opposite sides, one by a Presbyterian minister, the other by a member of the Buddhist Order or Brotherhood of the Elect. Dr. Scott approaches the subject confessedly as an amateur, "who only knows Indian books through the medium of European translations, and who has not seldom been compelled to take on trust what he felt strongly inclined to question." He has -merely sought to popularise the results of the labours of many learned students of this subject. "Others," he writes in his preface, "have extracted the ore from these old and interesting fields, and minted it into gold and silver. What has thus been rendered available, many like myself can only reduce into copper and bronze ; but if only our work be faith- fully done, we may thus help in increasing the currency and in extending its circulation." A hard task, one would have thought, to turn gold and silver into copper and bronze ! But despite this unhappy phrase, which rather suggests the operation. of "increasing the currency" by debasing it, we think that Dr. Scott is too modest, and that his volume contains some pure gold ; and we trust it may have a circulation among those who have not learning or leisure -enough for volumes more heavily weighted with that precious metal. We will seek to test the gold in one or two places by the touchstone of the Buddhist Catechism. which Subhadra Bhikshu (we know not of what land) has written" for the intelli- gent appreciation of educated populations containing in a compendious form the essential doctrine of the Teacher, stripped of the trappings with which the superstition and -childish conception of Eastern peoples had, in the long course of ages, sought to adorn it." Twenty years ago, Mr. Alabaster introduced us to the views of another "Modern Buddhist," who was well enough read in Western Agnosticism to know, -or to think, that Bud dhism, if only sufficiently stripped of its trappings of superstition, might possibly gain a hearing in Europe. However, we have no desire to compare modern Or :ancient Buddhism with Western Agnosticism, but rather to 'read Dr. Scott and Subluidiu Bhikshu by the help of the light -which they may mutually throw upon one another.
Within the limits of six lectures, Dr. Scott only treats the 'subject in broad outline ; but he succeeds in presenting the salient features in a clear and comprehensive fashion. The ..comparison is made between the historical antecedents of the two systems, and the evidential value of their Sacred Books ; between the character of the Buddha and the Christ, as presented by their Sacred Books; between their respective Gospels; between the Buddhist Order and the Christian church; and between the two religions in their historical .development. Very fairly, we think, he endeavours to place 'Christianity by the side of Buddhism as it was originally taught, rather than with Iluddhism as it is now held by most -of its nominal adherents, although when he comes to consider the suitability of the religion to the deepest- needs of man, he has a strong case in drawing attention to the fact that -two of the fundamental articles of Gautama's creed, the non- -existence of God, and the non -existence of Soul, have never been accepted by the great majority of professing Buddhists.
On these two points, what do we learn from the Buddhist 'Catechism? Subluidra asserts that Buddhism neither denies -nor affirms the existence of gods, as "they are not required 'for the attainment of moral perfection and salvation." 'That is, there may be Beings in a higher sphere whom, if you please, you may call gods, but they have no control -over our lives, and so there is no use in praying to them for help. This is practical Atheism, and in this sense Gautama was clearly an Atheist, and it is equally certain that the vast mass of Buddhists are not in this sense Atheists, but that they do worship some outside Being or Beings believed to be Mg], r than themselves.
Then, as regards the existence of soul and a future life, the Buddha's doctrine of transmigration was rather of a trans- migration of character than of soul. As Dr. Scott says :— ." Though there was no person, no soul to emigrate from the body, though the man perished, -there was something which he called the Karma—a word coined by old Brahman sages,
(1.) Buddhism and Cliri4ionity: a Parotid and a Contra. fly Arohihed ,Seott, D D. Edinburgh David Dowdao.— (2) A Buddhist Catookism, By .Enbladra, 13hilcohu. London: George Lthyny,
though used by them in a difference sense—that survived. The aggregate of good and evil in the life that had come to an end formed the seed of another existence, so that each new individual and generation became the exact and inevitable results of those that had preceded them." This doctrine, he points out, was from the first "a difficulty to the Buddhists themselves. Their learned men never pro- fessed to justify it to reason, but accepted it as a mystery, in open contradiction to their principle that everything was to be rejected which could not be comprehended or explained. The common people, again, simply ignored it, and adhered to the belief of their fathers in continuity of life and personal identity for man in the future." Turning to the Buddhist Catechism for further light on this mystery, we are rather disapPointed, as we are told that "it is most difficult to put in a few words to the European student, grown up in totally, different ideas, what is meant by Karma. Oral instruction is indispensable to full explanation." However, we learn that "the substance called 'Soul' by the followers of European religions is nothing but an aggregate of various higher or lower faculties (shandhas), and is dissolved after death into its constituent elements. What is re- materialised in a fresh birth is not the soul, but the indi- viduality ;" or, as he says in another place, "the individual will, or desire, to live which constitutes the essence of our being is reincorporated in another form." The word " indi- viduality " is not here used in any subjective sense of conscious personality, but in the purely objective sense of distinctive- ness. It is written in the Dhammapada : "All that we are is the result of what we have done; it is founded on our doing ; it is made up of our doing." What, then, is passed on in the process of transmigration is not "ourselves," but "our doing."
