Arthur Lillie

“ In the First Gospel of the Infancy, it is stated that, when Christ was in His cradle, He said to His mother: "I am Jesus, the Son of God, the Word whom thou didst bring forth according to the declaration of the angel Gabriel to thee, and my Father hath sent Me for the salvation of the world."
In the Buddhist scriptures it is announced that Buddha, on seeing the light, said:—
"I am in my last birth. None is my equal. I have come to conquer death, sickness, old age. I have come to subdue the spirit of evil, and give peace and joy to the souls tormented in hell." ”

“ There is a mind that is enfranchised. This man has noble ends in view. This man has no ends in view." As a child sees his earrings reflected in the water, and says, "Those are my earrings," so the purified ascetic recognises the truth. Then comes to him the faculty of "divine vision," and he sees all that men do on earth and after they die, and when they are again reborn. Then he detects the secrets of the universe, and why men are unhappy, and how they may cease to be so.
I will now quote a conversation between Buddha and some Brahmins which, I think, throws much light on his teaching. ”

“ Having heard the dictum of Oxford, perhaps it is fair to listen to a real Buddhist. In a work called "Happiness," an anonymous writer sketches his religion.
The teaching of Buddha, as set forth by him, is simple and sublime. There are two states of the soul, call them ego and non-ego—the plane of matter and the plane of spirit—what you will. As long as we live for the ego and its greedy joys, we are feverish, restless, miserable. Happiness consists in the destruction of the ego, by the Bodhi, and Gnosis. ”

“ Paul.
"The enlightened view both worlds," says Mirza the Sufi, "but the bat flieth about in the darkness without seeing."
"Who speaks and acts with the inner quickening," says Buddha, "has joy for his accompanying shadow. Who speaks and acts without the inner quickening, him sorrow pursues as the chariot wheel the horse."
Let us give here a pretty parable, and let Buddha speak for himself:—
"Once upon a time there was a man born blind, and he said, 'I cannot believe in a world of appearances. Colours bright or sombre exist not. There is no sun, no moon, no stars. ”

“ An earth the perfect work of a benevolent God, yet a vale of tears not made to be enjoyed, but only to be despised and renounced. An omnipotent heaven, and yet unable to prevent the intrigues and constant victories of hell. Christianity is evidently not a homogeneous but a composite, a hybrid religion; and considered in connection with the indications of history, and the evidence of the above-named ethical and traditional analogies, these facts leave no reasonable doubt that the founder of the Galilean Church was a disciple of Buddha Sakyamuni. ”

“ Happening to soar up into those pure regions one day, he is told by a host of devatas, or heavenly spirits, that a mighty Buddha is born in the world, "who will establish the supremacy of the Buddhist Dharma." The "Lalita Vistara" announces that, "looking abroad with his divine eye, and considering the kingdoms of India, he saw in the great city of Kapilavastu, in the palace of King Suddhodana, the child shining with the glitter of pure deeds, and adored by all the worlds." Afar through the skies the spirits of heaven in crowds recited the "hymn of Buddha." ”

“ In Jerusalem the Greek pontiff goes into the cave called Christ's sepulchre and brings out miraculous fire to the worshippers, who are fighting and biting each other outside, imaging unconsciously Buddha's great battle with Mâra and the legions of hell, its thunder and lightning and turmoil, followed by a bright coruscation, and by the angels who greeted his victory. This sudden illumination, which is the chief rite of Freemasonry, of Mithraism, and of Christianity, has oddly enough been thrown overboard by the English Church. ”

“ The Buddhist teachers in Persia and Egypt in days before Christ; in Japan, in Islâm, during the Middle Ages; in Europe now,—have had and have one method of procedure. They say practically, "Religion as we conceive it has only one lesson—knowledge of God. This is to be acquired not externally through creeds and priests, but internally by the education and purification of the soul. Keep your Bibles if the weaker brethren insist on them, but explain that they are symbols, not history. Keep your prophets, your Moses, your Mahomet, your Zoroaster, and fasten our teaching on him. ”

