MA HAVANA BUDDHISM AXI> (II KM ST [ANITY. 



2G9 



Or again :* " What is Tao ? " exclaims Huai-nan Tzu (or Liu 

 An, 122 B.C.) in his History of Great Light . . . " Tao is 

 that which supports Heaven and Earth. Hidden and obscure, 

 it reinforces all things out of formlessness. Penetrating and 

 permeating everything, it never acts in vain. It fills all within 

 the Four Points of the Compass. It contains the Yin and the 

 Yang." As has been well said : " Now,f man's great object, the 

 goal of his hope for the future, the secret of life worth living 

 now, must be conformity to this Tao, this Nature, or Principle 

 of Nature, this pathway of souls, and of all things, this 

 Doctrine of the Way. How is conformity to be secured ? ' I >y 

 being always and completely passive ' ; ' Non-exertion ' ; ' Not 

 doing'; 'Inertia,' with all its 'vices.' Spontaneity and the 

 absence of design also must be attained. Passionless, as well 

 as quiescent, man must banish all desires from his heart, and 

 simply yield himself to his environment. ' He need not be a 

 recluse to be quiescent. Holy men there were, who did not 

 abide in forests. They did not conceal themselves, but they 

 did not obtrude their virtues.' (Chuang-tzu.)" This philosophy 

 of quiescence is so thoroughly in accordance with certain forms 

 of Hindu philosophy that, had not Taoism existed in China long 

 before any known contact with the West, we should have been 

 almost convinced of its Indian origin. In the same way the 

 Doctrine of the Tao coincides almost entirely with the 

 Mahayanistic theory of " Suchness," which, indeed, though 

 alien to earlier Buddhism, is distinctly derived from Hindu 

 philosophy. These things not only show how closely Taoism 

 and Mahayanism are related to one another, but also how it 

 was that, when introduced into China, Mahayana Buddhism 

 found a wide acceptance and was able to assimilate many 

 Chinese beliefs and to admit Kwanyin and perhaps other 

 Chinese deities into its Pantheon. A similar process on 

 a larger scale took place in Japan.. In early days the 

 indigenous gods of China were worshipped without the use of 

 either temples or images ; and it is believed that both of these 

 were introduced into the country by the Buddhists. 



Worship in a Buddhist temple in China is thus described : J 

 " Buddha — the historic Gautama — sits in the centre of his own 

 temple, gilded over the whole surface of his image, and with a 



* Moule, The Chinese People, pp. 256, 257. 



t Ibid., Archdeacon Moule is here speaking from the Taoist point of 

 view. 



I Op. cit., p. 213. 



