Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T13:22:15.484Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

“The Seeming Anomaly of Buddhist Negation”: American Encounters with Buddhist Distinctiveness, 1858–1877

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Thomas A. Tweed
Affiliation:
University of Miami

Extract

In a lecture in Horticultural Hall in Boston on Sunday 3 March 1872 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the social reformer and religious radical, praised “The Character of the Buddha.” He ended his very sympathetic portrait by alluding to King Asoka's discovery of the tomb of the Buddha. Those who opened the tomb, so the story goes, found the lamps that had been lighted two hundred years earlier still burning and the flowers that had been offered in homage still fresh and fragrant. Higginson saw a parallel to his own age: “More than two thousand years have now passed, and we are opening this tomb again; the lights still burn, the flowers are still fresh, the perfume of that noble life, yet remains immortal.” In some ways, Higginson's comment seems appropriate: literate Americans of his generation were learning more and more about Buddhism and its founder; and, although most interpreters during the 1860s and 1870s struggled with its distinctiveness, some found Buddha's life and teachings praiseworthy. Yet Americans had begun to pry open “the tomb of the Buddha” decades earlier, and not everyone was as blinded by the sudden illumination or as overcome by the sweet fragrance as Higginson.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, “The Character of Buddha,” The Index 3 (16 03 1872) 83Google Scholar. This lecture was the ninth in a series of eleven “Sunday Afternoon Lectures” that he delivered in Horticultural Hall under the auspices of the Free Religious Association.

2 Rusk, Ralph L., ed., The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (7 vols; New York: Columbia University Press, 1939) 3. 179Google Scholar. Carus, Paul, “Hinduism Different from Buddhism,” Open Court 20 (04 1906) 253Google Scholar.

3 On the emergence of Buddha as historical figure and religious founder see Almond, Philip C., “The Buddha in the West: From Myth to History,” Religion 16 (10 1986) 305–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For examples of missionary contributions to American magazines see Mason, Francis, “Hints on the Introduction of Buddhism into Burmah,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 2 (1851) 334–36Google Scholar. Bennett, Chester, “Life of Gaudama: A Translation from the Burmese Book Entitled Ma-la-len-ga-ra wottoo,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 3 (1853) 1164CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Salisbury, Edward E., “Memoir on the History of Buddhism,” JAOS 1 (1843-1849) 81135Google Scholar. Salisbury was a member in the Center Church, on New Haven Green, from 1840 to 1872. He served as a deacon there from 1849 to 1862. In 1872, he transferred his affiliation to the Church in Yale College. For evidence of his piety see Salisbury, Edward Elbridge, “The Influence of the Spirit of Christianity on the Discovery of Truth,” n.d., Salisbury Family Papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New HavenGoogle Scholar. See also his journals and sermons: Edward Elbridge Salisbury, 3 August 1838, “Journal of Travels in Europe,” Salisbury Family Papers. Edward Elbridge Salisbury, “Mathew 26:36-44,” “II Timothy 3:6,” “I John 4:18,” n.d., Salisbury Family Papers (Thoreau, Henry David, ed.) “The Preaching of the Buddha,” The Dial 4 (01 1844) 391401Google Scholar. See also Mueller, Roger C., “A Significant Buddhist Translation by Thoreau,” The Thoreau Society Bulletin (Winter 1977) 12Google Scholar.

4 Cooper, Michael, ed., They Came to Japan: An Anthology of European Reports on Japan, 1543–1640 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965) 317Google Scholar.

5 Adams, Hannah, A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations… (4th ed.; 1784; Boston: Cummings and Hilliard, 1817) 56Google Scholar. , Salisbury, “Memoir,” 86Google Scholar. A Traveller, Buddhism—Its Origin, Tenets, and Tendencies,” Southern Literary Messenger 25 (11 1857) 381Google Scholar. See also the piece in the previous issue: A Traveller, Buddhist Superstition,” Southern Literary Messenger 25 (10 1857) 257–78Google Scholar. Buddhism,” The New Englander 3 (04 1845) 182–83Google Scholar.

