15. Buddhist Influence on the West.
Evidence of
any direct influence of Buddhism on the West in the
period before Alexander the Great is dubious. It is still
a matter of
controversy whether the attitude of in-
difference and nonattachment which Pyrrhon of Elis
(ca. 360-270
B.C.) showed towards his drowning
teacher Anarxarchos, was derived from any
knowledge
of the Buddhist ideal of the Holy Person (Arhat). How-
ever, historical investigations have shown
that many
Greeks or other Europeans, living in the Middle East
in the
Hellenistic period, after the invasion of India
by Alexander the Great in
327 B.C., professed Buddhist
or Hindu faith. King Milinda, whose name is
found
in the title of the celebrated book in Pāli literature
called The Questions of King Milinda was identified
with Manandros, the Greek King, who ruled Western
and Northern India in the
latter part of the second
century B.C. This book states that he was
converted
to Buddhism. He may indeed have been a devout
Buddhist
according to inscriptions, and because of the
statement by Plutarch that
the relics of the king were
distributed for worship among eight tribes.
Apollonius of Tyana, a Neo-Pythagorean (first cen-
tury A.D.) made a peregrination in search of the wisdom
of the
Brahmins. He is mentioned as a Buddhist in an
Indian classical work, Jagadgururatnamālāstava by
Brahmendra, an Advaita-Vedāntin, and in a commen-
tary on this work, as shown by M. Hiriyanna (Indian
Historical Quarterly,
2 [1926], 415-16). Some scholars
say that Plotinus was influenced by the teachings of
Buddhism,
e.g., E. Benz, in
Indische Einfluss auf die
Frühchristliche Theologie (Wiesbaden, 1951). There
are
many similarities between the philosophy of Neo-
Platonism and that of Mahāyāna
Buddhism.
There is an hypothesis that Buddhism had spread
to the islands of Britain
before the introduction of
Christianity, judging from a statement by Origen
and
the similarity of the images of the Celtic Cernunnos
to those of
the Indian Virūpāksa and Řiva. British
archaeologists officially reported (e.g., Sir John Mar-
shall in Taxila, 3 vols. [1951], I,
22), that Buddhist
sculptures of Gandhāra style were discovered
in the
ruins of ancient Roman cantonments in England. Bud-
dhist images were also discovered in ruins in Sweden.
Scholars like James Moffatt (J. Hastings, Encyclo-
paedia of Religion and
Ethics, Edinburgh and New
York [1908-27], V, 401; XII, 318-19), say
that the
ascetic practices observed by the Essenes, who lived
around
the Dead Sea in the second century B.C., con-
tained some Buddhist elements. Celibacy, vegetar-
ianism, and a life of meditation practiced in mon-
asteries in Egypt before the birth of
Christ are held
by some to be evidence for the influence of Buddhism.
A number of analogies have been pointed out be-
tween the life stories of Christ and Buddha, and also
between
precepts and parables in the Bible and the
sutras. Scholars such as Arthur
Christy (1932, pp.
255-56) and Richard Garbe in his Indien und das
Christentum (1914; trans. 1959), assert that
these anal-
ogies are not mere coincidence,
but represent bor-
rowing by the writers of
the Bible. There is little doubt
that the life stories given in apocryphal
gospels seem
to be modifications of the life of Buddha.
Gnostics were greatly influenced by Buddhism. Some
scholars, following Ernst
Benz, say that Basilides (sec-
ond century A.D.)
advocated an altruism based on the
standpoint of
Mahāyāna and held an idea of transmi-
gration in the Buddhist sense. By recent studies Bud-
dhist influence has been traced in the
philosophy of
Manicheism, and is found in the second and third
centuries in the works of Pantaenus, Bardesanes,
Clement of Alexandria,
Origen, and Philostratus. It
seems that the first Western philosopher who
expressly
referred to Buddhism was Clement of Alexandria (d.
215
A.D.). He says (Stromateis I, p. 305 A-B, as also
Megasthenes, frag. 43), that some Indians worship
Boutta (i.e., Buddha). The pyramid-worship he refers
to in this connection apparently refers to the Stūpa-
worship prevalent among the Indian Buddhists.
It was probably in the sixth or seventh century A.D.
somewhere in Eastern
Iran or Turkestan that the legend
of Barlaam and Josaphat originated.
