Edward Washburn Hopkins

“ If pessimism be the conviction that life on earth is not worth living, this view is shared alike by the greatest of earth's religions. If pessimism be the view that all beauty ends with life and that beyond it there is nothing for which it is worth while to live, then India has no parallel to this Homeric belief. If, however, pessimism mean that to have done with existence on earth is the best that can happen to a man, but that there is bliss beyond, then this is the opinion of Brahmanism, Jainism, and Christianity. ”

“ The Dawns are like heroes with golden weapons; like red kine of the morning on the field of heaven; shining they weave their webs of light, like women active at work; food they bring to the pious worshipper. Like a dancing girl is the Dawn adorned, and opens freely her bosom; as a cow gives milk, as a cow comes forth from its stall, so opens she her breast, so comes she out of the darkness (verses 1-4) ...She is the ever new, born again and again, adorned always with the same color. As a player conceals the dice, so keeps she concealed the days of a man ”

“ Where are your newest favors, O Maruts? Where are blessings? Where all delights? If you, sons of Priçni, were mortals and your praiser an immortal, then never should your praiser be unwelcome, like a deer in pasture grass, nor should he go on the path of Yama. [16] Let not one sin after another, difficult to be conquered, overcome us; may it depart, together with greed. Truly they are terrible and powerful; even to the desert the Rudriyas bring rain that is never dried up. The lightning lows like a cow, it follows as a mother follows after her young, when the shower has been let loose. ”

“ In the beginning arose the Golden Germ; as soon as born he became the Lord of All. He established earth and heaven—to what god shall we offer sacrifice? He who gives breath, strength, whose command the shining gods obey; whose shadow is life and death.... ”

“ O all ye gods with weal forever guard us.
In the laudation of Varuna the fancy of the poet exhausts itself in lofty imagery, and reaches the topmost height of Vedic religious lyric. In the praise of Dawn it descends not lower than to interweave beauty with dignity of utterance. Nothing in religious poetry more graceful or delicate than the Vedic Dawn-hymns has ever been written. In the daily vision of Dawn following her sister Night the poet sees his fairest goddess, and in his worship of her there is love and admiration, such as is evoked by the sight of no other deity. ”

“ But for him that conquered passion, and knew the truth, there was existence without the pain of desire, life without end, freedom from rebirth. The spirit of the sage becomes one with the Eternal; man becomes God. ”

“ As Varuna became gradually greatest, so did Indra in turn. But Varuna was a philosopher's god, not a warrior's; and Varuna was not double and mystical. So even the priest (Agni) leaves Varuna, and with the warrior takes more pleasure in his twin Indra; of him making an All-god, a greatest god. Varuna is passive; Indra is energetic; but Indra does not struggle for his lordship. Inspired by soma, he smites, triumphs, punishes. Victor already, he descends upon his enemies and with a blow destroys them. It is rarely that he feels the effect of battle; he never doubts its issue. ”

“ But when one comes to the modern sects, then he has to deplore not so much the lack of historical data as the grotesque form into which this same over-vivid imagination of the Hindu has builded his gods. As the scientific systems grow more and more fancifully, detailed, and as the liturgy flowers out into the most extraordinary bloom of weird legend, so the images of the gods, to the eye in their temples, to the mind in the descriptions of them, take to themselves the most uncouth details imagined by a curious fancy. ”

“ I am born age after age for the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the sake of establishing righteousness. Whoso really believes in this my divine birth and work, he, when he has abandoned his body, enters no second birth, but enters Me. Many there are who, from Me arising, on Me relying, purified by the penance of knowledge, with all affections, fear, and anger gone, enter into my being. ”

“ But the highest class, they that wish to emancipate themselves at once, know that physical life is but a form of spiritual life; that the personal creator is but a form of the Spirit; that the Spirit is absolute brahma; and that in reaching this they attain to immortality. These, then, are to meditate on spirit as the highest Spirit, that is, the absolute. To fear heaven as much as hell, to know that knowledge is, after all, the key to brahma; that brahma is knowledge; this is the way to emancipation. The gods are; but they are forms of the ego, and their heaven is mortal. ”

“ Do not be suspicious of virtue. He that doubts God or duty goes to hell (confusion) , but he that does his duty and is free from doubt goes to heaven (becomes immortal) . Doubt not scriptural authority. Duty is the saving ship. No other gets to heaven. Blame not the Lord Creator, who is the highest god. Through His grace the faithful gets immortality. If religious observances were without fruit the universe would go to destruction. People would not have been good for so many ages if there had been no reward for it. This is a mystery of the gods. The gods are full of mystery and illusion. ”

