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The History of Buddhist Thought c27: Chapter XIX. Buddhism and Modern Thought

The History of Buddhist Thought c27

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English

Chapter XIX. Buddhism and Modern Thought

c27.2

THE spread of Buddhism into other countries does not properly form a part of the history of Buddhist thought, except in so far as the mingling of cultures may have produced new schools. Theoretically there was no development. All schools claimed to be holding the word of Buddha, and in one sense they were right. The Buddhism of Ceylon spread to Burma, Siam, and Cambodia.¹ There are sects and ecclesiastical differences, but the doctrine is still that of the Pāli Scriptures. The Tibetans and the Chinese, followed by the Koreans and Japanese, received Mahāyāna Buddhism. Now it is Japan which is chiefly active in devotion to the doctrine, and the schools of Japan still find the Buddha word in the sūtras of the Mahāyāna schools which they received from the Chinese.

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¹ Both in Burma and Cambodia there are traces of Mahāyāna, but at present Hinayāna flourishes.

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The Buddhism of Tibet and the Far East is important in the first place through the fact that most of the Mahāyāna literature and a good number of Sarvāstivāda works were translated first into Chinese and later into Tibetan. From the Tibetan followed Mongolian translations. Since much of the literature in the original Sanskrit has disappeared, these translations come to be of the highest importance. The Tibetan translations, owing to the structure of the language, have been done in such a faithful manner that it is often possible to reconstruct the original Sanskrit. The translation of the Scriptures known as the Kanjur (bkah-hgyur) in 100 or 108 volumes was completed between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. There is also a collection of commentaries and secular works known as the Tanjur (bstan-hgyur).² Tibetan Buddhism, except for some historical and grammatical works, has been little but a development of the less worthy elements introduced from India along with superstitions of its own.

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² An analysis of the Kanjur and a slighter one of the Tanjur was given by Csoma in *Asiatic Researches*, xx, 1836, ff. Revised edition by L. Feer, Lyons, 1881. There is a detailed analysis of the Tanjur in P. Cordier's *Catalogue du fonds tibétain de la Bibliothèque nationale*, Paris, 1909–1915.

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In China, Mahāyāna entered on new phases of development. Legend places the introduction of Buddhism into China in A.D. 68, when the Emperor Min-ti invited two monks from north-west India to China, where they undertook to translate Buddhist works.¹ The work of establishing the doctrine was done through a series of Indian scholars and Chinese travellers. Among the travellers are three who stand out both on account of the records of their journeys as well as for the large number of works which they took back to China. Fa Hien travelled between A.D. 399 and 413. Hiuen Tsiang (Yuan Chwang), who spent some fifteen years in India (629–645), brought back hundreds of books. His work as translator and commentator gave a great impulse to the establishing of Yogāchāra doctrine, but he collected works of all schools, and it is chiefly due to him that we owe the preservation of the Vinaya of several schools. I-tsing travelled somewhat later (671–695), and followed Sarvāstivāda doctrine. He records the names of over fifty Chinese monks who travelled in India. The chief period of translation was between the fifth and the seventh centuries, but relations with India continued to the twelfth.²

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¹ They are said to have taken with them and translated the Sūtra of the forty-two Sections. This is not a sūtra in the ordinary sense, but a fairly complete summary of the doctrine, made up chiefly of a collection of Buddha's utterances. There is no trace of Mahāyāna doctrines in it. It is given in Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot, by the Rt. Rev. Soyen Shaku, Chicago, 1906. The best account of the missions is in P. C. Bagchi, Le Canon bouddhique en Chine, Paris, 1926.

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² See article by J. Takakusu on Yuan Chwang, etc., in ERE.

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In the sixth century Buddhism reached Japan by way of Korea. Schools had already arisen in China which became established in Japan. One school, however, the Nichiren sect, is recognized as due to the reforming activity of the Japanese Nichiren.³

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³ There is a traditional list of twelve Japanese sects, which do not represent the actual conditions. See R. Fujishima, Le bouddhisme japonais. Some of the twelve were never sects, and Sir C. Eliot (Enc. Brit., xii, 928) omits three and puts in their place three branches of the Tendai sect. There are, however, far more than twelve if branches are recognized. See p. 256.