To the question, "Then the reincarnated being is, in fact, no longer the same as before ?" the answer given in the Catechism is : "It might seem so to the ignorant; but he who has arrived at true insight knows certainly that it is the same being working good and evil, and reaping the fruit thereof in another reitharnation;" to which the following note is added : "To prove to the uninitiated reader how a man can to a certain degree become quite another, without losing his identity, it will suffice to point out to him the difference in the stages of life. The old man is quite other than the infant, and none the less both are one and the same person." Of course, this last analogy fails in the important respect of continuance of consciousness and memory. We have no remembrance of our former lives, whereas the old man remembers many of tke events of his earliest youth. This difficulty is attempted to be met by a comparison with dreams :—" Whilst dreaming, we do not remember other dreams we have had ; but when awake we remember the dreams of many a night. It is the same with our different lives. The same individuality, the same self is reborn under different forms ; each reincarnation is a dream of the individual will to live,' now terrible, now full of joy. As long as we are dreaming one of these dreams of life, we do not remember our former life-dreams. But a Buddha who has attained deliverance dreams no longer. He is awakened, and be remembers all his former births." This is an ingenious illus- tration; but we venture to doubt whether Gautama himself ever professed to remember anything of his former births. The oldest Buddhist writings, as remarked by Mr. Rhys Davids, Oldenberg, and others, tell us that Gautama at his enlightenment came to apprehend "the wanderings of spirits in the mazes of transmigration ; " it is only in later legends that he is described as knowing exactly what had happened in each of his own previous existences. The original book of the Jatakas did not contain references to the previous lives of the Buddha, which were apparently added by the com- mentator on the stories; and so the fables and romances which Gautama seems to have woven in his discourses were by his followers in after-ages turned into stories of Buddha himself in his previous births. This, we are aware, is a disputed point ; but, in any case,' we have it on the authority of Subliii,dra Bhikshu that, besides Buddha, only Arahats "possess the gift of remembering many of their former births ; " and Arahats arc beings who have attained Nirvana, or, as we may briefly translate it, conscious peace, and after death pass into Parinirvana,—i.e., unconscious peace, or, as Subluidra prefers to define it, "the everlasting true existence, where all suffering, individuality, separate being, and transmigration are at an end." Thus the memory of former existences, full self-consciousness, only cornea to a being at the end of his long career, just before he passes into a state where there is no self to be conscious of. How can this doctrine form a motive towards morality ? If not but another, or at any rate an ego that is not conscious of being " I," is hereafter to suffer for my ill-deeds, what motive from self-interest is there for my refraining :from evil-doing? It seems a purely altruistic motive, and yet Subhildra. Bhikshu makes no attempt to call it altruism. On the other hand, he appeals to heaven and hell to influence men quite as strongly as any Christian, Jew, or Mohammedan, the only difference being that (like many Christians of whom apparently this Buddhist -writer has never heard) he does not believe that any one remains in hell for ever, but only "until he has reaped the bitter fruit of his evil doings." Probably the ordinary Buddhist who hopes by a virtuous life to win heaven, or Nirvana, where he himself, his very conscious self, and not any result of himself or of his "doing," will live a long and happy life, does not bother his mind with the ques- tion "As I am not in this life conscious of any previous existence, how do I know that I shall be in. my next birth con- scious of my present self,—in fact, how do I know that I shall be I F" If the unlettered Buddhist often asked himself this question, he would probably soon get into the state of mind -of the old woman in the nursery-rhyme who, on waking -up one day to find her petticoats cut short, lost her sense of personal identity. There is only one other point that we have room to refer to, —namely, that Dr. Scott points out that the transmigration doctrine is bound up with pessimism, whereas the belief in the immortality of the soul (as held by Christians, at any rate) should be a hopeful, optimistic doctrine :—" The existence of evil is admitted by both, but the Buddhist believes that evil belongs to the very essence of man, and therefore he can find -no prospect of relief from it, here or hereafter. For as long as the stream of existence continues, it will always fall below its source, and evil, according to the inexorable rule of Nature, will propagate only evil. The Hebrew, however, did not conceive of it as essential to or as always in the nature of man. His ancestral beliefs carry him beyond the Fall ; his pedigree starts with the most sublime theory of helium origin that has ever been formulated in hum= speech ; 'Let us make man in our image and after our likeness.'" As water seeks its own level, the stream of existence will even- tually return to its source, and pan be restored to the image of God. Dr. Scott, however, hints in the following sen- tence, his own opinion that the restoration may not come about as the result of the training of this life only, but possibly after many lives, successive states of probation : 4' Probably we may have something to learn" from the Buddhist doctrine of transmigration, "by way of correcting the idea that true moral and spiritual excellence, perfection, saintliness, is the growth of a single life."
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