유란시아 책
III 부. 유란시아의 역사
Paper 94
The Melchizedek Teachings in the Orient
The Melchizedek Teachings in the Orient
Sections
- Introduction
- § 1. The Salem Teachings in Vedic India
- § 2. Brahmanism
- § 3. Brahmanic Philosophy
- § 4. The Hindu Religion
- § 5. The Struggle for Truth in China
- § 6. Lao-Tse and Confucius
- § 7. Gautama Siddhartha
- § 8. The Buddhist Faith
- § 9. The Spread of Buddhism
- § 10. Religion in Tibet
- § 11. Buddhist Philosophy
- § 12. The God Concept of Buddhism
초기 살렘 종교 선생들은, 아프리카와 유라시아에서 가장 멀리 있는 부족들에게도 스며들었고, 마키벤타의 복음을 계속 증거했는데, 이 복음은 한 분뿐이신 우주 하나님에 대한 사람의 신앙과 신임이, 신의 은혜를 얻기 위하여 지불하는 유일한 값이라고 제시했다. 멜기세덱이 아브라함과 맺은 언약은, 살렘을 비롯한 다른 중심지들에서 퍼져나가는 모든 초기 선전활동{宣傳活動}의 본이 됐다. 어떤 종교에도, 동반구 전체에 멜기세덱의 교훈을 전했던, 이 고귀한 남녀 사람들보다 더 열정적이고 적극적인 선교사가 유란시아에 있었던 적이 없다. 이 선교사들은 여러 민족과 종족으로부터 모집됐고, 주로 개종한 원주민을 통해서 교훈을 전파했다. 이들은 세계의 각기 다른 여러 지역에 훈련 중심지를 설립했고, 거기서 원주민에게 살렘 종교를 가르쳤고, 그다음에는 각자 자기 민족 가운데서 선생 역할을 하도록 이 제자들을 임명했다.
94:0.1 (1027.1)
THE early teachers of the Salem religion penetrated to the remotest tribes of Africa and Eurasia, ever preaching Machiventa’s gospel of man’s faith and trust in the one universal God as the only price of obtaining divine favor. Melchizedek’s covenant with Abraham was the pattern for all the early propaganda that went out from Salem and other centers. Urantia has never had more enthusiastic and aggressive missionaries of any religion than these noble men and women who carried the teachings of Melchizedek over the entire Eastern Hemisphere. These missionaries were recruited from many peoples and races, and they largely spread their teachings through the medium of native converts. They established training centers in different parts of the world where they taught the natives the Salem religion and then commissioned these pupils to function as teachers among their own people.
94:1.1 (1027.2)
In the days of Melchizedek, India was a cosmopolitan country which had recently come under the political and religious dominance of the Aryan-Andite invaders from the north and west. At this time only the northern and western portions of the peninsula had been extensively permeated by the Aryans. These Vedic newcomers had brought along with them their many tribal deities. Their religious forms of worship followed closely the ceremonial practices of their earlier Andite forebears in that the father still functioned as a priest and the mother as a priestess, and the family hearth was still utilized as an altar.
94:1.2 (1027.3)
The Vedic cult was then in process of growth and metamorphosis under the direction of the Brahman caste of teacher-priests, who were gradually assuming control over the expanding ritual of worship. The amalgamation of the onetime thirty-three Aryan deities was well under way when the Salem missionaries penetrated the north of India.
94:1.3 (1027.4)
The polytheism of these Aryans represented a degeneration of their earlier monotheism occasioned by their separation into tribal units, each tribe having its venerated god. This devolution of the original monotheism and trinitarianism of Andite Mesopotamia was in process of resynthesis in the early centuries of the second millennium before Christ. The many gods were organized into a pantheon under the triune leadership of Dyaus pitar, the lord of heaven; Indra, the tempestuous lord of the atmosphere; and Agni, the three-headed fire god, lord of the earth and the vestigial symbol of an earlier Trinity concept.
94:1.4 (1027.5)
Definite henotheistic developments were paving the way for an evolved monotheism. Agni, the most ancient deity, was often exalted as the father-head of the entire pantheon. The deity-father principle, sometimes called Prajapati, sometimes termed Brahma, was submerged in the theologic battle which the Brahman priests later fought with the Salem teachers. The Brahman was conceived as the energy-divinity principle activating the entire Vedic pantheon.
94:1.5 (1028.1)
The Salem missionaries preached the one God of Melchizedek, the Most High of heaven. This portrayal was not altogether disharmonious with the emerging concept of the Father-Brahma as the source of all gods, but the Salem doctrine was nonritualistic and hence ran directly counter to the dogmas, traditions, and teachings of the Brahman priesthood. Never would the Brahman priests accept the Salem teaching of salvation through faith, favor with God apart from ritualistic observances and sacrificial ceremonials.
