Lâm Ngữ Đường, Lin Yutang (1895-1976), Tư tưởng gia Trung Quốc, Chinese writer thinker, journalist and playwright

31. Lâm Ngữ Đường, Lin Yutang (1895-1976), Tư tưởng gia Trung Quốc, Chinese writer thinker, journalist and playwright 

[Buddhism has conquered China as a philosophy and as a religion, as a philosophy for the scholars and a religion for the common people. Whereas Confucianism has only a philosophy of moral conduct, Buddhism possesses a logical method, a metaphysics and a theory of knowledge.]

[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.]

[Buddhism helps man to find an answer to the question of his existence, yet which does not contradict the rationality, realism, and independence which are modern man's precious achievements. Paradoxically, Eastern religious thought turns out to be more congenial to Western rational thought than does Western religious thought itself. ]

[Buddhism is a system of thought, a religion, a spiritual science and a way of life which is reasonable, practical and all-embracing. For 2,500 years it has satisfied the spiritual needs of nearly one third of mankind. It appeals to those in search of truth because it has no dogmas, satisfies the reason and the heart alike, insists on self-reliance coupled with tolerance for other points of view, embraces science, religion, philosophy, psychology, mysticism, ethics and art, and points to man alone as the creator of his present life and sole designer of his destiny.]

[Of the establishment of the Buddhist Sangha, Arnold Toynbee has said that it was a greater social achievement than the founding of the Platonist academy in Greece. ]

[If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no'. The Buddha has given such answers when interrogated as to the conditions of a man's self after his death; but they are not familiar answers for the tradition of seventeenth and eighteenth century science. ]

[Real Buddhism is not really an “ism”. It’s a process, an awareness, an openness, a spirit of inquiry – not a belief system, or even (as we normally understand it) a religion. It is more accurate to call it “the teaching of the awakened,”, or the Buddha-Dharma]

[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. ]

[As a Buddhist, I was trained to be tolerant of everything except intolerance. I was brought up not only to develop the spirit of tolerance, but also to cherish moral and spiritual qualities, especially modesty, humanity, compassion, and, most important, to attain a certain degree of emotional equilibrium.] 

[While the materialist is mainly interested in goods, the Buddhist is mainly interested in liberation. But Buddhism is 'The Middle Way' and therefore in no way antagonistic to physical well-being. It is not wealth that stands in the way of liberation but the attachment to wealth; not the enjoyment of pleasurable things but the craving for them. ]

[Buddhism is much less a matter of organized and institutional orthodoxy than a state of mind. Buddhism does not aim directly at theological salvation but a total clarification of consciousness. It is not so much a way of worshipping as a way of being.]

[Buddhism begins where science ends. Science can give no assurance herein. But Buddhism can meet the Atomic Challenge, because the supramundane knowledge of Buddhism begins where science leaves off. And this is clear enough to anyone who has made a study of Buddhism. For, through Buddhist Meditation, the atomic constituents making up matter have been seen and felt, and the sorrow, or unsatisfactoriness (or Dukkha), of their 'arising and passing away' (dependent on causes) has made itself with what we call a 'soul' or 'atma' - the illusion of Sakkayaditthi, as it is called in the Buddha's teaching.” ]

[Christ is dead – Buddha Lives]

[The teachings of the Indian Prince has indeed nothing to dread from science. Buddhism 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.]

[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.]

[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. ]

[I found Buddhist philosophy is a way of thought that enthralled me by its calm and radical analysis of desire, its rejection of all the self-dramatisiting intensities by which I lived, and its promise of a possible strong and unsentimental sincerity.]

[Buddhist concept that you progress towards the Ineffable through a number of existences seemed to me much more intellectually satisfying than the Christian belief that you come just once and are cast into circumstances maybe of great wealth or of great moment, but that you come to God or don't come to God on the basis of that one life. I was never on the point of embracing Buddhism but I found, and still find, it infinitely more satisfying than the Judeo-Christian philosophy.]

[Some people thinhk that Buddhism is a dark and melancholy religion.. It is not so; it will make its followers bright and cheerful. When we read the birth stories of Boddhisatva, the future Buddha, we learn hos He cultivated the perfection of patience and forbearance, it will help us to be cheerful even in the midst of grea troubles and to take delight in other’s welfare>]

[Paul couples love with faith and hope, and his conception of love involves faith and hope: "Love," he says, "believes all things, hopes all things." The love I mean does not believe all things and hope all things. It survives disillusionment and persists in despair. Love is not love that ceases without hope or faith. As long as faith and hope support it, it is hardly more than puppy love. The Buddha knew that love brings "hurt and misery, suffering, grief and despair"; and he advised detachment. The love I consider a virtue is not a blind love of the lovers or the trusting, hopeful love of Paul, but the love that knows what the Buddha knew and still loves, with open eyes. ]

[Today science is challenging the finite quality of the human brain, a brain consisting of some 10,000 million electrically stimulated cells programmed with the instincts of our long history and receptive to new notions whether true or false. The aggregate of these cells provides our ever-changing personality and their partial removal by surgery or altered rhythm by shock treatment changes our character. By such crude methods, aggression can be turned into fear, hatred to affection - how much better that they should be changed by appreciation of the realities that the philosophy of Buddha has placed in our hands. ]

[The message of the Buddha is a message of joy. He found a treasure and he wants us to follow the path that leads us to the treasure. He tells man that he is in deep darkness, but he also tells him that there is a path that leads to light. He wants us to arise from a life of dreams into a higher life where man loves and does not hate, where a man helps and does not hurt. His appeal is universal, because he appeals to reason and to the universal is us all: It is you who must make the effort. The Great of the past only show the way.' He achieved a superior harmony of vision and wisdom by placing spiritual truth on the crucial test of experience; and only experience can satisfy the mind of modern man. He wants us to watch and be awake and he wants us to seek and to find. ]

[Of all the great religious teachers of the world, none has incarnated and lived the idea that ultimate reality is beyond the grasp of the ordinary mind with such purity and concentration as the Buddha. This, in part, explains why the Buddha's discourses say nothing about the existence of a Supreme Being, for example, or about immortality . .]

[Buddhism, better than most religions, seems to have adapted to modern life. Many considering it to be, among other things, not only a method of self discovery but a source of ideas for social orientation without equal in the West.]

[I believe that Buddhism is very relevant to the thought of the present day. Basically, its thought is familiar to us because it is the same kind of thinking as that employed in science.]