Buddhism in the Modern WorldSaunders, Kenneth J. (Kenneth James)
Religion
Buddhism in the Modern World
Saunders, Kenneth J. (Kenneth James)
Buddhism
All this is very largely the outcome of Christian activities in Japan
and it is very noteworthy that while the Christian Church is
numerically small its leadership in liberal politics and in
philanthropy is acknowledged all over the Empire and its pervasive
influence upon the thought of modern Japan is obvious on all sides.
St. Francis of Assisi and Tolstoy are perhaps the Christian leaders
most admired by the Japanese. They belong to the same spiritual
company as the great Sākyamuni, who, like them, embraced poverty and
was filled with a tender love and a sane yet passionate enthusiasm of
humanity. Japan is looking for a great spiritual and moral leader.
Will he be a Buddhist like the great Nichiren who in the thirteenth
century came like a strong sea-breeze to revive the soul of his people
and preached a religion which was to be a moral guide in national
affairs and in the daily life of his people? Or will he be a Christian
leader who, counting all things as dung compared with the Gospel of
Jesus, shall answer the cry of the Japanese patriot who believes that
his people are hungry for truth? There is a wealth of liberalism in
young Japan and there are idealists everywhere waiting to rally around
a great religious leader. But he will need to know and understand her
past and to launch his appeal to that wonderful patriotism which is
the essence of the Japanese character.
Can Buddhism produce this moral leadership? Let us hear what a
Japanese Christian of great learning and insight has to say. "To
Buddhism Japan owes a great debt for certain elements of her faith
which would scarcely have developed without its aid; but those
germinal elements have taken on a form and colouring, a personal
vitality not gained elsewhere. Important as are those elements of
faith, they still lack the final necessary reality. Buddhism is
incomplete in the god whom it presents as an object of worship. In
place of the Supreme Being, spiritual and personal, Buddhism offers a
reality of which nothing can be affirmed, or, at best, a Great Buddha
among many. Buddhism is incomplete in the consciousness of sin which
it awakens within the soul of man. Instead of the sense of having
violated an eternal law of righteous love by personal antagonism,
Buddhism deepens the consciousness of human misery by an unbreakable
bond of suffering; and the salvation, therefore, which Buddhism offers
is deliverance from misery, not from the power of personal sin. In its
idea of self-sacrifice, Buddhism affords an element of faith much more
nearly allied to that of the Christian believer. In both the offering
of self is for the sake of the multitude, the world-brotherhood; but
in the one pity, often acquiescent and helpless, predominates, whereas
in the other loyalty to a divine ideal finds expression in the
obligation to active service."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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