4 CONCERNING BUDDHISM

COMPARED WITH OTHER DOCTRINES of the East, Buddhism, as we have just explained, in some ways appears to be nearer to, or shall we say less remote from Western conceptions, and causes it to be regarded as an easier field of study for Westerners; this also probably accounts for the marked preference displayed toward it by orientalists. The latter do in fact believe that there is to be found in Buddhism something that can be made to fit into the framework of their own outlook, or at any rate something that does not lie entirely outside it, since here they do not encounter a barrier of utter incomprehensibility as happens with the other doctrines, an obstacle which they must sense vaguely even if they do not admit it openly. At least this is the feeling they experience when studying certain forms of Buddhism, for, as we shall show presently, there are many distinctions to be made even in this respect; and it is perhaps natural that they should be at pains to prove that those forms which they find most accessible represent the original and true Buddhism, whereas the remaining forms, according to them, are but comparatively late corruptions.

But Buddhism, of whatever kind it be and even under the most 'simplified' aspects that may have been displayed by certain of its subdivisions, remains nonetheless an Eastern doctrine; besides, the orientalists go much too far in discovering assimilations with Western points of view, for example when they wish to turn Buddhism into the equivalent of a religion in the European sense of the word, an intention which furthermore sometimes lands them in a strange embarrassment: for have not some of them, without recoiling from a contradiction in terms, declared Buddhism to be 'an atheistic religion'? In reality however, it is no more 'atheistic' than it is 'theistic' or 'pantheistic'; all that need be said of it is that it does not adopt a point of view where these various terms have any meaning; but if it does not do so, it is precisely because it is not a religion. Thus by their interpretations the orientalists succeed in distorting even those features that might appear to be least foreign to their mentality and this they do in more ways than one, for when they would make a philosophy of Buddhism they scarcely denature it more than when they attempt to turn it into a religion; for instance, when they speak of 'pessimism', as often happens, it is not Buddhism that is thus qualified, or rather it is only Buddhism as viewed through the philosophy of Schopenhauer; authentic Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, for things are not really regarded by it in this fashion; but certain people doubtless find it annoying not to be able to attach Western labels to every doctrine.

The truth is that Buddhism is neither a religion nor a philosophy, although, in comparison with the Hindu traditional doctrines, it comes closer to both in some respects, especially in the case of those forms of it that find most favor with orientalists. In point of fact these forms belong to schools which, having cut adrift from the regular tradition and having in consequence lost sight of the real metaphysics, were inevitably led into substituting for it something resembling the philosophical point of view in a certain measure—but only in a certain measure. One may even occasionally come across speculations which, if examined superficially, might seem to suggest psychology; but, quite clearly, they do not belong to psychology as we know it, for the latter is an entirely Western invention and even in the West it is quite recent, since it actually goes no further back than Locke; it would be wrong to attribute to the Buddhists an outlook which arose specifically out of the modern empiricism of the Anglo-Saxons. For the comparison to be legitimate it must not proceed as far as an assimilation; and likewise, where religion is concerned, Buddhism is not effectively comparable to it except as regards a single feature, of importance no doubt, but not sufficiently so to establish an identity of thought: the feature referred to is the appearance in it of a sentimental element, which however can in any case be explained by the need for adaptation to the special conditions of the period that saw the birth of those doctrines that were affected by it; this fact is therefore far from implying that all doctrines of this kind necessarily fall into one and the same category. A real difference of points of view can be much more essential than a resemblance which, after all, chiefly affects the forms of expression of the doctrines concerned; this is the point that is missed by those who speak of 'Buddhist morality': what they mistake for a moral code, all the more easily since its sentimental side might render such a confusion plausible, is really viewed from a totally different angle and springs from quite other causes that are not even of an equivalent order: the well-known formula 'may beings be happy' concerns the universality of beings without any restriction, and not human beings alone; this is an extension which the moral point of view, even by definition, in no wise admits of. The Buddhist 'compassion' is not the same thing as Schopenhauer's 'pity'; rather should it be compared to the 'cosmic charity' of the Muslims, which is moreover quite capable of being transposed outside all sentimentalism. However, it must be recognized that Buddhism is beyond question invested with a certain sentimental form which, though it does not go to the point of 'moralism', nevertheless constitutes one of the characteristic elements of the Buddhist doctrines; this should be borne in mind, especially as it is one of the features that sharply distinguish Buddhism from the Hindu doctrines; it is the presence of this element which also goes to show that Buddhism is further removed than Hinduism from the tradition in its 'primordial' state.

