BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

A CHAPTER FROM THE BOOK

"THE STORY OF
MANKIND"
By Hendrik Van Loon,
Ph.D.

Professor of the Social Sciences in

Antioch College. Author of The Fall of the
Dutch Republic, The Rise of the Dutch
Kingdom, The Golden Book of the Dutch
Navigators, A Short Story of Discovery,
Ancient Man.

To JIMMIE "What is the use of a book

without pictures?" said Alice.

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BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

~Note~

This is an Excluded portion of

following work , which is now in
public domain. For preface or Full
Content of that book you have to
go to the Original one.

Source : the Project Gutenberg

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CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

The discoveries of the Portuguese and

the Spaniards had brought the
Christians of western Europe into close
contact with the people of India and of
China. They knew of course that
Christianity was not the only religion on
this earth. There were the
Mohammedans and the heathenish
tribes of northern Africa who worshipped
sticks and stones and dead trees. But in
India and in China the Christian
conquerors found new millions who had
never heard of Christ and who did not
want to hear of Him, because they
thought their own religion, which was
thousands of years old, much better than
that of the West. As this is a story of
mankind and not an exclusive history of
the people of Europe and our western
hemisphere, you ought to know
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BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS
something of two men whose teaching
and whose example continue to
influence the actions and the thoughts of
the majority of our fellow-travellers on
this earth.

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●BUDDHA ●
In India, Buddha was recognised as
the great religious teacher. His history is
an interesting one. He was born in the
Sixth Century before the birth of Christ,
within sight of the mighty Himalaya
Mountains, where four hundred years
before Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), the
first of the great leaders of the Aryan
race (the name which the Eastern branch
of the Indo-European race had given to
itself), had taught his people to regard
life as a continuous struggle between
Ahriman, and Ormuzd, the Gods of Evil
and Good. Buddha's father was
Suddhodana, a mighty chief among the
tribe of the Sakiyas. His mother, Maha
Maya, was the daughter of a
neighbouring king. She had been
married when she was a very young girl.
But many moons had passed beyond the
distant ridge of hills and still her

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husband was without an heir who should
rule his lands after him. At last, when
she was fifty years old, her day came
and she went forth that she might be
among her own people when her baby
should come into this world.

It was a long trip to the land of the

Koliyans, where Maha Maya had spent
her earliest years. One night she was
resting among the cool trees of the
garden of Lumbini. There her son was
born. He was given the name of
Siddhartha, but we know him as Buddha,
which means the Enlightened One.

In due time, Siddhartha grew up to be a

handsome young prince and when he
was nineteen years old, he was married
to his cousin Yasodhara. During the next
ten years he lived far away from all pain
and all suffering, behind the protecting
walls of the royal palace, awaiting the
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day when he should succeed his father
as King of the Sakiyas.

But it happened that when he was thirty

years old, he drove outside of the palace
gates and saw a man who was old and
worn out with labour and whose weak
limbs could hardly carry the burden of
life. Siddhartha pointed him out to his
coachman, Channa, but Channa
answered that there were lots of poor
people in this world and that one more or
less did not matter. The young prince
was very sad but he did not say anything
and went back to live with his wife and
his father and his mother and tried to be
happy. A little while later he left the
palace a second time. His carriage met a
man who suffered from a terrible
disease. Siddhartha asked Channa what
had been the cause of this man's
suffering, but the coachman answered
that there were many sick people in this
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world and that such things could not be
helped and did not matter very much.
The young prince was very sad when he
heard this but again he returned to his
people.

A few weeks passed. One evening

Siddhartha ordered his carriage in order
to go to the river and bathe. Suddenly
his horses were frightened by the sight
of a dead man whose rotting body lay
sprawling in the ditch beside the road.
The young prince, who had never been
allowed to see such things, was
frightened, but Channa told him not to
mind such trifles. The world was full of
dead people. It was the rule of life that all
things must come to an end. Nothing
was eternal. The grave awaited us all and
there was no escape.

That evening, when Siddhartha returned

to his home, he was received with music.
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While he was away his wife had given
birth to a son. The people were delighted
because now they knew that there was
an heir to the throne and they celebrated
the event by the beating of many drums.
Siddhartha, however, did not share their
joy. The curtain of life had been lifted
and he had learned the horror of man's
existence. The sight of death and
suffering followed him like a terrible
dream.

