D. M. Strong

“ In moments of attempted aspiration we are prone to look upwards into space—a symbol of the boundless. On the other hand, when the mind is engaged in working out details and calculations, there is the habit of looking downwards. Not only men, but beasts of the field, look upwards for help in their dying moments; upwards into space, where the conditioned seemingly vanishes into the unconditioned.
I have often witnessed the pleading expression of dying antelopes and other wild animals, their eyes being almost invariably directed to the sky above in their last moments of life. ”

“ Gotama fully recognized that true joy was only to be found when the notion of self-hood was in abeyance, as it most certainly is found invariably in those cases in which we lose, as it were, the sense of objective being in an absorbing subject, or in the presence of a fascinating personality.
There is an indescribable pleasure realizable in engrossing occupations of mind and body which distract attention from ourselves as selves. Hence the apotheosis of love as the ultimate possible bliss, whether it be manifested in the adoration of the human or in the ecstasy of the saint. ”

“ Buddhism is a free religion. No one holds the keys of salvation but himself. Buddhism never dreams that anyone can save or damn you except yourself, and so a Buddhist monk is so far away from our ideas of a priest as can be. Nothing could be more abhorrent to Buddhism than any claim of authority of power from above, of holiness acquired, except by the earnest effort of a man's own soul" (The Soul of a People, by H. Fielding) . ”

“ Paul conjures up a vision of the immense figure of creation, prostrate, groaning beneath the silent heavens. "The true Buddhist certainly sees in this world a state of continuous sorrow; but this sorrow only awakes in him a feeling of compassion for those who are yet in the world. For himself he feels no sorrow or compassion.... He seeks Nirvana with the same joyous sense of victory in prospect with which the Christian looks forward to his goal, everlasting life" (Oldenberg) . ”

“ Although it may be accepted as a true statement that the typical Hindu mind, which ranges over such a vast area of speculation, will never be induced by missionary zeal to confine itself within the apparently limited formulæ of Christian doctrine, it must not be overlooked that even the symbolism of Christianity represents and covers a shoreless ocean in which thought can disport itself without ever coming into contact with the limitations of the concrete. The Hindu mind binds itself, as it has been said of Art, to no creeds, no articles of faith, no schemes of salvation, no confessions. ”

“ Morality, as a law and corollary of organized life, being confined to humanity, it follows that immorality, as subversive of this law, would be of necessity abhorrent to those who appreciate a law without which social life would become intolerable, and not worth living. But, when we come to consider why it should be that the exquisite process of the decomposition of flesh should be less pleasing to the senses than the formation and fading of a sunset, we are forced to the conclusion that the world was not made for man, but man for the world. ”

“ The theory of Karma, as Gautama formulated it, is all-embracing and comprehensive. It ranges over the whole field of life and morality. It ascribes causes for things; explains the working of the complicated machinery of the cosmos; abolishes the unwholesome idea of universal chaos and absence of motive power; substitutes in its place a definite and well-arranged system admirably suited to the needs of mankind; and finally establishes firmly the supreme importance of individual morality and responsibility. What more can one desire? ”

“ Paul Carus, in referring to the God idea of the Buddhists, says: "No religion can exist without belief in the existence of an ultimate authority of conduct; but in this sense Buddhism, too, teaches a belief in God. The Abhidharma, or Buddhist philosophy, distinctly rejects the idea of a creation by an Ishvara—i.e., a personal creator; but it recognizes that all deeds, be they good or evil, will bear fruit according to their nature, and they teach that this law, which is ultimately identical with the law of cause and effect, is an irreversible reality ”

“ Paul Carus, in his Buddhism and its Christian Critics, pp. 150-51, says: "According to the orthodox Buddhist conception, there is no doubt about it that the incarnation of Buddha, in the person of Gotama Siddharta, has passed away. Gotama has died, and his body will not be resurrected. But Buddha continues to live in the body of the Dharma—i.e., the law or religion of Buddha; and, in so far as he is the truth, he is immortal and eternal."
"The whole world may break to pieces, but Buddha will not die. The words of Buddha are imperishable." ”

“ Lafcadio Hearn, who, in answer to the question, What remains to rise above all forms and the total disintegration of body and final dissolution of the mind? sets forth the Buddhist conception in the following manner: "Unconsciously dwelling behind the false consciousness of imperfect man—beyond sensation, perception, thought—wrapped in the envelope of what we call soul (which, in truth, is only a thickly-woven veil of illusion) , is the eternal and divine, the absolute Reality; not a soul, not a personality, but the All-self without selfishness—the Muga no Taiga—the Buddha enwombed in Karma. ”

“ Gough says that to gain this extinction the sage must loose himself from every tie and turn his back upon the world.
This is very much akin to the way in which a Christian must act, according to the teaching of the New Testament, if he would gain heaven, union with God, with Love, with a quality. But it would be doing injustice to the spirit of Christianity and Buddhism to describe their ultimate goals as annihilation, aboriginal nothingness, and extinction, and the path to it as one of inertion, apathy, and vacuity, in the ordinary sense of these terms. ”

“ Perhaps, on account of the presence of dogmas, such as the negation of soul as a permanent individual entity and of immortality as it is known among us, which are to the average European intellect absurd and most repugnant, it has been more readily assimilated as a belief by races which, unlike ourselves, are philosophic by nature and by birth. But by far the most important part of Buddhism in its practical significance is the doctrine of Karma, which has proved so great a stumbling-block to many, and a medium of contempt for those professing other faiths. ”

