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The Buddhists agree with the Brahmins in the doctrine of Quietism, in the care of animal life, in transmigration. They deny the Vedas and Puranas, have no castes, and, agreeably to their cardinal principle, draw their priests from all classes like the European monks.
According to the Buddhists of Ceylon, the universe has perished ten different times, and each time has been renewed by the operations of Nature, or by the preservation of germs from a former world. In their mythology these germs are represented by a parent and a triplicated offspring.
"The gentlemen of modern materialistic schools do not compare favorably with Plato and Cicero in the elevation and reverence of their opinions." "Science has certainly made some advancement, but where is the warrant for the boasting" of sciolists of modern times? Buddhists taught the most perfect outline of materialism in general.
You furnish your own towel and the most untidy stranger in the compartment usually wants to borrow it, having forgotten to bring one himself. You acquire merit in heaven, as the Buddhists say, by loaning it to him, but it is a better plan to carry two towels, in order to be prepared for such an emergency.
It will be idle therefore to assume that the old sleepy system of Gautama has no chance in this wide-awake republic of the West. I have already called attention to the special tactics of Buddhists just now in claiming that Christianity, having been of later origin, has borrowed its principal facts and its teachings. Let us examine the charge.
Here we have a mixed population, estimated in 1856 at seventy-one millions, including North American possessions and tributary tribes, a great part of it composed of totally incongruous elements, and with a variety of religions, embracing about nine millions of Roman, Armenian, and irregular Greek Catholics, Lutherans, Mohammedans, Israelites, and Buddhists the national creed being the Greco-Russe, which, it is estimated, is professed by about fifty millions of the inhabitants, including, of course, infants and young children, and many others who know nothing about it.
Thus the nations of Europe that branched out in all directions from very nearly the same sources possessed common linguistic characters and somewhat similar creeds. The Sanskrit-speaking races were the original Brahmins and Buddhists. Ancestor worship is an accompaniment of the peculiar languages spoken by eastern Mongolian peoples.
The character of the successive appearances or tenements of the soul is determined by the law of Karma, which even more than metempsychosis is the basis of Indian ideas about the universe. Karma is best known as a term of the Buddhists, who are largely responsible both for the definition and wide diffusion of the doctrine.
It was afterwards reported to the Pope that Mangu and another Tartar Prince had been converted. Such fabricated stories were only too common. Rubruquis has left us much information about the Tartar Court; but his public discussions before the Khan with Nestorians, Mohammedans and Buddhists led to no practical result. On the death of Mangu his dominions were divided between his two brothers.
Few examples of the attainment of cosmic consciousness are as complete and of such fullness, as that attained by Buddha, and no instance which history affords has left so great an effect upon the world. It is estimated that at least one-third of the human race are Buddhists.
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