ABSORPTION INTO GOD. His spirit, no longer existing as a separate entity, but becoming One with the Universal Spirit, as the Blessed Apostle Paul also teaches "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” The teachings of Christ and of Buddha, of the Light and the Enlightened One, are the same in essence: they differ only as having been received through different channels; a different family of nations; a different tongue: but the truth is the same always. Christ teaches us that which is above human nature: that we should love our enemies. Buddha teaches five meditations; the first of which is "the meditation of love, in which you must so adjust your heart that you long for the weal and welfare of all beings, including the happiness of your enemies." Jesus says: "Blessed are the merciful," and Buddha's second meditation is "THE MEDITATION OF PITY in which you think of all beings in distress; vividly representing, in your imagination, their sorrows and anxieties, so as to arouse a deep compassion for them in your soul." Paul says: "Rejoice with them that do rejoice," and Buddha's third meditation is “THE MEDITATION OF JOY in which you think of the prosperity of others and rejoice with their rejoicings." Sometimes the very words of Buddha are identical with the Scriptures. "Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good." Very like "Blessed are the meek" is "Blissful is freedom from malice." He taught the uprooting of evil from the heart, saying: "I teach, Simha, that all the conditious of heart which are evil and not good, unrighteous actions by deed, by word and by thought, must be burnt away. He who has freed himself, Simha, from all those conditions of heart which are evil and not good, he who has destroyed them as a Palm-tree which is rooted out, so that they cannot grow up again, such a man has accomplished THE ERADICATION OF SELF." He taught, "the annihilation of egotism, of lust, of ill-will, and delusion," but not of the being. For he says-"When man dies the body is dissolved into its elements, but the spirit is not entombed. It leads a higher mode of life." In one matter Buddha showed himself far inferior to Jesus. Christ healed all who came to him; Buddha himself suffered from sickness, from which he was healed by Jivaka the physician. He raised a sick bhikshu, but could not heal him. When Krisha Gautami came to Buddha to raise her dead son, he asked her to obtain a handful of mustard seed from a house where no one had lost a child, husband, parent, or friend. She went from house to house, until she learned the lesson, that DEATH IS COMMON TO ALL. It was a good lesson, but how much better was it for Jarius, the Widow of Nain and the sisters of Lazarus, that they could go to Jesus instead of to Buddha. Christ gave to his disciples authority and power to heal every disease and every sickness, and even to raise the dead. Buddha, on the other hand, sternly forbade his bhikshus to attempt to work miracles under pain of expulsion from the Sangha. He had no commission apparently to perform miracles, and he hated superstitious pretence. So he added a fourth to his three great prohibitions: viz., "I forbid you, O bhikshus, to employ any spells or supplications, for they are useless, since the law of Karma governs all things. He who attempts to perform miracles has not understood the doctrine of the Tathagata." summed up evil under ten heads, against which he gave ten commandments: 9. Cleanse your heart of malice and cherish no hatred, not even against your enemies. 10. Free your mind of ignorance and be anxious to learn the truth. On the whole we may take it that the teachings of Buddha confirm those of Jesus the Christ, having been received from the same source. For the teachings of the Infinite Mind must be the same in essence by whomsoever received, or in whatsoever language written. Buddha refused to admit the assertion of the Buddhist Peter-Shariputra, that he was the greatest of all the Buddhas. For when Shariputra told him he thought that there never had been, nor would be-"any one greater or wiser than the Blessed one," he answered "Surely then thou hast known all the Blessed ones, who in the long ages of the past have been holy Buddhas" and "hast perceived all the Blessed ones, who in the long ages of the future shall be holy Buddhas?" When Shariputra said "Not so, Lord," Buddha rebuked him by saying: "You see, then, Shariputra, that you know not the hearts of the holy Buddhas of the past nor the hearts of those of the future. Why, therefore, are your words so grand and bold? Why do you burst forth into such a song of ecstasy?" One cannot read the life and precepts of Buddha without coming to the conclusion that he was a good and true man, who taught from the Infinite Mind, the highest gospel that his contemporaries were capable of receiving, and infinitely superior to anything that they had previously known. Like John the Baptist "he did no miracle," but if he had known Christ, we believe he would have acknowledged Him just as faithfully as John did, as the greatest of all the Buddahs, as the Light of the World; for Gautama was ready to suffer anything for the sake of the truth as he conceived it in his meditations; and as he taught 600 years before Christ, many doctrines identical with His, we may take one as being a confirmation of the other. It is foolish from a spiritual standpoint to think that identity of doctrine, or even of phraseology, necessarily implies contact, if both are taught by the same Infinite Mind-the Universal Spirit-we must expect them to be the same, though even in the natural order, those of the Christ, being later, must be more definite and full. The teaching of Buddha, which is regarded as being most diametrically opposite to Christianity, viz., self-extinction, is really taught as we have shown in other words by Christ. His explanation of being hereafter like a flame in a body of fire, is explained by other parts of Scripture and especially by the Pauline doctrine of the Body of Christ, for a member of the body can have no separate interests from the body but "having entered into such a state, we lose sight of our narrow and contracted individuality, and arrive at that consciousness which is the consciousness of God," and "in proportion as we enter this higher life of the soul we discover the fact that we are only a part" of the Universal Spirit (Revised Esoteric Vol. i. p. 39). So little is there indeed in the Gospel of Buddha inimical to pure Christianity that if his precepts were bound up between the Old and New Testaments, they would form a fitting prelude to the New Testament. In many respects the agreement is perfect, as for example, the abolition of animal sacrifices, which are deprecated in Isaiah (chap. i. 11-15) and in the later prophets, and completely done away under the New Covenent. His Gospel is far more consonant with Esoteric Christianity (that is, the living spirit and not the dead letter) than much of the Apocrypha, which is still used by the Romish Church. It is true, that to-day Buddhism has become debased into image worship, but it is no worse in this respect than the Greek and Roman Churches. One parallels the other, they are all alike abominable and degrade those nations who practice them. It would be well if Christian missionaries in Buddhistic countries would emphasize these points of contact, showing how all true religion having been learned, through self-sacrifice and meditation, from the universal Spirit, is the same in essence, and that all men might be, if willing to become pure in heart and to accept and do all the will of God, the subjects of an immediate and continual inspiration. For our work as Christian teachers is not to teach men all things, but to stir up the inward hearing of the heart, so that all men might be taught of God. UNITY. By John Greenleaf Whittier. Forgive, O Lord, our severing ways, The varying tongues that speak Thy praise! Suffice it now. In time to be Shall one great temple rise to Thee, Thy church our broad humanity. White flowers of love its walls shall climb, Its days shall all be holy time. The hymn, long sought, shall then be heard, Confessing Christ, the inward word! That song shall swell from shore to shore One faith, one love, one hope restore The seamless garb that Jesus wore! |