“ To the poetic people of the Ganges the immense plains of India, their broad and voiceless rivers, the magic beauty of an oasis, the distant silence of the Himalayas, the brooding calm of the atmosphere, all appear to labour in unison to the same end—to fashion the restless heart of mortals after their own emotionless image, to expand it into that fulness of peace which is theirs, and to guide the children of men into the haven where they would be. ”

“ There have been many calumniators, from interested motives, of Buddhism; but no false representations, however frequently reiterated, can serve to mask the purity and nobility of this remarkable religion. It has never, like Christianity, been made the pretext of warfare and the conquest of alien races; no blood has ever been shed in its propagation; no despairing cries of martyred wives and orphan children rise up from the centuries that are past to stamp its forehead with the brand of Cain. By reason alone has it spread and become endeared to the many millions who now owe it allegiance ”

“ These sorrows, these labours, these tears, this weary waiting, represent the experiences in store for the initiate, and the conditions under which the Christian must progress who would reach the goal of his dearest aspirations.
"Death is self-surrender; all loss is a kind of death; the only-begotten Son is the summing up of what is dearest, most one's own—i.e., God can only be at one with his work, can only make it to be truly his work by eternally dying—sacrificing what is dearest to him. ”

“ Spence Hardy, in his Manual of Buddhism, observes that "no one can tell but a Buddha how Karma operates or how the chain of existence commenced. It is as vain to ask in what part of the tree the fruit exists before the blossom is put forth as to ask for the locality of Karma." ”

“ We are incapable of apprehending a Personality, except in the sense of something that masks or represents an incomprehensible notion; and dogmatic systems are to us no more than the formal envelopes of spiritual truth.
Two cardinal ideas run through our deeper religious thought. One is the Maya, or cosmic illusion, which cuts the knot of any difficulty touching the relation between Spirit and Matter, and produces Unity by exhibiting the visible universe as a shadow projected upon the white radiance of eternity ”

“ Every being, according to Buddhistic teaching, attains Nirvana in the end; so may it not be in "the times of the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began"?
If symbolism were only taken for what it represents, every Buddhist could join with the Christian in many of the exquisite invocations of the Psalms. There is no rest to be found in the impermanent. To find the peace which passeth understanding, we must ultimately have recourse to the unconditioned, the permanent, Nirvana, God. ”

“ When we turn to India, to Ceylon, and more especially to Burmah, we are brought face to face with a very different state of things. It is true that in some parts—Thibet, for instance—Buddhism has been debased to an even worse state than Christianity in Europe; but, after all, that is merely asserting that human nature is human nature. The broader aspect of Buddhism in Asia must, to any unprejudiced observer, appear in striking contrast to the prostitution to which other religions in other corners of the earth have been subjected. ”

“ If humanity could assume this attitude of mind—if it could attune its thoughts to what Christian symbolism really means, or ought to mean—then all the magnificent ritual of the Holy Catholic Church, the realistic hymnology, even the shibboleths of the Salvationist, would no longer give rise to the supercilious contempt of the so-called intellectual world, but would everywhere be recognized as the expression of the most exalted philosophy, and consonant with the latest results of psycho-physiological research. ”

“ If it is granted that happiness predominates over unhappiness, and that life must consequently be worth living, this need not exclude the desire for a life more worth living, in which there is no unhappiness. If Buddhism is the wretched, pessimistic system it is declared by some to be, why should it not be allowed to hypothecate a heaven, when even the joyous, optimistic Christian, who finds life so worth living, speaks of being "delivered from the misery of this sinful world," and hopes for a life worth living? ”

“ But defining is truly dethroning in the cases of Jesus and Gotama. Like the dove in the Song of Solomon, they abide in the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places of the stairs. The suppliant can only satisfy his thirsty soul with an invocation: "Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely!" Theism, Atheism, Deism, and many other 'isms must be cast out of our minds into the bottomless pit before we can hope to place our trembling feet within even the threshold of their presence. ”

“ No religion, no system of morals, no philosophy, can be secure unless they rest upon the groundwork of universal truth and necessity; and it is certain that, if Christianity and Buddhism did not possess these supports, they would not now be what they actually are—the ruling forces to millions of human beings.
It has been said with much truth that the daily life of an ordinary man is a continual round of intoxication. Some form or other of inebriating excitement seems absolutely necessary to him, if he is to escape from the Slough of Despond of ennui and all its evil consequences. ”

“ As Professor Rhys Davids observes: 'Buddhism does not teach the transmigration of souls. Its doctrine would be better summarized as the transmigration of character.' Professor Oldenberg puts with much clearness the teaching of the action of transmigration and Karma when he says: 'Buddhism teaches: "My action is my possession, my action is my inheritance, my action is the womb which bears me, my action is the race to which I am akin." ”

“ When the mind wanders afar from the dogmatic of the scholiast, the life of Jesus presents itself with a dramatic force of loveliness and grandeur which, of its kind, cannot be surpassed; and the poetic pathos of the New Testament, though not so resonant as that to be found in the pages of such works as Job and the Prophets, possesses a pastoral charm of its own at once soothing and stimulating. ”