The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons | Page 3

longing and striving for and what
not. From this misconception have come all the unfounded charges that Buddhism is an
"atheistical," that is to say, a grossly materialistic, a nihilistic, a negative, a vice-breeding
religion. Buddhism denies the existence of a personal God--true: therefore--well,
therefore, and notwithstanding all this, its teaching is neither what may be called properly
atheistical, nihilistic, negative, nor provocative of vice. I will try to make my meaning
clear, and the advancement of modern scientific research helps in this direction. Science
divides the universe for us into two elements--matter and force; accounting for their
phenomena by their combinations, and making both eternal and obedient to eternal and
immutable law. The speculations of men of science have carried them to the outermost
verge of the physical universe. Behind them lie not only a thousand brilliant triumphs by
which a part of Nature's secrets have been wrung from her, but also more thousands of
failures to fathom her deep mysteries. They have proved thought material, since it is the
evolution of the gray tissue of the brain, and a recent German experimentalist, Professor
Dr. Jäger, claims to have proved that man's soul is "a volatile odoriferous principle,
capable of solution in glycerine". Psychogen is the name he gives to it, and his
experiments show that it is present not merely in the body as a whole, but in every
individual cell, in the ovum, and even in the ultimate elements of protoplasm. I need
hardly say to so intelligent an audience as this, that these highly interesting experiments
of Dr. Jäger are corroborated by many facts, both physiological and psychological, that
have been always noticed among all nations; facts which are woven into popular proverbs,

legends, folk-lore fables, mythologies and theologies, the world over. Now, if thought is
matter and soul is matter, then Buddha, in recognising the impermanence of sensual
enjoyment or experience of any kind, and the instability of every material form, the
human soul included, uttered a profound and scientific truth, And since the very idea of
gratification or suffering is inseparable from that of material being--absolute SPIRIT
alone being regarded by common consent as perfect, changeless and Eternal--therefore,
in teaching the doctrine that conquest of the material self, with all its lusts, desires, loves,
hopes, ambitions and hates, frees one from pain, and leads to Nirvana, the state of Perfect
Rest, he preached the rest of an untinged, untainted existence in the Spirit. Though the
soul be composed of the finest conceivable substance, yet if substance at all--as Dr. Jäger
seems able to prove, and ages of human intercourse with the weird phantoms of the
shadow world imply--it must in time perish. What remains is that changeless part of man,
which most philosophers call Spirit, and Nirvana is its necessary condition of existence.
The only dispute between Buddhist authorities is whether this Nirvanic existence is
attended with individual consciousness, or whether the individual is merged in the whole,
as the extinguished flame is lost in the air. But there are those who say that the flame has
not been annihilated by the blowing out. It has only passed out of the visible world of
matter into the invisible world of Spirit, where it still exists and will ever exist, as a bright
reality. Such thinkers can understand Buddha's doctrine and, while agreeing with him that
soul is not immortal, would spurn the charge of materialistic nihilism, if brought against
either that sublime teacher or themselves.
The history of Sakya Muni's life is the strongest bulwark of his religion. As long as the
human heart is capable of being touched by tales of heroic self-sacrifice, accompanied by
purity and celestial benevolence of motive, it will cherish his memory. Why should I go
into the particulars of that noble life? You will remember that he was the son of the king
of Kapilavastu--a mighty sovereign whose opulence enabled him to give the heir of his
house every luxury that a voluptuous imagination could desire: and that the future
Buddha was not allowed even to know, much less observe, the miseries of ordinary
existence. How beautifully Edwin Arnold has painted for us in The Light of Asia the
luxury and languor of that Indian Court, "where love was gaoler and delights its bars".
We are told that:
The king commanded that within those walls No mention should be made of age or death
Sorrow or pain, or sickness ... And every dawn the dying rose was plucked, The dead
leaves hid, all evil sights removed: For said the king, "If he shall pass his youth Far from
such things as move to wistfulness And brooding on the empty eggs of thought, The
shadow of this fate, too vast for man, May fade, belike, and I shall see him