Buddhism and Morality

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 57, 1 December 1923, Page 13

Buddhism and Morality

Origin and Outcome of an Eastern Code of Ethics

Buddhism, which sets a standard of morality singularly like that of Christianity, but even more comprehensive in that its ‘ Love thy neighbour as thyself” is held to apply to all living creatures, has been reviewed as to origin and effect, with much understanding by the Earl of Konaldshay, in the “Empire Review.” Extracts from his essay are given below : —

i I f F a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him as I the wheel follows the foot of .the ox that draws the carriage . . . I If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him JB like a shadow that never leaves him.” Thus the author of tho “Dhammapada,” the Buddhist “Book of Proverbs,” in which is set forth with a wonderful wealth of illustration the ethical teaching of e n e of the greatest moralists that the world has seen. For it is difficult to attribute to anything else than the intrinsic value of the code of conduct which its founder taught, the widespread and enduring influence which Buddhism has exerted upon mankind.

For the learned, no doubt, a core of metaphysics of a high order ran through the doctrine of early Buddhism. The theory of impermanence which, by explaining all phenomena as possessing only the attribute of “becoming,” denied to the universe of every-day experience any “being” or, in other words, reality; and the law of causality, which made man, and man alone, responsible for his fate: for the good that he enjoyed and the evil that he suffered, indeed, for his very existence in this shadowy world of woe at all—these doctrines may well have possessed a fascinating interest for the speculative Indian mind. But they could scarcely have appealed to humanity at large. Nor did the mystic theology, evolved later by the Mahayana school of Buddhists, possess the elements of peirmanence. The greatest missionary of Buddhism was the emperor Asoka; and it was the deep, but passionless, love for all animated beings which Buddha preached that entered into the heart of the king, and so shaped the future course of his career as to entitle him to rank amongst the greatest law-givers of all times. In all the famous edicts which he caused to be graven on rock and inscribed upon pillars, still to be seen in widely separated quarters of the Indian continent, there is from first to last no word of God or of the human soul, neither metaphysics nor theology, but a lofty code of conduct for the wellbeing of mankind. At tho present time, when pain follows the nations of the world as tho wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage, and the shadow of happiness grows dim, when it seems to others than the habitually cynical that the very foundations of civilisation are cracking and crumbling beneath the burden of man’s fiercely prosecuted hates, a man may well search for solid ground on which to rest his feet. From a theological point of view

the Christian and tho Buddhist are poles asunder; Christianity predicates God and the human soul, Buddhism finds no place for either. The mainspring of right action in the former is love for God and tho hope of Heaven, or to put it in another way, the paving of the way for tho advent of the Kingdom of God.

UNIQUE MOTIVE The motive inspiring right conduct in the case of the Buddhist is a totally different one. In theory, at any rate, he looks for no positive future reward; his whole effort, if he adhere to the letter of his Master’s teaching, is concentrated upon escape from existence, which, unless he be successful in his effort, stretches before him inexorably and eternally in everrecurring cycles of birth and death. Here, then, is a single code of conduct inspired by strangely different motives, for if we compare the ethical teaching set forth in the gospel of Buddha with that contained in the New Testament, omitting only such part of the latter as has direct reference to the Deity, we find them essentially tho same; and no one can doubt that if either were given complete and universal application the result so far as tho life of man on earth is concerned would be the same —thd sway of harmony where discord now reigns. Quite apart from religion, then, it would seem that ethics is something which possesses a permanent positive value of its own. On his deathbed, the great teacher looked back over the years that are gone, sees in the far-off days of childhood a boy brought up with loving care in the well-to-do household of a chieftain of the Sakhya tribo. Next, deeply imprinted upon his memory, he sees the sensitive feelings of the same young man subjected to a rude shock by a dawning realisation of the hardness of life for those beyond the shelter of the kindly home m which he himself has been nurtured. Of tho years which followed this discovery which drove him forth from homo and family in search of a solution of the problem of tho sorrow and suffering of all existence ho next sees a picture, years of struggle and sustained endeavour, of tho trial and subsequent rejection of the austerities of extreme asceticism, of long periods of introspection, and, finally, of ths great moment of revelation when the cause of sorrow and suffering was Hashed upon his mind, and the w’ay of escape therefrom became clear. His mind lingers, perhaps, upon the first great sermon, in which these illuminating Hashes of insight were .formulated for the salvation of mankind, and then travels on over the succeeding years of a ministry which brought into existence a band of followers, the founders, as we now see, of the greatest monastic order in the world. And so ho comes back to the present, tho years of intense and fruitful struggle behind him—years which had seen tho young man of a small Aryan tribe dwelling amidst tho forests and rico fields of the Himalayan foothills become a world-wide teacher of men, the Enlightened One, the Buddha: And knowing that the hour of his death is it hand, he utters his last words to those gathered round him—“ Behold now,

