dynasty emperor was still at the center of society, honored alone as the supreme head reigning over all the land. India, on the other hand, was at that time divided into hundreds of nation-states contending for power, and had no central authority. Shakyamuni himself was a prince of peerless intelligence: he received his education in a royal palace, and as a youth was broadly learned and multitalented. Because he personally witnessed the ravages of war in India, and observed the pain of the strong devouring the weak in the realm of living beings, he wanted to discover a way of true peace for the masses of the world. So he resolutely left home and traveled all over in search of the teachings left by the philosophers of antiquity, searching for the truth of the universe and human life.
After he left home, he sought out the methods of practice and realization of the traditional teachings of Brahminism, as well as the devotional life of transmundane asceticism practiced by other religions and schools of thought. As a result, he finally realized that none of them was the ultimate learning, so he went through a phase of solitary ascetic practice, cultivating realization on his own. He left home at the age of nineteen, but began to spread his teaching only when he was thirty-two.
Modern scholars treat Shakyamuni the same way they do Confucius: some recognize him as the founder of a religion, others recognize him as a philosopher or educator. But in reality these ranks and positions of honor have no meaning at all for Shakyamuni Buddha. An individual true sage philosopher, he was able to ignore the vainglory of the world; he cast off the honor of royalty as one would throw away a worn shoe, without a second glance. At the same time, he frequently spoke of ancient Buddhas and other Buddhas, so he obviously didn't consider himself the founder of a teaching. It was when it came to the point where his teaching had changed into a religion that he was set up on a jewel throne as the founder of a religion, which was the doing of the followers of second-hand tradition in later generations.
I feel that the founders of all the religions mostly had this kind of heart in them. For example, Lao-tzu was hauled up onto the jewel throne of the founder of Taoism as Lord Lao the Highest, but where in this is the original intent of Lao-tzu's heart as indicated by the saying that "it is not known where he died," or the tale that he left the country riding on a blue ox? Rather than say that Shakyamuni started Buddhism and was the founder of the religion, it would be better to say that he edited and compiled the whole body of ancient traditional culture and thought of India, and brought out its unique and independent spirit of cultural teaching, making it even greater and worthier of savoring.
CHAPTER 3
The Contribution to Humankind and
the World Made by Sdakyamuni's
Leaving Home and Attaining Enligfitenment
Now let us encapsulate the essential points of Shakyamuni's leaving home, attaining enlightenment, and disseminating his teaching. Overall there are five main points.
Establishing a Magnificent Array of Ways of Guidance, Shakyamuni Taught a Way to Govern Nations with Kindness and Compassion at Heart
Shakyamuni took into consideration the fact that he could have been a peerless hero and governed the whole Indian continent, but even though a hero may be able to conquer the world, he cannot conquer himself. What is more, human history is always in the process of change, and it is impossible to maintain a perpetually unchanging kingship. He wanted to establish a kind of cultural thought that could offer guidance for ten thousand generations; he wanted to conquer himself and fulfill the need to achieve inner wisdom, so he wanted to "detach from feelings and abandon desires, thus to be free from burdens," and consequently he left home to seek enlightenment.
His aspiration was in fact rewarded, and he set up a magnificent array of teachings as methods of guidance, thus winning the respect and reverence of countless generations of people in many nations of the world. In terms of the concept of economic value habitually used by modern-day people, the value of Shakyamuni's work as a perennial teaching for humanity cannot be compared with the value of his possibly having spent his life as a king or an emperor.
Based on the effects of the way of guidance he established, within a few hundred years there emerged the achievements of Ashoka, the great king of India, which constituted the most glorious page of cultured government in that country's history. This paralleled the way the doctrines of Confucius formed the cultured government of the early Western Han dynasty; but when I say paralleled, that does not mean they were the same. Something is connected with the spirit of developmental teaching in the Buddha's various ways of guidance, as well as in the models provided by the behavioral regulations of the Great and Small Vehicles of Buddhism, that corresponds to the Book of Rites in traditional Chinese culture, which also encapsules the basic spirit of the philosophy of human etiquette, social duty, and law. Since the time of the T'ang and Sung dynasties, whenever relatively objective scholars draw comparisons between Shakyamuni and Confucius, they recognize that if Confucius had lived in the India of his time, he would have done as Shakyamuni did, and if Shakyamuni had lived in the China of his time, he would have proceeded as did Confucius. As it is said, "For sages of the East and sages of the West, this mind is the same, this principle is the same, and the path is one."
Breaking Up India's Traditional Concept of Caste, Shakyamuni Preached Equality Extending to All Living Beings
Indian history has always been characterized by a very rigid concept of caste. Usually they speak of the first caste as the Brahmin, the traditional priesthood of Brahminism; the second caste is the Kshatriya, the warriors who traditionally held military authority; the third caste is the Vaishya, farmers, herders, merchants, and such people; and the fourth caste is the Shudra, those people involved in menial occupations. After Shakyamuni attained enlightenment, he energetically expounded the idea that the natures and forms of all living beings are equal. Not only did he recognize all humanity as being equal; he also recognized all creatures—whatever has flesh and blood and is conscious, even to the border of the divine and human—as belonging in the category of living beings: in terms of the substance of their basic nature, everyone must originally be equal. So people should not harm others with uncivil and malicious intentions, and at the same time they should not harm any living things out of selfishness.
Human and other living beings partake of the essence of suchness and so are fundamentally equal by nature; that is why everyone can become a Buddha by doing good and getting rid of evil. All living beings, celestial and human, can attain Buddhahood by doing good and eliminating evil. Although the terminology is different, this teaching derives from the same source as the Confucian principle that "the people are my relatives, beings are my companions" and the idea preached by the philosophers of Inner Design Studies that "everyone can be a sage."
The principle of Shakyamuni's teaching on the oneness of others and self, the doctrine of the equality of living beings, may be called an ideology of thoroughgoing egalitarianism that shines gloriously throughout past and present. At the same time he himself set the example. In the community of monks whom he personally guided in their studies, everyone was equal regardless of their social origins; only virtuous conduct was considered important.
Some may assume that once we speak of equality we will come to a point at which right and wrong are not distinguished, where good and bad are not divided. This is not to be misunderstood: what Shakyamuni spoke of was the basic equality of essence (substance) and form (function); when we arrive at the realm of equality, we still need the distinction between good and evil as well as the developmental exercise of doing good and eliminating evil. So the effort to get rid of evil and turn toward good, to depart from evil people and do whatever is good, is indeed an incomparably great virtue. There is no contradiction at all. This too is ultimately much the same in meaning, although different in expression, from the saying of Confucians that "wise kings got angry once and pacified the land."
Synthesizing
