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[This document can be acquired from a sub-directory coombspapers via
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[This version: 20 July 1994]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GOSPEL OF BUDDHA - BY PAUL CARUS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The following information was supplied on 25 Jun 94 to the
Coombspapers Social Sciences Data Archive by Cris A. Fugate
<fugate@plains.nodak.edu>
Book details
============
"The Gospel of Buddha, Compiled from Ancient Records"
Author - Paul Carus
Publisher - The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago and London, 1915
Copyright by The Open Court Publishing Co.,
1894 in United States, 1915 in Great Britain
These copyrights have since expired
Transcriber details
===================
Cris A. Fugate currently residing at 115C
University Village, Fargo, North Dakota 50102 USA. email:
fugate@plains.nodak.edu at North Dakota State University
Date of transcription: May 1994
No copyright for transcription has been claimed by Cris A.Fugate at the time
of lodgement of this electronic text with the Coombspapers Archive.
Changes made in transcription
=============================
The transcription does not include a pronunciation chart
The transcription does not include table of reference
The transcription does not include "Remarks on the
Illustrations of the Gospel of Buddha"
Page numbers in glossary and index are converted to chapter numbers.
Transcription should otherwise be very close to the original
since the text has been proofread several times.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- PREFACE
This book is published here in form of 13 files:
gospel-buddha-01-preface.txt, gospel-buddha-02-contents.txt,
gospel-buddha-03-introdu.txt, gospel-buddha-04-enlight.txt,
gospel-buddha-05-foundat.txt, gospel-buddha-06-consolid.txt,
gospel-buddha-07-teacher.txt, gospel-buddha-08-stories.txt,
gospel-buddha-09-lastdays.txt, gospel-buddha-10-conclus.txt,
gospel-buddha-11-bibliog.txt, gospel-buddha-12-glossary.txt,
gospel-buddha-13-index.txt
----------------------------------------------------------------------- PREFACE
PREFACE
This booklet needs no preface for those who are familiar with the
sacred books of Buddhism, which have been made accessible to the
Western world by the indefatigable zeal and industry of scholars like
Beal, Bigandet, Buehler, Burnouf, Childers, Alexander Csoma, Rhys
Davids, Dutoit, Eitel, Fausboell, Foucaux, Francke, Edmund Hardy,
Spence Hardy, Hodgson, Charles R. Lanmann, F. Max Mueller, Karl Eugen
Neumann, Oldenberg, Pischel, Schiefner, Senart, Seidenstuecker,
Bhikkhu Nyanatiloka, D. M. Strong, Henry Clarke Warren, Wasselijew,
Weber, Windisch, Winternitz & c. To those not familiar with the
subject it may be stated that the bulk of its contents is derivedfrom
the old Buddhist canon. Many passages, and indeed the most important
ones, are literally copied in translations from the original texts.
Some are rendered rather freely in order to make them intelligible to
the present generation; others have been rearranged; and still others
are abbreviated. Besides the three introductory and the three
concluding chapters there are only a few purely original additions,
which, however, are neither mere literary embellishments nor
deviations from Buddhist doctrines. Wherever the compiler has
admitted modernization he has done so with due consideration and
always in the spirit of a legitimate development. Additions and
modifications contain nothing but ideas for which prototypes can be
found somewhere among the traditions of Buddhism, and have been
introduced as elucidations of its main principles.
The best evidence that this book characterizes the spirit of
Buddhism coorectly can be found in the welcome it has received
throughout the entire Buddhist world. It has even been officially
introduced in Buddhist schools and temples of Japan and Ceylon. Soon
after the appearance of the first edition of 1894 the Right Rev. Shaku
Soyen, a prominent Buddhist abbot of Kamakura, Japan, had a Japanese
translation made by Teitaro Suzuki, and soon afterwards a Chinese
version was made by Mr. O'Hara of Otzu, the talented editor of a
Buddhist periodical, who in the meantime has unfortunately met with a
premature death. In 1895 the Open Court Publishing Company brought
out a German edition by E. F. L. Gauss, and Dr. L. de Milloue, the
curator of the Musee Guimet, of Paris, followed with a French
translation. Dr. Federigo Rodriguez has translated the book into
Spanish and Felix Orth into Dutch. The privilege of translating the
book into Russian, Czechic, Italian, also into Siamese and other
Oriental tongues has been granted, but of these latter the publishers
have received only a version in the Urdu language, a dialect of
eastern India.
Buddhism, like Christianity, is split up into innumerable sects,
and these sects not infrequently cling to their sectarian tenets as
being the main and tmost indispensable features of their religion.
