CHAPTER 1
Buddhism and the Culture of India
THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIAN CULTURE
The formation and growth of any religion is sure to have a cultural background.As is common knowledge, in the present-day world, if we speak of civilizationswith a long history and cultural tradition, there are only China and India inthe East, and Egypt and Greece in the West. These are called the world's fourgreat ancient civilizations.
The glorious history of Greece is already a thing of the past, but its culturallegacy has mixed with other elements and spread, contributing to the formationof the modern civilization of Europe and America. Egyptian civilization isalready remote and hidden in the mists, and only some fragments of its grandeurremain. Indian civilization, especially the Buddhist civilization which has madesuch an impact on the world and has shone brightly from ancient to modern times,has already been completely assimilated in the territory of Chinesecivilization, through a process that lasted from the end of the Han dynastythrough the Song dynasty.
Greek civilization represents the West. It developed first from a religion to aphilosophy; from a philosophy it evolved into science, bringing about the modernWestern culture. Thus one can say that it has many flourishing offshoots.
If people in today's world want to inquire into the source of the various greatreligious civilizations, they soon find that, ultimately, all thesecivilizations had their origins in the East. This is particularly true ofBuddhist civilization, which long ago became interconnected with Chinesecivilization to form a single whole. Its widespread influence thus goes withoutsaying. But when we trace the source and seek the background of the sudden riseof Buddhism in India, and examine its development into a great stream radiatingin all directions after its transmission to China, we are sure to uncover adefinite sequence of cause and effect. Therefore, to understand the birth ofBuddhist civilization and its gestation in the civilization of the precedingperiod, we must first have some elementary knowledge of traditional Indiancivilization.
The Background of Indian Culture
Humans are born between heaven and earth, and it is unavoidable that bothclimate and geographical circumstances are important factors in shaping apeople's civilization. India is a peninsula in southern Asia, and its geographyand climate have obvious differences from lands in other regions. Southern Indiaextends into the tropics, while northern India is next to the Himalaya Mountainsand central India has a temperate climate. For the people of ancient India, theyearly cycle, in accord with the climate, was divided into three seasons of fourmonths each. Because of India's location between the temperate and the tropicalzones, the physical and mental activity of its people, and, generally speaking,their way of thinking, was very lively. This is particularly true of thesouthern regions, which were even richer in mystical imagination.
From ancient times until today, the cultures and languages of India have neverbeen unified. In ancient India, there were more than fifty or sixty writingsystems. These are generally lumped together under the single term Sanskrit forall forms of Indian written language, but in reality, Sanskrit is just one ofthe many written languages of India. There are still several dozen languagescurrent in India today. China was able to unify its weights and measures and itswritten language because of the great unification it underwent in the Qin andHan dynasties (c. 220 B.C.-A.D. 200). But such was not the case for India.Though from ancient times until now it has always been called one country, inreality, India is still divided into various ethnic groups, each occupying itsown area. Hence Indian culture has never really been unified.
During the period from the Zhou dynasty to the Qin dynasty in Chinese history(c. eleventh to third centuries B.C.), India was divided into various smallstates, just as China was. There were two or three hundred small principalities,each occupying its own territory and each having its own ruler. During thisperiod, many schools of learning were established. The various schools ofthought all claimed to teach the truth, although in just a single region therewere more than a hundred different schools. In the cultural life of the people,there was one special characteristic: class divisions were very strict, and sonoble and humble were sharply separated into castes and received very differenttreatment. This outlook remains deep-rooted and strong, despite all the attacksof 20th-century ideas of freedom and equality. Concerning this, we can onlyquote the proverbial observation: Something that has been so since ancient timeswill not change now.
The Indian system of four castes creates four traditional classes of people.First, the brahmans were hereditary specialists in rituals and sacrifices. Theywere the heart of instruction in religion and culture and ranked the highest ofthe castes. Hence of all the castes, they merited the highest respect. They werethe upper stratum, functioning as spiritual and intellectual leaders. Allmilitary and political affairs were influenced by them. Second were thekshatriyas, the royal officers and warriors. They gathered together military andpolitical power in a single lineage and became hereditary rulers. Third, camethe vaisyas, the class of merchants, who possessed wealth and controlled trade,while the fourth class, the sudras, were a class of peasants who worked tillingand planting the land.