That night the moon was shining

brightly. Siddhartha woke up and began
to think of many things. Never again
could he be happy until he should have
found a solution to the riddle of
existence. He decided to find it far away
from all those whom he loved. Softly he
went into the room where Yasodhara was
sleeping with her baby. Then he called
for his faithful Channa and told him to
follow.
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Together the two men went into the

darkness of the night, one to find rest for
his soul, the other to be a faithful servant
unto a beloved master.

The people of India among whom

Siddhartha wandered for many years
were just then in a state of change. Their
ancestors, the native Indians, had been
conquered without great difficulty by the
war-like Aryans (our distant cousins) and
thereafter the Aryans had been the rulers
and masters of tens of millions of docile
little brown men. To maintain themselves
in the seat of the mighty, they had
divided the population into different
classes and gradually a system of
"caste" of the most rigid sort had been
enforced upon the natives. The
descendants of the Indo-European
conquerors belonged to the highest
"caste," the class of warriors and nobles.
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Next came the caste of the priests.
Below these followed the peasants and
the business men. The ancient natives,
however, who were called Pariahs,
formed a class of despised and
miserable slaves and never could hope
to be anything else.

Even the religion of the people was a

matter of caste. The old Indo-Europeans,
during their thousands of years of
wandering, had met with many strange
adventures. These had been collected in
a book called the Veda. The language of
this book was called Sanskrit, and it was
closely related to the different languages
of the European continent, to Greek and
Latin and Russian and German and
two-score others. The three highest
castes were allowed to read these holy
scriptures. The Pariah, however, the
despised member of the lowest caste,
was not permitted to know its contents.
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Woe to the man of noble or priestly caste
who should teach a Pariah to study the
sacred volume!

The majority of the Indian people,

therefore, lived in misery. Since this
planet offered them very little joy,
salvation from suffering must be found
elsewhere. They tried to derive a little
consolation from meditation upon the
bliss of their future existence.

Brahma, the all-creator who was

regarded by the Indian people as the
supreme ruler of life and death, was
worshipped as the highest ideal of
perfection. To become like Brahma, to
lose all desires for riches and power,
was recognised as the most exalted
purpose of existence. Holy thoughts
were regarded as more important than
holy deeds, and many people went into
the desert and lived upon the leaves of
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trees and starved their bodies that they
might feed their souls with the glorious
contemplation of the splendours of
Brahma, the Wise, the Good and the
Merciful.

Siddhartha, who had often observed

these solitary wanderers who were
seeking the truth far away from the
turmoil of the cities and the villages,
decided to follow their example. He cut
his hair. He took his pearls and his
rubies and sent them back to his family
with a message of farewell, which the
ever faithful Channa carried. Without a
single follower, the young prince then
moved into the wilderness.

Soon the fame of his holy conduct

spread among the mountains. Five
young men came to him and asked that
they might be allowed to listen to his
words of wisdom. He agreed to be their
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master if they would follow him. They
consented, and he took them into the
hills and for six years he taught them all
he knew amidst the lonely peaks of the
Vindhya Mountains. But at the end of
this period of study, he felt that he was
still far from perfection. The world that
he had left continued to tempt him. He
now asked that his pupils leave him and
then he fasted for forty-nine days and
nights, sitting upon the roots of an old
tree. At last he received his reward. In
the dusk of the fiftieth evening, Brahma
revealed himself to his faithful servant.
From that moment on, Siddhartha was
called Buddha and he was revered as the
Enlightened One who had come to save
men from their unhappy mortal fate.

The last forty-five years of his life,

Buddha spent within the valley of the
Ganges River, teaching his simple
lesson of submission and meekness
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unto all men. In the year 488 before our
era, he died, full of years and beloved by
millions of people. He had not preached
his doctrines for the benefit of a single
class. Even the lowest Pariah might call
himself his disciple.

This, however, did not please the nobles

and the priests and the merchants who
did their best to destroy a creed which
recognised the equality of all living
creatures and offered men the hope of a
second life (a reincarnation) under
happier circumstances. As soon as they
could, they encouraged the people of
India to return to the ancient doctrines of
the Brahmin creed with its fasting and its
tortures of the sinful body. But
Buddhism could not be destroyed.
Slowly the disciples of the Enlightened
One wandered across the valleys of the
Himalayas, and moved into China. They
crossed the Yellow Sea and preached the
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wisdom of their master unto the people
of Japan, and they faithfully obeyed the
will of their great master, who had
forbidden them to use force. To-day
more people recognise Buddha as their
teacher than ever before and their
number surpasses that of the combined
followers of Christ and Mohammed.

