VI. Northern And Southern Buddhism And Christianity

Very much matter might also be incorporated herein to show the differences which exist between the two great Schools of Buddhism, the Northern and the Southern School, sometimes known as the Mahayana (meaning the ‘ Greater Path’) and the FHinayana (meaning the ‘Lesser Path’—a rather belittling name never used by Southern Buddhists of themselves)."

Northern Buddhism is chiefly distinguished by its hier- archical and more highly organized priesthood, its emphasis upon rituals, its elaborate doctrine of divine emanations, its Christian-like worships and masses, its Tantricism, its Dhyani Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and extensive pantheon, its belief in a Primordial Buddha, its greater insistence on Yoga, its subtle philosophy, and its transcendental teachings concerning the Tri-K aya.

In Southern Buddhism, on the contrary, there is a very loosely organized priesthood with no recognized heads like the Dalai Lama, who is the God-King, and the Tashi Lama, who is the Higher Spiritual Head of Lamaism. There are no recognized rituals comparable to the rituals of the Northern School, little or nothing clearly Tantric, and no worship of Dhyani Buddhas or of a Primordial Buddha, but a limited belief in devas and demons. The only Bodhisattva appealed to and imaged in temples is the coming Buddha, Maitreya. Although theoretically Yoga is insisted upon, it appears to have been but little practised among Southern Buddhists since the times of Buddhagosa and his immediate suc-

have adopted ‘‘Vehicle’”? as an equivalent of Ydua, as that is the common meaning given in school-books, but ‘‘ Path” is preferable.’

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cessors, when Buddhist Ceylon is said to have been famous— as Buddhist Tibet is now—for its great saints, or yogis. That there exists a transcendental Buddhism, based chiefly upon Tantric teachings and applied Yoga, such as the Jamas claim to possess through oral transmission direct from the time of the Buddha, Southern Buddhism denies, for it holds that the Buddha taught no higher or other doctrines than those recorded in the 777z-Pitaka or Pali Canon. Similarly, the doctrine of the Esoteric Trinity, or 7v7-Kaya, Southern Buddhism does not propound, although there are clear references to the Dharma-Kaya in the Aggaiiia Sittanta of the Digha Nikaya, wherein the Buddha speaks of the Dharma-Kaya to a Brahmin priest named Vasetta (Skt. Vashishtha) ; and the Sinhalese work known as the Dharma- Pradiptka contains elaborated expositions of Ripa-Kaya and Dharma-K aya.

The hypothesis of Christian apologists that Northern Buddhism in its differentiation from Southern Buddhism was primarily affected by early Christian missionaries seems to be disproved—in so far as really fundamental doctrines are con- cerned—by the far-reaching fact (but recently made known to Western scholars through the recovery of some of the writings of the greatest of the Fathers of the Northern Buddhist Church, namely, the Patriarch Ashvagosha) that Northern Buddhism was fundamentally the same in the first century A. D. as it is now and was prior to the Christian era. If there were Christian in- fluences, as claimed, brought in by the Nestorians, or St. Thomas, or later missionaries, it appears that they could only have been superficial at most.2— In our own view—which is, of

course, merely hypothetical, seeing how little is at present known of the interdependent influences of Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Oriental religions and Christianity—it is Christianity which probably has been shaped, not only in its pre-Christian symbolology and in its rituals, but in its beliefs, by the Faiths preceding it, and out of which it evolved. For example, Christian monasticism, as best studied in the first centuries of the Christian era in Egypt, with its yoga-like practices, has had, apparently, direct relationship with the more ancient monastic systems such as those of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Taoism. The two great doctrines of Christianity, namely, those of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, are not, as formerly believed, unique; not only did both develop in pre- Christian times in India, but were principal doctrines in the Osirian Faith of Egypt at least six thousand years ago. The primitive Christian Gnostic Church, as the exponent of an esoteric Christianity,! was also in general accord with the old Oriental teachings touching Rebirth and Karma, which the later or exoteric Christian Church eventually repudiated, the Second Council of Constantinople, in A.D. 553, decreeing that ‘Whosoever shall support the mythical doctrine of the pre- existence of the soul and the consequent wonderful opinion of its return, let him be anathema’. The Sermon on the Mount

century by Marpa (see p. 1357), whose chief guru was the Indian Pandit Atisha (cf, Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet, pp. 54-75).

taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity alone, but also of philosophic systems, in which certain truths are exoteric and others esoteric’ (Origen Contra Celsum, Book I, c. vii). That Origen was a sound Christian in this view—despite his condemnation as a ‘heretic’ by the corrupt Second Council of Constantinople, held by the exoteric Church—is clear from sayings attributed to the Founder of

mystery of the Kingdom of God; but unto them that are without [i.e. the

not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand’ (Mark, iv. 11-12); cf. St. Paul in z Corinthians, ii. 7; iii. 1-2; and Pistis Sophia, i. 9, 12, 15, and passim, translation by G, R. S. Mead (London, 1896).

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itself, as a study of the pre-Christian Pali Canon indicates, might very well be regarded, as many Buddhist scholars do regard it, as a Christian restating of doctrines which the Buddha, too, formulated as an inheritance from prehistoric Buddhas.' It is chiefly the doctrines of the modern Christian Churches that pride themselves in having no esoteric teachings, and not those of primitive, or Gnostic, Christianity, that did pro- pound an elaborate esotericism, which differ widely from the doctrines of Buddhism and other Oriental religions ; and among these doctrines the more outstanding are: (1) the doctrine of the one life on earth to be followed bya never-ending paradise or else an eternal hell; (2) of the forgiveness of sins through the blood sacrifice of a Saviour; and (3) of the uniqueness of the Divine Incarnation as exemplified in the Founder of Christianity.

