Buddhism in the East and in the West

Buddhism
in the East and in the West

Jatindra Mohan Ganguli

A foreign viewpoint with its own ideas, traditions and preju­dices is generally a handicap in appreciating and understanding the thought, culture and institutions of another country, particularly if such culture and institutions, descending from the long past, have a considerable time-lag behind the thought currents of the age. Western scholars have all the more suffered from this handicap in comprehending Indian thought and culture because of some radical differences in living ways and conditions, in traditions and in the outlook on life between Europe and India. The essential human nature has, of course, been the same, but the trend of cultural evo­lution, due to several causes, known and unknown – climatic, regio­nal and other, has influenced differently the drift of thought and the formation of outlook on life and on life’s end. Europe has rather concentrated on the physical and outward elements of exist­ence, but India, with gradual realisation of their transient and Volatile nature, and of their ultimate unreality, has grown discontented with those distracting elements and has turned inwards to discover truth and reality, absoluteness and permanence within the non-physical, not outwardly manifested, agency animating the world and its cre­atures and creations.

The result has been that while Europe has thought more of the physical self, its needs and comforts, and has pursued the know­ledge acquired through the senses, India has thought of renouncing the individual, desire-full self, and of subordinating the senses in order to awaken the subtler senses within and to perceive the Supreme Consciousness inside the external and outward forms and appearances. That has made India, not only reflective and medi­tative, but also devotional. Europe has argued and reasoned, ana­lysed and rationalised on the strength of her physical experience, but has missed the experiences coming through the perceptions of the spirit. The attitude of devotion, the mood to pray, the urge to surrender one’s little self to the all-pervading Being of which it is but a part – all that, Europe has generally rather missed to appreciate and understand.

India has approached the infinite through worship, prayer, devotion and surrender, as also through reason of the most dis­secting kind, the scope of which she did not restrict by any asser­tive finality, and the doors of which she left open to receive fresh light corrective influence and expansive ideas.

This very significant bifurcation of the thought-current and the different moulding of the mental attitude with the cultural evolu­tion in India and Europe, have not merely led to a different philo­sophy of life and of living, but have consequently estranged what has been termed the mystical philosophy of India from the so-called rationalism of the Europe of the analytical, scientific period fallow­ing the Middle Ages. European scholars, therefore, in understand­ing and interpreting Indian thought and religious philosophy, have shorn them of their mysticism, of their devotional texture, of their not easily intelligible metaphysical character, and of whatever did not come within the ring of their physical perception and mental conception. Under such shearing operations at the hands of Euro­pean interpreters, Buddhistic philosophy has become almost a corpse of its old vital self. It has been reduced almost to a bundle of abstract ideas and of dry reasoning circumscribed by artificial finiteness. Buddhism originated with the subtlest human perception of the things and ways of the world, of the sorrows and afflictions of its creatures, of the heart’s inner discontent at the emptiness of material possessions, and of its revolt at the mad unthinking ways and tendencies of people hurting, killing, paining and tyrannising over others for false, unlasting, selfish gains. It was the intensity of that perception which made the Great Prince renounce his throne and kingdom and go into seclusion to devote himself to deepest contemplation on the great mystery of the creation till the revelation came.

That was how Siddhartha became the Buddha, and that was how, on the devotional meditation on the unknown and the eternal, Buddhism was founded and developed. Look at the image of that great thinker sitting with depthless vision in his eyes, lost in endless contemplation, motionless in unflinching devotion. That way he conceived and sought Nirvana. That way he drew out light from darkness and gave it to the blind. He argued, reasoned, explained and postulated but all that was done with the subtle consciousness of a trans-material entity, the ultimate realisation of which was to him the great Nirvana. To fail to comprehend this inner conscious­ness supremely influencing the Buddha is to miss the track which he followed, and to be without the key to understand his philosophy and his teachings. Without that consciousness in you and without your heart vibrating with it, as Buddha’s did, one cannot truly approach and follow him, nor can one squeeze out the nector one may seek from his teachings and sayings. To understand Buddha and to rise to his plane one must sit before an image of him in the serenity of quiet environment and meditate as prayerfully and devotionally as he did.

But generally the Western scholars have not looked at Buddhism from that viewpoint. They have sought to weave a philosophy with Buddha’s teachings and utterances, leaving out the devotional aspect of his life. Under such influence Buddhism has been weakening in its influence over and appeal to the human heart.

The modem Buddhists read the Buddhistic literature, discuss and expostulate, but do not sit quietly and worshipfully to realise Truth. Buddhism has been torn out of its devotional setting and reduced to mere abstract metaphysics superimposed on some pre­cepts and ethical ideas. But faith and devotion are the essential ingredients of all religion, whereby it reaches the innermost recesses of the heart and makes the subtlest perceptions admissible there and such faith and devotion arise and develop with increasing realisation and expanding consciousness, which generate devotional mood.

Buddhism has been and can be no exception to that truism. The tendency to make it an exception under the modern sceptical and analytical interpretation has deprived it of its power to awaken ardour in the minds of its followers and to impart the deep sense of dawning divine consciousness. Out of and away from the elect of this tendency, where the people have retained their devotional fervour, Buddhism is still living, is still inspiring and emotionally stimulating – it may be in somewhat attenuated form, but its life-­stream is still flowing. It is in that life-stream, which is coursing through the unsophisticated mind of the Buddhist masses in Tibet or interior Burma, who worship and pray and pour out their feelings and emotions of joy and sorrow at the feet of the Buddha’s stone idol, that the prospect of the resurrection of Buddhism is present, and it is among those people that when the suspicious time comes the Buddha will be born again, as before. All great teachers, world saviours and prophets have been born only in such pious, devotional and unsophisticated environment, where the human mind has pulsa­ted with religious fervour and has been sensitive to the ecstasy of feeling arising from ardent faith, surrendering devotion and tearful prayer. The next Buddha also can be born only in such environment and atmosphere, and not within the jurisdiction of the learned Buddhist societies, or within the purview of faith – bereft, dry, analytical study and interpretation of Buddhism.

Western scholars may have created interest in the religion of the Buddha in the West – but what they have carried and spread has not been the soul-stirring and life-revolutionising message of the Buddha, but only an oriental philosophical curio to be comparatively studied with theological trends in other countries. That the world has in that way missed the deep voice and the heart yearnings of a great humanist is no doubt true, but the greatest pity is that, because of that, even the traditional followers of the Buddha in India, and in Asia at large, are getting unmoored from their age-­old religious anchorage and are getting disinterested in cultivating the internal spirit realisation through outpouring devotion and heart­felt prayer. If Buddhism is to be animated again with stimulating life and vigour it has to be enlivened with the same old creep feeling and spirit of devotion as before, which have been overlooked and unappreciated by the intellectuals of today.