Chan Buddhism

“ The religion was brought to China about A.D. 65, ready-made in its Mahayanistic form, in consequence of a dream of the Emperor Ming Ti (A.D. 58–76) of the Eastern Han dynasty in or about the year 63; though some knowledge of Buddha and his doctrines existed as early as 217 B.C. As Buddha, the chief deity of Buddhism, was a man and became a god, the religion originated, like the others, in ancestor-worship. When a man dies, says this religion, his other self reappears in one form or another, “from a clod to a divinity.” ”

“ Owing to the extremely secular character of the Confucian ethics on the one hand, and on the other, to the fact that Buddhists deny the existence of a personal god, and are eager to minister salvation through any adequate means so long as it does not contradict the Law of the Universe upon which the whole doctrine is based, Buddhism found in the teaching of the Chinese sage and his followers not only no enemy, but, on the contrary, a helpful friend. ”

“ This teaching of meditation and vast emptiness shared very little with other branches of Chinese Buddhism. Ch'an had no sacred images because it had no gods to worship, and it de-emphasized the scriptures, since its central dogma was that dogma is useless. Handed down from master to pupil was the paradoxical teaching that nothing can be taught. According to Ch'an (and Zen) , understanding comes only by ignoring the intellect and heeding the instincts, the intuition. ”

“ It may be asked if the inspiration is not Taoist in the main rather than Buddhist. Side by side with ethics and ceremony, a native stream of bold and weird imagination has never ceased to flow in China and there was no need to import tales of the Genii, immortal saints and vampire beauties. But when any coherency unites these ideas of the supernatural, that I think is the work of Buddhism and so far as Taoism itself has any coherency it is an imitation of Buddhism. ”

“ Unless the Confucians were not moved to assimilate Buddhist thought in their system, so naturally that they attempted to reconstruct the whole frame of Confucian ideas, not merely for the sake of reconciliation, but for the sake of deepening, enriching, and resuscitating it, we cannot say that Buddhism entered into the life of Chinese thought and became the real possession of the Chinese mind. ”

“ When Buddhism with all its characteristically Indian dialectics and imageries was first introduced into China, it must have staggered the Chinese mind. Look at its gods with many heads and arms—something that has never entered into their heads, in fact into no other nation’s than the Indian’s. Think of the wealth of symbolism with which every being in Buddhist literature seems to be endowed. ”

“ Some holy places, such as P'uto and Wu-t'ai-shan are frequented by both Lamas and Chinese monks, and Tibetan prayers and images may sometimes be seen in Chinese temples, but as a rule the two divisions do not coalesce.
Chinese Buddhism has a physiognomy and language of its own. The Paraphrase of the Sacred Edict in a criticism, which, though unfriendly, is not altogether inaccurate, says that Buddhists attend only to the heart, claim that Buddha can be found in the heart, and aim at becoming Buddhas. ”

“ Buddhism is now the dominant religion of China. It is closely bound up with the lives of the people, and is a never-failing refuge in sickness or worldly trouble. It is no longer the subtle doctrine which was originally presented to the people of India, but something much more clearly defined and appreciable by the plainest intellect. Buddha is the saviour of the people through righteousness alone, and Buddhist saints are popularly supposed to possess intercessory powers. ”

“ When this is done, Zen will appear as a most natural product of the Chinese soil where Buddhism has been successfully transplanted in spite of many adverse conditions. Roughly, then, the Chinese are above all a most practical people while the Indians are visionary and highly speculative. We cannot perhaps judge the Chinese as unimaginative and lacking in the dramatic sense, but when they are compared with the inhabitants of the Buddha’s native land, they look so grey, so sombre. The geographical features of each country are singularly reflected in the people. ”

“ On the walls of the Imperial palace at Peking there is a pavilion richly decorated with Arabic inscriptions from the Koran in honour of a Mohammedan lady who was a wife, or favourite, of one of the emperors. This does not look like persecution for religion’s sake. And, more than these, Buddhism? Ever since the Emperor Ming Ti dreamt a dream, nearly nineteen centuries ago, and sent for Buddhist books and images to China, Buddhism has been the popular religion, as Confucianism is the popular school of moral philosophy. Tao-ism, the native religion of Lao Tsŭ, cannot hold its own with it. ”