6 These magazines included The Princeton Review, The North American Review, The Christian Examiner, Christian World, The Methodist Quarterly Review, The Radical, The Atlantic Monthly, The Bibliotheca Sacra, The New Englander, The Index, and The Baptist Quarterly. For one example of a report on the Buddhist scholarship see Dr. , Mullens, “Buddhism—Its Literature, Origin, and Doctrine,” Christian World 20 (11 1869) 333–35Google Scholar. Burnouf, Eugene, VIntroduction a I'histoire du buddhisme indien (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1844)Google Scholar; Hardy, R[obert] Spence, Eastern Monachism (London: Partridge and Oakey, 1850)Google Scholar; idem, A Manual of Buddhism in its Modern Development (London: Partridge and Oakey, 1853)Google Scholar; Mtiller, F[riedrich] Max, “Buddhist Pilgrims [1857],” in Chips from a German Workshop, vol. 1: Essays on the Science of Religion (1869; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985) 232–75Google Scholar; idem, The Meaning of Nirvana [1857],” Chips from a German Workshop, 1. 276–87Google Scholar; SaintHiiaire, Jules Barthe'lemy, Le Bouddha et sa Religion (1860; Paris: Didier, 1862)Google Scholar.

7 , Burnouf, L'Introduction a Vhistoire du buddhisms indien, 589–90Google Scholar. Weber, Albrecht, “Uber den Buddhismus,” lndische Skizzen (Berlin: Dummlers, 1857)Google Scholar. d'Alwis, James, Buddhist Nirvana: A Review of Max Muller's Dhammapada (Colombo, Ceylon: William Skeen, Government Printer, 1871)Google Scholar.

8 Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Representation (trans. Payne, E. F. J.; 2 vols.; 1818; New York: Dover, 1969) 2. 169Google Scholar. On the association between Buddhism, Schopenhauer, and pessimism see Schopenhauer and His Pessimism,” Methodist Quarterly Review 28 (07 1876) 489Google Scholar, 508; [Warner, Herman J.], “The Last Phase of Atheism,” Christian Examiner 78 (07 1865) 7880Google Scholar.

9 The passage from Alexander is quoted in Welbon, Guy R., The Buddhist Nirvana and Its Western Interpreters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968) 19Google Scholar. [Holland, F. W.], “Siam,” Christian Examiner 66 (03 1859) 237Google Scholar. On Buddha as a reformer see Mifller, F. Max, “Buddhism [1862],” Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. 1Google Scholar; Weber, Albrecht, “Uber den Buddhismus;” Koeppen, Karl, Die Religion des Buddha und ihre Enstehung (Berlin: F. Schneider, 1857)Google Scholar; and Foucaux, Phillipe Edouard, Doctrine des bouddhistes sur le nirvana (Paris: Benjamin Duprat, 1864)Google Scholar. The passage about Buddhism as a “civilizing influence” is from , Miiller, “Buddhist Pilgrims,” 243Google Scholar. The passage from Weber is quoted in , Welbon, Buddhist Nirvana, 65Google Scholar.

10 For an example of one interpreter who continued to present Buddhism as passive see [Holland, F. W.], “Siam,” 237Google Scholar.

11 Traveller, A, “Buddhism—Its Origin, Tenets, and Tendencies,” 380Google Scholar. The passage from Ware is quoted in Howe, Daniel Walker, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805–1861 (1970; Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988) 96Google Scholar. Gaustad, Edwin Scott, Dissent in American Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973) 42Google Scholar. On nineteenth-century agnostic and atheist thinking in the United States see Turner, James, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

12 Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, trans. Reeve, Henry (1835-1840; New York: Vintage, 1945) 2. 104Google Scholar. In their attempts to define modernist culture in America some scholars have been driven to acknowledge the belief in an immutable and substantial self that was connected with the Victorian culture that modernism displaced. Daniel Joseph Singal, for example, used the contrast between Victorian views and modernist conceptions of a dynamic and processive self to help characterize the new cluster of beliefs and values that emerged among many Western intellectuals just before and after World War I (Towards a Definition of American Modernism,” American Quarterly 39 [Spring 1987] 15)Google Scholar.

