Miss I.B. Horner who succeeded Professor Rhys Davids as the President of the Pali Text Society also says the following words of appreciation: “Many people in the West can no longer believe in a creator God who is both all powerful and all merciful for the tragic events they see all around them; the oceans of suffering and distress do not support such a hypothesis. At the same time many people have a strong wish for a rational way of life; something they can turn to use as a barrage against the almost overwhelming materialism of our times. This is what early Buddhism gives.”
Another Western writer expressed his view of Buddhism in these words: “Buddhism is a plan for living in such a way as to derive highest benefit from life. It is a religion of wisdom where knowledge and intelligence predominate. The Buddha did not preach to win converts but to enlighten listeners.”
Anatole France, a famous French poet and novelist of the 19th century, made this appreciative reference to the Buddha: “It seemed that the kindly aesthetic, eternally young, seated cross legged on the lotus of purity with his right hand raised in admonition, answered in these two words: If you wish to escape from suffering, from fear, practise wisdom and compassion.”
This beauty of Buddhism is even more stressed by Hermann Keyserling, a German philosopher, who says: “I know nothing more grand in the world than the figure of Buddha. This grandest creation of art, the figure of the Buddha, surely could not have been produced by a pessimistic religion.”
Now, the last and longest quotations here will be those of Nehru, the late Prime Minister of India. As a leader of Hindu India, his impression of Buddhism is particularly interesting. In his well known book, The Discovery of India, he says:
“The Buddha story attracted me even in early boyhood, and I was drawn to the young Siddhartha who, after many inner struggles and pain and torment, was to develop into the Buddha. Edwin Arnold’s ‘Light of Asia’ became one of my favourite books. In later years when I travelled about a great deal in my province, I liked to visit the many places connected with the Buddha legend, sometimes making a detour for the purpose.”
“Was Buddhism passive and pessimistic? Its interpreters may say so ... But when I think of the Buddha no such feeling arises in me ...”
“Seated on the lotus flower, calm and impassive, above passion and desire, beyond the storm and strife of this world, so far away he seems, out of reach, unattainable. Yet again we look and behind those still, unmoving features there is a passion and an emotion, strange and more powerful than the passions and emotions we have known. His eyes are closed, but some power of the spirit looks out of them and a vital energy fills the frame. The ages roll by and Buddha seems not so far away after all; his voice whispers in our ears and tells us not to run away from the struggle, but, calm eyed, to face it, and to see in life ever greater opportunities for growth and advancement.”
“His message was one of universal benevolence, of love for all. It was an ideal of righteousness and self discipline. Buddha relies on reason and logic and experience and asks people to seek the truth in their own minds. It is remarkable how near this philosophy of the Buddha brings us to some of the concepts of modern physics and modern philosophic thought. Buddha s method was one of psychological analysis and, again, it is surprising to find how deep was his insight into this latest of modern science.”
Elsewhere he says:
“It is essentially through the message of the Buddha that the individual, national and international problems of today can be looked at from the right perspective.”
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