“ In China such statements are made as this: to follow the strict law of Buddhism is to climb to heaven as a fly crawls up the wall, but to attain Salvation by repeating {150} the name O-mi-to is like sailing heavenwards in a boat with wind and tide behind, at the pace of a hundred li an hour. There is a general agreement that adherence to the strict Buddhist law of chastity, honesty, truth, temperance, abstinence from anger and serenity of mind, is an ideal which is impossible at any rate for the laity. ”

“ There is now very little that is distinctively Buddhistic in the religious ideas or ceremonies of the people, and apart from the priests it is very doubtful whether there is a single Chinese in the Territory who could give the date and place of the Buddha's birth, [396] much less give any account of the teachings of that wonderful man. The reincarnation of human souls is vaguely believed in after a fashion, though some belief of the kind would probably be found in China even though Buddhism had never existed. ”

“ Modern Taoism, however, once a purely metaphysical system, is now so leavened with the superstitions of Buddhism, and has borrowed so much material from its younger rival, that an ordinary Chinaman can hardly tell one from the other, and generally regards them as to all intents and purposes the same. ”

“ When I say that Buddhism did not really affect Chinese thought until it was converted into Zen through which the creative genius of China began to formulate its philosophy along a much deeper and more idealistic line of thought than that of the Ante-Ch‘in period, there will be many who will object to this view. ”

“ The Chinese deity Kwan-Yon may, for all we know, be the Magna Mater of most primitive China. At least she was an ancient popular goddess. When Buddhism was introduced into the Middle Kingdom she was too dear to the people to be abandoned or degraded in rank, and so she was interpreted to be a female incarnation of the Buddha himself. ”

“ Buddhism in China, as in Japan, it may also be observed just here, is now only a hideous mixture of superstition and fraud. As I found believers in the Japanese temples rubbing images of men and bulls to cure their own pains, so in the great Buddhist temple at Canton I found the fat Buddha's body rubbed slick in order to bring flesh to thin supplicants, while one of the chief treasures of the temple is a pair of "fortune sticks." If the Chinese Buddhist wishes to undertake any new task or project, he first comes to the priest and tries out its advisability with these "fortune sticks." ”

“ JAPANESE TROOPS LANDING AT CHEMULPO. September 9th.
The morals of Buddhism are superior to its metaphysics. Its commandments are the dictates of the most refined morality. Such was Buddhism in its early purity. Beside its moral code and philosophical doctrines it had almost nothing. But in the twelve centuries which passed while it swept through India, Birmah, Siam, China, Thibet, Manchooria, Corea, and Siberia, it acquired the apparel with which Asiatic imagination and priestly necessity had clothed and adorned the original doctrines of Buddha. ”

“ But I must pass on to another question, the relation of Chinese to Indian Buddhism. Chinese Buddhism is often spoken of as a strange and corrupt degeneration, a commixture of Indian and foreign ideas. Now if such phrases mean that the pulse of life is feeble and the old lights dim, we must regretfully admit their truth, but still little is to be found in Chinese Buddhism except the successive phases of later Indian Buddhism, introduced into China from the first century A.D. onwards. In Japan there arose new sects, but in China, when importation ceased, no period of invention supervened. ”

“ On the other hand, those of the laity who take their religion seriously generally attain a high standard of piety and there have been [Pg 335] attempts to reform Buddhism, to connect it with education and to spread a knowledge of the more authentic scriptures [894] .
When one begins to study Buddhism in China, one fears it may be typified by the neglected temples on the outskirts of Peking, sullen and mouldering memorials of dynasties that have passed away. ”