The present book follows none of the sectarian doctrines, but takes an
ideal position upon which all true Buddhists may stand as upon common
ground. Thus the arrangement into a harmonious and systematic form is
the main original feature of this Gospel of Buddha. Considering tje
bulk of the various details of the Buddhist canon, however, it must be
regarded as a mere compilation, and the aim of the compiler has been
to treat his material in about the same way as he thinks that the
author of the Fourth Gospel of the New Testament utilized the accounts
of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. He has ventured to present the data
of the Buddha's life in the light of their religio-philosophical
importance; he has cut out most of their apocryphal adornments,
especially those in which the Northern traditions aboud, yet he did
not deem it wise to shrink form preserving the marvellous that appears
in the old records, whenever its moral seemed to justify its mention;
he only pruned away the exuberance of wonder which delights in
relating the most incredible things, apparently put on to impress
while in fact they can only tire. Miracles have ceased to be a
religious test; yet the belief in the miraculous powers of the Master
still bears witness to the holy awe of the first disciples and
reflects their religious enthusiasm.
Lest the fundamental idea of the Buddha's doctrines be
misunderstood, the reader is warned to take the term "self" in the
sense in which the Buddha uses it. The "self" of man translates the
word atman which can be and has been understood, even the Buddhist
canon, in a sense to which the Buddha would never have made any
objection. The Buddha denies the existence of a "self" as it was
commonly understood in his time; he does not deny man's mentality, his
spritiual constitution, the importance of his personality, in a word,
his soul. But he does deny the mysterious ego-entity, the atman, in
the sense of a kind of soul-nomad which by some schools was supposed
to reside behind or within man's bodily and psychical activity as a
distinct being, a kind of thing-in-itself, and a metaphysical agent
assumed to be the soul.
Buddhism is monistic. It claims that man's soul dies not consist
of two things, of an atman (self) and of a manas (mind or thoughts),
but that there is one reality, our thoughts, our mind or manas, and
this manas constitutes the soul. Man's thoughts, if anything, are his
self, and these is no atman, no additional and separate "self"
besides. Accordingly, the translation of atman by "soul", which would
imply that the Buddha denied the exitstence of the soul, is extremely
misleading.
Representative Buddhists, of different schools and of various
countries, acknoledge the correctness of the view here taken, and we
emphasize especially the assent of Southern Buddhists because they
have preserved the tradition most faithfully and are very punctilious
in the statement of doctrinal points.
"The Buddhist, the Organ of the Southern Church of Buddhism,"
writes in a review of The Gospel of Buddha:
"The eminent feature of the work is its grasp of the difficult
subject and the clear enunciation of the doctrine of the most puzzling
problem of atman, as taught in Buddhism. So far as we have examined
the question of atman ourselves from the works of the Southern canon,
the view taken by Dr. Paul Carus is accurate, and we venture to think
that it is not opposed to the doctrine of Northern Buddhism."
This atman-superstitiion, so common not only in India, but all over
the world, corresponds to man's habitual egotism in practical life.
Both are illusions growing out of the same root, which is the vanity
of worldliness, inducing man to beleive that the purpose of his life
lies in his self. The Buddha puroposes to cut off entirely all
thought of self, so that it will no longer bear fruit. Thus Nirvana
is an ideal state, in which man's soul, after being cleasnsed from all
selfishness, hatred and lust, has become a habitation of the truth,
teaching him to distrust the allurements of pleasure and to confine
all his energies to attending to the duties of life.
The Buddha's doctrine is not negativism. An investigation of the
nature of man's soul shows that, whicle there is no atman or ego-
entity, the very being of man consists in his karma, his deeds, and
his karma remains untouched by death and continues to live. Thus, by
denying the existence of that which appears to be our soul and for the
destruction of which in death we tremble, the Buddha actually opens
(as he expresses it himself) the door of immortality to mankind; and
here lies the corner-stone of his ehtics and also of the comfort as
well as the enthusiasm which his religion imparts. Any one who does
not see the positive aspect of Buddhism, will be unable to understand
how it could exercise such a powerful influence upon millions and
millions of people.
The present volume is not design to contribute to the solution of
historical problems. The compiler has studied his subject as well as
he could under the circumstances, but he dies not intend here to offer
a scientific production. Nor it this book an attempt at popularizing
the Buddhist religious writings, nor at presenting them in a poetic
shape. If this Gospel of Buddha helps people to comprehend Buddhism
better, and if in its simple style it impresses the reader with the
poetic grandeur of the Buddha's personality, these effects must be
counted as incidental; its main purpose lies deeper still. The
present book has been written to set the reader thinking on the
religious problems of to-day. It sketches the picture of a religious
leader of the remote past with the view of making it bear upon the
living present and become a factor in the formation of the future.
