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SKETCHES OF BUDDHISM AS A LIVING
RELIGION
KENNETH J. SAUNDERS
Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California
This article presents in graphic form the activities of Buddhist devotees as they
would be observed by an eyewitness, and seeks to show what these mean in the experi-
ence of those who worship and aspire in these ways. Brief interpolations are given
of the power of Buddhism and the status of Christian ideals in Burma and Ceylon.
I. IN BURMA
It is morning, and the golden pagoda is shining and scintil-
lating in the clear air. Far below the great city is astir and
humming with life: here all is quiet. In the monastery a
class of boys from eight to fourteen years old are seated
around a kindly old monk. They are shouting loudly in
unison, repeating over and over certain words, about whose
meaning they do not seem to be thinking. As we draw near
we realize that they are phrases from a popular Buddhist book
known as Mingala Thot, a summary of the Buddhist beatitudes,
which describe the happy life of the Buddhist layman. First a
word of Pali and then a word of Burmese, and then lastly the
whole verse. There are twelve such verses, of which the
following are typical :
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 got by heart, but gradually their meaning sinks in, and
simple explanations and grammatical notes are part of the
teacher's task.
418
BUDDHISM AS A LIVING RELIGION 419
Or it may be a short summary of the excellent qualities of
the "Three Jewels" of Buddhism — the Buddha, his order of
monks, and his law or teaching. Having mastered these
preliminary books, the boys will learn the chief Jdtakas, a
strange medley of folklore dressed up in Buddhist guise, and
purporting to be stories of the former existences of the Founder
Sakyamuni. For, besides being a system of moral teachings,
Buddhism is a religion and has an elaborate system of beliefs.
It makes very great demands upon faith ! These former lives
of the Buddha are taught in legend and hymn, in popular sum-
maries or proverbial sayings, and are universally believed.
As we study this strange educational system which per-
meates the whole country, we shall be amazed to find that
there are about two monasteries to every village, and that,
however great a drain they may be upon the country, they have
made it one of the most literate of all the lands of the East,
with a larger percentage of men who can read and write than
modern Italy. We shall learn too that these boys must all
undergo "ordination" before they are regarded as human
beings (so great is the power of the monks), and shall realize
that some of them are caught by the lure of the monastic
life and the glamor of the yellow robe. Yet most go back to
the world after a short experience. The young shin, or novice,
may in due course pass on to ordination. Then, dressed in
princely robes, he celebrates the time when the Founder of
Buddhism left his royal state to become a mendicant. His
head is shaved, his gorgeous clothes are taken from him, and
henceforward he is to be clad only in the yellow robe of this
ancient order, older, more widespread, and more picturesque
than any religious order in the world. He has " taken refuge
in the Three Jewels," and now begins for him the regular life
of the monk. He must go out daily with a file of others and
collect food; he must attend to the needs of the older monks
and to simple household tasks, and he must continue to study
until he has a working knowledge of the three "Baskets," of
420 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
Discipline, Narratives or Dialogues, and Higher Religion,
which make up the Buddhist canon. 1 Later he may himself
become a teacher.
Watch him now as the great sun goes down and the pagoda,
glorious in the sunset, as it changes from gold to purple and
from purple to gray, is thronged with devout worshipers.
He is prostrate before the great jeweled alabaster image of
Buddha, unaware of the people round him, it would seem, who
honor him as a being of a superior order; or if conscious of
them it is with a sense of his own aloofness. " Sabba Dukkhd"
("All is sorrow"), he is murmuring; "Sabba anatta" ("All is
without abiding entity"), and mechanically the lay-folk
repeat words which have been for twenty-five centuries the
Buddhist challenge to the world.
Here kneels a young wife offering strands of her hair, and
praying that her child may have hair long and beautiful;
here is an unhappy wife who prays that her husband may
become pure as the flower which she lays at the Buddha's
feet, and here is one very old and trembling woman who has
bowed first to the great image and lit her little candle before
it, and then turning back is patting a great tree lest the Nat, or
spirit, which lives within be offended. As has been said:
The spirits are always malignant, and have to be propitiated. The
world Renowned One, is he not benign ? So the Burman does his best
to serve both, but it is of the demons that he thinks most
There is a Pagoda at or near every village in the country, and prob-
ably also a monastery; but there is a spirit shrine in every home and the
spirits are consulted before homes are built, marriages made, bargains
struck, or journeys begun.