Another useful point to be noted in the same connection is that there is a fairly close link between the sentimental form of a doctrine and its tendency to wide diffusion, a tendency to be found both in the religions and in Buddhism, as is proved by its expansion over the greater part of Asia; but here again, likenesses should not be over-stressed, and it is perhaps not quite accurate to speak of Buddhist 'missionaries' who went out from India at certain periods, for apart from the fact that here one is only dealing with a small number of isolated individuals, the word 'missionary' is almost bound to call to mind methods of propaganda and proselytism peculiar to Westerners. What is furthermore remarkable is the fact that alongside this process of distant diffusion, Buddhism was losing ground in India itself, till it finally disappeared from that country altogether, after having in its last stages given birth, incidentally, to certain degenerate and clearly heterodox schools which are frequently referred to in Hindu works contemporary with this closing phase of Indian Buddhism: the writings of Shankarāchārya, for example, never mention these schools except in order to refute their theories in the name of the traditional doctrine, without however ascribing any of their errors to the founder of Buddhism himself, which goes to prove that it was nothing more than a case of degeneration. Oddly, it is precisely such shrunken and aberrant forms which, in the opinion of a considerable number of orientalists, are supposed to represent as nearly as possible the true original Buddhism.

We shall return to this point later; but before proceeding further it is important to state quite plainly that India never was really Buddhist, contrary to a commonly expressed opinion, which would make of Buddhism the very pivot of all that affects India and its history: India before Buddhism, India after Buddhism—such is the clear division that orientalists believe themselves to have established, implying by this statement moreover that Buddhism, even after its complete disappearance, left behind it a deep impression on the lands of its origin, which is untrue for the reasons we have just given. It is true that these writers, who fancy that the Hindus must have borrowed from Greek philosophy, are equally capable of maintaining, with no greater degree of probability, that they also are indebted to Buddhism; and we are not quite sure whether such is not perhaps the substance of their thought. It must however be admitted that there have been some honorable exceptions; thus Barth declared that 'Buddhism only had the importance of an episode,' a statement that is strictly accurate as far as India is concerned; but nevertheless, contrary opinions have not ceased to prevail among scholars, not to mention the complete ignorance of the European public, which is even sometimes led to believe that Buddhism still actually reigns in India. The truth of the matter is that about the time of King Ashoka, that is to say toward the third century BC, Buddhism in India enjoyed a period of wide extension, while at the same time it was beginning to overflow outside India, this period being moreover quickly followed by that of its decline; but even during that period, if one wished to discover some parallel in the Western world, one would have to say that this extension was rather comparable to the spread of a monastic order than to the propagation of a religion addressing its message to the whole body of a population; this comparison, though not perfect, is probably the least inexact of all.

But we have not yet done with all the fantasies of the orientalists; we find some of them, like Max Müller, claiming to discern the germs of a Buddhism imagined after their own fashion, that is to say the germs of heterodoxy, even in the Upanishads,^[1] which, forming as they do an integral portion of the Veda, are therefore among the essential foundations of Hindu orthodoxy; it would indeed be difficult to push absurdity further or to give proof of greater incomprehension. Whatever picture may be formed of Buddhism, it is nevertheless quite easy to understand that it must always have shared many features with Hinduism, even after it had separated from it, given the fact that it arose in a Hindu environment and was in a way an offshoot of Hinduism, and it is this fact that fully explains whatever is found to be common to both; Roussel has doubtless exaggerated in an opposite direction by insisting on the complete lack of originality of the Buddhist doctrine, though his opinion is more plausible than Max Müller's and at least expresses no contradiction; and it should be added that this opinion would express praise rather than criticism for those who, like ourselves, take up the traditional standpoint, since differences between doctrines, in order to be legitimate, can only be a mere matter of adaptation, modifying the more or less external forms of expression but in no wise touching the principles themselves; the introduction of the sentimental form is itself only a case in point, always provided that it allows metaphysics to be preserved intact at the center of the doctrine.