It is a remarkable fact that the two greatest religions of the
world, Christianity and Buddhism, present so many striking
coincidences in the philosophical basis as well as in the ethical
applications of their faith, while their modes of systematizing them
in dogmas are radically different; and it is difficult to understand
why these agreements should have caused animostity, instead of
creating sentiments of friendship and good-will. Why should not
Christians say with Prof. F. Max Mueller: "If I do find in certain
Buddhist works doctrines identically the same as in Christianity, so
far from being frightened, I feel delighted, for surely truth is not
the less true because it is believed by the majority of the human
race."
The main trouble arises from a wrong conception of Christianity.
There are many Christians who assume that Christianity alone is in
possession of truth and that men could not, in the natural way of his
moral evolution, have obtained that nobler conception of life which
enjoins the practice of a universal good-will towards both friends and
enemies. This narrow view of Christianity is refuted by the mere
existence of Buddhism.
Must we add that the lamentable exclusivesness that prevails in
many Christian churches, is not based upon Scriptural teachings, but
upon a wrong metaphysics?
All the essential moral truths of Christianity, especially the
principle of a universal love, of the eradication of hatred, are in
our opinion deeply rooted in the nature of things, and do not, as is
often assumed, stand in contradiction to the cosmic order of the
world. Further, some doctrines of the constitution of existence have
been formulated by the church in certain symbols, and since these
symbols contain contradictions and come in conflict with science, the
educated classes are estranged from religion. Now, Buddhism is a
religion which knows of no supernatural revelation, and proclaims
doctrines that require no other argument that the "come and see." The
Buddha bases his religion solely upon man's knowledge of the nature of
things, upon provable truth. Thus, we trust that a comparison of
Christianity with Buddhism will be a great help to distinguish in both
religions the essential from the accidental, the eternal from the
transient, the truth fromt he allegory in which it has found its
symbolic expression. We are anxious to press the necessity of
discriminating between the symbol and its meaning, between dogma and
religion, between metaphysical theories and statements of fact,
between man-made formulas and eternal truth. And this is the spirit
in which we offer this book to the public, cherishing the hope that
its will help to develop in Christianity not less than in Buddhism the
cosmic religion of truth.
The strength as well as the weakness of original Buddhism lies in
its philosophical character, which enabled a thinker, but not the
masses, to understand the dispensation of the moral law that pervades
the world. As such, the original Buddhism has been called by
Buddhists the little vessel of salvation, or Hinayana; for it is
comparable to a small boat on which a man may cross the stream of
worldliness, so as to reach the shore of Nirvana. Following the
spirit of a missionary propaganda, so naturla to religious men who are
earnest in their convictions, later Buddhists popularized the Buddha's
doctrines and made them accessible to the multitudes. It is true that
they admitted many mythical and even fantastic notions, but they
succeeded nevertheless in bringing its moral truths home to the people
who could but incompletely grasp the philosophical meaning of the
Buddha's religion. They constructed, as they called it, a large
vessel of salvation, the Mahayana, in which the multitudes would find
room and could be safely carried over. Although the Mahayana
unquestionably has its shortcomings, it must not be condemned offhand,
for it serves its purpose. Without regarding it as the final stage of
the religious development of the nations among which it prevails, we
must concede that it resulted from an adaptation to their condition
and has accomplished much to educate them. The Mahayana is a step
forward in so far as it changes a philosophy into a religion, and
attempts to preach doctrines that were negatively expressed, in
positive propositions.
Far from rejecting the religious zeal which gave rise to the
Mahayana in Buddhism, we can still less join those who denounce
Christianity on account of its dogmatology and mythological
ingredients. Christianity has certainly had and still has a great
mission in the evolution of mankind. It has succeeded in imbuing with
the religion of charity and mercy the most powerful nations of the
world, to whose spiritual needs it is especially adapted. It extends
the blessings of universal good-will with the least possible amount of
antagonism to the natural selfishness that is no stronly developed in
the Western races. Christianity is the religion of love made easy.
This is its advantage. which, however, is not without its drawbacks.
Christianity teaches charity without dispelling the ego-illusion; and
in this sense it surpasses even the Mahayana; it is still more adapted
to the needs of multitudes than a large vessel fitted to carry over
those who embark on it; it is comparable to a grand bridge, a
Mahasetu, on which a child who has no comprehension as yet of the
nature of self can cross the stream of self-hood and worldly vanity.
A comparison of the many striking agreements between christianity
and Buddhism may prove fatal to sectarian conceptions of either
religion, but will in the end help to mature our insight into the true
significance of both. It will bring out a nobler faith which aspires
to be the cosmic religion of universal truth.
Let us hope that this Gospel of Buddha will serve both Buddhists
and Christians as a help to penetrate further into the spirit of their
faith, so as to see its full height, length and breadth.
Above any Hinayana, Mahayana, and Mahasetu is the Religion of
Truth.
PAUL CARUS
----------------------------------------------------------------------- PREFACE
end of file