“ For Varuna beside the loftiest figure in the Hellenic pantheon stands like a god beside a man. The Greeks had, indeed, a surpassing aesthetic taste, but in grandeur of religious ideas even the daring of Aeschylus becomes but hesitating bravado when compared with the serene boldness of the Vedic seers, who, first of their race, out of many gods imagined God.
In regard to eschatology, as in regard to myths, it has been shown that the utmost caution in identification is called for. It may be surmised that such or such a belief or legend is in origin one with a like faith or tale of other peoples. ”

“ Upward goes the path that leads to gods; it is inhabited by them that have sacrificed and have done penance. Unbelieving persons and untruthful persons do not enter there; only they that have duteous souls, that have conquered self, and heroes that bear the marks of battle. There sit the seers and gods, there are shining, self-illumined worlds, made of light, resplendent. And in this heaven there is neither hunger, nor thirst, nor weariness, nor cold, nor heat, nor fear; nothing that is terrible is there, nothing unclean ”

“ True Buddhism is the only religion which, discarding all animism, consists in character and wisdom. But neither in sacrificial works, nor in kindness alone, nor in wisdom alone, lies the highest. One must renounce all selfish desires and live to build up a character of which the signs are purity, love for all, and that courageous wisdom which is calm insight into truth. The Buddhist worked out his own salvation without fear or trembling. To these characteristics may be added that tolerance and freedom of thought which are so dissimilar to the traits of many other religions. ”

“ The cause, then, of the rapid spread of Buddhism at the beginning of its career lies only in the conditions of its teaching and the influential backing of its founder. It was the individual Buddha that captivated men; it was the teaching that emanated from him that fired enthusiasm; it was his position as an aristocrat that made him acceptable to the aristocracy, his magnetism that made him the idol of the people. From every page stands out the strong, attractive personality of this teacher and winner of hearts. No man ever lived so godless yet so godlike. ”

“ And in the same breath, with a connection of meaning patent only when one regards the whole not as borrowed but as native, follow the words that we have ventured to put upon the title-page of this volume, as the highest and at the same time the truest expression of a religion that in bringing the gods to men raised man to equally with God—"This is a holy mystery which I declare unto you: There is nothing nobler than humanity." ”

“ Better than going to heaven, better than lordship over all
worlds, is the reward of entering the stream of holiness.
Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's mind,
that is the teaching of the Buddhas.
Let us live happily, not hating them that hate us. Let us live happily, though we call nothing our own. We shall be like bright gods, feeding on happiness.
From lust comes grief, from lust comes fear; he that is free from lust knows neither grief nor fear.
The best of ways is the eightfold (path) ; this is the way, there is no other that leads to the purifying of intelligence. ”

“ In the Rig Veda, as it stands, with all the different views of Varuna side by side, Varuna is a universal encompasser, moral as well as physical. As such his physical side is almost gone. But the conception of him as a moral watcher and sole lord of the universe is in so sharp contrast to the figure of the rain-god, who, like Parjanya, stands in mid-air and upsets a water-barrel, that one must discriminate even between the Vedic views in regard to him. [81]
It is Varuna who lets rivers flow; with Indra he is besought not to let his weapons fall on the sinner; wind is his breath. ”

“ But a new spirit, the spirit of progress and of education, will prevail at last. When it rules it will undo the bonds of caste and do away with low superstition. Then India also will be free to accept, as the creed of her new religion, Christ's words, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself.' But to educate India up to this point will take many centuries, even more, perhaps, than will be needed to educate in the same degree Europe and America. ”

“ To cast off not only gods but soul, and more, to deny the moral efficacy of asceticism this was a leap into the void, to appreciate the daring of which one has but to read himself into the priestly literature of Buddha's rivals, both heterodox and orthodox. We see then in Buddhism neither a debauched moral type, nor a weakened intellectuality. The pessimism of Buddhism, so far as it concerns earth, is not only the same pessimism that underlies the religious motive of Brahmanic pantheism, but it is the same pessimism that pervades Christianity and even Hebraism. ”