Having said this much, we must now ask ourselves how far it is justifiable to refer to Buddhism in general terms, as is customary, without incurring the danger of various misunderstandings; in order to avoid them, it is on the contrary necessary to make clear which Buddhism is being referred to, for in point of fact it included and still does include a large variety of branches and schools, and one must beware of attributing to all indiscriminately features that are really confined to one or other among them. These schools, viewed as a whole, can be made to fall under the two main headings of Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna, titles that are usually translated by 'Greater Vehicle' and 'Lesser Vehicle', but which would perhaps both more exactly and more clearly be rendered by the names 'Great Way' and 'Little Way'; it is much better to keep these names, which are the ones they bear authentically, than to replace them by epithets such as 'Northern' or 'Southern' Buddhism, which have only a geographical bearing, rather vague at that, and which do not in any way describe the doctrines concerned. It is the Mahāyāna which can unquestionably be regarded as constituting a complete doctrine in the fullest sense, including the properly metaphysical elements that go to form its higher or central part; on the other hand, the Hīnayāna appears to be a doctrine that in some ways stops short at comparatively external aspects without proceeding beyond those things that are accessible to the ordinary run of people, and this accounts for the name it has been given; it is but natural that this more restricted branch of Buddhism, of which the Buddhism of Ceylon is the most typical present-day representative, should have given rise to the deviations we referred to earlier on. It is here that the orientalists really reverse the normal relations, for they will insist that the most aberrant schools, those that have carried heterodoxy furthest, are the most authentic expressions of the Hīnayāna and that the Hinayāna itself is really the original form of Buddhism or at least its regular continuation, to the exclusion of the Mahāyāna which, according to them, is but the product of a series of alterations and borrowings. In upholding this opinion they do no more than obey the anti-traditional trend of their own mentality, which prompts them naturally to sympathize with all that is heterodox; more particularly they conform to the false conception, held pretty generally by modern Westerners, that whatever is simplest, one might even say most rudimentary, must always for that reason pass for being most ancient; with such prejudices, it does not so much as cross their minds that the truth might be the exact opposite. Under the circumstances one might well ask what sort of a weird caricature has been represented to Westerners as being the real Buddhism, such as its founder preached, and one can almost smile at the idea that this travesty has become an object of admiration for many people in the West, who have been so fascinated by it that some have not even hesitated to proclaim their conversion—a conversion moreover that remains quite theoretical and 'ideal'—to this Buddhism which they discover to be so extraordinarily similar to their own 'rationalist' and 'positivist' outlook!

Of course, when one says that the Mahāyāna should be included in Buddhism from the beginning, this must only be taken as referring to what might be called its essence, independently of the more or less special forms belonging to its various schools; these forms are only secondary, but they are all that the 'historical method' allows itself to take into account, and it is this fact that lends an appearance of justification to the statement of the orientalists when they try to argue that the Mahāyāna is 'late' or that it only represents an 'altered' form of Buddhism. The question is further complicated by the fact that Buddhism, when it came out of India, was modified considerably and in several different ways, as indeed it was bound to be modified in order to adapt itself to quite different surroundings; all that is important is to know how far these modifications go, a question that does not seem very easy to decide, especially for those who have practically no idea of the traditional doctrines with which it came into contact. This applies especially to the Far East, where Taoism clearly has influenced certain branches of the Mahāyāna, at least as regards their modes of expression; the school of Zen, in particular, adopted methods that are quite plainly of Taoist inspiration. This fact finds its explanation in the special character of the Far-Eastern tradition, with the sharp cleavage existing between its two portions, inner and outer, that is to say between Taoism and Confucianism; under these conditions Buddhism appears to have been called upon to occupy a realm intermediate between the two; in certain cases it even seems to have provided what was really an 'outer covering' for Taoism, thus allowing the latter to remain a very closed preserve much more easily than would otherwise have been the case. This also explains how Far-Eastern Buddhism came to assimilate certain symbols of Taoist origin, as for example when it identified Kwan-yin with a Bodhisattva or, to be more exact, with a feminine aspect of Avalokiteshvara, by reason of the 'providential' function common to both; and this, be it noted, has been the occasion of a further mistake on the part of some orientalists, who as regards Taoism as often as not know little more than its bare name; they were led into believing that Kwan-yin properly belonged to Buddhism, and they seemed to ignore her essentially Taoist origin completely.

Furthermore, whenever they come across something of which the character or the origin cannot be exactly determined by them, it is quite in accordance with their mental habits to settle the difficulty by attaching to it a Buddhist label; this provides a rather convenient means of disguising their conscious or unconscious embarrassment and they have recourse to it all the more readily because, in virtue of the practical monopoly of information that they have succeeded in acquiring, they are quite sure that no one is going to contradict them; what fear of criticism can people feel who start off by laying down the principle that, in the line of study concerned, no real competence is admissible except such as is to be gained in their own school? Moreover, it goes without saying that all those things that they thus label as Buddhist to their heart's content, as well as those things that really are Buddhist, represent in their eyes nothing but a 'corrupted Buddhism'. In a manual of the history of religions that we have already quoted, containing a chapter on China that in very many ways reveals a most regrettable lack of understanding, it is stated that 'of primitive Buddhism there is no longer a trace in China' and that the doctrine now to be found there 'retains nothing of Buddhism but the name';^[2] if by this 'primitive Buddhism' is meant that which orientalists put forward as such, the statement is quite correct, but first of all it would be necessary to decide whether their conception of it is acceptable or whether, on the contrary, it is that conception which in actual practice represents nothing but a corrupted Buddhism.

