Article selections by Rev. Joseph Edkins | Notes by H.P.B.
On the interest attaching to the hope of a future life developed among the Northern Buddhists, not a word need to be said. This hope has been powerful amongst them for nearly 2,000 years. While some think more of the Nirvana as their hope, and give themselves up to happy reverie, as they think of the union with Buddha which is attained by the loss of personality,1 many more prefer to meditate on the Paradise of Amitabha, the Buddha of a world situated in the West, beyond the region of the fixed stars, as the home they may attain by the merciful help of BUDDHA.
1. The loss of the false or temporary personality by its transformation into the ABSOLUTE “Ego.”—Ed. [H.P.B.]
All over Tibet, China, Mongolia, and Japan, this hope exists amongst the Buddhists. And it is a curious question whether it was occasioned by Persian or by Christian influence, or whether it was entirely self-originated.2
2. Most undeniably the idea was originated by neither of the above-named influences, no more than the knowledge of the Zodiac, astronomy or architecture was ever originated in India “by the Greek influence,” agreeably with Dr. Weber’s and Professor Max Müller’s favourite hobbies. This “hope” is based on knowledge, on the secret esoteric doctrines preached by Gautama Buddha, and flashes of which are still found even in the semi-exoteric tenets of the schools of Mahayana, Aryasangha and others.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
It is proposed in this paper to place before the reader the evidence from Chinese sources, by which it may be learned that this doctrine began in India and spread in the Punjaub and Affghanistan shortly before the Christian era, and that it was adopted by the Buddhist writers of the age for such reasons as the following: They regarded it as a powerful engine for aiding in the cure of worldliness by intensifying the meditative reveries of the monks. It was adapted to deepen the religious feelings and to multiply the religious activity of lay Buddhists of all classes and both sexes. Further, it added variety to the forms of happiness which Buddhism gives to believers.3
3. Buddhist works may have appeared in China not earlier than 67 A.D.; but there are as good proofs and evidence, from Chinese and Tibetan History as much as from Buddhist records, that the tenets of Gautama reached China as early as the year 683 of the Tzin era (436 B.C.). Of course in this instance we accept Buddhist chronology, not the fanciful annals of the Western Orientalists, who base their chronological and historical computations on the so-called “Vikramaditya era,” while ignorant to this day of the date when Vikramaditya really lived.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
. . .
Belief in the magical powers of the Buddhists had much to do with the spread of their religion, and not less influential was the superstitious regard for the sacred books,4 which it was supposed could save kingdoms from war.
4. No more, we say, than the “miracles” of the New Testament had to do with the spread of the Christian religion. Then why should any fair-minded person, even if a missionary, denounce the reverence of Buddhists for their sacred books as “a superstitious regard,” while enforcing the same “superstitious regard” for the Bible, under the penalty, moreover, of eternal damnation?—Ed. [H.P.B.]
. . .
The author of the list made in the year A.D. 730 was a learned monk, who divides the books, now in libraries, and which he had himself personally seen, from those which were lost. He says of a book called the Sutra of the boundless and pure, that this was the same with the greater Amitabha Sutra. But this is equivalent to saying, that it taught the legend of the Western paradise, and we may, therefore, look upon it as certain that this legend was taught in China, in the years A.D. 147 to 186, when the translator was occupied in his duties in the Chinese capital. It appears that he also rendered from Sanskrit a work on Akshobya, the companion Buddha to Amitabha and ruler of the Eastern Universe. This legend belongs to the same class as the legend of the Western Paradise, and in the ” Book of Golden Light ” these two Buddhas are mentioned together. They were, therefore, contemporaneous in origin.5
5. That origin must be archaic indeed, since both the names are found in the Book of Dzyan, classed with the Dhyan-Chohans (Pitris), the “Fathers of man,” who answer to the seven Elohim.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
. . .
Now Buddha is said to have died B.C. 543.6
6. Read in this connection in Five Years of Theoosophy, the article: “Sakya Muni’s place in History,” pp. 371-375.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
. . .
The country on the west of the Kingdom of the Indian Getae was Parthia, which lasted till the year A.D. 226, when the Persians recovered their independence. One of the translators was An shi kan, son of the Parthian king, his mother being the principal queen. He would naturally know the Zendavesta, and the doctrine of the resurrection. Parthian Jews, too, returned from keeping the Pentecost at Jerusalem to their own country, and carried with them Christian convictions7 and experiences. This was about a hundred years before this prince went as a missionary to China, He was actively engaged in translation in that country from A.D. 147 to 170. Among the titles of the 95 books he translated, are some which appear in the “precious collection,” such as “the book of unlimited age.” He has two which treat of worlds of punishment (Naraka), which to the Buddhists are prisons, fiery hot, or icy cold, where every kind of torture is used.8 . . .