For the student of the West, whose outlook has been more or less affected by this theology of Church-council Christianity, rather than by primitive, or Gnostic, Christianity, there is need to realize exactly how Buddhism differs in fundamentals from modern Christianity.

Thus, unlike modern, or Church-council, Christianity which

teaches dependence upon an outside power or Saviour, Buddhism teaches dependence on self-exertion alone if one is to gain salvation. In practice, and to a limited degree _in theory, this fundamental doctrine of self-dependence is modified in Lamaism—as illustrated in the Bardo Thidol— and direct appeal is made by the devotee to the Dhyani Buddhas and tutelary deities, very much as to Jesus and saints and angels by Christians. Similarly, Northern Buddhism and Church-council Christianity, unlike Southern Buddhism, have their masses and their eucharistical ceremonies.

Secondly, as pointed out above, Church-council Christianity condemns the doctrines of Rebirth and K arma(which primitive, or Gnostic, Christianity upheld), and Buddhism champions them.

Thirdly, the two Faiths hold divergent views concerning

the existence or non-existence of a Supreme Deity. ‘The Fatherhood of God’ as a personal and anthropomorphic deity is the corner-stone of Christian Theology, but in Buddhism— although the Buddha neither denied nor affirmed the existence of a Supreme Deity—it has no place, because, as the Buddha maintained, neither believing nor not believing in a Supreme God, but self-exertion in right-doing, is essential to com- prehending the true nature of life.

The Buddha ‘argued not that Ishvara was cause, nor did He advocate some cause heretical, nor yet again did He affirm there was no cause for the beginning of the world’. He argued: ‘If the world was made by Ishvara deva,... there should be no such thing as sorrow or calamity, nor doing wrong nor doing right; for all, both pure and impure deeds, these must come from Ishvara deva.... Again, if Ishvara be the maker, all living things should silently submit, patient beneath the maker’s power, and then what use to practise virtue? *Twere equal, then, the doing right or wrong,... Thus, you sce, the thought of Ishvara is overthrown in this discussion (shdstra).’}

Although the Great Teacher has set aside, as being non- essential to mankind’s spiritual enlightenment, the belief and the non-belief in a Supreme Deity—more especially in an anthropomorphic Supreme Deity—He has, however, made the corner-stone of Buddhism (as it is of Hinduism) the belief in a Supreme Power or Universal Law, called the Law of Cause and Effect by the Science of the West and, by the Science of the East, Karma. ‘What ye sow, that shall ye reap’, saith the Buddha; even as St. Paul wrote long after- ward, ‘ Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap’.

Again, as elsewhere stated, Buddhism denies that there can be a permanent, unchanging, personal entity such as Christian Theology calls ‘soul’. It also denies the possibility of reaching a state of eternal felicity within the Sangsdra (i.e. the uni- verse of phenomena); for Reality, or Mrvaua, is for all

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Schools of Buddhism non-sangsaric, being beyond all heavens, hells, and worlds, in a state only capable of being understood through personal realization of it.

The Buddha has, therefore, not taught of any Father in Heaven, nor of any Only Begotten Son, nor of any method of salvation for mankind save that won by self-exertion leading to Right Knowledge. He, as all Buddhists believe, found the way as a result of innumerable lifetimes of spiritual evolution, and became the Fully Awakened, the Enlightened One, ex- hausting completely the Sangséra of Impermanency and of Sorrow. Through His own exertions alone He reached the Goal of all existence—Supramundaneness. Buddhists vene- rate Him, not as Christians do a Saviour, but as a Guide, in whose footsteps each must tread if Truth is to be realized and Salvation attained.

Although, as in the Bardo Thédol, there are prayers addressed to higher than human powers, and although all Buddhists pay what is really a sort of worship to the Buddha, the doctrine of Right Knowledge through self-development is never quite lost sight of; there is never that almost complete dependence upon outside forces which Christianity inculcates, nor is there anywhere a parallel to the Christian belief in the forgiveness of sins through repentance, or faith in a Saviour, or through vicarious atonement. Some of the rituals of Northern Buddhism may seem to suggest a Christianlike theory of the forgiveness or absolution of sins, which, more than any other subsidiary doctrine peculiar to Northern Buddhism, may possibly yet be shown to have been shaped— if any of the Mahayana doctrines have been—by Christianity. But in their last analysis these rituals really imply,—setting aside any possible transformation due to Christianity,—as the whole of Southern Buddhism more clearly teaches, that it is only merit, or an equal amount of good karma, which can neutralize the same amount of evil karma, as, in physics, two equally balanced opposing forces neutralize one another.

But as in all religions, so in Buddhism, there is apt to be very wide divergency between original teachings and actual doctrines and practices; and, accordingly, the Bardo Thidol

as a ritual treatise is no exception. Nevertheless, underneath the symbolism of the Bardo Thédol there are to be discovered, by those that have eyes to see, the essential teachings of Northern Buddhism, sometimes called, in contrast with Southern Buddhism, the Higher Buddhism.