The question of the relations of Buddhism and Taoism is comparatively easy to settle, provided of course that one knows something about Taoism; but it must be admitted that there are also other and more difficult problems: this is especially true when one is no longer dealing with elements belonging to traditions foreign to India, but actually with Hindu elements, concerning which it may be hard to tell whether they were always more or less clearly associated with Buddhism in virtue of its Indian origin, or whether they came to be integrated into certain of its forms after the event. This applies, for instance, to the Shaivite elements that occupy so large a place in Tibetan Buddhism, the form commonly known by the rather misleading name of 'Lamaism'; this feature is moreover not confined exclusively to Tibet, since in Java a Shiva-Buddha is to be met with, exemplifying a similar association but carried this time to the furthest possible limit. In fact, a solution of this question might be arrived at through a study of the relations between Buddhism, even at the outset, with the Tantric doctrines; but the latter are so little known in the West that it would be almost impossible to consider them without being led off into lengthy discussions than can find no place here; we will therefore stop short at the mere suggestion, for the same reason that decided us, when writing the chapter on the main divisions of the East, to confine ourselves to a passing mention of the Tibetan civilization, despite its great importance.

One last point now remains to be discussed, at least in brief: why did Buddhism expand so far and with such success outside its original country, whereas in that same country it declined so rapidly till it disappeared entirely? Does not this diffusion outside India constitute the real justification of Buddhism itself? What we mean to say is that Buddhism seems to have been really destined for non-Indian peoples; nevertheless, it was necessary for it to arise out of Hinduism itself, in order that it might be the recipient of those elements that were to be carried elsewhere after undergoing the required process of adaptation; but this task once accomplished, it was but natural for it to disappear from India where it had no enduring task to fulfill: in this particular respect, but in this respect only, it would not be altogether unreasonable to compare the situation of Buddhism with regard to Hinduism, with that of Christianity in relation to Judaism, on condition of course of constantly bearing in mind those differences of points of view that we stressed earlier on. In any case, this consideration is the only one that permits of recognizing in Buddhism, without falling into an illogicality, the character of a traditional doctrine, a character that the Mahāyāna at least undeniably possesses—for one must equally be ready to admit the heterodoxy of certain late and deviated forms of the Hīnayāna; and it is also the same reasons that explain what the mission of the Buddha himself really was. Had he taught the heterodox doctrines attributed to him by orientalists it would be impossible to explain the fact that a large number of orthodox Hindus do not hesitate to look on him as an Avatāra, that is to say as a 'divine manifestation', a function of which the records of his life in fact reveal all the characteristic features; it is true that the orientalists, who make a point of excluding whatever belongs to the 'non-human' order, maintain that the events of his life are only part of 'a legend', that is to say a story devoid of any historical value, and that these legendary features are also foreign to 'primitive Buddhism'; but if these features are done away with, what after all remains of the founder of Buddhism in the sense of a purely human individuality? It would indeed be hard to say; but Western 'criticism' makes no bones over so small a matter, and in compiling a life of the Buddha according to its own views, it goes so far as to lay it down as a principle, following Oldenberg, that the 'Indo-Germans' do not admit miracles; it is difficult to keep serious in the face of such assertions. This so-called 'historical reconstruction' of the Buddha's life is worth about as much as that of his 'primitive' doctrine, and is entirely a product of the same prejudices; in either case the principal aim is the suppression of anything that offends the modern outlook, and it is by means of this eminently naive proceeding that these people hope to arrive at the truth.

We will say no more on the subject, since Buddhism is not the object of our present study; it is sufficient to have 'situated' it on the one hand with regard to the Hindu doctrine and on the other in relation to those Western theories that people have tried to assimilate to it with greater or less abuse. Having digressed thus far we can now return to the examination of properly Hindu conceptions, but before doing so we will permit ourselves one last comment which can serve as a conclusion to all that has been said above: if orientalists have fallen into such grave errors on the subject of Buddhism, in which they have so to speak 'specialized', what value is to be attached to their statements concerning other doctrines that, compared with Buddhism, have been regarded by them as secondary and almost incidental objects of study?