7. It would be more correct, perhaps, to say “Gnostic,” instead of “Christian” convictions. The Jews could be Gnostics without renouncing Judaism.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
8. Which, however, are all metaphorical expressions, whenever used. Buddhists have never believed in their philosophy in any Hell as a locality. Avitchi is a state and a condition, and the tortures therein are all mental.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
On the whole, what this man taught in China was Christian morality in the Buddhist shape. The forgiveness of injuries, contentment, pity for men when they sin, suffering in the place of others, are very Christian.9
9. They are “Christian” only because Christianity has accepted them. All these virtues were taught and practised by Buddha 600 years B.C.; as other Chinese and Indian good men and adepts accepted and taught them to the multitudes thousands of years B.B., or before Buddha. Why call them “Christian,” since they are universal?—Ed. [H.P.B.]
. . .
The Sankhya philosophy derives all evils suffered by mankind from the connection of man with nature. The Vedanta philosophy finds the origin of transmigration and other evils in God who is the cause of virtue and vice.10
10. The Vedanta philosophy finds nothing of the kind, nor does it teach of a God (least of all with a capital G). But there is a sect of Vedantins, the Visishtadwaita, who, refusing to accept dualism, have, nolens volens, to place the origin of all evil as of all good in Parabrahman. But Parabrahman is not “God” in the Christian sense, at any rate in the Vedanta philosophy.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
Buddhism in its statement of the cause of transmigration finds it in a moral necessity of things, and being atheistic11 it stops there. Retribution follows all actions by unseen fate compelling it.12 Here it is that the human conscience utters its voice. Good actions are rewarded by happiness, and evil actions by misery.
11. Atheistic, inasmuch as it very reasonably rejects the idea of any personal anthropomorphous god. Its secret philosophy, however, explains the causes of rebirths or “transmigration.”—Ed. [H.P.B.]
12. This “unseen fate” is Karma.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
. . .
Ashwagosha . . .wrote the Shastra called Cki sin lun, and in this argued that the legend of the Western Heaven was necessary on account of the weakness of men’s minds. On their first learning Buddhist doctrines correct faith was difficult for them, and to reverence the Buddhas was impossible. In order to aid faith and to prevent falling back, you should know that Buddha has a most excellent aid. This aid in guiding and guarding the believing heart, consists in becoming entirely absorbed in thinking of Buddha, and in the desire to be born in a Buddha world in the West, to be there seen by Buddha, to leave all wicked doctrines for ever, and as the Sutra says, meditate exclusively on Amida, attain fixity in thought, a right purpose, steady progress, and the constant view of Buddha in the form of the body of the law.
Such is the statement of Ashwagosha as to the intention of the legend of Amida. It was to help in producing and strengthening faith.13 It was an aid to the Buddhist teachers against scepticism and would prove valuable in their missions among new races not accustomed to Hindu modes of thought. This appears to have been the object of the invention of the Western Heaven legend.
13. Buddha preached against blind faith and enforced knowledge and reason.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
. . .
It seems reasonable that so far as the Parthians were acquainted with Christianity in the early centuries, and the Persians of the Sassanide dynasty afterwards, the Buddhists would, being in close connection with them, become aware of Christian tenets. They would notice how much Christians were influenced by the hope of a future life, how it occupied their thoughts and made them superior to the fear of death! This would lead them to reason as did Ma ming in regard to the hope of future happiness in a world without sin as a means of increasing faith. The Apostle Peter is said to have preached the gospel in Parthia, and Bardesanes of Edessa, in the second century, states that Christianity had spread into Parthia, Media, Persia, and Bactria.14
14. It would be far more correct to say that it is the early Christians, or the Gnostics rather, who were influenced by Buddhist doctrines, than the reverse. All these ideas of Devachan, etc., were inculcated by Buddhism from the first. No foreign influence there, surely. It cannot be proved historically, that the “Apostle Peter” had preached the gospel in Parthia, not even that the blessed “Apostle,” whose relics are shown at Goa, went there at all. But it is an historical fact, that a century before the Christian era, Buddhist monks crowded into Syria and Babylon, and that Buddhasp (Bodhisattva), the so-called Chaldean, was the founder of Sabism or baptism. And Renan, in his Vie de Jesus, says, that [it was] “the religion of multiplied baptisms, the scion of the still existent sect, named the ‘Christians of St. John’ or Mendaeans, whom the Arabs call el-Mogtasila or Baptists. The Aramean verb seba, origin of the name Sabian, is a synonym of βαπτιζω.”—Ed. [H.P.B.]
. . .
The communication by sea through the trade in Indian productions, and those of Ultra India, was always active between India and the Persian Gulf. This led necessarily to the residence in Indian seaports and at the courts and capitals of Rajahs, of Babylonian astrologers and diviners. These men would communicate the views held in the West on the future life, and it would be in this way that the Indians, predisposed by the Vedas to believe in a future state, would be led on to the adoption with astrology and the art of writing, of some of the Babylonian and Egyptian doctrines on cosmogony and the future state.15 This helps to account for the striking contrast between Hindoo opinion on these matters in the Vedas and in the older books of Buddhism.
. . .
15. There is one little impediment, however, in the way of such a “Weberian” theory. There is no historical evidence that the “Chaldean astrologers and diviners” were ever at the courts of Indian Rajahs before the days of Alexander. But it is a perfectly established historical fact, as pointed out by Colonel Vans Kennedy, that it was, on the contrary, Babylonia which was once the seat of the Sanskrit language and of Brahmanical influence.—Ed. [H.P.B.]