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<font size="4">The
Mission of Buddhism</font></B></p>
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<FONT SIZE=3>BUDDHISM came as a blaze of lightning across the sky of
India's tradition; it was almost a fiery writing on the wall, bearing
the doom of a world. Buddhism opposed and denied some of the very
fundamental principles upon which the old world rested. It was
perhaps the greatest iconoclastic movement ever thrown up by the
human consciousness. First of all, it denied the tradition itself; it
did not <SPAN LANG="en-GB">recognise</SPAN> the authority and
sanctity of the p<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">u</FONT>rve pitarah<I>,
</I>the ancient fathers, nor their revealed knowledge, the Veda.
Buddhism enjoined the priority and supremacy of the individual's own
consciousness, own effort and own <SPAN LANG="en-GB">realisation.</SPAN>
Be thou thy own light. Work out thy own salvation. That was the
injunction given. Not to take anything for granted - not even God or
Brahman - but to judge and see for yourself where and what is the
truth. It was the first <I>protestant </I>reaction recorded in human
history.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Buddhism has sometimes been called the rebel child of
Hinduism. The word need not be a term of abuse. A rebel is not always
a mere destroyer, a pure negator. A negation can be only a form of
stating something positive, an affirmation of a truth and reality.
Not unoften a rebel means a call back to a truth that has been
neglected, inadequately treated or completely omitted and by-passed;
it is an urgent demand that that which has been forgotten and left
behind, uncared for and undeveloped, must now be taken up again and
brought forward, made a full-grown and mature element in a greater
and more perfect <SPAN LANG="en-GB">organisation</SPAN> of human
consciousness.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Buddhism cried halt because of two omissions: it turned
man's mind to two new directions. In our eagerness to reach the
spiritual and the supra-sensual, we gave scant recognition to the
mental and the rational; and yet mind and reason should</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 280</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>be the very basis of the life spiritual. And in the
pursuit of God and the gods and the things divine, we became blind to
human problems, things concerning man in the human way. The earlier
vision gives us a happy picture of humanity. The world moves, it was
said, from delight to delight, it was born in delight and it
consummates in delight. One sang of immortality, of the solar light,
of men being children of Heaven and Beatitude. That this material
structure on which man leads his precarious existence is a texture of
age and disease and death, that misery and undelight is of the very
substance of human life was a hard fact that did not get due
recognition. Perhaps it was an earlier, that is to say, a younger
humanity</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>A simple Child,</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>That lightly draws its breath,</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>And feels its life in every limb,</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>What should it know of death ?<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">¹</FONT></FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Yes, it was the age, almost a golden age, when man lived
with his sense married to the Dawn, spontaneous in his reflexes,
<I>prime-sautier, </I>intuitive and imaginative, full of a natural,
unspoilt, unsophisticated happiness and hopefulness. But the Age of
Reason had to come, and man's maturer nature, perhaps some &quot;sicklied
o'er with the pale cast of thought&quot;. Such an age of Reason and
Ratiocination and pure brain power was ushered in by Buddha in India,
and almost contemporaneously by Socrates in Greece and Confucius in
China. The rational, that is to say, the scientific or analytical
attitude to things appeared in the human consciousness for the first
time in its fullness and almost exclusive sway. Neither the Vedas nor
the Upanishads knew of logic as an instrument-a necessary
instrument-for knowledge and expression. The old-world method was, as
I said, intuitive, experiential, empirical, dogmatic. Also the
atmosphere of that world, the stress of the consciousness was
theocratic; what the new world brought in was what is called
humanistic.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>We say then that it was a necessity: it was a necessity
that the rational, logical, ratiocinative, analytic mentality should
be brought out and given its play and place. It is perhaps
an inferior power of the mind or consciousness, but it is a strong</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">¹</FONT> Wordsworth, &quot;We
Are Seven&quot;.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 281</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>power and has its use and utility. It is the power that