“Barlaam” is a
corruption of the Sanskrit word bhagavān, an epithet
for Buddha, and “Josaphat” derives from the
Sanskrit
word bodhisattva. This legend is a copy of
the life of
the Buddha made by some Christian missionaries for
the
purpose of facilitating Christian propaganda among
people living in
Buddhist countries. This story came
to be very popular in the medieval
West. Both Barlaam
and Josaphat were venerated for a time as saints in
the Catholic Church. Some of the Jātaka tales, par-
ables, and other stories given in Buddhist scriptures
find their counterparts in the Western world in more
or less revised forms.
With the advent of Westerners to Eastern countries
in the beginning of the
modern age, Eastern languages
and literatures came to be directly known to
Europe-
ans. A great many Eastern
religious and philosophical
works have been translated into Western
languages.
However, in the Renaissance period and in the Euro-
pean literature and philosophy of the
seventeenth cen-
tury little influence of
Buddhism could be traced. What
chiefly influenced Europe then was Chinese
thought,
especially Confucianism in a form rationalized and
idealized
by Western intellectuals. It was only in the
eighteenth century that the
influence of Buddhism
could be seen in European literature and philosophy.
In the efforts to introduce Eastern thought Friedrich
Max Müller
(1823-1900) was a leading scholar of wide
influence. He edited many
Buddhist texts, and also a
50 volume series of translations called
“Sacred Books
of the East,” which included various
Buddhist texts of
great importance. He was effective in spreading Bud-
dhist thought. J. Estlin Carpenter developed
compara-
tive religion, by continuing
the scholarship of F. Max
Müller.
Thomas William Rhys Davids (1843-1922), with his
wife, Mrs. C. A. F. Rhys
Davids, established the Pāli
Text Society in London (1881) to
publish texts of early
and Southern Buddhism in the Pāli
language, and this
set the line of Buddhist studies. American scholars
such
as Henry Clarke Warren and Franklin Edgerton (to-
ward the end of the nineteenth century) made re-
markable contributions in this field.
In the field of philosophy Schopenhauer expressly
identified the essence of
his philosophy with that of
the Upanisads and Buddhism, as well as with
that of
Plato and Kant. His idea of “blind will” is
related to
the Buddhist concept of “Nescience” (avidyā). The
philosophy of the
“Unconscious” of Eduard von Hart-
mann derived from this line of thought. Along with
Schopenhauer, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, a mys-
tical thinker of the early nineteenth century, was also
influenced by Indian thought. He called his philo-
sophical standpoint
“Pan-en-theism.” Schopenhauer's
admirer, Paul
Deussen, devoted his whole life to the
study of Indian philosophy,
especially Vedānta. He was
the first scholar who ventured to write a comprehensive
history
of Eastern and Western philosophy entitled
Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie (6 vols.,
Leipzig,
1906f.). His
Elemente der Metaphysik
(1877) was a
reflection of the influence of Buddhist philosophy in
the
Western world.
Count Hermann Keyserling especially drew the at-
tention of Westerners to the East. At the end of his
unique
work, The Travel Diary of a Philosopher
(Darmstadt,
1919), he said that only the Bodhisattva
ideal would save the whole world
from confusion and
destruction.
Karl Jaspers examined the significance of the philo-
sophical views of various Buddhist thinkers. Albert
Schweitzer, although he overtly criticized Buddhism,
was influenced by its
idea of the respect for life.
Buddhism as a religion was examined from the view-
point of a sociologist by Max Weber to demonstrate
his assertion
that Buddhism could not contribute to the
rise of capitalism as Calvinism
did in the West. Rudolf
Otto and other scholars of comparative religion
recog-
nized parallel developments
between two world reli-
gions, Christianity
and Buddhism. The studies of these
scholars resulted in giving up the idea,
held in general
by Western intellectuals, that Christianity is the
only
true religion.
Eastern philosophy was introduced into America by
Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose
transcendentalism was
greatly influenced by the philosophy of brahman
in
the Upanisads as well as by Buddhist philosophy. Henry
David
Thoreau tried to live a solitary life like a Yogin
or a Buddhist recluse.
In the 1950's and 1960's Aldous
Huxley incorporated principal ideas of
Vedānta and
Zen in his writings. Critics and writers who
show
Buddhist influence include Alan Watts, Christopher
Isherwood, and
others. The standpoint of Charles Mor-
ris is
somewhat similar to that of Early Buddhism, as
he himself says. Irving
Babbitt translated the
Dham-
mapada
with respect for the spirit of Buddhism, hu-
morously criticizing his contemporary civilization.