Let us consider this group of women. What are the living
truths of Buddhism for them ? (a) In the first place there is
the order of monks, the great "field of merit"; did not the
Master teach that offerings to them are potent in bringing
benefits in this world, and even in helping the dead in the
1 The Tipitaka: (i) Vinaya; (2) Sutta; (3) Abhidhamma.
BUDDHISM AS A LIVING RELIGION 421
dim life of the underworld? (b) Secondly there is the fact
that Buddhism is a great social force providing festivals and
giving color to life. In theory it may be sad ; in practice it is
very cheerful! Some Christian women go to church to see the
latest fashions; can we wonder that Burmese Buddhist
women delight to gather on the great pagoda for a smoke,
gossip, and friendly intercourse ? (c) Here too they hear the
well-known Buddhist stories, often miraculous, always with a
moral, and they know by heart the lives of certain great
Bodhisattvas, buds of the lotus which later on will bloom into
full Buddhahood. Before them is a picture of "Godama"
when he was a hare and jumped into the fire to feed the hungry
Brahmin, and here, more familiar and more poignant still, is
his appearance as Prince Vessantara, giving away his wife
and beloved children to a hunchback beggar. Do they ever
question his right to do so ? (d) Then again Buddhism influ-
ences them because it appeals to their imagination and their
sense of mystery with its solemn chanting, its myriad shrines,
its candles twinkling in the dusk, and the sexless sanctity of its
monks. How wise and good they are ! Here one little woman is
lifting a heavy stone; the monk has told her that if it seems
heavy her prayer will surely be answered — and it weighs
forty pounds. And then to make sure she will go and consult
the soothsayer, whose little booth is beside the shrine — -a
cheerful rogue, not without insight and a sense of humor. A
friend of mine once "read" his hand and told him in fluent
Burmese that he would be hanged. "Ho, ho!" he chuckled,
"There are no bones in your tongue."
Watch now this group of men. Here is one who between
prostrations before the image is keeping his long cheroot alive
and enjoying a puff at it. He is like many men one meets,
making the best of both worlds, and for him Buddhism has
its appeal because (a) it is the custom of his people; and in the
national movement which is alive in Burma and elsewhere
Western influence (of which Christianity seems a part) is
422 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
resented, (b) Moreover it has launched a strong appeal to his
reason. He understands why there is inequality in human
lot, why some are rich and some poor, some healthy and some
diseased. It is the law of Karma that is working out; it
explains everything ! Men suffer now because they have sinned
in a former birth. Listen to this conversation: old U Hpay
is telling a neighbor of a foolish old sister who has adopted a
calf, and is petting it because its voice is so like that of her
dead husband! And while the old men chuckle at her belief
that his spirit is reincarnated in this way, yet they do believe
that that is the law. If you kill a mosquito it may be your
mother-in-law in a new body, and still going strong! (c) More-
over they know that there are times when there comes over
them a wistful yearning for something which this world has
not given them, and that in these quiet moments in the evening
of life, when they are no longer concerned with making money
or raising a family, the appeal of Nibbdna and its peace comes
home to them. They do not hope to reach it, they do not
understand what it means; for some of the monks say it will
be "annihilation," and some say the "extinction of all passion
and a great calm", but either way it has its appeal, especially
to the world-weary. I remember meeting a Christian mis-
sionary once, one of the noblest, who longed for just that
quietude and relief from the bustle and flurry and staleness of
life, which he felt could only be found in ceasing to be. A
tropical climate had gradually in twenty-five years sapped his
vitality.
Playing around, while the old people talk or pray, are
some children. Here a fat, naked baby takes a puff at his
grandfather's cigar, and here is a little girl devoutly imitating
what she sees her parents doing in the front of the image; she
too will light her candle and offer her marigolds. And here is
an older child for whom already there is beginning a hero-
worship of the great being who has done so much for the world.
She is thinking wistfully, maybe, of her brother, lately her
BUDDHISM AS A LIVING RELIGION 423
playmate; now a young shin with shaved head and yellow
robe, aloof and removed from her.
What wonder that there are over 75,000 monks in the
country, for every mother desires that one of her sons shall
take and keep the yellow robe, and for many this means a
long and anxious struggle of wills. The young educated Bur-
mese are frank in calling the monks a "yellow peril," not
because they are bad men — public opinion will not usually
tolerate that in Burma — but because there are so many of them,
and because to feed them is a costly business, while to rebuild
and gild a pagoda may mean that they will receive a decimated
inheritance! "The pagoda is built and the village ruined"
they quote ruefully. Moreover in the government schools and
in contact with the "free thought" of the West they have
learned to call themselves "heretics." Very few are really
Buddhists; among my students not more than 10 per cent
were orthodox. And so the old people are anxious and the
young are restive; and Burma like many other countries is
going through a strange period of transition. Yet undoubtedly
Buddhism still has a great hold upon the people. How shall
we estimate it ?
