In point of age, therefore, most other
creeds are youthful compared with this venerable religion, which has in it
the eternity of a universal hope, the immortality of a boundless love, an
indestructible element of faith in final good, and the proudest assertion
ever made of human freedom.
Sir Edwin Arnold (1832-1904)
British poet, Journalist and Poet Laureate of England
The teachings of the Indian Prince has indeed
nothing to dread from science . . . Words would fail me if I attempted to express
how necessary I think knowledge of this high faith and philosophy is to leaven
the materialism of the West . . . It 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. In relation to
its noble and scientific austerity no words are needed.
L. Adam Beck
An American Traveler and author
To the
Christian, Love is the highest virtue; to the Buddhist, Wisdom, for they hold
that ignorance is the root of all evil. Love, all the same, ranks high ......Tolerance
and loving kindness, both based on Buddhist wisdom, are perhaps the chief reason
why the middle way of Gotama has come down through 2500 years.
Sir Charles Bell KCIE,
CMG ( 1870-1945)
British Diplomat and Lexicographer
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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.
Dr. Amadou-Mahtar
M 'Bow
Director - General, UNESCO
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The only one of the great
religions which makes any appeal to me is Buddhism; and that, as I understand
it, is rather a philosophy of the world, and a way of life for the elite founded
upon it, than a religion in the ordinary sense of the word.
C D Broad (1887-1971)
British Philosopher
- 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.
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J.Bronowski (1908-1974)
American Author and Philosopher of Science
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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.
Marie B. Byles (1900-1979)
Australian author and mountaineer
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.
Javier Perez De
Cuellar
Peruvian Diplomat from 1982 and Secretary General
of United Nation
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It cannot be denied that there is a real
beauty of an Oriental kind in the various expressions which the Buddhists
use; and that there was real grounds for the enthusiasm which gave them birth.
Never in the history of the world had such a scheme been put forth, so free
from any superhuman agency, so independent of so even antagonistic to the
belief in a soul, the belief in God, and the hope of a future life...
Whether these be right or
wrong, it was a turning point in the religious history of man when a reformer,
full of the most earnest moral purpose and trained in all the intellectual
culture of his time, put forth deliberately, and with a knowledge of the opposing
views the doctrine of salvation to be found here, in this life, in an inward
change of heart, to be brought about by perseverance in a mere system of self
culture and self control.
Buddhist or non-Buddhist, I have examined
every one of the great religious systems, of the world, in none of them
I have found anything to surpass, in beauty and comprehensiveness, the Noble
Eightfold Path and the Four Truths of the Buddha.
Prof. T. W. Rhys Davids
(1843-1922) B ritish Orientalist lexicographer and
the first person to hold a chair in Comparative Religion in a British university
Like the other teachers of
his time, Buddha' taught through conversation, lecturers and parables. Since
it never occurred to him, any more than Socrates or Christ, to put his doctrine
into writing, he summarised it in sutras (threads) designed to prompt the memory.
As preserved for us in the
remembrance of his followers these discourses unconsciously portray for us the
first distinct character of India's history: a man of strong will, authoritative
and proud, but of gentle manner and speech, and of infinite benevolence. He
claimed enlightenment but not inspiration; he never pretended that a god was
speaking through him. In controversy he was more patient and considerate than
any other of the great teachers of mankind.
Like Lao-tze and Christ he wished to return good for evil, love for hate; and
he remained silent under misunderstanding and abuse . . . Unlike most saints,
Buddha has a sense of humour, and knew that metaphysics without laughter is
immodesty.
Will Durant
(1885-1 981)
American Historian and Pulitzer Prize Winner
The individual feels the
nothingness of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvellous order
which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. He looks
upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe
as a single significant whole, the beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already
appear in early stages of development - e.g. in many of the Psalms of David
and in some of the Prophets.
Buddhism, as we have learnt
from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer especially, contains much
stronger elements of it. The
religion of the future will he a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal
God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual,
it should he based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things,
natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.
If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would
be Buddhism.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
German physicist, mathematician.
Winner of the Nobel Prize
But Eliot's attraction to Buddhism was
not simply a philosophical one. Nirvana is extinction* the annihilation of
desire, the freedom from attachments - and there was, as can he seen from
his poetry, an over-riding desire in the young Eliot to be free.
The absolutism of Buddhism
is quite as relentless as anything he had found in Maurras and, although he
was perhaps attracted to it for much the same reasons, the Eastern religion
had more romantic affiliations for someone who wished to break free from the
familial bonds which otherwise held him.
Peter Ackrayd's
comments on English poet T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
*The extinction of greed, hatred and delusion.
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