●Confucius●
As for Confucius, the wise old man of
the Chinese, his story is a simple one.
He was born in the year 550 B.C. He led a
quiet, dignified and uneventful life at a
time when China was without a strong
central government and when the
Chinese people were at the mercy of
bandits and robber-barons who went
from city to city, pillaging and stealing
and murdering and turning the busy
plains of northern and central China into
a wilderness of starving people.

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Confucius, who loved his people, tried to

save them. He did not have much faith in
the use of violence. He was a very
peaceful person. He did not think that he
could make people over by giving them a
lot of new laws. He knew that the only
possible salvation would come from a
change of heart, and he set out upon the
seemingly hopeless task of changing the
character of his millions of fellow men
who inhabited the wide plains of eastern
Asia. The Chinese had never been much
interested in religion as we understand
that word. They believed in devils and
spooks as most primitive people do. But
they had no prophets and recognised no
"revealed truth." Confucius is almost the
only one among the great moral leaders
who did not see visions, who did not
proclaim himself as the messenger of a
divine power; who did not, at some time

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or another, claim that he was inspired by
voices from above.

He was just a very sensible and kindly

man, rather given to lonely wanderings
and melancholy tunes upon his faithful
flute. He asked for no recognition. He did
not demand that any one should follow
him or worship him. He reminds us of
the ancient Greek philosophers,
especially those of the Stoic School,
men who believed in right living and
righteous thinking without the hope of a
reward but simply for the peace of the
soul that comes with a good conscience.

Confucius was a very tolerant man. He

went out of his way to visit Lao-Tse, the
other great Chinese leader and the
founder of a philosophic system called
"Taoism," which was merely an early
Chinese version of the Golden Rule.

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Confucius bore no hatred to any one. He
taught the virtue of supreme
self-possession. A person of real worth,
according to the teaching of Confucius,
did not allow himself to be ruffled by
anger and suffered whatever fate
brought him with the resignation of
those sages who understand that
everything which happens, in one way or
another, is meant for the best.

At first he had only a few students.

Gradually the number increased. Before
his death, in the year 478 B.C., several of
the kings and the princes of China
confessed themselves his disciples.
When Christ was born in Bethlehem, the
philosophy of Confucius had already
become a part of the mental make-up of
most Chinamen. It has continued to
influence their lives ever since. Not
however in its pure, original form. Most
religions change as time goes on. Christ
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BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS
preached humility and meekness and
absence from worldly ambitions, but
fifteen centuries after Golgotha, the head
of the Christian church was spending
millions upon the erection of a building
that bore little relation to the lonely
stable of Bethlehem.

Lao-Tse taught the Golden Rule, and in

less than three centuries the ignorant
masses had made him into a real and
very cruel God and had buried his wise
commandments under a rubbish-heap of
superstition which made the lives of the
average Chinese one long series of
frights and fears and horrors.

Confucius had shown his students the

beauties of honouring their Father and
their Mother. They soon began to be
more interested in the memory of their
departed parents than in the happiness
of their children and their grandchildren.
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BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS
Deliberately they turned their backs
upon the future and tried to peer into the
vast darkness of the past. The worship
of the ancestors became a positive
religious system. Rather than disturb a
cemetery situated upon the sunny and
fertile side of a mountain, they would
plant their rice and wheat upon the
barren rocks of the other slope where
nothing could possibly grow. And they
preferred hunger and famine to the
desecration of the ancestral grave.

At the same time the wise words of

Confucius never quite lost their hold
upon the increasing millions of eastern
Asia. Confucianism, with its profound
sayings and shrewd observations, added
a touch of common-sense philosophy to
the soul of every Chinaman and
influenced his entire life, whether he was
a simple laundry man in a steaming
basement or the ruler of vast provinces
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BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS
who dwelt behind the high walls of a
secluded palace.

In the sixteenth century the enthusiastic

but rather uncivilised Christians of the
western world came face to face with the
older creeds of the East. The early
Spaniards and Portuguese looked upon
the peaceful statues of Buddha and
contemplated the venerable pictures of
Confucius and did not in the least know
what to make of those worthy prophets
with their far-away smile. They came to
the easy conclusion that these strange
divinities were just plain devils who
represented something idolatrous and
heretical and did not deserve the respect
of the true sons of the Church. Whenever
the spirit of Buddha or Confucius
seemed to interfere with the trade in
spices and silks, the Europeans attacked
the "evil influence" with bullets and
grape-shot. That system had certain very
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definite disadvantages. It has left us an
unpleasant heritage of ill-will which
promises little good for the immediate
future.

♧♧♧♧♧♧

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