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BUDDHISM

CHRISTMAS HUMPHREYS

PENGUIN BOOKS

PREFACE

THE Ideal author of this work would have a considerable knowledge of each part of the subject, be impartial in respect of all of them, and be able to see and to present the vast system as an intergrated whole. No such person exist . ther are experts in Theravada or Southern Buddhism; in the Mahayana or Northern Buddhism; in Tibetan Buddhism; on Buddhism art and on Zen. But these are scholars working for the most part each in a limited sphere, and few if any of them know the condition of Buddhism in the world to-day. To compress the essence of all these subjects , in their due proportion, into a volume of this size is a bold ideal and a consummation easy to be missed.

My own qualifications are few. I have no knowledge of oriental languages, and therefore rely upon translations, yet as I belong to no one School of Buddhism I can study the whole dispassionately, and have done so for some thirty years. Of Buddhism in the world to-day I known more than most, and of Buddhism in the West as much as any man, having been the active President of the Buddhist Society, London, from its foundation in 1924 until its Silver Jubilee to-day.

Of these qualifications the practical experience is paramount. Any writter who studied the books in the Bibliography could tell ot the bones of Buddhism; only a Buddhist can reveal its life. As Dr. J.B. Pratt says in his Preface to the Pilgrimage of Buddhism: ‘To give the feeling of an alien religion it is necessary to do more than expound its concepts and describes its history. One must catch its emotional undertone, enter sympathetically into its sentiments, feel one’s way into its symboles, its cult, its art, and then seek to impart these thing not merely by scientific exposition but in all sorts of indirect ways. This is true, and a book on Buddhishm should be subject to this test. Not that Buddhism is an emotional religion. Indeed, by the usual test, it is not a religion so much as a spiritual philosophy whose attitude to life is as cool and objective as that of the modern scientist. But it lives, it lives tremendously, and is not, as the West is apt to regard it as, a museum specimen.

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1.                  The Life of the Buddha

2.                  The Ministry

3.                  The Rise of the Two schools

4.                  The Spread of Buddhism

5.                  Theravada Buddhism I: The Three Signs of Being

6.                  Theravada Buddhism II: The Four Noble Truths

7.                  Theravada Buddhism III: Karma and Rebirth

8.                  Theravada Buddhism IV: The Noble Eightfold Path

9.                  Theravada Buddhism V: The Four Path and the Goal

10.              The Sangha

11.              Some Mahayana Principles

12.              The Bodhisattva Ideal and the Pure land Schools

13.              Schools of the Mahayana

14.              Zen Buddhism

15.              Tibetan Buddhism

16.              The Fruits of Buddhism

17.              Buddhism to-day

Appendix I. The Buddhist Scriptures

Appendix II. Pancha Sila (Pansil)

Glossary

General Bibliography

Index

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