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It is only recently that studies have been made on a scale which will make it possible to give an adequate account of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. Japanese scholars have produced valuable works, and it is chiefly to them that we must look for further light.¹

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¹ O. Rosenberg’s *Die Probleme der buddhistischen Philosophie* is not only a work of fundamental importance for the history of Buddhism, but gives a special treatment of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism drawn from Japanese sources. It contains an extensive bibliography. An extremely important work for Japanese Buddhism is *Habogirin*, an encyclopædic dictionary of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, now being issued by S. Lévi and J. Takakusu.

c27.13

It was quite impossible for either Chinese or Japanese to recognize any chronological sequence in the mass of doctrinal works that they received. They could not even, like the Mahāyānists of India, set aside the Āgamas of the Tripiṭaka as superseded. Hence they invented quite artificial methods to explain the different portions of the literature as partial or complete revelations of the teaching. The Tendai school made five divisions: (1) the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, which was taught in the second week after the enlightenment, (2) the Āgamas (i.e. of the Sarvāstivādins), which for twelve years were taught at Benares, (3) certain Mahāyāna-sūtras, such as the Laṅkāvatāra and Suvarṇaprabhāsa, which were taught for eight years, (4) the Prajñāpāramitā-sūtras, for twenty-two years, and lastly (5) the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka (the Lotus) and the Mahānirvāṇa-sūtra, taught for eight years.² The two last sūtras are the Scriptures at the Tendai (T’ien-t’ai) school, which reached Japan in the eighth century. As will have been seen (p. 185) the Lotus does not expound metaphysical questions. It is really a theology preaching an eternal Buddha and an infinity of bodhisattva saviours. Its philosophical principles are those of the Void and conventional and absolute truth. The Rev. Yamakami says, “the mountains soar high up in the air, the water flows in the river, stars adorn the sky, the flowers beautify the earth : all these have distinctive existences. These existences, however, are not real, but are only conventional. In other words, they are subject to the law of causation; they could not have their respective existences without causes and conditions. This law of causation is technically called ‘the principle of conventionality’ in the Tendai school. And the ‘law of causation’, according to this school, is nothing but an active principle of the Truth or Reality; hence individual existences in the universe are not independent manifestations apart from the Reality . . . We must not, therefore, forget that in every phenomenon or individual we may recognize the light of Truth. Or more buddhistically speaking, we should comprehend that the mountains, which soar high up in the air, the water which flows in the stream, the stars that adorn the sky, or the flowers which decorate the earth, are all manifestations of the supreme reality; therefore we may enjoy the enchanting views of the realm of Truth through their manifestation.”¹

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² Fujishima, loc. cit., p. 71; cf. Rosenberg, p. 255.

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¹ *Systems*, p. 274.

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This beautiful nebulosity may even be harmonized with the thoughts of a Tennyson or a Rousseau, but how does the philosophy behind it compare with the metaphysical systems of the West? East and West have each been occupied with their special problems. Has either anything to learn from the other? The doctrine of the Void with its inconceivable reality and its relative truth looks much like the deserted tabernacles of Schopenhauer and Herbert Spencer, but its actual value still awaits adequate exposition and estimation as philosophy.

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From the religious point of view the differences are more fundamental. To the West the theology or buddhology of the Lotus is fantastic, and Mahāyāna, having deserted the historical standpoint of early Buddhism, had nothing but this to put in its place. In theology most of the great world religions have avoided pantheism. No Indian system of monism has been able to escape it.

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But not even the Rev. Yamakami finds the Tendai school final. It is the *Avataṃsaka*, he finds, which marks the final development of Buddhist philosophy. This (and the Tendai) are the last and also the best products of Buddhist thought. There are also four other schools which seek to realize these doctrines by experiment and practice, the *Mantra* (*Shingon*), the *Dhyāna* (*Zen*), the *Sukhāvatīvyūha* (*Jodo*), and the Japanese Nichiren school.

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The *Avataṃsaka* (*Kegon*) school takes its name from the Scripture of that school, the *Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra*, “discourse of the adornments of Buddha.”² It is really a collection of sūtras, one of them being the *Daśabhūmika*, which has already been discussed (p. 204). Mr. Suzuki describes it as “the consummation of Buddhist thought, Buddhist sentiment, and Buddhist experience. To my mind, no religious literature in the world can ever approach the grandeur of conception, the depths of feeling, and the gigantic scale of composition, as attained by this sūtra. It is the eternal fountain of life from which no religious mind will turn back athirst or only partially satisfied . . . Here not only deeply speculative minds find satisfaction, but humble spirits and heavily oppressed hearts, too, will have their burdens lightened. Abstract truths are so concretely, so symbolically, represented here that one will finally come to a realization of the truth that even in a particle of dust the whole universe is seen reflected—not this visible universe only, but a vast system of universes, conceivable by the highest minds only.” ¹

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² Analysis in Vasiliev, *Buddhism*, p. 173.

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¹ Studies, p. 95.

