276 



MAHAYANA BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 



Iii Haeckel's view, mind was developed out of matter ; in the 

 Buddhist manual; The Awakening of Faith, the same idea is brought 

 forth. The root idea was that the universe was self-existent, without 

 will or consciousness. 



He would like to ask the Lecturer how he accounted for murders 

 being so common in Buddhist countries, seeing that Buddhists were 

 so careful of animal life. ^He would also like to ask what was the 

 Buddhist's notion of sin. 



The Chairman considered Buddhism to be a serious declension 

 from Hinduism, the latter teaching a greater sense of sin. Buddhism 

 was, therefore, even more than Hinduism, opposed in its spirit to 

 Christianity. 



False religions originating in declensions from, or corruptions of, 

 the one true God-revealed religion, it was only reasonable to suppose 

 that they would, more or less, retain traces of it, and touch it at 

 certain points. 



In Genesis i we are told of the Creation of the heavens and the 

 earth. Were the heavens material or ethereal 1 If the latter, they 

 would seem to correspond to the Buddhist Tao. 



In the name of the Meeting, he asked Dr. Tisdall to accept their 

 sincere thanks for his most admirable and instructive paper. 



The Lecturer thanked the audience for the great attention 

 which they had paid to what he feared was a dull paper. 



The Buddhist's idea of sin was anything that tended to hinder 

 progress toward Nirvana, or personal extinction ; the opposite of 

 this was the Buddhist idea of virtue. Sin, therefore, was to do that 

 which was inexpedient. There was no sense of a breach of law, 

 because there was no law, since there was no lawgiver. 



With regard to the prevalence of murders in Ceylon, that 

 was a region where Hinayana Buddhism prevailed, not Mahay ana 

 Buddhism. The reason of the small regard for human life seemed 

 to be that no real distinction was felt between the ego of the man 

 and that of the animal. Fish were killed for human food — why not 

 a man if he stood in one's way, and if you were benefited by his 

 death 1 The murdered person would revive in some other form. 



The Buddhist use of holy water, of praying beads and the like, 

 was earlier than their use by the Roman Catholics, who, therefore, 

 could not have given them to the Buddhists. 



The Meeting adjourned at 6 p.m. 



