Below is a short
excerpt from part two of an article concerning St. Nicholas of Japan on
Buddhism.
The saint just as
negatively reacted to the idea he heard of creating a hybrid of Christianity
and Buddhism, pointing out the “absurdity of such an endeavor, and the
impossibility under any circumstances of comparing the truth of God’s faith
with human invention” (III, 363).
St. Nicholas
approved of the words of his visitors who “had compared Christianity with
Buddhism and found them to be polar opposites” (III, 804). The saint at times
had to disprove the then popular opinion among Western and Russian
intelligentsia that Christianity was constructed upon ideas borrowed from
Buddhism. He describes his conversation with the wife of Admiral Schmidt. At
her remark about the closeness of Buddhism’s moral teaching with that of
Christianity, St. Nicholas replied, “ ‘There is indeed some resemblance to our
religion in Buddhism’s moral teaching; and what pagan religion does not have
it? The moral teaching of pagans is drawn from the conscience, which they have
not lost.’ ‘But they say that Christ’s teachings were borrowed from Buddhism.’
‘Well, this is what people say who know neither Buddhist nor Christian
teachings well.’ ‘No—why shouldn’t Christ borrow something from Buddhism if He
liked it? He (Christ) was an intelligent man.’ ‘Christ was God and He spoke His
teaching as a Divine command; Buddha, as well as everything in the world and
the whole world itself, is nothing before Him’, I interrupted her, in order to
stop this outflow of refuse from the cesspool of a general’s mind… So, the
upper class in Russia is ignorant … in things related to faith” (II, 296).
At the same time,
the saint also related skeptically to ideas expressed in response apologetics
about aspects in the life of Buddha supposedly being borrowed from the Gospels.
Remarking on a lecture he heard by the Protestant Spencer, St. Nicholas writes
that there were “no few paradoxes; for example, the supposition that Buddha’s
‘life’ was copied from the life of the Savior. He would do well to prove that”
(IV, 167).
From conversations
with converts, St. Nicholas formed the opinion that Buddhism does not answer
the needs of the soul that has a living religious feeling. He cites the story
of one family: “Yuki and his wife were both believing Buddhists. Not having
found in Buddhism a ‘personal’ God, he lost his faith in it and was extremely
glad to find God the Creator and His Providence in Christianity, about which he
had learned by accident, having obtained a Bible. He began to pray to the
Christian God, and his fervent prayer was even crowned by a miracle: his wife
had been ill to the point that she was unable to stand up. He prayed fervently
for her healing, and she at once rose up healthy, to everyone’s amazement” (IV,
208). It is the fact that Christianity gives a person not simply an “idea of
God”, but a living connection with Him, that in St. Nicholas’s eyes
distinguishes it in principle from Buddhism. This is explained by the saint’s
comment that, “Buddhism in the religious sense is essentially empty, for what
religion can there be without God?” (III, 443).
St. Nicholas spoke
several times about Buddhist prayer: “Their prayer is fruitless, because they
pray to something that does not exist” (V, 571); “Their prayer is useless and
deserves pity, for a tree and a rock or some empty space, at which they direct
their calls to the gods and buddhas, which do not exist, do not see or hear
them, and cannot help” (II, 175).
Unfortunately, St.
Nicholas (Kasatkin’s) study of Japanese Buddhism has remained completely
unnoticed by Orthodox authors, although it could substantially supplement their
knowledge of the many various trends in this religion. The first attention
given to St. Nicholas’s views on Buddhism came as late as the twenty-first
century: A. Larionov in a short article gave an overview of the saint’s
commentary, almost entirely based upon his Diaries. He writes that the
“comments on Buddhism are rare, and bear a purely practically character. The
basic conclusion is: Buddhism had for a long time fulfilled its role as nanny,
preparing the Japanese to receive the Truth… This was that “divination in the
mirror”, which taught the Japanese love for each other and an understanding of
the vanity of life. Now it must be set aside, because the fullness of grace has
come.”
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