94:1.6 (1028.2)
The rejection of the Melchizedek gospel of trust in God and salvation through faith marked a vital turning point for India. The Salem missionaries had contributed much to the loss of faith in all the ancient Vedic gods, but the leaders, the priests of Vedism, refused to accept the Melchizedek teaching of one God and one simple faith.
브라만들은 살렘 선생과 대항하려는 노력의 일환으로, 당대의 신성시되는 기록들에서 추려냈고, 이런 편집물은 나중에 다시 개정되어, 현대에 이르기까지 리그-베다로 전해오는데, 가장 오래된 신성시되는 책 가운데 하나다. 브라만들이 당시 민족들에게 제시한 자기네 경배 제례식과 희생제물을, 구체화시키고 형태화하고 고정시키려고 애씀에 따라서, 두 번째와 세 번째와 네 번째 베다가 계속 만들어졌다. 최상의 것을 고려할 때, 이 기록들은 개념의 아름다움과 통찰력의 진실성에서, 비슷한 성격의 다른 어떤 본문에든지 필적할 만하다. 그러나 뛰어난 이 종교가 인도 남부에서, 수많은 미신과 예찬집단과 제례식에 오염되자 점차 변형되어, 전에 필사적 사람이 개발한 것들 가운데 가장 잡다한 체계가 되고 말았다. 베다 경전을 살펴보면, 전에 알려졌던 신격 개념 중에서 가장 높은 개념과 가장 타락한 개념을 얼마큼씩 드러낼 것이다.
94:1.7 (1028.3)
The Brahmans culled the sacred writings of their day in an effort to combat the Salem teachers, and this compilation, as later revised, has come on down to modern times as the Rig-Veda, one of the most ancient of sacred books. The second, third, and fourth Vedas followed as the Brahmans sought to crystallize, formalize, and fix their rituals of worship and sacrifice upon the peoples of those days. Taken at their best, these writings are the equal of any other body of similar character in beauty of concept and truth of discernment. But as this superior religion became contaminated with the thousands upon thousands of superstitions, cults, and rituals of southern India, it progressively metamorphosed into the most variegated system of theology ever developed by mortal man. An examination of the Vedas will disclose some of the highest and some of the most debased concepts of Deity ever to be conceived.
94:2.1 (1028.4)
As the Salem missionaries penetrated southward into the Dravidian Deccan, they encountered an increasing caste system, the scheme of the Aryans to prevent loss of racial identity in the face of a rising tide of the secondary Sangik peoples. Since the Brahman priest caste was the very essence of this system, this social order greatly retarded the progress of the Salem teachers. This caste system failed to save the Aryan race, but it did succeed in perpetuating the Brahmans, who, in turn, have maintained their religious hegemony in India to the present time.
그리고 이제는, 더 높은 진리를 거부함으로 베다교리가 약화되면서, 아리아인 종파는 데칸에서 더욱 침략 당하게 됐다. 종족이 멸망하고 종교가 소멸하는 형세를 막아보려는 절망적인 노력으로, 브라만 신분계층은 스스로를 다른 모든 것보다 우위에 놓으려고 애썼다. 신격에게 희생제물을 바치는 것은 그 자체로 대단히-효과적이고, 그 효력에서 대단히-강력하다고 가르쳤다. 우주에 근본적인 두 가지 신성한 원칙 가운데 하나는 신격인 브라만이고, 다른 하나는 브라만 사제계층이라고 선포했다. 유란시아 민족들 가운데 다른 어떤 민족도, 사제가 자기네 신들 위에 자기를 더 높이고, 신들에게 돌아갈 영예를 자신이 가로챈 경우는 없었다. 그러나 그들이 이런 뻔뻔스런 주장과 함께 너무 모순되게 멀리 갔으므로, 주변의 덜 발전된 문명들로부터 쏟아져 들어오는 타락시키는 종파들 앞에서, 그 불안정한 체계는 통째로 붕괴됐다. 광대한 베다 사제계층 자체는, 그들 자신의 이기적이고 어리석은 무례함이 온 인도에 퍼뜨린, 타성적이고 염세적인 암담한 물결 아래로 허우적거리면서 침몰했다.
94:2.2 (1028.5)
And now, with the weakening of Vedism through the rejection of higher truth, the cult of the Aryans became subject to increasing inroads from the Deccan. In a desperate effort to stem the tide of racial extinction and religious obliteration, the Brahman caste sought to exalt themselves above all else. They taught that the sacrifice to deity in itself was all-efficacious, that it was all-compelling in its potency. They proclaimed that, of the two essential divine principles of the universe, one was Brahman the deity, and the other was the Brahman priesthood. Among no other Urantia peoples did the priests presume to exalt themselves above even their gods, to relegate to themselves the honors due their gods. But they went so absurdly far with these presumptuous claims that the whole precarious system collapsed before the debasing cults which poured in from the surrounding and less advanced civilizations. The vast Vedic priesthood itself floundered and sank beneath the black flood of inertia and pessimism which their own selfish and unwise presumption had brought upon all India.