“ Popular literature bears the same testimony. It is true that in what are esteemed the higher walks of letters Buddhism has little place. The quotations and allusions which play there so prominent a part are taken from the classics and Confucianism can claim as its own the historical, lexicographical and critical [586] works which are the solid and somewhat heavy glory of Chinese literature. But its lighter and less cultivated blossoms, such as novels, fairy stories and poetry, are predominantly Buddhist or Taoist in inspiration. ”

“ Of all the intellect-stultifying devices superstitiously conceived, Buddhism must be the most successful. Happy the day when the devotion now so uselessly expended is given in the exercise of a rational religion! Speaking of them as a body, the Chinese are, intrinsically, a very God fearing people, and Christianity once introduced will have ardent and faithful practisers. ”

“ Confucianism then, as the doctrine of that great teacher was called, was not a religion, but merely a system for the ordinance of man's life on earth, without reference to a God; but about the same time as Confucius, Buddha lived and founded the religion of Buddhism in India; and in the first century A.D. Buddhist missionaries came to China. It is to this influence that the pagoda-shaped temples are due which are a prominent feature in Chinese scenery, for it was in this form that the Buddhist temples were roofed. ”

“ Buddhism has its Tripitaka (three baskets) , and the reading, reciting and copying of the sacred scriptures is one of the surest means of acquiring merit. But as it ignores the gods, and places Buddha far above them, it does not claim divine inspiration for its writings. Buddha himself enlightens, but every man must save himself by walking in the true way which has been shown to him. Confucianism has its literature of absolute authority on manners, morals, rites and politics, but its claim does not rest on inspiration. ”

“ The celebrated roll of Ku K'ai-chih [588] shows no trace of Indian influence and presupposes a long artistic tradition. But Mahayanist Buddhism brought across Central Asia new shapes and motives. Some of its imports were of doubtful artistic value, such as figures with many limbs and eyes, but with them came ideas which enriched Chinese art with new dramatic power, passion and solemnity. Taoism dealt with other worlds but they were gardens of the Hesperides, inhabited by immortal wizards and fairy queens, not those disquieting regions where the soul receives the reward of its deeds. ”

“ It formulates their principles of life, but it is in no strict sense a popular religion. It is rather a state ritual, or a scheme of personal and social ethics. Taoism recognizes the immediate influence of the spirit world, but it ministers only to local ideals and needs. In the usages of family and community life, ancestor worship has a definite place, but an occasional one. Buddhism was able to leave untouched each of these expressions of Chinese personal and social life, and yet it went far beyond them in ministering to religious development. ”

“ They have had Buddhism, as we have had Christianity; but no one who can perceive and understand would say that their outlook is determined by Buddhism, any more than ours is by Christianity. It is Confucianism that expresses the Chinese attitude to life, whenever the Chinese soul, becoming aware of itself, looks out from the forest of animistic beliefs in which the mass of the people wander. ”

“ We cannot quote similar figures for Buddhism or Confucianism. Yet assuredly Buddhism has been a great power in China, as great perhaps as Christianity in Europe, if we remember how much is owed by European art, literature, law and science to non-Christian sources. The Chinese language is full of Buddhist phraseology [584] , not only in literature [Pg 241] but in popular songs and proverbs and an inspection of such entries in a Chinese dictionary as Fo (Buddha) , Kuan Yin, Ho Shang (monk) [585] will show how large and not altogether flattering a part they play in popular speech. ”

“ There are some so-called Buddhist temples, each tenanted by a single priest and a pupil or two, and proofs are not wanting that many centuries ago the sites of some of these rather dilapidated buildings were occupied by flourishing little monasteries: but Buddhism has long been a decadent religion in Shantung, and, considering the corrupt state into which it has fallen in northern China, its disappearance as a power in the land is not to be regretted. ”

“ Eitel, in concluding his discussion of this point in his “Lecture on Buddhism, an Event in History,” says: “It is not too much to say that most Chinese are theoretically Confucianists, but emotionally Buddhists or Taoists. But fairness requires us to add that, though the mass of the people are more or less influenced by Buddhist doctrines, yet the people, as a whole, have no respect for the Buddhist church, and habitually sneer at Buddhist priests.” ”