We had read in many wise books that it was a pessimistic
religion. As we see it in Burma it seems a strange power for
making people happy and content — unless it be only the cheery
temperament of the Burmese; there is certainly a wonderful
joyousness about these gay-robed crowds of happy, smiling
people, " the Irish of the East " we called them in happier days !
"A most Christ-like thing is their cheery optimism," says a
Christian missionary, even though it has no deep roots.
Moreover we had heard that Buddhism had degraded
women; we find that while it does not give her nearly so high
a place as the religion of Christ, yet it has certainly given her
a better standing than she has in any part of India. She is the
"better half" in Burma and knows it; while she prays to be
born next as a man, she does not tell her husband so!
424 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
Buddhism again has not developed a caste system and has
made for democracy and for the education of the masses. Nor
has it led on any large scale to religious persecution or to war:
its lesson that "hatred is only ended by love" is one the
world sorely needs.
These are no small services; and yet as we get to know
the life of the people we shall find strange evidences of want
of control, and of lack of purpose and seriousness in life, and,
above all, we shall find an unsatisfied longing which we believe
can only be satisfied when they find that the great unknown
God is near and loving and that he is not in a remote Nibbana.
There are only about 20,000 Burmese Christians as yet,
though the Karens are largely Christian. What then are the
reasons which make us confident that Burma will be a Chris-
tian country, even if, as we believe and hope, its Christianity
is to differ profoundly from ours ?
a) In the first place the natural instinct of the Burmese for
religion is very strong; they have deified the great teacher
Gautama, and gratitude to him is a strong motive. They
tend to look upon Gautama as a savior. So strong is this
longing for a savior that as the father blesses his child he says
to him: "May you be reborn when the loving one, Maitri,
comes." For Gautama himself promised a loving savior;
and some of our most pietistic hymns are imitated: "Yes,
Buddha saves me; yes, Buddha saves me." Buddhism, even
in Southern Asia, is changing from a way of merit and self-
mastery to a way of salvation by faith.
b) Again, it is clear that Buddhists are generally much
more ready than they were for the idea of a Christian heaven.
This heaven preached as a state of progress, a meeting place of
friends, and the beatific vision of God is attracting them far
more than the old doctrine of Nirvana. "We are walking in
darkness," said a Buddhist leader in Ceylon, "without seeing
a light, a person, or a hope." "Nirvana," said a monk in
Burma, "is a fearsome thought. I have no hope of attaining
BUDDHISM AS A LIVING RELIGION 425
it." Missionaries both in Burma and Ceylon are agreed that
the outlook of Buddhists is changing, and a well-known mis-
sionary, after forty years' service in Burma, has written:
"Buddhism has changed very greatly in its teachings among
those who have come directly or indirectly in touch with
Christianity. Formerly, no supreme God, Nirvana, total
quiescence, almost total annihilation, man his own savior, no
possible escape from the penalty of sin; now there must be a
God, Gautama a savior, sin forgiven by one God and a heaven
in place of Nirvana."
None the less it remains true that in very many parts there
are no Christian doctrines which arouse more opposition than
just these, and it would seem as if Buddhism is making a great
last stand against the gospel of Christ. Indeed it is not clear
yet that our Christianity is loving enough and sacrificial enough
to win these people, who have had so high a standard set by
their own religion. Nor is Christendom sufficiently Christian
to be a very good argument for the efficacy and truth of our
faith. As in other parts of the East nothing but the best is good
enough.
c) Yet the moral situation clearly demands either that a
revivified Buddhism or Christianity in its most vital form
should come to the rescue. The need is grave.
The moral sense of the people is diminishing with a slackening of
religious observances. With the decay of ancient beliefs the Buddhist
religion is losing its moral sanction as an inspiring force in the lives of
its adherents, and drunkenness, gambling, drug-taking and vicious
habits, increasing as they all are, tend to produce a weakening of self-
control and a loss of self-respect which in favoring circumstance easily
create the criminal.
So reads the government bluebook on the administration of
criminal justice for 1912, concerning the province of Burma,
which is at once the most literate and most criminal province in
the Indian Empire. The fair-minded missionary would add
that these deplorable results are in large part due to the intro-
426 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
duction of Western "civilization," and that it is up to us in
ordinary justice and fair play to see that the West is represented
by the very best we can send out for mission service, in com-
merce and to government posts. If this be done the future
of Christianity is assured.
Again if Christianity is indeed alive it will go out in loving
social service; and when it does this, whether in work for the
lepers, for the deaf and the blind, or for any other needy class
in the community, it is welcomed with open arms by the
people. Buddhists are generous in helping Christian work
for the afflicted. Let us do more and still more.
