Not Resenting Being Unknown by Others—Is That Not Purity?
On a sudden impulse, I casually wrote an essay called Studying the Buddha, One Must Know the Harmful Side of Buddhism and posted it on Toutiao. I did not expect it to become a hit; the readership instantly passed ten thousand and within a few hours reached thirty or forty thousand, and it is still being frantically shared. Probably this post, like other popular articles I have written, will end up being read by a great many readers.
Among the comments below the post, as I expected, foul-mouthed replies were the great majority. Having been involved with Buddhism for so long, I know China's Buddhism's various chaotic phenomena all too well, so it was no surprise. After reading the comments, I laughed it off. I have long since lost the angry-mind; the overwhelming abuse could not raise a ripple in my heart. That the quality of Chinese Buddhists has sunk to this degree is a sorrow of Chinese Buddhism. The inability to make Buddhists people who "do not use harsh speech" is one proof of the deficient level of China's Buddhist teachers.
As Master Taixu said back then, we in China loudly claim to follow the Mahayana path, yet we have all cultivated into a Hinayana situation of self-liberators, even falling far short of that. Meanwhile, the Theravada countries of the South practice Hinayana yet bear the fruit of Mahayana. Chinese Buddhists all ignore the precepts, have a severe angry-mind, and use harsh speech at the slightest provocation, behaving worse than an ordinary person in society.
This is precisely the harmful side of studying the Buddha that I wanted to talk about: people study until they become extreme and narrow, but the writing was hasty and I did not expand on it. China's Buddhist world has always been blind faith, rejecting independent thought, demanding that one enter the Buddha's view and extinguish one's own view. Without one's own view, how can one extinguish one's own view? Without one's own view, how can one know the Buddha's view? Is the Buddha's view not also a view of one's own? The living Buddha taught according to circumstances and students—where is there any fixed view?
A person first needs the spirit of independent thought, must be able to perceive the Buddha's emotional journey, and only then can understand the Buddha's thought. Regrettably, what China's Buddhist world has the most of is Buddhist believers lacking the spirit of independent thought. They denounce independent thinkers as people with heavy self-view, never realizing that their own cognition is also a self-view—and a very narrow one at that.
The Buddha cannot save us; people must save themselves, and in the process of saving themselves they rely on one self-view after another. A thought arises, a thought is extinguished; in the process of discarding the old and establishing the new, one constantly elevates oneself and increases one's wisdom. To recite mechanically by rote is like marking the boat to find the sword. That Buddhism has fallen into its present state—some students, once obsessed, completely lose themselves, more bewildered than before studying the Buddha, with weakened willpower—is also a pity.
The Saha world is, indeed, as Mr. Russell said, multiform and varied. Others' faith is others' faith; our exposition is our exposition; each walks its own path, and communication between souls is extremely difficult. A writer only needs to write from his own true heart and need not be disturbed by the noise. Keep a pure, ordinary mind and simply go on.
When Mr. Ji Xianlin studied the history of Buddhism and laid bare a few of the Buddha's wounds, he drew overwhelming abuse and vicious curses from China's Buddhist believers; a master of national learning was savagely besieged. Once religious believers fall into a state of fanatical faith, they have no reason at all and cannot tolerate any fact-based criticism from others of the idol they worship.
There is an old Chinese saying that the scholar is useless for anything; in fact this saying is wrong. Those who truly have integrity are precisely the scholars. Hu Shih was besieged yet pushed the New Culture Movement his own way; Ji Xianlin was besieged by Buddhists the world over yet did not change his resolve. When the nation is in turmoil, it is mostly these foolishly stubborn scholars who raise a strong army and save the country and people from deep suffering. For only they are the ones who truly care for the common people.
The wheel of history rolls forward; no one can stop civilization from evolving onward. All civilization develops gradually through criticism. As intellectuals, we must dare to speak out, dare to criticize, and dare to take responsibility; only thus can we live up to the enlightenment of our predecessors. The road ahead is long and far; I will write to the very end, until my last breath.