By the BHIKKHU ANANDA METTEYYA.

8vo., pp. 54. Rangoon. 6d. net. Also Luzac & Co., 46, Great Russell Street, London, W.C.

(Reprinted from the Buddhist Review, No. 3, pp. 313-16.)

At last an attempt has been made­an attempt of considerable bulk, by a European who has actually embraced the yellow robe and tried to live the life of a Buddhist mendicant in all its fulness­to explain from the inside the peculiarities and distinctive excellencies of the Buddhist religion. To those who knew the Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya during his six months residence in England which terminated in October, 1909, the fact that a great revolution in Buddhist propaganda was about to take place could not fail to occur, and even now it is hard for our Eastern brethren to realise that the West is beginning really to understand what it is that has held so many millions of them for so many centuries close to the teaching of the Buddha. Some time ago Messrs. Lloyd issued a large and comprehensive work on Burma and invited our Bhikkhu to write the chapters on Religion in that country. These chapters won golden opinions from many quarters and it was a happy thought which prompted Mrs. Besant to reprint those chapters with extensive additions in the pages of the Theosophist, although by his unyielding insistence on the unreality of the Self the Buddha completely severed his system from all connection with the sophy of a theos or the belief in a god. To the generosity of the editor of the Theosophist, however, Buddhist readers are largely indebted, and the present low price of the Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya's manual cannot fail to place it within reach of every reader.

Beginning with the origins of Buddhism, the author shows that, at the last census, the religion was accepted in Burma by 9,184,I21 persons, amounting to 88.6 per cent. of the total population. Buddhism has been divided erroneously into two schools­the Northern and the Southern, and that of Burma has been assigned to the latter school. The division is false because all phases of the teaching alike insist on the Three Qualities of Existence­Regret, Transience, and Absence of Individuality, and teach unchanged the Four Great Truths. There is in fact no one school of Northern Buddhism, and between these Northern Sects are differences far greater than between the teaching of Ceylon, Burma and Siam, and, say, some of the sects of Japan. The correct designation of the so-called Southern Buddhism is the Theravada or the Tradition of the Elders, and to those Elders, the custodians and transmitters of the primitive Pali Scriptures, European thinkers do well to go. Unfortunately Europe's first knowledge of Buddhism was obtained from fragmentary Sanskrit or Chinese works incorrectly translated, and much of the "knowledge" imparted by the earlier French, German, and English writers needs careful revision in the light of the Pali books. There is no doubt about the early date of these books, and when we examine closely their teaching we find a Buddha stripped almost entirely of the incredibly supernatural and teaching truths which the most fastidious and unbending scientist must perforce admit. Foremost in these teachings is the doctrine of Anatta, namely, that everywhere even to the godhead there is lacking an enduring, separate, unchanging individuality or sell The Buddha saw with unerring clearness that not even the most elementary act of goodness could be practised without the relinquishment of self, and glancing throughout the Cosmos he perceived the great truth that non-self was the secret of life and happiness. "Let not the student," says the Bhikkhu, "here imagine we are concerned merely with a dogma with a view of life important but in men's imagination or belief. In the Anatta Doctrine, or, as it might be rendered, the Teaching of Selflessness, we have the statement of a fact so profound, so true, that every action of the man who holds it must needs be modified from what he otherwise would have done. On it depends the whole of Buddhist Teaching, the threefold practice of its ethics, morality and charity, and this third term Samadhi, or Right Culture of the Mind; to it, once more, is due that perfect Buddhist tolerance and freedom from all persecuting or denouncing spirit. Not least significant of all, it is the conception towards which the philosophy of modern science is steadily bearing the West Aryans; established already in the domain of physics, it now is finding ever wider and deeper acceptance amongst the foremost thinkers of the modem world. . . . 'Whether high or low, great or small, gross or subtle, mean or exalted,' to quote an oft-repeated passage of the Pali canon, 'there is no Self at all.' . . . . Put in other words, the meaning of this Doctrine of Anatta is, that Life in deepest truth is One­that the conception of the 'I' and the 'not-I ' or 'the Universe,' as contrasted or separated entities is founded on a misapprehension far greater and much farther reaching than was the old delusion of the geocentric astronomy. All Life is One. There is neither in the heart of man nor in the heart of heaven any one separate and immortal being."

Buddhism asks from its followers not faith but understanding, and it is the forty-five years that the Buddha spent teaching this great fact that have endeared his memory and made him the centre of an intense devotion. He was the Enlightened One. At his death his disciples wrote of him, "So passed away the Great, the Loving Teacher, who never spake an angry or a cruel word." "No threatenings of hell," says the Bhikkhu, "for those who would not follow in the way he taught!" His teaching is in lurid contrast with that of the other great religions, and to-day "Buddhists can boast that on their Creed's behalf has never one drop of blood been shed, never a persecution waged, never a 'Holy War' been prosecuted ; . . . over acknowledged facts­such as the Law of Gravitation now-a-days appears­no vainest or most foolish man ever has lifted hand in wrath against his fellows; it is the fancies that men fight for; in defence of vain and false imaginations that they hate, oppose and fight." Buddhism has no fancies, it asks men to accept that which they have tried and proved, and its weakness is its strength. Based on reason, it has failed to establish a world-wide and powerful hierarchy like the Papacy, but it can afford to wait, confident that when men's minds are free to think they will of necessity admit and live according to the Noble Eightfold Path.

The Buddha's life so often narrated before is told with wonderful freshness, and the Dharma­his Teaching, is summed up in the old scriptural words, "To abstain from all evil; to fulfil all good; and to purify the heart­this is the teaching of the Buddhas." The teaching is not merely negative. The Master calls upon us not only to eschew evil but to seek every opportunity to do the good, and the necessary state effectively to pursue these two paths is purity of heart. Such a religion must produce good lives, and it is the proud boast of Burma, the land of universal charity, that "The poverty that shames and curses Western nations, that breeds crime and cruelty, that starves even little children to the death, such is unknown in Burma." As to the origin of the Universe, such a question is unmeaning for "a cause is really a link in a series which is endless like a circle," and it is a pity that Western minds, encouraged by the vain and childish attempts in the Hebrew Bible, so constantly demand an answer to this question from Buddhism. The Buddha was above all things practical, and he saw that Sorrow and its Destruction was the only ideal worthy of a religious life. As the wave of a lake when it reaches the opposite shore is the outcome of but is not the original wave, so by Karma the effect of one life is handed over to the next and in this sense we are all re-born. Evil, therefore, cannot be done with impunity, and the scientific answer to the great question, "Why live a moral life?" is found. This is the Buddhist idea of transmigration, and it is all the more forcible in that it rejects the untenable doctrine of an individual soul.

In Chapter IV. we have an interesting account of the daily life of the Brotherhood and its functions among the people. Every young Burman goes to the Monastery for a time in order to learn at the threshold of manhood that self-restraint the neglect of which in Western lands brings about such woeful consequences. For the layman and laywoman there are the five precepts, increased at certain seasons to eight, and permanently for the mendicants to ten. All of them are directed not towards a painful asceticism, but towards the realisation of the goal of the Middle Path, the giving up oneself for the benefit of all living things and the eradication of the thought of self. We are thankful to the Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya for this well-written and enthusiastic manual, and we can confidently recommend it to our readers as one of the best and most beautiful books on Buddhism that have been written.

EDITOR.