Besides these four, there was also a class of hereditary slaves and debasedpeople who performed lowly occupations like butchering animals and so on. Theirposition was the lowest of all and their lives were very difficult and full ofsuffering. This ancient Indian system of four castes has remained solid andunbreakable for over three thousand years. The remnants of this way of thinkinghave still not been totally obliterated.
The brahman class controlled cultural education and, relying on the four Vedas,upheld the concepts of Brahman (the absolute) and Atman (the true self). Thisformed the Brahmanical religion that was the center of historical Indiancivilization. This gradually spread out and influenced the thinking andconsciousness of the three upper castes, the brahmans, kshatriyas, and vaisyas,toward the way of life of the shramana who leaves home to cultivate the path toself-realization.
For them, the ideal course of a person's life was divided into four periods. Thefirst was a period of pure conduct, a period of life devoted to a young person'seducation. When they reached a certain age, young people would leave home tostudy the Vedas and other branches of learning. (For the disciples of brahmans,this was from age 8 to 16; for the disciples of kshatriyas, from 11-20; for thedisciples of vaisyas, from age 12-24.) These disciples would spend a set periodof time studying, for example, a term of twelve years, or twenty-four years, orthirty-six years, or forty-eight years. Only when the term was completed andtheir studies accomplished, could they return home to ordinary life.
The second period, the period of living as a householder, was one of maturity,when a person would marry and have children, undertaking the responsibilities offamily life and fulfilling the duties of heading a household.
The third was a period of living in the forests. This was the period of middleage, when a person would live in seclusion in the forest, a period of life whenthe person concentrated on cultivating the path. Having already completed theirobligations as householders during their mature years, from this point on peoplewould live in seclusion to devote themselves to higher pursuits, diligentlycultivate ascetic practices, and learn various methods of meditativeconcentration and contemplation, in order to seek the sublimation of the Atmanto reach union with Brahman.
Fourth, came a period of withdrawal from the world. By means of cultivatingpractice in their middle years, when people entered their years of old age anddecline, their life of cultivating practice would have reached a conclusion.Their bodies and minds would be absolutely purified, and they would have alreadyperfected the fruits of the path. From this point on, they would secludethemselves in the forests, free from sensory entanglements and no longerparticipating in the affairs of the world.
This ideal human life was advocated and experienced not only by the brahmansthemselves; the kshatriyas and vaisyas could also emulate it. But the sudras,the menial class, never had any way to share in it. This kind of religious lifewas thus fundamentally restricted. For this reason, there was a reaction amongthe kshatriyas, who gradually became dissatisfied with the old norms of thinkingthat placed the brahmans in the lead. The kshatriyas began to assert themselvesand provided the impetus for new trends of thought in such fields as religion,philosophy, culture, and education. Thenceforth, they began to investigate thereal truth about the world, to seek the ultimate of the Atman spirit, and todelve into the basic source of the myriad forms in the universe. Thus, as soonas the books of profound meaning called the Upanishads began to appear withinIndian culture, they were pitted against the traditional spirit of the brahmans.But the position of the brahmans remained as preeminent as ever. Brahmanicalthought had deeply penetrated Indian culture and was hard to change.
From the foregoing introduction, we can understand the source of the thought ofthe people of ancient India and their cultural background. Due to the specificsof their geographical circumstances and the natural climate, the ancient Indiansliked contemplative pursuits and enjoyed setting their wills on lofty, far-reachinggoals. Moreover, they already had the deeply rooted religion ofBrahmanism and a pervasive system of religious thought. From the beginning oftheir history, the Indians tended toward the idea of leaving the world in orderto seek to purify body and mind, and they considered living in retreat in theforest as the greatest enjoyment in human life. Thus their thought system waspreoccupied with lofty concerns and tended toward empty imaginings. But most ofall, returning from the lofty concept of Atman to ordinary human life, theintermediate level, a humanistic system of thought, was lacking. Thiscontributed to the extremely rigid caste divisions and the extreme inequality ofstatus between high and low. Even religious beliefs in ancient India could notarrive at concepts of equality and liberty.
Shakyamuni Buddha arose in response to these conditions. With his great vow ofcompassion, he founded the Buddhist religion, balancing out inequalities,keeping the good points from the preexisting culture and doing away with itsshortcomings. He taught in response to what was good and beautiful in the humanspirit, summing up a hundred generations of cultural tradition. He refuted theconcept that humankind was divided into classes by nature, and pointed out howto elevate, refine, and perfect human nature.
