in whose eyes all things are Maya -- illusion. The shimmer of pearl
belongs of right to her whose soul reflects the colour and quiet radiance
of a thousand dreams. Compassion urged the one, the love of harmony
led the other. How near they were akin! how far apart they have wandered!
Yet there has always been this essential difference between them,
that while the Buddhist regards the senses as windows looking out
upon unreality and mirage, to the Taoist they are doors through which
the freed soul rushes to mingle with the colours and tones and contours
of the universe. Both Buddha and Lao Tzu are poets, one listening to
the rhythm of infinite sorrow, one to the rhythm of infinite joy.
Neither knows anything of reward at the hands of men or angels.
The teaching of the Semitic religions, "Do good to others that you may benefit
at their hands," does not occur in their pages, nor any hints
of sensuous delights hereafter.* In all the great Buddhist poems,
of which the Shu Hsing Tsan Ching is the best example,
there is the same deep sadness, the haunting sorrow of doom.
To look on beautiful things is only to feel more poignantly
the passing of bright days, and the time when the petals must leave the rose.
The form of desire hides within it the seeds of decay. In this epic
of which I have spoken, Buddha sees the lovely and virtuous Lady Aruna
coming to greet him, says to his disciples:

--
* This is a simplistic and inaccurate picture of religious teachings.
Mr. Cranmer-Byng, like many cross-cultural scholars,
seems to have fallen into the trap of seeing only noble things afar,
and only ignoble things at hand. As counter-examples, there are
numerous schools of Buddhism, some of which DO offer a type of heaven;
and the Confucian ideal of reciprocity can easily be, and often has been,
misinterpreted in the same way as Semitic religions. -- A. Light, 1995.