Course XXV - Teaching 16: The Mongolians

The origin of Chinese civilization (Chun-Chin) are lost in the fog of Vedic times, because Vedas were those tribes settled on the rock of Chung-Yang, defeated their inhabitants, and assimilated them and adapted themselves to them.
This country, extended from Tibet until the Yellow Sea, has kept better than anyone else the concept of a divine religion, since like the Egyptians they see their emperor as the highest being. He rules over men and gods; the Pantheon of Chinese gods is subject in its category to the orders of the emperor; thence the name of this kingdom –Celestial Empire.
The most ancient and real emperor, since precedent dynasties are only myths and legends, was Yu, of the Hia’s dynasty.
He builds cities, organizes armies, fights against his enemies and is always victorious in his undertakings.
The Chinese annals date back from that time; they are perfect codes related to social, moral, and economic order.
But it is Confucius who transforms the Chinese imperial grandeur into religion.
He transforms the military order into practical philosophy: obedience to the king into filial devotion, like a son for his father and a man for God. He establishes a discipline that has to transform the human sorrow in continuous happiness; but this can be possible through a perfect leader and chief, who lives a life strictly moral.
The Book of the Annals, written by him, became code, religious text, which still today is a guide of the high Chinese aristocracy.
But Confucius’ religion does not deal with life after death, since it is merely materialistic. Its entire purpose consists in providing man with a happier and more comfortable life.
It is Lao-tse the philosopher and great Chinese Initiate in metaphysics. He teaches men the science of the soul, and says all that we see is manifestation of a sublime, hidden and fundamental principle, and that the true bliss consists of looking for that unique truth, which can reincorporate a human being in his early state.
Yang, the male principle, and Yin, the female principle, are the two energetic forces that maintain the universe.
Lao-tse leaves in China such a number of disciples that they form a true army, and a religion that still survives, called Taoism. “Tao” means “path”, “religion”; but eventually the Taoist religion lost its early concepts of pure spirituality, and became a magical religion. A Taoist priest drives away evil spirits, consecrates family Manes, makes amulets and relics, and certain liquor extracted from a peach, which is like an elixir of life, a tonic of rejuvenation.
But Buddhism was the most disseminated religion in China, even though today the Shintoism prevails, which is a synthesis of the three, but independent and based on the worship of fire. The Emperor professes this religion because it is a synthesis of the three; the aristocracy follows Confucius’s laws; priests and sages follow Lao-tse laws; and the people is Buddhist.
Buddhism is so closely linked with the figure of its founder that it is impossible to speak of one and not to remember the other.
In Kapilavastu, a little kingdom of Punjab, the prince Siddhartha is born. Devaki Maya, his mother, dies when she gives life to him; and he stays comfortably with the king, his father, in his palace. He grows up unaware of miseries of the world, marries a close princess, and very soon the mate has a child. But a cloud of infinite doubt floats over the brow of this beautiful prince –his desire of knowing life. Therefore he goes out of his palace and, as he sees men suffering growing older and dying, decides to abandon his crown and his family, in order to look for the secret of the eternal happiness.
This prince becomes a Sanyasi and, begging his bread, travels through dusty roads in search of the Arcane.
He follows the path of study and knowledge; tries Tantric Yoga exercises; reduces his body to a skeleton through penitence; and has experiences of mystical love; but does not find the secret.
And then, under the holy Bo tree, receives the highest Initiation and discovers the reason of human suffering; attachment is cause of pain in life, of death, and of being born again. When being is devoid of desires and renunciation is absolute, then he does not suffer or return to earth any more and find the eternal happiness by reincorporating himself in the Non-Absoluteness.
Since that day he begins his mission on earth –to show the path of happiness, the right path, to men. As a reaction produced in the religious consciousness harassed by many symbols, ceremonies and laws, a powerful Buddhism emerges and drags the multitude.
Thousands of adepts appear wherever the Buddha goes.
He said men were all equal and this way gave a deadly blow to Hinduism adhering strongly to caste division. He said God is the essence of all things, and this way he threw down, and killed at one stroke, millenary gods. He said the righteous work is the only work that man must do, and this way he destroyed another fundamental belief of the ancient religion, which based the fruit of future rather on divine help than on right behavior.
The Buddha placed celibacy on the summit of perfection; that is why he was followed by rows of monks that had abandoned everything in the world in order to hear and practice his word. One day, his own son would come to him to ask his admission in the community.
It is beyond imagination the hatred produced by the Buddha’s doctrine among the Brahmans. But along with hatred, a desire of rivaling with him emerged; it was like a Hindu Counter-Reformation.
In different Hindu sects, men appeared that understood the impossibility of fighting against so enlightened man or against so useful doctrine, with the exception of the same weapons. They understood the need of returning to the early source of religion and to drink in pages of Vedas those eternal truths that they had forgotten in order to apply them again and profess them in their temples and ceremonies. In short, Buddhism awakened the consciousness of India, brought a word of freedom to men, who until then had felt slaves, and encouraged the rehabilitation of early Vedas.
But Buddhism was not destined to settle in India.
The Buddha died at the age of eighty in the arms of his disciple Ananda, and then fights began again, and did not end until two generations later, when the Chatrias, guided by Brahmans, destroyed all Buddhists in India and swept that religion in its entire soil.
But the blood of martyrs always becomes seed of new triumphs; the Buddha’s religion was not dead. Just it has been transplanted to other more fertile and needy lands of its spiritual help.