The Way of the Buddha

O ye monks, like as the great ocean has but one savor, the savor of salt, so has this religion and order but one, the savor of renunciation . . . Long is the night to him who is awake, long is the mile to him who is tired, long is life to the foolish who know not the True Law.

Like a high, thin curl of smoking incense, the chant arose from thousands of monks assembled near Rangoon, Burma. For 1600 hours it would go on, until all 14,804 pages of the sacred Buddhist texts, the Tipitakas,* had been chanted. Under the leadership of an 80-year-old holy man, Abhidhaja Revata, impassively seated on a golden dais, the sixth World Buddhist Council was under way.

Human or Divine? In the 2,480-odd years since the Buddha attained Nirvana, there have been six World Buddhist Councils. Their story outlines the progress of the world's fifth largest faith. The first council took place soon after the Buddha's death in the 5th century B.C., when about 500 of the leading monks of the New Order met in a cave to decide on the first collection of their master's teachings: the universality of suffering and the Eightfold Path by which one might escape from it--right belief, right contemplation, right speech, right work, right livelihood, right exercise, right mindfulness, right concentration.

The second council, about 100 years later, heard a plea by some monks for relaxation of discipline, which foreshadowed a great split in Buddhism. At the third council, about 244 B.C., it was decided to send out missionaries to other countries; and at the fourth, in the 1st century A.D., the big split crystallized. It divides the Buddhist world to this day between the traditional Hinayana Buddhists, who look upon Buddha as a human teacher, and the more recent and increasingly influential Mahayana Buddhists, who worship him as a divine being.*

The fifth World Buddhist Council was called at Mandalay in 1868 for the purpose of putting the texts of the Tipitakas into a permanent form. They were engraved on 729 marble slabs.

Marx or Buddha? The present council, which will last for two years, was called to codify some changes in the texts and to prepare them for propagation throughout a morally shaken Asia. The man behind the council is Burma's pleasant, scholarly Prime Minister U Nu, who has been doing his best to spark a religious resurgence in his country since it got its independence in 1948. A devout Buddhist, who rises to pray at 4 a.m. each day, U Nu was meditating one day several years ago in the sacred cave where the first Buddhist council was held, when he had a vision of a great gathering of monks chanting the scriptures in a similar cave. In 1948 an unknown hermit sent U Nu a walking staff engraved with the words Siri Mangala (glorious prosperity) and instructions to build a pagoda. If the pagoda were finished by 1952, the hermit said, great buildings would grow up around it.

After searching for a suitable site, U Nu found one about seven miles from Rangoon, coincidentally named Siri Mangala, and there erected his pagoda. Around it, the site of the sixth Buddhist council is nearly completed, with some two dozen buildings, including a man-made cave (to recall the setting of the first council) large enough for some 15,000 people.

An ancient prophecy holds that 2,500 years after Buddha's death the Way he founded will either fade away entirely or experience a renaissance. The present council will disband in May 1956, when the 2,500 years will be up, and U Nu is hoping for the upsurge. Said he recently: "The growing [Marxist] challenge to Buddhism has not effectively been met. . . The Buddhist organization we are going to have will combat these challenges not only in the intellectual field but if need be in the physical field as well."

* Meaning "The Three Baskets." As the ancient Indians disposed of earth from an excavation by passing baskets from hand to hand, so Buddhist wisdom was passed along from generation to generation. The Three Baskets: 1) Vinaya, the monks' rules of discipline; 2) Sutta, sermons, commentaries and parables; 3) Abhidhamma, metaphysics, psychology and philosophy.

* Hinayana countries include Ceylon, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand. Mahayana countries include China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, Mongolia, Nepal. India, where Buddhism began, now contains only a small number of Buddhists. Most Indians are Hindu.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.