The increasing interest in Eastern philosophy on the
part of Western
thinkers gave rise to “comparative
philosophy.” Paul
Masson-Oursel (1882-) of France
was probably the first scholar to use the
term, in his
Philosophie comparée (1923; trans. 1926). The
East-
West Philosophers' Conference has
been held four
times at Honolulu, since 1939, with philosophers of
Eastern and Western countries participating, and the
journal, Philosophy East and West, specifically directed
to
this kind of studies, with most of the issues under
the editorship of
Charles A. Moore, has been published
by the University of Hawaii. The Journal of the History
of Ideas, under the
editorship of Philip P. Wiener, has
in recent years included topics
relevant to Eastern
philosophy. A great many eminent philosophers, such
as William Ernest Hocking, Filmer S. C. Northrop, Van
Meter
Ames, Archie Bahm, Abraham Kaplan, Edwin
A. Burtt, Georg Misch, Dale Riepe,
and others, have
engaged in studies of comparative philosophy. Such
specialists of Indian and Buddhist studies as Helmuth
von Glasenapp, W.
Norman Brown, Daniel H. H. In-
galls, Walter
Ruben, Constantin Regamee, Jean Fil-
liozat,
and others have published relevant works. All
these scholars agree that
Western philosophy is not the
only philosophy of mankind, and that any
philosophy
which will develop in the future must also take note of
Eastern, especially Indian and Buddhist, philosophy.
In the field of literature, many German writers of
the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, such as Richard
Wagner, Eduard Grisebach, Josef Viktor
Widmann,
Ferdinand von Hornstein, Max Vogrich, Karl Gjellerup,
Fritz
Mauthner, Hans Much, Albrech Schaeffer, Lud-
wig
Deinhard, Karl Bleibtreu, Hermann Hesse, Adolf
Vogel, and many others,
wrote novels, poems, and
dramas, clearly influenced by Buddhist or Eastern
Weltanschauung. Significant for English readers, The
Light of Asia (1879), a long poem on the life of
Buddha,
by Sir Edwin Arnold, was still widely read in the
twentieth
century.
Western thinkers influenced by Buddhist teachings
did not accept the role of
God as the Creator. A
religion without the idea of God was something
new
in the eyes of Westerners, and they were attracted by
the Buddhist
ideal of Compassion which is supposed
to permeate all living beings.
A Buddhist temple was established in 1924 in Berlin
by Paul Dahlke; in
London there has been a Buddhist
Society since 1906. In North America there
were about
174,000 Buddhists in the 1960's. Many Buddhist
churches in
America and Canada are mostly supported
by Americans and Canadians of
Japanese origin, but
their influence has spread among others. The Gospel
of Buddha, (1894), by Paul Carus, was
warmly wel-
comed in America as a good
introduction.
Japanese culture reflecting Buddhist influence was
diffused internationally
by the literary works in English
of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), a
journalist from
America who became a Japanese citizen, and by the
writings of Wenceslau de Moraes (1854-1929), a Portu-
guese diplomat.
Zen Buddhism has come to be well known to West-
erners through works by Japanese scholars. Daisetz
Teitaro
Suzuki wrote many works on Zen (chiefly
Rinzai) in English, and lectured at
various universities
in the West. Shigatsu Sasaki and in 1930 Mrs.
Ruth
Sasaki established the First Zen Institute of America
in New
York. Nyogen Senzaki exerted influence in
California. Books on
Sōtō Zen in English have been
published by that sect in
Japan.
Some Americans welcome the practical and non-
metaphysical character of Zen. The irrational and anti-
traditional attitude of some Zen
masters of the Sung
Period of China appealed directly to American
“beat-
niks” for the
justification of their non-deferential and
eccentric behavior. Some
Americans observe the Bud-
dhist life of
solitude.
Pure Land Buddhism is becoming known to Ameri-
cans, first because of the efforts of Buddhist missionaries
such as
Itsuzō Kyōgoku, and also from the evaluation
by the
scholars who took an interest in it, such as Paul
Tillich, Robert H. L.
Slater, and Kenneth W. Morgan.
The political ideal of Buddhism, as it was set forth
by its leaders, is
making an impression in world politics
because it is observed by U Thant
and some Buddhist
statesmen of international significance. They abide
by
the Buddhist principles of pacifism and the unity of
mankind.