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Although this sūtra was, we are told, the first preached by Buddha, men of slow intellect, like Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana, were unable to understand a word of it. Hence for their sakes he taught the Hinayāna doctrine, to disciples the four Truths, and to Pratyekabuddhas the Chain of Causation. With this sūtra we still stand on purely Indian ground, for the philosophy is that of Yogāchāra. What it means for a Japanese can be seen from the impressive words of Mr. Suzuki. There is no doubt that Buddhism of that kind is religion. One point may be noticed here in connection with the universal character of Mahāyāna. The goal for everyone is Buddhahood, but in order to attain the Truth as understood by Yogāchāra it is also necessary through long ages to fulfil the career of a bodhisattva and become a Buddha, and yet not in the highest sense a Buddha, but Buddha, Tathatā, absolute reality. Other schools, especially those popular with the laity, chose a less arduous way.

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The mystical side of Yogāchāra was emphasized by the teaching of the Zen school,² which was brought to China from south India by Bodhidharma in the sixth century. Suzuki has shown ³ that the school held their teaching to be contained in the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra, but their tendency was to reject any external doctrinal statement as authority. Their whole method and system was meditation (dhyāna). As Ma-tsu, a pupil of Bodhidharma, said, “O monks, when you each believe that you yourself are the Buddha, your mind is no other than the Buddha-mind. The object of Bodhidharma who came from Southern India to this Middle Kingdom was to personally transmit and propagate the supreme law of One Mind by which we are all to be awakened to the truth.”¹ That is all the teaching, and there remains hardly anything in the system characteristic of Buddhism. Suzuki says that it “grew up as a native product of Chinese genius”. It reached Japan as late as the twelfth century.

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² Chinese shan, from Skt. dhyāna.

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³ Essays in Zen Buddhism and Studies, p. 44.

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¹ Suzuki, Studies, p. 46.

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Of the Shingon or Mantra school little is known. The terms that are used are those of Tantra, but more information is wanted. One peculiar method of its propaganda, says Rosenberg, was that it interpreted the doctrines of other religions in a Buddhist sense, and the gods of Shintoism were explained as incarnations of various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

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For both schools of Mahāyāna full enlightenment and salvation are attained only by ages of striving and sacrifice in the career of the bodhisattva. That ideal remained, but the Jodo (Pure Land) school there is another tendency, although the final end remained the same. This was to aim at being reborn in Sukhāvatī, the Happy Land, the heaven of the Buddha Amitābha at the western point of space, and this was achieved, as has been seen, by devotion to Amitābha and Avalokiteśvara and sharing in their merits. It was not a substitute for the goal of enlightenment, for Avalokiteśvara’s vow was that he would go on taking beings to Sukhāvatī to hear the doctrine preached by Amitābha until all should be set in the highest enlightenment.

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The idea of sharing in the merits of a saintly being is not peculiar to Mahāyāna or even to Buddhism, and it contains an element of truth. No being is morally self-made. There is no calculating the extent to which the moral development of one individual may be due to the influence of others. But this is not the way in which Buddhism looked at it. Good karma produced a store of merit, which might be transferred to others. The idea is found even in the Pāli Jātakas, and it is much extended in the worship of the bodhisattvas, and can be seen in its fullest extent in the Scriptures of this school, the two *Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtras* and the *Amitāyurdhyāna-sūtra*. There we are told : “ Not on account of a mere root of goodness are beings born in the Buddha country of the Tathāgata Amitāyus. Whatever son or daughter of good family shall hear the name of the Lord Amitāyus, and having heard it shall reflect upon it, and for one, two, three, four, five, six, or seven nights shall reflect upon it with undisturbed minds, when they come to die the Tathāgata Amitāyus attended by the assembly of disciples and followed by a host of bodhisattvas will stand before them, and they will die with unconfused minds. After death they will be born even in the Buddha-country of the Tathāgata Amitāyus, in the world Sukhāvatī.” ¹

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¹ Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha, § 10. All three sūtras are conveniently translated in SBE, vol. 49.

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This, says Rosenberg, is the latest stage of the dogmatic development of Buddhism in Japan. The teaching began in China in the seventh century and a century later in Japan. The sūtras represent the development of the most popular form of Buddhism among the laity in India, and so it remained in Japan.

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The history of the schools of Japan represents the stages of doctrinal development, but all this had little significance for the laity. Modern popular Buddhism shows three general tendencies. There is the form which has combined with the shamanistic superstitions of the people, their belief in spirits and demons, and the use of spells and amulets, especially in the Shingon sect. Another group holds the belief in Amida (Amitābha) and rebirth in his Pure Land. The higher clergy of this sect consist of the aristocracy and the most cultured class of Japanese society. The third tendency is that of mystic contemplation. “In this sect Shamanism is rejected in principle, as well as the belief in any saving power. Everyone can and must by himself reach the knowledge of the truth through contemplation . . . In medieval Japan the warrior aristocracy joined this sect, as lovers of the beautiful and at the same time as men who admired the concentration and self-denial of the contemplative mystic.” ² It was thus, in form at least, a return to the earliest Buddhism.