13 Syme, J. B., ed., The Mourner's Friend; Or, Sighs of Sympathy for Those Who Sorrow (Worcester: S. A. Howland, 1852) 28Google Scholar. On the Victorian cult of mourning see Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982) 124–52Google Scholar.

14 Schaff, Philip, America: A Sketch of Its Political, Social, and Religious Character, ed. Miller, Perry (1855; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961) 88, 94, 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 , O. D., “On the Signs and Prospects of the Age,” Christian Examiner 36 (01 1844) 22Google Scholar. Historians have consistently and explicitly linked Victorian culture with these two clusters of beliefs and values. For example, Walter E. Houghton linked British Victorianism with “optimism” and “enthusiasm” (even “moral optimism”;) ( The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830–1870 [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957] 2753Google Scholar, 263–304). Frank Thistlethwaite emphasized the connection between British and American activism in “The Anglo-American World of Humanitarian Endeavor,” in Davis, David Brion, ed., Ante-Bellum Reform (New York: Harper and Row, 1967) 6381Google Scholar. Henry F. May argued that the Didactic Enlightenment (i.e., the Scottish philosophy of “Common Sense”) was assimilated by the official culture of nineteenth century, and its influence was evident in that culture's emphasis on moral values and progress (The Enlightenment in America [New York: Oxford University Press, 1976] 337–62)Google Scholar. Scholars have discovered an emphasis on optimism in mainstream Protestantism and its leaders during the period. See McLoughlin, William G., The Meaning of Henry WardBeecher: An Essay on the Shifting Values of Mid-Victorian America, 1840–1870 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970)Google Scholar. Frank Luther Mott suggested that a spirit of “optimism” characterized all the leading general magazines between 1850 and 1865 (A History of American Magazines [5 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938-1968] 2. 27)Google Scholar. Singal found “steadfast optimism,” a “gospel of progress,” “practicality,” and “paternalistic benevolence” in Southern Victorianism ( Singal, Daniel J., The War Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought in the South, 1919–1945 [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982] 2324)Google Scholar. Finally, Daniel Howe identified “future-orientedness,” “moral seriousness,” and “didacticism” as part of Victorian culture in America. Confidently focused on the future, Howe suggested, Victorian Americans engaged in numerous efforts to moralize and reform ( Howe, Daniel Walker, “Victorian Culture in America,” in Howe, Daniel Walker, ed., Victorian America [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976] 1923)Google Scholar.

16 Tuveson, Ernest Lee, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1968)Google Scholar. The phrase “cosmic optimism” is found in Fredrickson, George M., The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York: Harper and Row, 1965) 7Google Scholar. The speeches by Lincoln and Bushnell are reprinted in Cherry, Conrad, ed., God's New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971) 195–96Google Scholar, 197–209. Johnson, Samuel, “American Religion,” The Radical (01 1867) 257Google Scholar. Beecher, Henry Ward, “The Tendencies of American Progress,” in The Original Plymouth Pulpit: Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyne. From Stenographic Reports by T. J. Ellinwood (10 vols.; Boston and Chicago: Pilgrim Press, 1871) 5. 218Google Scholar. Beecher preached this sermon on 24 November 1870.

17 Channing, William Ellery, “The Moral Argument Against Calvinism,” in Robinson, David, ed., William Ellery Channing: Selected Writings (1820; New York: Paulist Press, 1985) 103–21Google Scholar.

18 Sprague, William B., The Excellent Woman as Described in the Book of Proverbs (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1851) 59Google Scholar.

19 [Hungerford, Edward], “Buddhism and Christianity,” The New Englander 33 (04 1874) 278–79Google Scholar. [, Warner], “The Last Phase of Atheism,” 86Google Scholar.

