In point of
age, therefore, most other creeds are youthful compared with
this venerable religion, which has in it the eternity of a
universal hope, the immortality of a boundless love, an
indestructible element of faith in final good, and the
proudest assertion ever made of human freedom.
Sir Edwin
Arnold (1832-1904)
British poet, Journalist and Poet Laureate of England
The teachings
of the Indian Prince has indeed nothing to dread from
science . . . Words would fail me if I attempted to express
how necessary I think knowledge of this high faith and
philosophy is to leaven the materialism of the West . . . It
is, at all events, a truth which influenced not only the
mightiest thinkers of Greece and Rome, but also the
beginnings of Christian teachings - which it antedated by
five or six hundred years. It may well claim kindred with
all the great faiths, persecuting and opposing none which
differ with it, and this for reasons which are easily seen
in the teachings themselves. In relation to its noble and
scientific austerity no words are needed.
L. Adam Beck
An American Traveler and author
To the Christian, Love is the highest virtue; to the Buddhist,
Wisdom, for they hold that ignorance is the root of all evil.
Love, all the same, ranks high ......Tolerance and loving
kindness, both based on Buddhist wisdom, are perhaps the
chief reason why the middle way of Gotama has come down
through 2500 years.
Sir Charles
Bell KCIE, CMG ( 1870-1945)
British Diplomat and Lexicographer
Lord Buddha's
message of truth, peace, compassion and tolerance is as
relevant as it was many centuries ago. The passage of time
has made its flame shine with greater luminosity. Rampant
materialism and the pursuit of individual success at all
costs have eroded the ties of brotherhood and community. In
these circumstances, it is necessary to remember and
propagate the message of compassion of Lord Buddha so that
hatred can be replaced by love, strife by peace and
confrontation by co-operation.
Dr.
Amadou-Mahtar M 'Bow
Director - General, UNESCO
Page 2
The only one of
the great religions which makes any appeal to me is Buddhism;
and that, as I understand it, is rather a philosophy of the
world, and a way of life for the elite founded upon it, than
a religion in the ordinary sense of the word.
C D Broad
(1887-1971) British Philosopher
The recent
evolution of man certainly begins with the advancing
development of the hand, and the selection of a brain, which
is particularly adept at manipulating the hand. We feel the
pleasure of that in our actions, so that for the artist the
hand remains a major symbol; the hand of the Buddha, for
instance, giving man the gift of humanity in a gesture of
calm, the gift of fearlessness.
J.Bronowski (1908-1974)
American Author and Philosopher of Science
Whether the
Westerner who first approaches the Buddha's teachings be
accustomed to modern scientific or to Christian terminology,
he should always bear in mind that the Buddha was not
interested in the existence or non-existence of a Supreme
Being or any other abstract philosophical proposition. He
was interested only in the Way, the practical way, by which
suffering may be ended, both here and hereafter.
Marie B. Byles
(1900-1979)
Australian author and mountaineer
Buddha's message of compassion and devotion to the service
of humanity is more relevant today than at any other time in
history. Peace, understanding and a vision that transcends
purely national boundaries are imperatives of our insecure
nuclear age.
Javier Perez De
Cuellar
Peruvian Diplomat from 1982 and Secretary General of United Nation
Page 3
It cannot be
denied that there is a real beauty of an Oriental kind in
the various expressions which the Buddhists use; and that
there was real grounds for the enthusiasm which gave them
birth. Never in the history of the world had such a scheme
been put forth, so free from any superhuman agency, so
independent of so even antagonistic to the belief in a soul,
the belief in God, and the hope of a future life...
Whether these
be right or wrong, it was a turning point in the religious
history of man when a reformer, full of the most earnest
moral purpose and trained in all the intellectual culture of
his time, put forth deliberately, and with a knowledge of
the opposing views the doctrine of salvation to be found
here, in this life, in an inward change of heart, to be
brought about by perseverance in a mere system of self
culture and self control.
Buddhist or
non-Buddhist, I have examined every one of the great
religious systems, of the world, in none of them I have
found anything to surpass, in beauty and comprehensiveness,
the Noble Eightfold Path and the Four Truths of the Buddha.
Prof. T. W.
Rhys Davids (1843-1922) B ritish Orientalist lexicographer
and
the first person to hold a chair in Comparative Religion in
a British university
Like the other
teachers of his time, Buddha' taught through conversation,
lecturers and parables. Since it never occurred to him, any
more than Socrates or Christ, to put his doctrine into
writing, he summarised it in sutras (threads) designed to
prompt the memory.
As preserved
for us in the remembrance of his followers these discourses
unconsciously portray for us the first distinct character of
India's history: a man of strong will, authoritative and
proud, but of gentle manner and speech, and of infinite
benevolence. He claimed enlightenment but not inspiration;
he never pretended that a god was speaking through him. In
controversy he was more patient and considerate than any
other of the great teachers of mankind.
Like Lao-tze and Christ he wished to return good for evil,
love for hate; and he remained silent under misunderstanding
and abuse . . . Unlike most saints, Buddha has a sense of
humour, and knew that metaphysics without laughter is
immodesty.
Will Durant
(1885-1 981)
American Historian and Pulitzer Prize Winner
Page 4
The individual
feels the nothingness of human desires and aims and the
sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both
in nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon
individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to
experience the universe as a single significant whole, the
beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear in
early stages of development - e.g. in many of the Psalms of
David and in some of the Prophets.
Buddhism, as we
have learnt from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer
especially, contains much stronger elements of it. The religion of the future will he a cosmic religion. It should
transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology.
Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should he
based on a religious sense arising from the experience of
all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity.
Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion
that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be
Buddhism.
Albert Einstein
(1879-1955) German physicist, mathematician.
Winner of the Nobel Prize
But Eliot's
attraction to Buddhism was not simply a philosophical one.
Nirvana is extinction* the annihilation of desire, the
freedom from attachments - and there was, as can he seen
from his poetry, an over-riding desire in the young Eliot to
be free.
The absolutism
of Buddhism is quite as relentless as anything he had found
in Maurras and, although he was perhaps attracted to it for
much the same reasons, the Eastern religion had more
romantic affiliations for someone who wished to break free
from the familial bonds which otherwise held him.
Peter Ackrayd's
comments on English poet T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
*The extinction
of greed, hatred and delusion.