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² Rosenberg, Probleme, 281.

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Behind all this is the Buddhism which is cultivated by the students in the monasteries. There the dogmatic systems remain, and work is being done by Japanese scholars which is of the highest importance for the historical study of Buddhism. Professor Takakusu, describing present activities, says that Buddhism in Japan is represented by thirteen sects and fifty-eight sub-sects. Each sect has its own college instituted solely for the benefit of scholars who make a special study of its particular doctrine. Of these colleges those ranking as universities are the Ryukoku Daigaku of the Nishi Hongwanji Temple (the Shin sect), the Otani Daigaku, of the Higashi Hongwanji Temple (the Shin sect), the Rissho Daigaku (the Nichiren sect), the Komazawa Daigaku (the Soto sect), and the Rengo Daigaku (the Tendai, Jodo, Shingon of the new school, and Yuzunembutsu sect). Besides these there is the Toyo Daigaku, one of the most well-known schools in Tokyo. Almost all the leading universities and colleges have introduced more or less provisions for Buddhistic research, and in each of the State universities one or more chairs of Buddhist literature have been founded, which are in charge of competent professors and assistant professors.¹

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¹ The Young East, 1925, p. 1.

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Mahāyāna has never made any impression on the West either as religion or philosophy. Presented by the early investigators as a tissue of absurdities or niaiseries, it is still commonly looked upon as nihilism or subjectivism. Now it is beginning to be recognized as more than this, but a full exposition of its metaphysical theories still awaits the complete publication of its authoritative texts and commentaries.

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It is, however, possible to recognize in Mahāyāna two theories which are philosophical systems, Weltanschauungen in the true sense. They have parallels with Western systems, and they deserve investigation. Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of the Void may be said to strike on the same rock as the Vedānta of Śankara. They both explain experience in such a way that the experience to be explained has no longer any reality. Then it has to be denied explicitly, and yet the experience itself is the basis of the negative conclusion. Hence the doctrine of relative and absolute truth. But even there is the recognition, even if inadequate, of a universally admitted principle. Experience only becomes real when interpreted, and every philosophical system is a reinterpretation more or less adequate. Every interpretation and every system becomes false in the light of a more complete co-ordination. The relative truth which was rejected by Nāgārjuna was that of the everyday conception of the world expressed in the traditional terms of language. Everyone knows that this is false. The sun does not rise, thunderbolts do not fall. Is it possible to restate this conception so as to reach an exact statement of the truth of experience? It has not been done yet in a final sense, and Nāgārjuna did not stop to ask. He was so sure of absolute reality and of a means of attaining it by direct intuition that he swept away every interpretation as relative and hence false. To the mystic the exact nature of the structure of the world or the atom was of no more importance then than it is now. That is why the Mahāyānists accepted the Sarvāstivāda cosmology as we find it in the *Abhidharmakośa*. It was a scientific presentation of everyday experience. In the third chapter of that work we have the elements of a system of natural science, including psychology. One of its most characteristic features is its reduction of time as well as matter to a series of atomic elements, and hence the existence of the individual to a sequence of moments. It had no importance for metaphysics, for the individual, even if reduced to a flow of time atoms, still remained a flow.

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The philosophy of the Yogāchāras was a positive step forward in attempting to reinterpret the data of experience. Unlike modern idealism it did not accept the distinction of self and not-self, but denied it. It was solipsism rather than idealism. Both this theory and the relativity theory of Nāgārjuna need further study, not so much as a part of Buddhism, but in connection with the related Hindu theories of natural science and metaphysics.

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It is as a religion that Buddhism has come into contact with Western thought, and this has been through the Pāli tradition, the Buddhism of Ceylon, Burma, Siam, and Cambodia. It was unfortunate that it was once expounded by scholars who took a pleasure in describing it as agnostic atheism, and who even spoke of "the antinomy of an entity or soul". Not even Kant put the soul into his list of antinomies.

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Buddhism agrees with the other world-religions in recognizing an ultimate eternal reality, but it nowhere describes this reality in positive language. Mahāyāna Buddhism indeed came to describe the Tathāgata in terms hardly to be distinguished from the monotheistic terminology of Hinduism, but this was only relative truth. In reality there was only the inexpressible absolute, and this differed from the earlier conception of Nirvāṇa by being described not only as an individual state, but as a cosmological ultimate. God is a cosmological ultimate, but evidently this bare concept cannot be made to cover what is meant by God in a theistic system.