20 [Wight, J. K. ?], “Buddhism in India and China,” Princeton Review 31 (07 1859) 391Google Scholar. The Sanskrit Language,” Methodist Quarterly Review 19 (07 1867) 362Google Scholar. Graves, R. H., “Three Systems of Belief in China,” Baptist Quarterly 6 (1872) 412Google Scholar. , Muller, “Buddhist Pilgrims,” 243Google Scholar.

21 , Müller, “Buddhist Pilgrims,” 243–44Google Scholar.

22 , Müller, “Buddhism,” 230–31Google Scholar.

23 Quoted in , Welbon, The Buddhist Nirvana, 198Google Scholar.

24 , Wight, “Buddhism in India and China,” 415Google Scholar. See also Scudder, David C., “A Sketch of Hindu Philosophy: Article II,” BSac 18 (07 1861) 578Google Scholar. On Pure Land see [Pilcher, L. W.?] “Gautama and Lao Tzu,” Methodist Quarterly Review 28 (10 1876) 653Google Scholar. Schaff, Philip, “Rise and Progress of Monasticism: Origin of Christian Monasticism: Comparison with Other Forms of Asceticism,” BSac 22 (04 1864) 386Google Scholar. , Graves, “Three Systems of Belief in China,” 412Google Scholar. For examples of interpreters who acknowledged the Buddha's lofty moral principles and effective reform efforts see Warner, “The Last Phase of Atheism,” Scudder, “A Sketch of Hindu Philosophy,” and Hungerford, “Buddhism and Christianity.” On Buddha as a reformer and Buddhism as the “Protestantism of India” see , Scudder, “Sketch of Hindu Philosophy,” 581Google Scholar and , Graves, “Three Systems of Beliefs in China,” 413Google Scholar.

25 For further information on the Oriental explorations of these liberals and radicals see Jackson, Carl T., The Oriental Religions and American Thought (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981) 103–40Google Scholar.

26 Ahlstrom and Carey make the point about Clarke's influence in Ahlstrom, Sydney E. and Carey, Jonathan S., ed., An American Reformation: A Documentary History of Unitarian Christianity (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1985) 292Google Scholar. Clarke, James Freeman to ? [“My Dear Sir”], 9 01 1846, New York Historical Society, New York CityGoogle Scholar, idem, Autobiography, Diary, and Correspondence, ed. Hale, Edward Everett (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1891) 226Google Scholar. idem, Buddhism; Or, the Protestantism of the East,” Atlantic Monthly 23 (06 1869) 713–28Google Scholar. idem. Ten Great Religions (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1871) 166Google Scholar.

27 William M. Bryant, review of The Indian Saint; Or Buddha and Buddhism, by Mills, Charles de Berard, The Western 3 (08 1877) 503Google Scholar. Mills, Charles D. B., The Indian Saint; Or, Buddha and Buddhism (Northampton, MA: Journal and Free Press, 1876) 6566Google Scholar. Adler, Felix, “A Prophet of the People,” Atlantic Monthly 37 (06 1876) 683–84Google Scholar.

28 Alger, William Rounseville, The Poetry of the East (Boston: Whittemore, Niles, and Hall, 1856)Google Scholar. Alger, William R., “The Brahmanic and Buddhist Doctrine of a Future Life,” North American Review 86 (04 1858) 456–58Google Scholar, 462. See also the book in which he reprinted this piece on Hinduism and Buddhism: idem, A Critical History of the Doctrine of the Future Life (1859; Philadelphia: Childs, 1864)Google Scholar.

