A MONG the many religious beliefs originating in the speculative Oriental mind, Buddhism is one which becomes increasingly attractive to Occidentals. Dissatisfied with the system of rewards and punishments mitigated by sacrifice and mercy, to which the race has so long been enslaved, the modern mind of the West is inclined to favour a creed which teaches that good inevitably brings forth good, and evil evil.
In the number of its adherents and in the area of its prevalence Buddhism surpasses any other creed; and its existence through twenty-four centuries entitles it to be considered one of the most venerable forms of belief.
Buddhism in its purity ignored the existence of a God it denied the existence of a soul; it was not so much a religion as a code of ethics.
The relations of Buddhism to the still more ancient religion of Hinduism may be compared to the relation of Christianity to Judaism. As Christians saw in Christianity the fulfilment of Judaism, so Buddhists beheld in their creed the natural evolution of Hinduism. It has been maintained that Buddhism, while introducing into the older religion several striking innovations, involved no absolute break with Hinduism. As Jesus was born and brought up a Jew, so was Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, born and brought up a Hindu. As certain pagan myths and pagan festivals became Christianised, so, in a much greater degree, did Hindu myth-ology pass into Buddhist legends. Gautama, we are told, came to deliver not men only, but the deities, or devas, of Hinduism. We read that "to the city of deliverance he led thousands of men and gods," that "to eighty thousand divinities he revealed the truth."
In the Buddhist as in the Homeric world gods and men lived side by side. Indeed, the deities of both worlds are but beings living under happier conditions than men.
Gautama seems to have accepted not Hindu mythology only, but the Hindu theory of the universe. At any rate he appears to have made no attempt to formulate any theory of his own. But long after his death, his disciples, according to their various schools of philosophy, evolved theories which they attributed to Gautama.
One of these is expressed in a dialogue between Gautama and his disciple Kasyapa.
"On what doth the earth repose, O Gautama?" asked Kasyapa.
"The earth reposeth on the circle of the waters, O Brahman."
"And the circle of the waters, on what doth it repose?"
"It reposeth on the wind."
"And the wind, O Gautama, on what doth it repose?"
"It reposeth on the ether."
"And the ether, O Gautama, on what re-poseth it?"
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