“ Writers like Kuenen and Lightfoot assure us that it is quite impossible that Christianity can be due to any influence outside Judaism, because it is such a very obvious development of Jewish thought. This is a startling statement. Christianity pronounced the slaughter of animals at the altar a piece of useless folly, and tore up the great ordinances of Taboo, the Covenant between Israel and the Maker of the Heavens. It proclaimed three Gods instead of one. ”

“ The humbled Brahmins learned in the three Vedas then ask Buddha to "show them the way to a state of union with Brahma."
Buddha replies at considerable length, drawing a sharp contrast between the lower Brahminism and the higher Brahminism, the "householder" and the "houseless one." The householder Brahmins are gross, sensual, avaricious, insincere. They practise for lucre black magic, fortune-telling, cozenage. They gain the ear of kings, breed wars, predict victories, sacrifice life, spoil the poor. ”

“ If Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Solomon, knew in their secret hearts that the one fierce hatred of Yahve was the graven image, their assiduous idolatry spread over 1500 years must have been a pure comedy, intended to insult Yahve, not to conciliate him.
What is the object of the religion of the savage? Anthropology has recently answered this question.
The religion of the savage is a slavish reign of terror. His rites and prohibitions are a vast apparatus of magic, to obtain food for the tribe, and safety from the plague and the foeman. ”

“ Sometimes, on an occasion of public rejoicing, the margin of the lake on our side will be lit with a fiery chain of illuminations, and galleys, hung with lights, row to and fro with strains of music sounding over the broad water. ”

“ The man who was born blind obeyed; and the parable ends with its obvious interpretation. Buddha is the old Rishi, and the four simples are the four great truths. He weans mankind from the lower life and opens the eyes of the blind. ”

“ The Gospel of Buddha, though a pernicious, is, however, a perfectly consistent doctrine. Birth, life, and re-birth is an eternal round of sorrow and disappointment. The present and the future are but the upper and lower tire of an ever-rolling wheel of woe. The only salvation from the wheel of life is an escape to the peace of Nirvâna. The attempt to graft this doctrine upon the optimistic theism of Palestine has made the [Pg 58] Christian ethics inconsistent and contradictory. A paternal Jehovah who yet eternally and horribly tortures a vast plurality of his children. ”

“ The old man is Tathagata, and his children the blind, suffering children of sin and passion. Tathagata fondly loves them, and would save them from their unhappiness. The old rambling mansion, unsightly, rotten, perilous, is the Domain of Karma, the Domain of Appetite. ”

“ For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist, but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. ”

“ The members of either sex live a single and ascetic life, spending their time in fasting and contemplation, in prayer or reading. They believe themselves favoured with divine illumination—an inner light. They assemble on the Sabbath for worship, and listen to mystical discourses on the traditionary lore which they say has been handed down in secret among themselves. ”

“ Thus the Brahmajâla Sûtra, much quoted by missionaries, who are plainly unaware that it belongs to the literature of the "Carriage that drives to Nowhere," announces that the existence of the soul after death in a conscious or even an unconscious state is impossible. But there is a passage which the missionaries do not quote. Buddha also tells his disciples that the statement of the Brahmins and Buddhist teachers, that "existing beings are cut off, destroyed, annihilated," is founded on their ignorance and want of perception of the truth. ”

“ We now come to an important question, Did Christianity emerge from Essenism?
Historical questions are sometimes made more clear by being treated broadly. Let us first deal with this from the impersonal side, leaving out altogether the alleged words and deeds of Christ, Paul, etc. Fifty years before Christ's birth there was a sect dwelling in the stony waste where John prepared a people for the Lord. Fifty years after Christ's death there was a sect in the same part of Palestine. The sect that existed fifty years before Christ was called Essenes, Therapeuts, Gnostics, Nazarites. ”

“ Before the sun and the signs were created, before the stars of heaven were formed, his name was invoked in the presence of the Lord of Spirits. A support shall he be for the righteous and the holy to lean upon, without falling, and he shall be the light of nations. ”

