: Buddhism in the Modern World by Saunders Kenneth J Kenneth James - Buddhism

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PREFACE

K?YA SAN HIEISAN AND ITS SECTS A SHINSHU TEMPLE A REVIVAL OF BUDDHISM CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE

A CHINESE TEMPLE

BUDDHISM IN THE MODERN WORLD

"Tend parents, cherish wife and child, Pursue a blameless life and mild: Do good, shun ill and still beware Of the red wine's insidious snare; Be humble, with thy lot content, Grateful and ever reverent."

Many times must these phrases be droned through before they are learned by heart, but gradually their meanings sink in and simple explanations and grammatical notes by the teacher help his class to understand as well as to learn. These moral maxims still exert a powerful influence for good.

Let us turn again to the shrine. The great sun is going down and the pagoda, splendid in the sunset as it changes from gold to purple and from purple to gray, and then to silver as the glorious moon rises, is thronged with devout worshippers. The monk prostrates himself before the jewelled alabaster image of Buddha. He seems unaware of the people around him, who honour him as a being of a superior order; or, if conscious of them, it is with a sense of his own aloofness. "Sabb? Dukkh?" he is murmuring: "Sabb? Anatt?" . Mechanically the lay-folk repeat with him the words which have been for twenty-five centuries the Buddhist challenge to the world, calling it away from the lure of the senses and the ties of family and home.

And finally, Buddhism influences Burmese women by appealing to their imagination and their love of mystery, with its solemn chanting, its myriad shrines, with their innumerable candles twinkling in the dusk, and the sexless sanctity of its monks. How wise and good they seem to be! Are they not custodians of the truth? Here one little woman is lifting a heavy stone weighing forty pounds; a monk has told her that if it seems heavy her prayer will surely be answered. To make assurance doubly sure, she may go and consult the soothsayer, whose little booth is near the shrine--a cheerful rogue, not without insight and a sense of humour--but she gives to the monk the supreme place, and pays him more generously!

A Burman acquaintance of mine, who was converted to Christianity, was asked by an old lady why he had deserted the "custom" of his people. "I am sick," he began, "of all this bowing down to the monks, and of all these offerings." "Stop, stop!" she cried, aghast. "You are destroying the whole religion of our nation!"

Again, while Buddhism does not give to womanhood nearly so high a place as does the religion of Jesus, yet it has granted her a far better standing than she has in any part of India under Hinduism or Islam. Woman is the "better half" in Burma and knows it, even though she may pray to be born next as a man.

Caste, moreover, the great bane of India, is almost unknown to Buddhist Burma: it is a cheerful democratic land. Buddhism believes in the education of the masses, and its schools and monasteries are open to all. It is also very tolerant and kindly. It has not led on any large scale either to religious persecution or to war. These are no small services. Moreover, Buddhism has in the past been a great bond of union between the peoples of Asia, and it is to-day again playing some part in the movement, "Asia for the Asiatics"--a movement deserving our sympathetic attention. In the great awakening of Nationalism the Buddhist Revival has its share both as cause and as effect.

There are only some twenty thousand Burmese Christians as yet, although, within the confines of Burma there is a far larger number of Christians, and the Karens are already a great church. What, then, are the reasons for confidence that Burma will at some time be a Christian country, albeit with a Christianity whose type will differ very greatly from the prevailing types of the West?

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