29 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, The Results of Spiritualism: A Discourse Delivered at Dodsworth Hall, Sunday, March 6, 1859 (New York: St. Munson, [1859]) 5, 21Google Scholar. This pamphlet is found in the Thomas Wentworth Higginson Papers, Thomas Wentworth Higginson Miscellaneous Pamphlets, no. 36, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge. Mary Higginson, Thacher, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846–1906 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1921) 347–48Google Scholar. [Therese (deSolms) Blanc], A Typical American: Thomas Wentworth Higginson (trans. Waller, E. M.; London and New York: Howard Wilford Bell, 1902)Google Scholar. For examples of his continuing commitment to these beliefs and values see his autobiography, Cheerful Yesterdays, in which he emphasized the positive turns in his life and the steady progress of history. He also continued to engage actively public issues when he protested United States intervention in the Philippines. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, Cheerful Yesterdays (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1898).Google ScholarMass Meetings of Protest Against the Suppression of Truth about the Philippines, Faneuil Hall, Thursday, March 19, 3 and 8 pm: Addresses by the Hon. George S. Boutwell, The Hon. Charles S. Hamlin, Col. T. W. Higginson.… (Boston: 1903)Google Scholar. This pamphlet can be found in the Thomas Wentworth Higginson Papers.

30 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, “The Sympathy of Religions,” The Radical 8 (02 1871) 123Google Scholar. idem, The Character of Buddha,” The Index 3 (03 1872) 8183Google Scholar. idem, The Buddhist Path of Virtue,” The Radical 8 (06 1871) 62Google Scholar.

31 H[igginson], T[homas] W[entworth], review of Oriental Religions and Their Relation to Universal Religion, vol. 1Google Scholar, by Johnson, Samuel, The Index 3 (11 1872) 361Google Scholar. Child, Lydia Maria, The Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive Ages (3 vols.; New York: Francis; London: S. Low, 1855)Google Scholar. Johnson, Samuel, Oriental Religions and Their Relation to Universal Religion (3 vols.; Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1872Google Scholar, 1877, 1885). Emerson's description of Johnson, and Johnson's account of his own stand, are quoted in Mueller, Roger C., “Samuel Johnson, American Transcendentalist: A Short Biography,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 115 (01 1979) 9Google Scholar. Johnson urged his radical friends not to form an official body. Their present troubles, he argued, were a result of organizations! After they ignored his advice, Johnson did have some loose connections with the Free Religious Association. A few of his sermons and letters to the editor were published in that group's official organ, The Index; and he delivered a few addresses under the auspices of the organization. On his connection to the Free Religious Association see , Mueller, “Samuel Johnson,” 3940Google Scholar. Johnson, Samuel, Oriental Religions, 1. 2Google Scholar.

32 , Johnson, Oriental Religions, 2. 759, 757; 1. 611Google Scholar.

33 Johnson, Samuel, Lectures, Essays, and Sermons (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1883) 353Google Scholar. [Anonymous] Samuel Johnson,” Atlantic Monthly 51 (06 1883) 850Google Scholar.

34 , Mueller, “Samuel Johnson,” 25Google Scholar. Samuel Johnson to Wendell Phillips, 14 May 1869, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge. , Johnson, Lectures, Essays, and Sermons, 387Google Scholar.

35 E[rnest] J[ohn] Eitel, review of Oriental Religions and Their Relation to Universal Religion, by Samuel Johnson, reprinted in Lectures, Essays, and Sermons, Samuel Johnson, 463. This review by Eitel, who served the London Missionary Society and produced a Sanskrit-Chinese dictionary, originally appeared in the China Review in 1882. See Eitel, E. J., Handbook for the Student of Chinese Buddhism (Hong Kong and Shanghai: Lane, Crawford, and Co., 1870)Google Scholar. Lum, Daniel Dyer, “Buddhism Notwithstanding: An Attempt to Interpret Buddhism from a Buddhist Standpoint,” The Index 29 (29 04 1875; 6 May 1875) 195–96Google Scholar, 206–8.

36 Gordon, John Ogden, “The Buddhist and Christian Ideas of Hell,” The Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review 4 (01 1875) 43, 38, 45, 41Google Scholar.

37 , Hungerford, “Buddhism and Christianity,” 268Google Scholar.