지나친 자아 집중은 확실히, 자아가 사람이나 짐승이나 잡초 등으로 끝없이 거듭 육신화한다는 비진화적 영속에 대한 두려움으로 이어졌다. 그리고 새로 나타나는 일신교가 될 뻔한 어떤 것에 매달릴 수 있었던, 모든 오염시키는 믿음 중에서 어떤 것도, 드라비다의 데칸에서 온 윤회{輪廻}를 믿는 이 믿음--즉 혼이 다시 육신화한다는 교리--처럼 그토록 망쳐놓지는 못했다. 진저리나고 단조롭게 거듭 윤회한다는 이 믿음은, 그들이 초기 베다 신앙의 한 부분으로서 오랫동안 소중히 간직해왔던, 죽음에서 벗어나 영적 승진을 획득한다는 희망을, 고심하는 필사자들로부터 빼앗았다.
94:2.3 (1029.1)
The undue concentration on self led certainly to a fear of the nonevolutionary perpetuation of self in an endless round of successive incarnations as man, beast, or weeds. And of all the contaminating beliefs which could have become fastened upon what may have been an emerging monotheism, none was so stultifying as this belief in transmigration—the doctrine of the reincarnation of souls—which came from the Dravidian Deccan. This belief in the weary and monotonous round of repeated transmigrations robbed struggling mortals of their long-cherished hope of finding that deliverance and spiritual advancement in death which had been a part of the earlier Vedic faith.
철학적으로 쇠약하게 만드는 이 가르침 이후에 곧 뒤이어, 전체 창조 총괄혼인 브라만과 절대적으로 결합하여 우주의 안식과 평화 속에 잠김으로써, 자아로부터 영원히 탈출할 수 있다는 교리가 창안됐다. 필사자의 욕망과 인간 야망은 효과적으로 강탈당하고 실질적으로 파괴됐다. 2천 년이 넘는 동안, 상류 정신을 지닌 인도 사람은 모든 욕망에서 탈피하려고 애썼으며, 그리하여 영적 절망상태의 사슬로 수많은 힌두 민족의 혼{魂}을 실질적으로 속박해온, 후대의 그 종파들과 교훈에게 출입문을 활짝 열어 놓았다. 모든 문명 중에서 베다-아리아인 문명이, 살렘 복음을 거부한 것에 대하여 가장 혹독한 대가{代價}를 지불했다.
94:2.4 (1029.2)
This philosophically debilitating teaching was soon followed by the invention of the doctrine of the eternal escape from self by submergence in the universal rest and peace of absolute union with Brahman, the oversoul of all creation. Mortal desire and human ambition were effectually ravished and virtually destroyed. For more than two thousand years the better minds of India have sought to escape from all desire, and thus was opened wide the door for the entrance of those later cults and teachings which have virtually shackled the souls of many Hindu peoples in the chains of spiritual hopelessness. Of all civilizations, the Vedic-Aryan paid the most terrible price for its rejection of the Salem gospel.
94:2.5 (1029.3)
Caste alone could not perpetuate the Aryan religio-cultural system, and as the inferior religions of the Deccan permeated the north, there developed an age of despair and hopelessness. It was during these dark days that the cult of taking no life arose, and it has ever since persisted. Many of the new cults were frankly atheistic, claiming that such salvation as was attainable could come only by man’s own unaided efforts. But throughout a great deal of all this unfortunate philosophy, distorted remnants of the Melchizedek and even the Adamic teachings can be traced.
힌두 신앙의 후대 경전인 브라마나와 우파니샤드가 편집된 것은 바로 이 시대였다. 유일하신 하나님을, 개인 신앙을 통해서 체험한다는 개인적인 종교 교훈을 거부했으므로, 그리고 데칸에서 온, 저하시키고 쇠약하게 만드는 종파와 신조의 물결로, 그리고 신인동형동성론{神人同形同性論}과 환생사상으로 오염되기 시작했으므로, 브라만교 사제계층은 이런 오염시키는 믿음에 대항하는 격렬한 반발을 체험했는데;참된 실체를 추구하고 찾으려는 명확한 노력이 있었다. 브라만들은 인도인의 신격 개념에서 인간의 모습을 벗겨내기 시작했으나, 그렇게 하면서, 하나님 개념에서 인격을 빼버리는 끔찍한 오류에 빠졌으며, 낙원 아버지라는 드높은 영적 이상이 아니라, 오히려 만물을-품는 절대자라는, 모호하고 형이상학적인 개념을 갖고 나타났다.
