THE SEARCH FOR A JUST SOCIETY
JOHN HUDDLESTON
GEORGE RONALD 1989
PART V
Chapter 5: Buddhism and the Mauryan Empire
Siddhattha Gautama (563-483 BC), born the son of a king in the area that is now Nepal, knew all the material pleasures of life from an early age. Coming to manhood, He became dissatisfied with this way of life and left his home to investigate the philosophies of the time, including asceticism, but found none that brought Him peace. Then, at the age of thirty-five, the spiritual experience which he called ‘enlightenment’ came to him; out of it He developed the theme of the ‘middle way’ between extreme asceticism and extreme sensuality.
His teachings revolved around the ‘Four Noble Truths’:
- That all life is suffering, like a disease of the body (duhkha)
- That suffering comes from desire, greed, hatred and illusion about the true nature of life; and that such attitudes create suffering both for the self-and for others;
- The way to stop suffering is to eliminate desire and to cultivate the opposite virtues: generosity, love and clear insight. These will bring one to a state of spiritual health (Nirvana), a state that can be achieved by every man – whether rich, or poor and oppressed;
- The way to achieve Nirvana is to follow the three-fold path of wisdom, meditation and morality. The three-fold path is then subdivided into a more specific eight-fold path, in which the first two elaborate on wisdom, the next three on meditation, and the last three on morality:
v Right view – an understanding of the Four Noble Truths;
v Right thought – the freeing of the soul from thoughts of lust, ill will, cruelty and untruthfulness;
v Right effort – the struggle to replace such evil thoughts with good thoughts;
v Right mindfulness – vigilant attention to every state of the body, emotion and mind;
v Right concentration – deep meditation on the purpose of life;
v Right speech – no lying, tale-bearing, harsh language and vain talk;
v Right action – support of the family and no killing, stealing, sexual misconduct or use of alcohol;
v Right livelihood – earning one’s living without causing harm to others.
Buddha denied the authority of the Vedic scriptures; in particular he did not accept the elaborate ritual, the caste system, and the hereditary priesthood which had become characteristics of Hindu practice in his time. The records of His teachings rarely make direct reference to a God, but close perusal shows that (contrary to the opinion of many) there is an underlying assumption of belief in God, and it has been suggested that reticence on this subject may have been designed to make a clear distinction between this religion of ethics and the corrupt superstitions of the prevailing religion, so as to prevent the former being eventually subsumed by the latter.
During his lifetime there gathered around Buddha a group of disciples who after His death began to carry the new Faith to all parts of the Indian subcontinent. The religion reached a peak of glory under King Asoka the Great (274-237 BC). Arguably the noblest monarch in all history, Asoka was the third of the Mauryan dynasty and his dominions, with their capital at Patna in the Indus Valley, embraced Afghanistan and the whole of the Indian subcontinent, including the extreme southern tip. He became a Buddhist early in his reign after the shock of a bloody battle, and thereafter he declined to participate in further military conquest. He promulgated a universal law for the government of his kingdom which stressed the dignity of man, religious toleration and non-violence – and he even abolished the royal hunt. He provided a whole range of services for his people, including large-scale irrigation schemes and trunk roads (shaded by specially planted banyan trees and equipped with rest houses every few miles). He called a council of the leading Buddhist authorities to bring together and codify the teachings of Buddha. There was an active programme for promulgating the faith, which included the conversion of most of the people of Ceylon. Buddhism later advanced into South-East Asia, China and Japan, and for a period of several hundred years in the first millennium AD it was the most widespread religion in the world.
Soon after the death of Asoka the Mauryan Empire began to crack and eventually to fall apart, whilst simultaneously there was a Brahmin reaction against Buddhism. Mighty empires were to succeed each other in the subcontinent over the centuries: the Kushans (first and second centuries AD), the Gupta (fourth and fifth centuries AD), the Moghuls (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), the British (nineteenth century) but none reached the full extent of the Mauryan Empire or the relative peace and prosperity which it brought. Buddhism itself, which eventually lost its hold on India between AD 500 and 1200 as a result of the revival of Hinduism and the rise of Islam, became divided into a number of sects, acquired its own layers of rituals and man-made practices, and lost a great deal of its original spiritual fire. It still has a hidden strength which it shares with other great religions: the expectation of the return in the spirit of its founder and the establishment of a universal peace:
I am not the first Buddha who came upon the earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time another Buddha will arise in the world, a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals. He will reveal to you the same eternal truths which I have taught you. He will preach religion, glorious in its origin, glorious at the climax and glorious at the goal, in the spirit and in the letter. He will proclaim a religious life wholly perfect and pure such as I now proclaim.
Chapter 6: Confucianism and the Middle Kingdom