gives the form and pattern for the display of consciousness and
intelligence in outward expression and external living; it is a firm
weapon that gives control over these inferior ranges of
consciousness. The leap from the sense-consciousness or the ele­ments
of consciousness, from a mental growth just adequate and not too
<SPAN LANG="en-GB">specialised</SPAN>, straight into the
supra-sensuous and the transcendent had been an inevitable necessity,
so that the human consciousness might get the first taste of its
supreme status and value: a similar necessity brought to the fore
this element of the mind, the mind's own power - of <SPAN LANG="en-GB">judgement</SPAN>
and will-so that there might be a greater and wider integration of
human nature and also that the higher realities may be captured in
our normal consciousness. Even for the withdrawal of the mind from
the outer objects to the inner sources, the mind itself can be used
with much effect. And Buddha showed it magnificently. And of course,
Shankara too who followed in his footsteps.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>To abrogate the matter of fact, rational view of life in
order to view it spiritually, to regard it wholly as an expression or
embodiment or vibration of consciousness-delight was possible to the
Vedic discipline which saw and adored the Immanent Godhead. It was
not possible to Buddha and Buddhistic consciousness; for the Immanent
Divine was ignored in the Buddhistic scheme. Philosophically, in
regard to ultimate principles, Buddhism was another name for
nihilism, creation being merely an assemblage of particles of
consciousness that is desire; the particles scattered and dissolved,
remains only the supreme incomparable Nirvana. But pragmatically
Buddhism was supremely humanistic.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>As it took man as a rational animal, at least as a
starting-point, even so it gave a sober human value to things human.
A <SPAN LANG="en-GB">rationalist's</SPAN> eye made him see and
<SPAN LANG="en-GB">recognise</SPAN> the normal misery of mankind; and
the great compassion goaded him to find the way out of the misery. It
was not a dispassionate quest into the ultimate truth and reality nor
an all-consuming zeal to meet the Divine that set Buddha on the Path;
it was the everyday problem of the ordinary man which troubled his
mind, and for which he sought a solution, a permanent radical
solution. The Vedanist saw only delight and ecstasy and beatitude;
for</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 282</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>him the dark shadow did not exist at all or did not
matter; it was the product of illusion or wrong view of things; one
was asked to ignore or turn away from this and look towards That.
Such was not the Buddha's procedure.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>These are the two primary <I>truths - <FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">a</FONT>rya
sarya-which </I>Buddha's illumination meant and for which he has
become one of the great divine leaders of humanity. First, he has
discovered man's rationality, and second, he has discovered man's
humanity. Since his advent two thousand and five hundred years ago
till the present day, in this what may pertinently be called the
Buddhist age of humanity, the entire growth, development and
preoccupation of mankind was <SPAN LANG="en-GB">centred</SPAN> upon
the twofold truth. Science and religion today are the highest
expressions of that achievement.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>They speak of the coming of a new Buddha (Maitreya) with
the close of the cycle now, ushering another cycle of new growth and
achievement. It is said also that humanity has reached its apex, a
great change-over is inevitable: seers and savants have declared that
man will have to surpass himself and become superman in order to
<SPAN LANG="en-GB">fulfil</SPAN> what was expected of him since his
advent upon earth. If we say that the preparation for such a
consummation was taken up at the last stage by the Buddha and
Buddhism, and the Buddhistic inspiration, we will not be wrong. It
was a cycle of ascending tapasya for the human vehicle: it was a
seeking for the pure spirit which meant a clearance of the many
ignorances that shrouded it. It was also an urge of the spirit to
encompass in its fold a larger and larger circle of humanity: it
meant that the spiritual consciousness is no more an aristocratic or
hermetic virtue, but a need in which the people, the large mass, have
also their share, maybe in varying degrees.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>A new humanity broad-based to encompass the whole earth,
expressing and embodying the light and power and joy of spiritual
heights, forming a happy world state, may very well announce in the
new age the descent of a supreme truth and principle of existence
here below.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page - 283</FONT></P>
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