“ The bishop, anxious to deal gently with a valuable ally, would point out that he was only a cogwheel in a vast machinery, a cogwheel that could be promptly replaced if it proved the least out of gear. He would show that the Anglican Church had a mass of very definite rules called canon law, with courts empowered to punish the slightest infringement of these rules. He would show that even an archbishop could not alter a tittle of the gospel narrative. Every man, woman, and child would immediately detect the change. ”

“ According to Christianity—Go and earn your own bread and support yourself and your family. Marriage, it says, is honourable and undefiled, and married life a field where holiness can grow."
But history is history; and a French writer has recently attacked Christ for attempting to bring into Europe the celibacy and pessimism of Buddhism. This author in his work, "Jésus Bouddha," cites Luke xiv. 26:—
"If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple." ”

“ For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! But wisdom is justified of all her children." (Luke vii. 24-35.)
It is a singular fact that this short passage has been made the chief armoury of the disciples of gastronomic, and also of interior Christianity. ”

“ Another faculty is now conquered by his force of will, as the fashioner of ivory shapes the tusk of the elephant according to his fancy. He acquires the power of hearing the sounds of the unseen world as distinctly as those of the phenomenal world—more distinctly, in point of fact. Also by the power of Manas he is able to read the most secret thoughts of others, and to tell their characters. He is able to say, "There is a mind that is governed by passion. ”

“ In the "Lalita Vistara" (Chinese version, p. 225) it is announced that when Buddha overcame Mâra all flesh rejoiced, the blind saw, the deaf heard, the dumb spake, the hells were cleared, and all by reason of Buddha's Karma in previous lives.
[Pg 69]
In Romans (v. 18) , St. Paul writes thus:—
"As by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
"For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." ”

“ In point of fact, the savage believes that sickness, death, thunder, and other human ills come not from nature, but the active interference of the god. He looks upon every one outside his tribe as an enemy. The west coast negroes represent their deities as "black and mischievous, delighting to torment them in various ways." The Bechuanas curse their deities when things go wrong. All this throws light on the god of the Hebrews. ”

“ A superficial observer at a little distance would take his Thibetan and Buddhist mass for a Roman mass of the first water. He makes twenty genuflexions at the right intervals, turns to the altar and then to the congregation, rings a bell, drinks in a chalice water poured out by an acolyte, intones paternosters quite of the right sing-song—the resemblance is really shocking. But men whose faith is properly robust will see here nothing but a corruption of Christianity." (Corr. vol. i., p. 265.)
It must be borne in mind that what is called Southern Buddhism has the same rites. ”

“ Plainly Justin thought that it was the Virgin and not Joseph that had descended from Abraham.
But the suppressing of genealogies that were not invented until one hundred years after the Apostles were slumbering in forgotten tombs, was only a detail of their "heresy." Their gospel makes out Christ to be not the Logos masquerading in a human form, but a man and a prophet. "A prophet will the Lord our God raise up unto you from your brethren," he says. And prophets can sin, and he can sin, for he was [Pg 132] plainly without the Holy Ghost until his baptism. ”

“ Now, unless this system is clearly understood, Mosaism will remain a riddle. It is to be observed that Ezra, far from having relaxed the reign of terror of the Great Taboo of savage survival, had enlarged the number of petty faults and superstitions; and the Levites and Pharisees at the date of Christ, far from considering all this a comedy, were the most stiff-necked of believers. It results that a new religion that proposed to ignore the chief edicts of the Taboo must have come from some strong outside influence. ”

“ This restless, wicked city can present but few attractions, I grant, to a lover of philosophic quiet. But I cannot commend the extreme to which I see so many hastening. A passion for ascetic seclusion is becoming daily more prevalent among the devout and the thoughtful, whether Jew or Gentile. Yet surely the attempt to combine contemplation and action should not be so soon abandoned. A man ought at least to have evinced some competency for the discharge of the social duties before he abandons them for the divine. ”