94:2.6 (1029.4)
These were the times of the compilation of the later scriptures of the Hindu faith, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. Having rejected the teachings of personal religion through the personal faith experience with the one God, and having become contaminated with the flood of debasing and debilitating cults and creeds from the Deccan, with their anthropomorphisms and reincarnations, the Brahmanic priesthood experienced a violent reaction against these vitiating beliefs; there was a definite effort to seek and to find true reality. The Brahmans set out to deanthropomorphize the Indian concept of deity, but in so doing they stumbled into the grievous error of depersonalizing the concept of God, and they emerged, not with a lofty and spiritual ideal of the Paradise Father, but with a distant and metaphysical idea of an all-encompassing Absolute.
94:2.7 (1029.5)
In their efforts at self-preservation the Brahmans had rejected the one God of Melchizedek, and now they found themselves with the hypothesis of Brahman, that indefinite and illusive philosophic self, that impersonal and impotent it which has left the spiritual life of India helpless and prostrate from that unfortunate day to the twentieth century.
94:2.8 (1029.6)
It was during the times of the writing of the Upanishads that Buddhism arose in India. But despite its successes of a thousand years, it could not compete with later Hinduism; despite a higher morality, its early portrayal of God was even less well-defined than was that of Hinduism, which provided for lesser and personal deities. Buddhism finally gave way in northern India before the onslaught of a militant Islam with its clear-cut concept of Allah as the supreme God of the universe.
가장 높은 단계의 브라만교는 거의 종교라 할 수 없지만, 철학과 형이상학의 영역에 필사 정신이 도달한 가장 훌륭한 경지 중 하나임에 틀림없다. 최종 실체를 발견하려고 출발하면서, 인도인 정신은, 다음과 같은 근본적인 두 가지 종교 개념을 제외한 거의 모든 신학적 국면을 줄기차게 심사숙고했는데:이 두 개념은, 온 우주의 피조물을 지으신 우주 아버지가 실존하신다는 사실, 그리고 영원한 아버지께서 완전하신 것처럼 그들에게도 완전하라고 명하신 그 아버지께 도달하려고 애쓰는 동안, 바로 이 피조물들이 우주에서 상승하는 체험을 겪는다는 사실이다.
94:3.1 (1030.1)
While the highest phase of Brahmanism was hardly a religion, it was truly one of the most noble reaches of the mortal mind into the domains of philosophy and metaphysics. Having started out to discover final reality, the Indian mind did not stop until it had speculated about almost every phase of theology excepting the essential dual concept of religion: the existence of the Universal Father of all universe creatures and the fact of the ascending experience in the universe of these very creatures as they seek to attain the eternal Father, who has commanded them to be perfect, even as he is perfect.
94:3.2 (1030.2)
In the concept of Brahman the minds of those days truly grasped at the idea of some all-pervading Absolute, for this postulate was at one and the same time identified as creative energy and cosmic reaction. Brahman was conceived to be beyond all definition, capable of being comprehended only by the successive negation of all finite qualities. It was definitely a belief in an absolute, even an infinite, being, but this concept was largely devoid of personality attributes and was therefore not experiencible by individual religionists.
브라만-나라야나는, 절대자, 무한한 자존체{自存體}, 잠재하는 시공우주의 근원적 창조 효력, 모든 영원 세계 전체에 정적{靜的}으로 잠재적으로 존재하는 우주의 자아로 생각됐다. 당시의 철학자들이 신격 개념에서 한 걸음 더 진보할 수만 있었다면, 브라만을 연합하기 쉽고 창조적이며 피조된 진화하는 존재가 다가갈 수 있는 인격체라고 생각할 수 있었다면, 그런 가르침은 유란시아에서 신격에 대한 가장 진보된 설명이 됐을 터인데, 이는 그 가르침이 전체 신격 기능 가운데 처음 다섯 수준을 포함하고, 아마 나머지 둘을 상상했을 수도 있었기 때문이다.
94:3.3 (1030.3)
Brahman-Narayana was conceived as the Absolute, the infinite IT IS, the primordial creative potency of the potential cosmos, the Universal Self existing static and potential throughout all eternity. Had the philosophers of those days been able to make the next advance in deity conception, had they been able to conceive of the Brahman as associative and creative, as a personality approachable by created and evolving beings, then might such a teaching have become the most advanced portraiture of Deity on Urantia since it would have encompassed the first five levels of total deity function and might possibly have envisioned the remaining two.
94:3.4 (1030.4)
In certain phases the concept of the One Universal Oversoul as the totality of the summation of all creature existence led the Indian philosophers very close to the truth of the Supreme Being, but this truth availed them naught because they failed to evolve any reasonable or rational personal approach to the attainment of their theoretic monotheistic goal of Brahman-Narayana.