The Religion and Philosophy of Ancient Indian Civilization
With the particular form and the rich contents of its thought systems, Indiancivilization truly occupied an extremely important and preeminent position inworld cultural history for about three thousand years, from roughly 2000 B.C. toA.D. 1000.
The following were major components of the thought of the ancient civilizationof India:
The Vedas: Ancient Indian civilization is commonly called Vedic civilization.This was the period when the brahmanical religion was the center of culture. Theeducation propagated by the brahmans determined the people's culturalconsciousness. They relied totally on the Vedas for their central ideas. Vedameans "treatise on wisdom" or "treatise of explanation." In other words,treatises which seek knowledge of the universe and of human life. They includethree main sections: verses of praise and collections of mantras; books on pureconduct called Brahmanas, books of the brahmans, and books of spirituallearning; and books of abstruse meaning, called Upanishads, which are books ofesoteric philosophy. There are four collections of verses of praise, called thefour Vedas-, the Rig-Veda, containing elegies and chants; the Yajur-Veda,describing sacrifices; the Sama-Veda, containing songs; and the AtharvaVeda,containing prayers.
The Vedic elegies and explanations are the fount of Indian religion andphilosophy. They pay homage to a multitude of gods and spirits. They offerworship and make songs of praise to Heaven and Earth, the Sun and Moon, the windand clouds, the thunder and rain, and myriad natural phenomena, such asmountains and rivers and animals. Hence, the early Vedic religion can be calleda primitive culture's pantheism. In their religious and philosophical message,the Vedas do not talk of hell and do not talk of the past. They do not containthe concept of cause and effect, nor of karmic rewards and punishments. However,they do hold that the human soul does not perish. Their idea is that, after thebody dies, the soul returns to Yama's heaven. The Vedas teach that, in allmatters relating to sacrificing to the gods and spirits, and all prayers toavoid calamities and attract blessings, the people can get a response bychanting the verses of the Vedas. This is quite similar to the prayers andincantations of the religious specialists in ancient Chinese culture. It is alsolike the primitive religious consciousness found among all the world's ethnicgroups at a certain point in their history.
Gradually, in order to satisfy metaphysical needs, from this primitive religiousbelief there eventually arose accounts of the origin of humanity. The origin ofhumanity was due to a chief god who created everything. He was the supremedeity, the origin of the universe and of the human race. All the shapes andforms of myriad phenomena in the universe were also his creations along withhumanity.
The books of pure conduct, called the Brahmanas, form the second section of theVedas. As time moved forward, the philosophy of the Vedas could no longer fullymeet people's needs. At this point, the books of pure conduct came intoexistence to spur on the brahman class and form a solidly constructedbrahmanical religion. Most of the books of pure conduct still had as theiressential message an affirmation of the sacrifices and songs that the Vedas usedto offer praises to the gods and provide explanations of man and the world andformulas for praying to avert disasters and attract blessings.
As for their religious philosophy, the Brahmanas transformed the Vedicphilosophy of a chief god who was the creator of all things and the origin ofman. They revered a god who was the lord of creation, but held that this god wasnot apart from our true selves. This chief god was Brahman. The name "Brahman"means absolutely pure and perfectly real. The Brahmanas asserted that there isno duality between Atman, the true self of human beings, and the true self ofBrahman. This is similar to the later Confucian idea of the unity of Heaven andmankind, and is similar to the message of other religions that God and mankindshare the same essence.
Subsequently, this religious consciousness of Brahman, and the philosophy thatthere is no duality between Brahman and Atman, the true self of humans, becamedeeply implanted in Indian philosophical thought. This has endured all the wayto the present day. The highest goal of modern Indian religion and its yogictechniques is still to reach the realm where Brahman and Atman are united asone.
Still, the brahmanical religion, based on revering and following the Brahmanas,the books of pure conduct, adhered at the same time to the Vedic traditions andpaid homage to the grandeur of nature. It adopted the pervasive supernaturalbeings worshipped by the lower orders of society, namely the asuras, therakshas, the evil spirits, and other spirits, and honored them all.
The only special point of the Brahmanas, compared to the brahmanical religion,is that they incorporated a religious philosophy of cause and effect and karmicreward and punishment. This is the theory that sentient beings revolve in thecycle of birth and death due to the force of karma. It explains that, becausethey planted different good and evil causal bases in their past lives, peoplereceive different rewards of pleasure and suffering in their present lives.Based on this, there were also teachings concerning what they called "ascendingto heaven" and "descending to hell." This is the original source of the teachingof karmic reward and punishment.