And lastly Christianity must show its power in the demon-
haunted villages and in the stews of the great cities; it is not
a system of ethics which these countries need. They have an
admirable one already. " The kingdom of God is not in word
but in power."
II. IN CEYLON
Let us now set over against this composite picture of the
Buddhism of Burma a scene in a neighboring Buddhist land,
the island of Ceylon, where for 2,500 years the religion of the
yellow robe has held undisputed sway. It is early spring.
The rains are over, and in the brilliant moonlight the Singhalese
peasants have gathered from their little malarial villages to a
hillside to listen to the preaching of the Buddhist law. Life is
dull, and any incident and any teaching will be welcome;
it is a strange world from which they have come, "a world of
bare and brutal facts; of superstition, of grotesque imagination;
a world of hunger and fear and devils, where a man is helpless
before the unseen and unintelligible forces surrounding him."
As in Burma, so here, demonism is inexplicably interwoven
with the Buddhism of the people, and here it is a darker and
more sinister demonism, as it is also a more somber and pessi-
mistic Buddhism which speaks through the monotonous sing-
song of the yellow-robed monk who is speaking to them and
BUDDHISM AS A LIVING RELIGION 427
urging upon them that life is transient and full of sorrow; that
none the less their chief duty is to avoid taking the life of the
meanest animal; that they are not even to kill the malarial
mosquito or the plague-bringing rat, against which government
edicts have gone out. The men listen dully for the most part,
chewing betel nut the while. They have not much use for the
"brethren," who own one-third of the arable land of the
country and are a heavy drain upon its resources, and who,
except fitfully, are not schoolmasters like those of Burma, but
tend to be drones in the hive; almost all they teach the children
are the doctrines of rebirth and of not killing. Yet, as we listen,
here too there is a certain sense of religious peace, of an other-
worldly calm; and, if we are fortunate, we may find some
Buddhist layman who will talk of the deep roots which the great
tree of Buddhism has put out in the island of Ceylon, (a) In
the first place there are signs in these jungles everywhere of
an ancient civilization which Buddhism undoubtedly built
there. It taught the inhabitants to irrigate their fields, to build
cities, to write books, and when so little has been spared, as
wave after wave of European aggression has swept over the
island, do they not inevitably hold on to what is left them of
the old Buddhist past ? They venerate the relics of a civiliza-
tion two thousand years old. Moreover in these days of dis-
illusionment there are many world-weary men to whom the
attraction of the monastic life is overpoweringly strong. The
fact that there are still about eight thousand monks in Ceylon
shows that, though men may despise the yellow robe, there
are some who find under it protection and peace, and some
few who use its influence for noble ends, (b) Moreover the
intelligent layman will tell you how it has done away with
caste and has cleansed religion. He will compare the dignity
and harmlessness of the Buddhist temple with the gross inde-
cencies of a Saivite shrine in South India, (c) He will show
that Buddhism has still the power of molding public opinion,
as for example in the strenuous appeals which the Buddhists
428 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
have made to the government of the island to suppress instead
of encouraging the liquor traffic. Buddhists too supported
the Christian missions in their courageous campaign which
closed whole streets of licensed brothels.
These points will go home to your mind and conscience,
and yet you will be constrained to say that the people of Ceylon
do need Christ as Burma does, and indeed as America and
England need him ! Here is after all the nerve of the missionary
enterprise. We are not missionaries because we have a superior
civilization; we go because of the fact of Christ, and because,
though we as Western nations have not given him his rightful
place, we are anxious that these Eastern people should bring
their rich gifts and lay them at his feet. Are we not to be
partners in a glorious enterprise ?
But let us return to our moonlight preacher. While we
have been chatting, a change has come over the audience. All
are now alert and eager. Seated around his platform, they
are holding a string which seems to bind them in some mystic
circle. It is "Pirit." The preacher is reciting the ancient
runes by which evil is averted and demon armies kept at bay.
He is telling how the bandit Angulimala, who had killed 999
victims and wore their fingers as a chaplet, tried to kill the
Buddha, and was converted before he could put his thousand
up! "May the merit of this be yours," he says, and they all
cry "Sadhu, Amen." "All humbug," grunts our layman.
