Buddhist Institute

One night, 25 centuries ago, Prince Gautama left Yasodhara, the beautiful young wife who had just borne .him a son, and went into the wilderness to meditate. Only Channa, the charioteer, accompanied him. In time, Gautama sent Channa back to the palace to take all the princely jewels and rings to Yasodhara in remembrance of her husband. Thus, alone, ventured forth the first Buddha.

In India the intellectual classes were egoists and Buddha could not altogether enlighten them. Still he did not wish entirely to withhold his teachings. So he taught them the Hinayana (Little Vehicle) which was best suited to their intellectual capacities.

Later, in China, flowered the sublimest school of Buddhism, the Mahayana (Great Vehicle). And so, it is explained, from China there now issues "the greatest 20th century disciple of Buddha."

Last week this disciple set foot in Manhattan. Clad in a robe of orange silk he stepped softly down America's gangplank in small felt slippers. His eyes behind heavy spectacles were incurious. He is Tai Hsu (pronounced Ty Shue), onetime abbot of the Pai-Yun-Se Temple near Canton, and conceded China's foremost Buddhist.

The Buddhists are not essentially missionaries. A Buddhist will not interfere if he sees a man about to cross a bridge known to be condemned. He will suppose, courteously, that the man knows what he is doing. However should the man inquire if the bridge be safe, the Buddhist will tell him. Similarly Buddhists do not generally interfere with other people's religion nor try to lead them from paths they have chosen.

Tai Hsu, however, has a missionary-like ambition "to increase human felicity, virtue and intelligence, and to achieve universal peace and happiness." Tai Hsu believes Buddhism can achieve these things. In U.S. colleges and universities, therefore, he will explain his doctrines. But unlike most Christian missionaries, he will seek to convert no unbelievers. He intends merely to offer his beliefs for intelligent examination, letting those accept who wish.

He has also another purpose: to establish in Europe or in the U.S. a Buddhist Institute. In Paris a grant of land has already been given him. But Tai Hsu has not yet accepted. The Institute's purpose will be to clarify Buddhism to the Western world, to represent Buddhism as a religion nowhere antagonistic to scientific theories.

Buddhists believe in reincarnation and, therefore, that life ceases never. When a Buddhist becomes enlightened and good he may himself become a Buddha. Then he reaches Nirvana where there is rest and surcease from the pains of life and death.

Familiar even to Western minds is the endlessly-turning Buddhist wheel-of-life. The wheel represents the cycle of conception, life, death, ascent to a higher plane (or descent to a lower); then reincarnation; and then, again, conception, life, death, ascent.

Certain Buddhist doctrines read curiously like pages from modern scientific treatises. The Buddhist Sutra anticipates the theory of evolution in such statements as "all life emerges from a certain concentration of matter in the form of a nucleus" (i.e., cell). Professor Einstein holds that perception is generally false because relative. Buddhists likewise deny truth to all appearances.

But Buddhists seek not for Truth, because Truth is always present. Truth must be universal--something which may be applied in all places. Truth must be permanent--something which may be applied at all times. Says Buddhist Tai Hsu: "If Truth be a thing which is universal and permanent there can be no gain in studying it and no loss in neglecting it, since that which can be gained or lost is neither permanent nor universal."

The Buddhist credo is, therefore, that the world neither progresses nor retropresses but revolves endlessly (the wheel-of-life). There is neither evolution nor involution but revolution.

Hope is not denied by this cyclic theory. For any man may eventually become Bodhisattva (a person who in his next reincarnation will be a Buddha). Such a person therefore actually is in a state of evolution. For in his next reincarnation he will no longer be revolving with the wheel-of-life but will attain the rest which is Nirvana and will be through with the tiresome harrying metamorphoses which were his lot on earth.