The International Buddhist Society
AN International Buddhist Society was founded in Mandalay last year, and has entered upon an active propaganda for the extension of Buddhism in all lands. “The hope of all hearts,” says the report of the secretary-general, is that “from this small beginning our work shall extend over the globe, and the earth be brought beneath the canopy of the Conqueror, the Lord of wisdom and of love.” This has been done, so the prospectus of the movement states, in the firm belief that it “will prove a remedy for many of the evils of the present age.” It is interesting to note some of the grounds on which this belief is based. The prospectus says:— The teachings of Buddhism being against the taking of life, their general acceptance would involve the substitution of arbitration for war, of imprisonment for capital punishment, and the abolition of the slaughter of animals—a practice as degrading to those employed in it as it is cruel to helpless creatures. The ethical system of Buddhism further prohibits the use of intoxicating liquors or drugs, one of the chief curses of this age, the use of alcohol alone being responsible for over twenty-five per cent of lunatics in our asylums, to say nothing of its effects on the descendants of those afflicted by this deadly habit. Buddhism, again, is the sole great religion of the world which places men and women on the same footing; many of the great disciples of Buddha were women, and in Burma, where Buddhism is the dominant factor of the national life, women have more freedom than in any other country in the world. The spread of Buddhist tenets would undoubtedly tend to do away with the injurious distinctions of sex that prevail in the West. It will be observed that a considerable basis is afforded in these specifications for an appeal to the æsthetic and moral sensibilities of many people in civilized as well as heathen lands; for many are opposed to the slaughter of animals for food, to the use of alcohol, and to drugs. It is evident, too, that this advantage to Buddhism comes from the fact that the “Christian” powers of the world are not Christian in fact as well as in name. If the truths of Christianity were honored in the practices of professedly Christian people, no opportunity would be given a false religion to claim superiority for itself in the important matter of promoting temperate living. The prospectus points out, further, that Buddhism, in its philosophic aspects, presents “an agnosticism singularly in accordance with the more advanced phases of modern thought.” This is certainly true; for many ideas which belong to the “advanced phases of modern thought” are purely pagan, though in “Christian” lands they assume a Christian guise. It would not be strange therefore if this Buddhist society’s program of implanting Buddhism in the religious soil of the Western world should meet with a considerable degree of success. “Every year,” the prospectus tells us, “more and more, intellectual Western minds are discovering the wrong direction of scientific thought, and adopting the more metaphysical attitude of Buddhism” as being “the only logical and possible explanation of the difficulties that confront us.” And viewed from any other standpoint than that of faith, this seems true enough. But probably pagan ideas will continue to flourish best in civilized lands in the guise of advanced Christianity, embodied in some of the latter-day isms which have taken a Christian name. The advance of paganism under such a guise in the nominally Christian countries of the earth constitutes one of the great perils of these last days.