" Come let us go to the Y.M.B.A., where a Singhalese advocate,
newly returned from home [i.e., England], is going to read a
paper on 'Buddhism a Gospel for Europe!'" As we leave
the palms and fragrant trees of the jungle, silhouetted against
the brilliant sky, and pass the white buildings of the Buddhist
high school and the famous Temple of the Tooth (a precious
relic of Gotama), we talk of this possibility. There is, we
learn, a movement on foot to send a mission to Europe, and
my friend smiles sympathetically when I say, "Well, better be
a good Buddhist than a Christian who can think of God as a
BUDDHISM AS A LIVING RELIGION 429
God of battles, and attribute to him some of the strange things
which the old Jews believed of him." We are agreed, too, that
there are certain quarters where such a mission might begin
its activities at once, and to my joy I find that this young Bud-
dhist is in hearty agreement with me that if Christians were
real followers of Jesus of Nazareth, such missions would not
be needed. "We see your Christ," he says, "in his beauty,
because we have first seen the beauty of our Buddha." Here is
a preparation for the gospel indeed ! And I find myself wonder-
ing if all we who are idealists — Buddhists, Christians, and
others — may not co-operate much more freely in great causes.
In Ceylon, as in Burma, Buddhism is in some degree adapting
itself to a changing world, and its old cry of pain, " All is fleet-
ing, transient, sorrowful," is giving place to some attempts at
social service and positive living. Yet the predominant note
is one of world- weariness and despair, far more emphasized
in Ceylon than in Burma.
Contrast these two scenes:
A great Singhalese abbot has passed away. The hillside
is thronged with great companies of monks in every shade of
yellow and brown, and around them surges a somber sea of
the faithful laity. In the center is the funeral pyre, draped in
white and red, and, standing beside it, a monk is telling in
solemn and mournful tones of the greatness and goodness of
the departed, who, though he had not come in sight of Nirvana
had his feet surely set upon the upward path leading to a good
rebirth in some heavenly place. Then amidst solemn chanting
and the wailing of flutes and throbbing of drums he applies a
torch to the pyre. While the people bow their heads and cry
Sadhu, the body returns to dust. Then solemnly and silently
the great crowd disperses, the lay people to the ordinary duties
of life, the monks to meditate upon its transient character and
unreality. And here a boy monk, to whom the dead man had
been dear, stays weeping, while the last embers die and night
comes swiftly down.
430 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
Another funeral scene; it is that of a Buddhist monk in
Burma, a Hpongyi. The whole countryside has turned out.
In clothing of exquisite silk, like a brilliant swarm of butterflies,
they surround the great catafalque blazing with tinsel and gold
leaf. On it lies the embalmed body of the monk. Presently
it is taken down in its coffin, and the young bloods of the
village, in two carefully picked teams, are ranged about it.
Then begins a tug of war, and the victorious team which
pulls the body over the line will treat the defeated group to
drinks and sideshows at the little booths which cluster around
awaiting custom! It is a glad and jovial scene and all rejoice,
for has not the good man been released from this transient life
(which, nevertheless, is good and satisfying, while blood is hot
and youth lasts) ? " Youth for pleasure, middle age for busi-
ness, old age for religion." Has he not returned to a life of
glory, and won much merit for his own folk and for all the
faithful ?
Soon the body is restored to its resting-place, the pyre is
lighted, and the whole mass flares up in flame and smoke,
consuming not only the body, but with it paintings of numerous
demons, including an Englishman with a gun! Then with
shouts of merriment the crowd disperses, well content, not
least the relatives of the departed. They have put up a good
show, the dead has been honored, the family name has been
distinguished, and everybody is satisfied. If for the next
year or more the family exchequer has been depleted, still it
is the custom, and one must follow it. It has been well said
that Buddhism is a cheery and a social thing in Burma,
"from festive marriages to no less festive funerals."
With one-tenth of the population nominally Christian, and
with a revived Buddhism strongly nationalist, Ceylon may well
be said to be at the crossroads in religion. Which of the faiths
can produce the sincere and unselfish leaders whom she needs
if she is to win her place as a self-governing dominion, and to
make her own contribution to the life of the world ? Scottish
BUDDHISM AS A LIVING RELIGION 431
German monks, converts to Buddhism, have toiled to revive
the drooping faith and spirit of the Buddhists of the island,
and theosophists like Madame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, and
Mrs. Besant have helped them to build schools and colleges.
Now as she looks wistfully to the two greatest teachers of the
world to make her strong and free, now is the time for their
disciples to vindicate their teachings! It is a challenging
appeal alike to the Sangha of Gotama Buddha and to the
church of Jesus Christ. The former has held undisputed
sway from the time of the gentle prince-missionary Mahinda,
and has done great things for this lovable nation; the latter,
greatly handicapped by the Prussian methods of its Portu-
guese exponents, has now a clear field to reveal the spirit of
its Master. There are many things in which a purified Bud-
dhism and a really Christian Christianity can co-operate.
Prosint!
