PLAIN WORDS CONCERNING BUDDHISM.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4833, 5 February 1887, Page 6 (Supplement)

PLAIN WORDS CONCERNING BUDDHISM.

[by the rev. de beedt hovell.]

No. 3. WHAT DOES BUDDHISM TEACH CONCERNING THE SOUL? ;

S.Matthew xvi., 26.—"What is a man profited, .if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul."

Having endeavored, in the course of my last address, to put you in possession of the actual teaching of the Buddha upon the question of the existence, or non-existence, of one Almighty God; and having shown you, from what I believe to be irrefutable ovidence, that that teaching resolves itself into nothing more or less than the proclamation of blank atheism; lam desirous of directing your attention, this evening, to another important section of his doctrinal teaching, namely, that which refers to the existence, or non-existence, of the Soullof man. - ■

Mr Edward Judson makes the remark (Life of Dr Judson, p. 66) that " Buddhism denies the existence * * * * * of the Soul." This statement I believe to be entirely correct.

After careful consideration of the subject, and a review of the arguments adduced by those who hold a contrary opinion, I can come to no other .conclusion than that orthodox Buddhism denies jbhe existence: of the Soul, even ac it denies the -existence of God.

THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE DENIED Following out a somewhat similar course to the one adopted last Sunday, I will now pmeeed to giivej jn some detail, the utterances of autiho.ritiqs jn the _ domain . of Buddhism who.entixeiy ,agr£e with the above mentioned statement of Mr Judson. Dr Ehys Davids (Buddhism, p. -94)., says that "It is repeatedly and distinctly laid <down in the Pitakas," or Oanonic.aJ Books of .the Southern Buddhists, "that * * * * man , Sβ paver the same for two consecutive moments, ,md there is within him no abiding principle whatever." In support of this unqualified assertion, as to the teaching, by the Buddha, of the non-existence of the Soul, Dr Ehys Davids fffweeds to quote, from the Pitakas, lengthy extracted which teach, formally, and distinctly,' that man Jhaefeo'Soul. Professor Kellogg (Light of Asia, $>, 187), says, "It is agreed by the ihighesit Authorities on the subject, almost without exception, that Buddhism, according to the tcacjiitig of the Buddha himself, so fatas we can ascertain it from the Pitakas, does not admit the existence .of the Soul. A few, Kideed, doubt or deny this. , " A little fur--fches.- on, in the same work from which the above statement is taken, the learned Professor continues: ''The direct andpositive ( testimony to the fact * * that Buddhism, according to its o\vn highest authorities, idoes /deny that there is a Soul, seems unanswerable.. Thus I? the ' Sutta Nipiita ' we read, l only the name yeftwins tmdecayed of tiu! person who has passed away, . This cer(tainly denies .the survival of a Soul after •deafh in. so many .words; while in the "ITxliina Kafha , ,' of the.' Birth Stories,' the is made without any limitation !V " the Buddha, after his attainment of *h a *,, *'<ysd, called five of his disciples Buddhanv. , < pf eached to them ttwdistogether ana X < it , &isic)ux ofthcSoiiV" course ■ On ■ the lv. -< (jfa Religions Barth in his work entu .„ /) do of India,' (pp. 111, 112), sa., ( , «, trine of the .non-existence of the ~,' a doctrine of the entire orthodor- literntur'd / Southern Buddhism •■." and that while th« •

books of the North ' appear to concede .* *■ * * an esro jmssiug , from one to another (in transmigration), yet this is but ' a vaguely apprehended, feebly postulated ego.' Professor Oldenberg, whose opinion carries very great weight, says: "An essence the Buddhistic dontrine does not rccog~ ni.se. , (Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lohre, seine Gemoindo). I could continue to quote, if it were necessary, for a considerable time longer, from other leading authorities on this question, paragraph after paragraph, in support of the statements given above, and to the effect that the Buddha expressly denied the existence of the Soul. But I feel that I should weary you by so doing, and that the opinions already recorded are amply sufficient for my purpose. One further remark, however, I desire to make. Not only does orthodox Buddhism deny tho existence of the Soul, but it does not stop at a mere denial. It makes the counter assertion a heresy, and declares those to bo heretics who believe in the Soul's existence. 'The belief in self or Soul,' says Dr Rhys Davids (Buddhism, p. 95) 'is regarded so as a heresy that two well-known words in Buddhist terminology have been coined on purpose to stigmatise it.' THE DOCTEINE OF TEANSMIOEATION. It is quite possible, however, that some of you, who have been good enough to give me your careful attention thus far, are beginning to wonder how I shall be enabled to make the well-known Buddhist doctrine of • transmigration' fit in with the assertion, so strongly supported, that Buddhism denies tho existence of a Soul, and stamps the assertion of its existence as a heresy. That the doctrine of transmigration is believed in, and held to most tenaciously, is capable of easy proof. " Faith in transmigration accounts for the pious Buddhist's treatment of the lower animals. The priests strain the gnats out of the water they drink. They do not eat after noon, nor drink after dark, for fear of swallowing minute insects, and they cany a brush on all occasions, with which they carefully sweew every place before they sit down, lest they "should inadvertently crush any living creuturo. Mr Huxley tells us that a Hindoo's peace of mind was completely destroyed by a microscopist who showed him the animals in a drop of water." Yes, there can be no doubt that transmigration is an evergreen doctrine amongst Buddhists. It obtained in India, as an integral part of the older Vedic faith, many a long year before the Buddha saw the light of day, and he modified it and transferred it to his system. ■ What was the doctrine of transmigration that he found embedded in the more ancient Brahman creed ?