94:3.5 (1030.5)
The karma principle of causality continuity is, again, very close to the truth of the repercussional synthesis of all time-space actions in the Deity presence of the Supreme; but this postulate never provided for the co-ordinate personal attainment of Deity by the individual religionist, only for the ultimate engulfment of all personality by the Universal Oversoul.
94:3.6 (1030.6)
The philosophy of Brahmanism also came very near to the realization of the indwelling of the Thought Adjusters, only to become perverted through the misconception of truth. The teaching that the soul is the indwelling of the Brahman would have paved the way for an advanced religion had not this concept been completely vitiated by the belief that there is no human individuality apart from this indwelling of the Universal One.
94:3.7 (1030.7)
In the doctrine of the merging of the self-soul with the Oversoul, the theologians of India failed to provide for the survival of something human, something new and unique, something born of the union of the will of man and the will of God. The teaching of the soul’s return to the Brahman is closely parallel to the truth of the Adjuster’s return to the bosom of the Universal Father, but there is something distinct from the Adjuster which also survives, the morontial counterpart of mortal personality. And this vital concept was fatally absent from Brahmanic philosophy.
94:3.8 (1031.1)
Brahmanic philosophy has approximated many of the facts of the universe and has approached numerous cosmic truths, but it has all too often fallen victim to the error of failing to differentiate between the several levels of reality, such as absolute, transcendental, and finite. It has failed to take into account that what may be finite-illusory on the absolute level may be absolutely real on the finite level. And it has also taken no cognizance of the essential personality of the Universal Father, who is personally contactable on all levels from the evolutionary creature’s limited experience with God on up to the limitless experience of the Eternal Son with the Paradise Father.
94:4.1 (1031.2)
With the passing of the centuries in India, the populace returned in measure to the ancient rituals of the Vedas as they had been modified by the teachings of the Melchizedek missionaries and crystallized by the later Brahman priesthood. This, the oldest and most cosmopolitan of the world’s religions, has undergone further changes in response to Buddhism and Jainism and to the later appearing influences of Mohammedanism and Christianity. But by the time the teachings of Jesus arrived, they had already become so Occidentalized as to be a “white man’s religion,” hence strange and foreign to the Hindu mind.
94:4.4 (1031.5)
2. The Trimurti, the supreme trinity of Hinduism. In this association Brahma, the first member, is conceived as being self-created out of the Brahman—infinity. Were it not for close identification with the pantheistic Infinite One, Brahma could constitute the foundation for a concept of the Universal Father. Brahma is also identified with fate.
94:4.5 (1031.6)
The worship of the second and third members, Siva and Vishnu, arose in the first millennium after Christ. Siva is lord of life and death, god of fertility, and master of destruction. Vishnu is extremely popular due to the belief that he periodically incarnates in human form. In this way, Vishnu becomes real and living in the imaginations of the Indians. Siva and Vishnu are each regarded by some as supreme over all.
94:4.6 (1031.7)
3. Vedic and post-Vedic deities. Many of the ancient gods of the Aryans, such as Agni, Indra, and Soma, have persisted as secondary to the three members of the Trimurti. Numerous additional gods have arisen since the early days of Vedic India, and these have also been incorporated into the Hindu pantheon.
94:4.8 (1031.9)
While Hinduism has long failed to vivify the Indian people, at the same time it has usually been a tolerant religion. Its great strength lies in the fact that it has proved to be the most adaptive, amorphic religion to appear on Urantia. It is capable of almost unlimited change and possesses an unusual range of flexible adjustment from the high and semimonotheistic speculations of the intellectual Brahman to the arrant fetishism and primitive cult practices of the debased and depressed classes of ignorant believers.
94:4.9 (1032.1)
Hinduism has survived because it is essentially an integral part of the basic social fabric of India. It has no great hierarchy which can be disturbed or destroyed; it is interwoven into the life pattern of the people. It has an adaptability to changing conditions that excels all other cults, and it displays a tolerant attitude of adoption toward many other religions, Gautama Buddha and even Christ himself being claimed as incarnations of Vishnu.
94:4.10 (1032.2)
Today, in India, the great need is for the portrayal of the Jesusonian gospel—the Fatherhood of God and the sonship and consequent brotherhood of all men, which is personally realized in loving ministry and social service. In India the philosophical framework is existent, the cult structure is present; all that is needed is the vitalizing spark of the dynamic love portrayed in the original gospel of the Son of Man, divested of the Occidental dogmas and doctrines which have tended to make Michael’s life bestowal a white man’s religion.
