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" There is Karma and there is also escape. According to the one school, escape comes through persistency in following the true, the good, and the merciful; according to the other and more popular school, escape comes through powers above acting within the soul. Even when one is exhorted to righteousness in order to be saved, he never ceases to look to Buddha for help and mercy. And even when one relies on salvation by the Buddha, he knows that by no possibility can he escape from Karma, except by transformation of character. Salvation, however it comes, cannot come without a change of heart and of life, and without overcoming evil and becoming essentially good. This is as much the teaching of Christianity as of Buddhism, and of Buddhism as of Chris- tianity. The law with its hope of alteration runs through all the realms of religious thought. VIII Buddhism may further be appreciated for the distinction it makes between self and better self, and between lower and higher desires. The desires which lie at the root of all suffering are evil desires and more properly called lusts or pas- sions. This is indicated in the Chinese term which is used to translate the idea of desire. In the same way a distinction prevails in every individual, the one who yields to his lower nature and the other who follows his higher nature. The lower nature, the false self, is the servant of passion; the higher nature, the true self, is the servant of conscience. When Buddhism is supposed to teach that self disappears, it is only meant that the lower nature, that which is transitory, and what may be called the animal side of one's nature, or, in scrip- tural language, the flesh, disappears. The higher and spiritual side of one's nature is eternal and is forever developing. The great apostle of Christianity mentions, on the one side, his "delight in the law of God after the inner man," and, on the other, he adds: "I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bring- ing me into capitivity under the law of sin which is in my members," and then he cries out in this startling exclamation, "Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" These words of the Christian apostle sound fitting on the lips of the devoted Buddhist. The desire which issues in 22 THE BIBLICAL WORLD suffering is this law in one's members, which each one in his sober moments recognizes as base and unsatisfying, contrary to the law in the inner man, which alone satisfies and which in the end shall triumph and last forever. When one succeeds in escaping from self — that is, from the desires of this lower self — he is not far from the rest of Nirvana. While escape from these de- sires of the lower self is effected, it does not mean that all desires are extinguished. Good desires remain and have then a chance for full development in the smooth working of the spiritual faculties. Sakyamuni, speaking of this lower self, said: "Self is an error, an illusion, a dream. Open your eyes and awake, see things as they are, and you will be comforted." And he adds: "Surrender the grasping disposition of your selfish- ness and you will attain to that sinless calm state of mind which conveys per- fect peace, goodness, and wisdom." The desirability of following the true self, higher desires, or what Buddhism calls truth is seen in these words: "Ye who long for life, know that immortality is hidden in transiency. Ye who wish for happiness without the sting of regret, lead a life of righteousness. Truth is wealth and a life of truth is happiness." Then as Buddhahood is the highest state of truth, it is said: "Buddha is the truth; let Buddha dwell in your hearts. Extinguish in yourselves every desire that antagonizes Buddha, and in the end of your spiritual evolution you will become like Buddha." IX Along with this important distinction is the other distinction between reality and unreality. It has been supposed that in Buddhism the distinction is between the real and the unreal. The things of life which we see, those which have form, are transient and will dis- appear, but this does not mean that all of life or all of personality will also dis- appear. The Nirvana of primitive Buddhism does not mean nothingness or annihilation, but that the transient ele- ments of life have all disappeared and that the highest, the best, the eternal, the spiritual, will remain. The ambi- tion of the Buddhist is to attain to Buddhahood, or what is called enlighten- ment, but enlightenment means spiritual vision, higher than human learning and ordinary knowledge. It is much like wisdom as spoken of in the Bible. To link this highest form of wisdom with annihilation is plainly an absurdity. The annihilation is of the lower form of desire and of self. The real remains. According to the Brahmanistic teach- ing which Sakyamuni accepted, while re- jecting other teachings, there is beneath all phenomena and behind all nature a universal soul or spirit. This alone is permanent; all else is illusory and transitory. The self or ego which is separate from this universal soul is hence illusory and transitory; that which is identified with the universal soul is permanent and real. Dr. Charles Cuth- bert Hall in his lectures in India, speak- ing of this primary distinction, says: The general tendency of Western think- ing is to recognize with more or less ab- soluteness the reality of the phenomenal universe with the countless distinctions of finite souls and finite objects The immemorial thought of India emphasizes the reality of the Invisible Absolute, whilst A CHRISTIAN'S APPRECIATION OF BUDDHISM 23 to some extent admitting the distinction of the individual soul and its phenomenal environment. This characteristic of Indian thought represents Buddhism in both of its great schools. Thus what we see and hear, the mate- rial universe, is generally looked upon as existence. Buddhism would then say that if such is existence, we must look for rest and perfection in non- existence. What is thought of as exist- ence is illusory and unreal; what is thought of as non-existence is perma- nent and real. The universal soul is of this latter kind. This is Nirvana — a life of pure form, of high spiritual reality. As Mr. Reginald Johnston, in his valu- able work on Buddhist China, says: "This does not mean that Nirvana is another name for blank nothingness, or that the extinction of the phenomenal ego is equivalent to the annihilation of the real or transcendental self." He quotes from Professor Noda of Japan who describes Nirvana as "salvation from the misery of the world, as deliver- ance from suffering, as enlightenment and blessedness." Dr. Paul Carus in a similar way ex- plains this truth: And is Nirvana non-existence? Not at all. It is the attainment of the deathless state, of immateriality, of pure form, of eternal verity, of the immutable and endur- ing, where there is neither birth nor death, neither disease nor old age, neither affliction nor misery, neither temptation nor sin. And he quotes from the Buddhist canon: When the fire of lust is extinct, that is Nirvana; when the fires of hatred and in- fatuation are extinct, that is Nirvana; when pride, false belief, and all other pas- sions and torments are extinct, that is Nirvana. The Christian apostle, turning away from the sufferings and afflictions of this present world — the unreal part of life — to the reality and bliss of a future life, used these words: Though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day .... for the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are no? seen are eternal. X The tenth and last ground for the Christian's appreciation of Buddhism is that it teaches that there are many manifestations of the eternal and omni- present spirit or universal soul. These are better called theophanies than in- carnations. The many Buddhas, like the prophets of Judaism and Christianity and the Holy Men of Confucianism, are those who thus manifest God to the world. So much is this so that in Mon- golia Buddha is the term used for God. While the teaching of Buddhism con- cerning the Absolute and Infinite One is not equal to that in Confucianism, still less to that in Judaism and Christianity, it has this conception of the Infinite One, the Antetype, revealing himself to mankind in many ways and through many chosen men. Professor Charles Cuthbert Hall, speaking of Indian religious thought, which also characterizes Buddhism, says: In its fundamental proposition [i.e., of Christianity] that the Eternal One differ- entiates His own self-subsisting energy into the infinite variety of finite existences, it is not far removed from the fundamental proposition of the highest Indian thinking, 24 THE BIBLICAL WORLD that the self-subsisting Brahma, the Abso- lute, by his multiplying power, projects the infinite variety of finite existences and dis- tinctions described by the mystic word Maya. He quotes in this connection from Up- ton's Bases of Religious Belief: "It fol- lows that there is certain self-revelation of the Eternal and Infinite One to the finite soul." The Mahayanist recognition of this thought appears in the great classic The Lotus, where it is said: There is but One Great Cause, Enlightening every Sage and Prophet Manifested in the world. And again: All Law comes from one Source Always from the Eternal. This source of all which is manifested in sages and prophets, Buddhas and Pusas, is in modern Buddhism spoken of as the Antetype or the True Form, and He becomes incarnate in the Buddha.