Judson thus describes it:—" The soul is at first united with the lowest forms _of organic life. By successive births it may climb into the bodies of spiders, snakes, chameleons, and after long ages may reach the human tenement. Then comes.the period of probation. According to its behavior in the flesh it either rises still higher to oocupy the glorious forms of demi-gods and gods, or it relapses little by little into its former low estate, and again takes up its wretched abode in the degraded forms of the lower animals."

" Life runs its rounds of liviusc, climbing up, From mote, and f*nat, and worm, reptile and fish, Bird and shagged beaat, man, demon, deva, god, To olod and mote asaiii."

Brahmanism held to a belief in the soul. And in that system, more ancient than Buddhism, it was the soul that passed on from habitation to habitation. But tht teaching of the Buddha is against the existence of a soul. The teaching of the Buddha proclaims the man, who believes in the existence of the soul, a heretic. What is it then, which transmigrates, in the system of the Buddha ? KAEMA. Dr Rhys Davids appears to me to be very clear and luminous upon this particular point. He says, 'As Buddhism does not acknowledge a soul, it has to find, the link of connection, the bridge between one life and another, somewhere else. In order to do this * * * it resorts to the * * expedient of a mystery—one of the four acknowledged mysteries in Buddhism (which are also the four points in which it is most certainly wrong), the doctrine, namely, of Karma. This is the doctrine that, as soon as a sentient being (man, animal, or angel) dies, a new being is produced in a more or less painful and material state,of existence, according to the Karma, the desert or merit, of"tho being who had died. . Strange as this doctrine is, ' it has been,' says Dr Rhys Davids, elsewhere, ' the most stable doctrine of Buddhism ; the one which, in all the different systems developed out of the original teaching of the Pitakas, has been most accepted, and has had the greatest practical effect on the lives of its believers.' For ' he,' as says Hardwick (Christ and other Masters), ' who is now the most degraded of the demons may one day rule the highest of the heavens: He who is at present seated on the most honorable of the celestial thrones, may one day writhe amidst all the agonies of a place of torment; and the worm that we crush tinder our feet may in the course of ages become a supreme Buddha.' One further quotation from Dr Rhys Davids, and I shall pass on from the question of Karma.. In the introduction to his 'Buddhist Birth Stories,' he says: "The reader must of course avoid the mistake of importing Christian ideas into the conclusions (of these several birth stories), by supposing that the identity of the persons in the two stories is owing to the passage of a ' soul' from the one to the other. Buddhism does not teach the transmigration of souls. Its doctrine would be better summarised as the transmigration of character, for it is entirely independent of the early and widely prevalent notion of the existence with each human body of a distinct soul, or ghost, or spirit. * * * The only thing which continues to exist when a man dies is his karma, the result of his words and thoughts and deeds, literally, ' his doing';' and the curious theory that this result is concentrated in some new individual is due to the older theory of soul."

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER

From the statements I have brought forward for your consideration, you will be enabled, I think, to come to the conclusion, for yourselves, that the teaching of the Buddha contains an absolute denial of the existence of the soul.

And if the orthodox Buddhism denies the existence of the soul, is it, in this respect, akin to Christianity ? Is there p. point of contact Acre, between the two religions, 'as some shallow writer has asserted ? i

Let us question Christianity, and we shall find, that, so far from denying the existence of the soul, the soul's existence is one of its leading doctrines. ' What is a man profited,' says our Lord and Saviour, 'if Jiejshall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul/ '

There is no agreement between Buddhism and Christianity, upoa this question, my friends, you may rest assured of that. They flatly contradict each other. There is no more agreement between Buddhism and Christianity in the matter of the existence of the soul than there is between them in the matter of the existence of God.

' Orf hodo,x Buddhism denies the existence of God], as 'wfi saw last Sunday; denies the existence of the s/jul, as we have seen today. And we s-jre told Bjyldhism is the Light of Asia. ' Truly, the 'ivoi'ds, v as says a. certain writer, •to those who have learned of Him who is the Light of the World, seem to have a ring of irony.'