94:5.1 (1032.3)
As the Salem missionaries passed through Asia, spreading the doctrine of the Most High God and salvation through faith, they absorbed much of the philosophy and religious thought of the various countries traversed. But the teachers commissioned by Melchizedek and his successors did not default in their trust; they did penetrate to all peoples of the Eurasian continent, and it was in the middle of the second millennium before Christ that they arrived in China. At See Fuch, for more than one hundred years, the Salemites maintained their headquarters, there training Chinese teachers who taught throughout all the domains of the yellow race.
94:5.3 (1032.5)
1. The lingering teachings of Singlangton, which persisted in the concept of Shang-ti, the God of Heaven. In the times of Singlangton the Chinese people became virtually monotheistic; they concentrated their worship on the One Truth, later known as the Spirit of Heaven, the universe ruler. And the yellow race never fully lost this early concept of Deity, although in subsequent centuries many subordinate gods and spirits insidiously crept into their religion.
94:5.4 (1032.6)
2. The Salem religion of a Most High Creator Deity who would bestow his favor upon mankind in response to man’s faith. But it is all too true that, by the time the Melchizedek missionaries had penetrated to the lands of the yellow race, their original message had become considerably changed from the simple doctrines of Salem in the days of Machiventa.
94:5.5 (1032.7)
3. The Brahman-Absolute concept of the Indian philosophers, coupled with the desire to escape all evil. Perhaps the greatest extraneous influence in the eastward spread of the Salem religion was exerted by the Indian teachers of the Vedic faith, who injected their conception of the Brahman—the Absolute—into the salvationistic thought of the Salemites.
94:5.6 (1033.1)
This composite belief spread through the lands of the yellow and brown races as an underlying influence in religio-philosophic thought. In Japan this proto-Taoism was known as Shinto, and in this country, far-distant from Salem of Palestine, the peoples learned of the incarnation of Machiventa Melchizedek, who dwelt upon earth that the name of God might not be forgotten by mankind.
중국에서 이런 모든 믿음은, 계속 자라나는 조상 예찬집단과 후일에 혼동되고 혼합됐다. 그러나 싱글랑톤 시대 이후로, 중국인이 사제제도에 무력하게 노예화되는 일은 한 번도 없었다. 황인종은 야만적 속박으로부터 벗어나서 정리된 문명으로 발전된 첫 종족이었는데, 이는 그들이 신들에 대한 비굴한 두려움에서 처음으로 어느 정도 해방됐고, 다른 인종들이 두려워한 것과는 달리, 죽은 사람의 영을 두려워하지도 않았기 때문이다. 중국은 사제들로부터 해방상태가 된 초기 성공에서 더 진보하지 못했기 때문에 실패했으며;거의 마찬가지로 조상숭배라는 거의 재앙에 가까운 오류에 빠졌다.
94:5.7 (1033.2)
In China all of these beliefs were later confused and compounded with the ever-growing cult of ancestor worship. But never since the time of Singlangton have the Chinese fallen into helpless slavery to priestcraft. The yellow race was the first to emerge from barbaric bondage into orderly civilization because it was the first to achieve some measure of freedom from the abject fear of the gods, not even fearing the ghosts of the dead as other races feared them. China met her defeat because she failed to progress beyond her early emancipation from priests; she fell into an almost equally calamitous error, the worship of ancestors.
94:5.8 (1033.3)
But the Salemites did not labor in vain. It was upon the foundations of their gospel that the great philosophers of sixth-century China built their teachings. The moral atmosphere and the spiritual sentiments of the times of Lao-tse and Confucius grew up out of the teachings of the Salem missionaries of an earlier age.
미가엘이 도래한 때보다 약 600년 전에, 육체에서 떠난 지 오래된 멜기세덱에게는, 이 땅에서 자기가 가르쳤던 것이 유란시아의 옛 신앙에 전반적으로 흡수됨으로써, 그 순수성이 심히 위태롭게 되는 것처럼 보였다. 미가엘의 선구자로서 그의 사명이 한동안 위험에 처하는 듯 했다. 그리고 기원전 6세기경에, 영적 매개체의 특별한 협조를 통하여, 다양한 종교 진리가 유란시아에 아주 특이하게 여러 번 발표됐는데, 행성 감독관도 그 모든 것을 다 이해하지 못할 정도였다. 여러 인간 선생의 역할로 살렘 복음이 다시 규정되고 소생됐으며, 당시에 제시된 대로, 대부분은 본 기록이 쓰이던 때에도 존속했다.
94:6.1 (1033.4)
About six hundred years before the arrival of Michael, it seemed to Melchizedek, long since departed from the flesh, that the purity of his teaching on earth was being unduly jeopardized by general absorption into the older Urantia beliefs. It appeared for a time that his mission as a forerunner of Michael might be in danger of failing. And in the sixth century before Christ, through an unusual co-ordination of spiritual agencies, not all of which are understood even by the planetary supervisors, Urantia witnessed a most unusual presentation of manifold religious truth. Through the agency of several human teachers the Salem gospel was restated and revitalized, and as it was then presented, much has persisted to the times of this writing.