“ Buddhism had no such picturesque tales as those that enveloped with poetry the history of the man-god Krishna, Again, Buddhism in its monastic development had separated itself more and more from the people. Not mendicant monks, urging to a pure life, but opulent churches with fat priests; not simple discourses calculated to awaken the moral and religious consciousness, but subtle arguments on discipline and metaphysics were now what Buddhism represented. ”

“ For although the time is one in which ritualism had, indeed, become more important than religion, and the priest more important than the gods, yet is there no lack of reverential feeling, nor is morality regarded as unimportant. The first impression, however, which is gained from the literature of this period is that the sacrifice is all in all; that the endless details of its course, and the petty questions in regard to its arrangement, are not only the principal objects of care and of chief moment, but even of so cardinal importance that the whole religious spirit swings upon them. ”

“ Men in all ways follow after my path. Some desire the success that is of action, and worship gods; for success that is born of action is speedy in the world of men. Know Me as the maker of the four castes, know Me as the unending one and not the maker. Action stains Me not, for in the fruit of action I have no desire. He that thus knows Me is not bound by acts. [8] So he that has no attachment is not bound by acts. His acts become naught. Brahma is the oblation, and with brahma is it offered; brahma is in the fire, and by brahma is the oblation made. ”

“ Dyaus and Dawn are but material phenomena, slightly spiritualized, but not joined with the spirit-power of others.
Many have been the vain attempts to go behind the returns of Vedic hymnology and reduce Indra, Agni, and Soma to terms of a purely naturalistic religion. It cannot be done. Indra is neither sun, lightning, nor storm; Agni is neither hearth-fire nor celestial fire; Soma is neither planet nor moon.
Each is the transient manifestation of a spirituality lying behind and extending beyond this manifestation. Here alone is the latch-key of the newer, more popular religion. ”

“ What is, perhaps, the most striking feature of Hindu religious thought, as a whole, is the steadfastness with which survive, even in the epic and in Buddhism, the forms and formulae of the older faith. At a time when pantheism or nihilism is the avowed creed the ancient gods still exist, weak, indeed, yet infused with a true immortality. ”

“ No matter how much the cult of later gods might prevail, the other gods, who represented the daily phenomena of nature, were still visible, awe-inspiring, divine. The firmest pantheist questioned not the advisability of propitiating the sun-god, however much he might regard this god as but a part of one that was greater. Belief in India was never so philosophical that the believer did not dread the lightning, and seek to avert it by praying to the special god that wielded it. ”

“ Opposed to this is the path that leads to the world of heaven, whence, when good works have been exhausted, the spirit descends to a new birth on earth. The course of this second path is conceived to be the dark half of the moon, and so back to man. Both roads lead first to the moon, then one goes on to brahma, the other returns to earth. It will be seen that good works are regarded as buoying a man up for a time, till, like gas in a balloon, they lose their force, and he sinks down again. What then becomes of the virtue of a man who enters the absolute brahma, and descends no more? ”

“ He that gives respectfully and he that receives respectfully go to heaven; otherwise both go to hell. Let him, without giving pain to any creature, slowly pile up virtue, as does an ant its house, that he may have a companion in the next world. For after death neither father, nor mother, nor son, nor wife, nor relations are his companions; his virtue alone remains with him. The relations leave the dead body, but its virtue follows the spirit: with his virtue as his companion he will traverse the darkness that is hard to cross ”

“ All things are sweet to them that love God. I am satisfied with this, that happiness is in proportion to devotion. O God, Thou who art truth, grant me contentment, love, devotion, and faith.... Sit ye with humility at the feet of God, and rid yourselves of the sickness of your bodies. ”

“ And this taste, as expressed in religion, isolates Brahmanic and Hinduistic India, placing her apart, both from the gloom of Egypt and the grace of Greece; even as in her earliest records she shows herself individual, as contrasted with her Aryan kinsfolk. Like Egypt, she feels her dead ever around her, and her cult is tinged with darkness; but she is fond of pleasure, and seeks it deliriously. Like Greece, she loves beauty, but she loves more to decorate it; and again, she rejoices in her gods, but she rejoices with fear ”

“ But to be a true Buddhist one must renounce, as lust, all desire of evil, of future life, which brings evil; and must live without other hope than that of extinguishing all desire and passion, believing that in so doing he will at death be annihilated, that is, that he will have caused his acts to cease to work for good or ill, and that, since being without a soul he exists only in his acts, he will in their cessation also cease to be.
At least one thing may be learned from Buddhism. It is possible to be religious without being devout. ”