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Early Buddhism allows of no possibility for the concept of a saviour. Later Buddhism does, but there is a fundamental difference from the Christian doctrine. The doctrine of bodhisattvas with their merits corresponds rather with saint-worship. They do not save beings in the sense of bringing them to perfect enlightenment. They make their way easier, and bring them to the heaven where they may hear the preaching of the doctrine that is to lead the way to omniscience.

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In the transference of merit a parallel to the doctrine of grace can be seen. Such transference is not peculiar to Mahāyāna. There is a Jātaka story (No. 190) of a sea-spirit (nāga) who saved a shipwrecked disciple, but who refused to save his companion until the disciple allowed him to share in the merit of his having kept the commandments. But not even in Mahāyāna did this develop into a general scheme of salvation, though it is likely enough that the worshippers of Avalokiteśvara and Amitābha may have not looked beyond the Happy Land promised to them. There is a stricter resemblance to the doctrine of grace when we find the bodhisattvas uttering enlightened truth through being inspired by Buddha’s power, but here, too, the doctrine never became a general scheme.

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The mystical element in religion was shared by Buddhism with other Indian religions, and was carried through consistently. Mere faith and works are never final. Mere devotion, as in Krishna-worship, cannot bring salvation. The doctrine of rebirth had made this conclusion seem obvious. He that does many good deeds shall receive many rewards, but salvation rests upon a knowledge of the truth.

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Morals has not always been a part of religion, but all religions that have developed a theology have come to recognize that ultimate reality cannot be separated from the ultimate truth of morals. Fortunately for Indian ethics it early became possible to separate the question of ethics from the question of the morality of the gods, for the tales of the gods were as little edifying as those of Greek mythology. This was done through the doctrine of karma combined with the doctrine of repeated births. Karma became a law of moral cause and effect, which even the gods could not escape.

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These doctrines became the basis of Buddhist ethics, but the real greatness of the ethical system was due to the actual detailed teaching of a moral genius. Such doctrines as the forgiveness of enemies or compassion for the weak are revelations to which human consciousness may gradually awaken when they are set before it. They do not become realized by deduction from abstract principles. The doctrine of karma was one which lent itself to a mechanical conception of the heaping up of good actions. Buddhism did not entirely escape, but the Founder made the greatest advance in Indian ethics by insisting on motive as the standard of moral judgment.

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The insistence on morals throughout the disciples' career is all the more remarkable in that good action was never a means to the final end. Princess Sumanā once asked Buddha what would be the difference between two men, one of whom had been bounteous in a former life and one not. "The bounteous one will surpass the other in being long-lived, of good appearance, happy, famous, and powerful." What will happen if they enter the Order? The bounteous one will surpass the other in five similar ways. What will be the difference if they both win arhatship? "In that case I say, Sumanā, there is no difference at all between release and release." ¹

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¹ Angut., iii, 32.

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The doctrine of rebirth made the non-ātman theory a very different thing from what to a Western mind is implied by a denial of the soul. If there is no soul, then the only other alternative is

c27.49

To drop head foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease.

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It would not be to the point, even if it were true, to say that this, according to Buddhist principles, is the result of denying the ātman. It is a result that the Buddhists never drew.

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Ajita’s doctrine of annihilation at death was denied throughout the whole history of Buddhism. The individual being had existed before, and he would exist again. He was only a bundle of changing skandhas, changing from moment to moment, and from life to life, and it was only Nirvāṇa which could bring about their final dissolution. His personal identity remained to such an extent that he could come to remember his former existences. This was no accommodation to popular belief, for this doctrine of remembrance was part of the formal teaching, and it remains so still. The question of the dissolution of personality only becomes urgent when it is asked what takes place with the cessation of rebirth. Naturally no one can give an answer to that except the one who has reached that state, and what the Scripture says about it has already been recorded.

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The disputes and assertions and misunderstandings that have taken place on this very point have given it an unnecessary prominence. There is less need now for many words, for the literature is becoming accessible which makes obsolete much that was written before the texts were understood or even known.

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Leading up to this ultimate and fundamental problem is the whole religious and philosophical system, which maintained the continuity of its religious doctrines from their earliest appearance in the mists of historical legend to their disappearance from India in an almost equal gloom. It absorbed much of the culture of its Hindu surroundings during its thousand years of growth, and at the same time transformed it. Now it has become a part of the culture of the East. It will long continue to furnish matter for historical and philosophical research as well as problems of future social and religious development.

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