노자는, 모든 창조의 유일한 최초 원인으로서 도{道}를 천명했을 때, 살렘 전승 개념에 직접 기초했다. 노자는 대단한 영적 식견을 지닌 사람이었다. “사람의 영원한 운명은, 도 곧 지존자 하나님과, 우주의 왕이신 그분과의 영속적 합일{合一}이라”고 가르쳤다. “통일은 절대적 도에서 발생되며, 통일에서 시공우주 이원성{二元性}이 나오고, 그런 이원성에서 삼위일체가 실존하게 되고, 삼위일체는 모든 실체의 근본 원천이다.” “모든 실체는 시공우주의 잠재성과 실제성 사이에서 항상 균형을 이루며, 신성{神性}의 영이 이것들을 영원히 조화시킨다”고 썼을 정도로, 궁극적 인과관계에 대한 그의 납득은 분별력이 가장 뛰어났다.
94:6.3 (1033.6)
Lao-tse built directly upon the concepts of the Salem traditions when he declared Tao to be the One First Cause of all creation. Lao was a man of great spiritual vision. He taught that man’s eternal destiny was “everlasting union with Tao, Supreme God and Universal King.” His comprehension of ultimate causation was most discerning, for he wrote: “Unity arises out of the Absolute Tao, and from Unity there appears cosmic Duality, and from such Duality, Trinity springs forth into existence, and Trinity is the primal source of all reality.” “All reality is ever in balance between the potentials and the actuals of the cosmos, and these are eternally harmonized by the spirit of divinity.”
94:6.5 (1033.8)
He taught the return of the creature to the Creator and pictured life as the emergence of a personality from the cosmic potentials, while death was like the returning home of this creature personality. His concept of true faith was unusual, and he too likened it to the “attitude of a little child.”
하나님의 영원한 목적에 대한 그의 이해는 아주 분명했는데, 이렇게 말했기 때문이다:“절대자 신격은 싸우지 않지만 항상 승리하며;인류를 억지로 복종시키지 않지만 그들의 참된 열망에 응답할 준비가 항상 돼있으며;하나님의 뜻은 인내심이 영원하고, 그 뜻이 표현될 수밖에 없음도 영원하다.” 그리고 참된 종교인에 대해서는, 받는 것보다 주는 것이 더 복되다는 진리를 표현하면서:“선한 사람은 진리를 자기 혼자 차지하기보다 오히려 이 재물을 동료에게 나눠주려고 애쓰게 되는데, 그것이 진리를 실현함이기 때문이다. 절대자 하나님의 뜻은 항상 유익을 주고 파괴시키지 않으며;참된 신자{信者}의 목적은 항상 실천함에 있고 결코 강요함에 있지 않다”고 말했다.
94:6.6 (1034.1)
His understanding of the eternal purpose of God was clear, for he said: “The Absolute Deity does not strive but is always victorious; he does not coerce mankind but always stands ready to respond to their true desires; the will of God is eternal in patience and eternal in the inevitability of its expression.” And of the true religionist he said, in expressing the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive: “The good man seeks not to retain truth for himself but rather attempts to bestow these riches upon his fellows, for that is the realization of truth. The will of the Absolute God always benefits, never destroys; the purpose of the true believer is always to act but never to coerce.”
94:6.7 (1034.2)
Lao’s teaching of nonresistance and the distinction which he made between action and coercion became later perverted into the beliefs of “seeing, doing, and thinking nothing.” But Lao never taught such error, albeit his presentation of nonresistance has been a factor in the further development of the pacific predilections of the Chinese peoples.
94:6.8 (1034.3)
But the popular Taoism of twentieth-century Urantia has very little in common with the lofty sentiments and the cosmic concepts of the old philosopher who taught the truth as he perceived it, which was: That faith in the Absolute God is the source of that divine energy which will remake the world, and by which man ascends to spiritual union with Tao, the Eternal Deity and Creator Absolute of the universes.
공자(꿍 후-쯔)는 6세기에 중국에서 노자와 같은 시대의 인물이었고 노자보다는 어렸다. 공자의 교리는, 오래된 황인종 역사에서 이뤄진, 더 나은 도덕적 전통에 기초했으며, 또한 계속 남아있던 살렘 선교사 전승에도 얼마간 영향을 받았다. 그의 주요 업적은, 고대 철학자들의 현명한 교훈을 편집한 데 있었다. 그는 일생 동안 환영 받지 못한 선생이었으나, 그가 기록한 문서와 교훈은 그후로 줄곧 중국과 일본에 큰 영향을 미쳤다. 공자는 마술의 자리를 도덕으로 대체시키면서, 무당들에게 새로운 모범을 보였다. 그러나 그는 너무 나갔으며;질서를 새 주물이 되게 했고, 조상의 행위를 공경하도록 만들었는데, 본 기록이 이뤄지던 당시에도 중국인은 여전히 이를 공경하고 있었다.