brethren, I exhort you, saying, ‘Decay is inherent in all component things? Work out your salvation with diligence!’ ” In marked contrast with colder and less hospitable climes, where man has perforce to devote much thought and energy to satisfying his physical needs, he had here to take little thought for the body. Such an environment was conducive to the leisure which gives birth to speculation; and the professional ascetic and the peripatetic philosopher were familiar figures. In the secluded depths of the forests, men pondered deeply upon the nature of things, and discussion of the problem of the universe was a favourite pastime.

And the nature of the conclusions of these thinkers was undoubtedly influenced by climate. For if the Indian climate lacks die incentive to labour and to positive achievement of colder climes, and invites man to case and leisure, it also produces in him a great weariness. His soul becomes filled with an intense longing for that rest for body and peace of mind which over lie beyond his present weariness. “There is no fire like passion;” we read in the “Dhammapada,” “there is no losing throw like hatred; there is no pam like this body; there is no happiness higher than INFINITE EXISTENCE And what had emerged from the pouderings of many generations of men thus given to speculation? A scheme of things which may well have struck dismay into the hearts of men craving for peace and rest. I*or the solution of the riddle of existence, arrived at in those far off days was this—that man was born, grew old, died, and was born again, not once, nor twice, nor many times but eternally. He might be born a god in the highest Heaven or a tortured spirit in the nethermost hell according to the merit acquired or the demerit laid up in previous periods of this inexorable progression along the high road of eternity. But born he must be, whether he be god or man, animal or denizen of the infernal regions. Not man alone, but the universe itself was subject to this same intolerable tyranny. Evolution was succeeded by involution. At the end of vast aeons of time (kalpa) the whole universe fell into a state of dissolution.

Hie universe might fall asunder, and vanish as completely as mist before the morning sun; but the mainspring of existence was still there,

the stock of unrequited action, which not even the dissolution of the universe itself was able to destroy. So the disappearance of the Heaverfs above and the earth beneath was only temporary, aiujl the cataclysm having been achieved, there issued forth from Brahman—the one eternal and absolute reality—a remanifestation of the universe. Matter reappeared, the worlds renewed their interrupted race through space, and the recurring cyclo of human birth and death preceded as before, until at the termination of further aeons dissolution again took place. Thus, with a sort of morbid satisfaction, did the metaphyscians set up inexorable milestones ulong tho unalterable roadway of eternity. SUMMIT OF ACHIEVEMENT No more powerful incentive could be devised than the incentive to escape. The way to freedom was, in all sooth, difficult enough, and those who were so fortunate as to find it might rest content, satisfied that the summit of human endeavour had been reached. Buddha, himself, never claimed to teach men i: ore than this —“This only, 0 monks, have I taught; sorrow and the uprooting of the sorrow.” He refused to discuss tliat which Jay beyond existence as we know it, for the reason that any such discussion * must bo unprofitable. Man’s intellect contioned by time and space is ex hypothesi disabled from grasping that which is beyond all conditions. Wha ( t it concerned the ordinary man to know above all elso was tho cause of his imprisonment in the cyclo of existence and the means of its destruction. And these things were set forth categorically in the first sermon at Benares; desire was the cause, the craving for this and the craving for that, the clinging to the earthly, the will to live—these constituted tho pin which tied a man to the ever-revolving wheel of suffering and sorrow. And the means of loosening tho pin? A pure and upright life—right conduct in thought, in word and deed. “This, O monks, is the sacred truth of the path which leads to the extinction of suffering: Right Faith, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Living, Right Effort, Right Thought, Right Self-concentration.” “LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR” Who or what, it may be asked, is to be the arbiter of what constitutes “Right?” I have discussed this question elsewhere, and have given the answer which is to be found enshrined in some of the most treasured expressions of Indian thought. In practice, the right conduct enjoyed by Buddha was based on the command that a man should love his neighbour as himself, tho word neighbour being understood to comprehend not men and women only, but all animate beings. And it was this aspect of the leaching of Buddha, as I have already pointed out, that brought about a moral revolution in the heart of the Emperor Asoka, with such momentous effect upon thje history of the eastern world.