94:6.9 (1034.4)
Confucius (Kung Fu-tze) was a younger contemporary of Lao in sixth-century China. Confucius based his doctrines upon the better moral traditions of the long history of the yellow race, and he was also somewhat influenced by the lingering traditions of the Salem missionaries. His chief work consisted in the compilation of the wise sayings of ancient philosophers. He was a rejected teacher during his lifetime, but his writings and teachings have ever since exerted a great influence in China and Japan. Confucius set a new pace for the shamans in that he put morality in the place of magic. But he built too well; he made a new fetish out of order and established a respect for ancestral conduct that is still venerated by the Chinese at the time of this writing.
94:6.10 (1034.5)
The Confucian preachment of morality was predicated on the theory that the earthly way is the distorted shadow of the heavenly way; that the true pattern of temporal civilization is the mirror reflection of the eternal order of heaven. The potential God concept in Confucianism was almost completely subordinated to the emphasis placed upon the Way of Heaven, the pattern of the cosmos.
노자의 교훈은 동양에서 소수의 무리에게 전수됐지만, 공자가 기록한 문서는 그후로 계속, 유란시아인 가운데 거의 3분의 1에 해당하는 사람의 문화에서 도덕적 바탕의 기초가 됐다. 이런 공자의 격언은 옛 격언 가운데 최선의 것을 계승하면서도, 그토록 공경 받은 그 업적을 창출했던 바로 그 중국인 탐사 기질과는 어느 정도 상반되는 면이 있었다. 진시황 황실의 수고와 묵자{墨子}의 교훈이 이 교리의 영향에 도전했지만 실패했는데, 묵자는 도덕적 의무감이 아니라 하나님의 사랑에 기초한 형제관계를 전파했다. 새로운 진리를 찾으려는 옛 탐구심에 다시 불을 붙이려고 애썼으나, 그의 가르침은 공자의 제자들의 강력한 반발에 부딪쳐서 실패했다.
94:6.11 (1034.6)
The teachings of Lao have been lost to all but a few in the Orient, but the writings of Confucius have ever since constituted the basis of the moral fabric of the culture of almost a third of Urantians. These Confucian precepts, while perpetuating the best of the past, were somewhat inimical to the very Chinese spirit of investigation that had produced those achievements which were so venerated. The influence of these doctrines was unsuccessfully combated both by the imperial efforts of Ch’in Shih Huang Ti and by the teachings of Mo Ti, who proclaimed a brotherhood founded not on ethical duty but on the love of God. He sought to rekindle the ancient quest for new truth, but his teachings failed before the vigorous opposition of the disciples of Confucius.
중국에서 영적 암흑기{暗黑期}에, 다른 여러 영적 및 도덕적 선생과 마찬가지로, 결국 추종자들이 공자와 노자를 신격화했는데, 이 시대는 도교 신앙이 쇠퇴하고 타락하던 때와, 인도로부터 불교 선교사들이 도래하던 때 사이에 있었다. 이런 영적 퇴폐기 동안에 황인종의 종교는, 마귀와 용과 악한 영들로 가득 찬 비참한 신학{神學} 체계로 퇴보했으며, 이 모든 것은, 계몽되지 못한 필사 정신에 두려움이 돌아온 것을 나타낸다. 그리고 진보된 종교로 말미암아 한때 인간 사회에서 우위{優位}를 차지했던 중국은, 그후에 하나님-의식을 발전시키는 참된 경로에서 일시적으로 진보하지 못했기 때문에 뒤쳐지게 됐는데, 이 하나님-의식은 개별 필사자뿐 아니라, 시공간의 진화 행성에서 문화와 사회의 진보라는 특징을 나타내는, 복잡하고 복합적인 문명이 참으로 진보하는 데 꼭 필요하다.
94:6.12 (1034.7)
Like many other spiritual and moral teachers, both Confucius and Lao-tse were eventually deified by their followers in those spiritually dark ages of China which intervened between the decline and perversion of the Taoist faith and the coming of the Buddhist missionaries from India. During these spiritually decadent centuries the religion of the yellow race degenerated into a pitiful theology wherein swarmed devils, dragons, and evil spirits, all betokening the returning fears of the unenlightened mortal mind. And China, once at the head of human society because of an advanced religion, then fell behind because of temporary failure to progress in the true path of the development of that God-consciousness which is indispensable to the true progress, not only of the individual mortal, but also of the intricate and complex civilizations which characterize the advance of culture and society on an evolutionary planet of time and space.
94:7.1 (1035.1)
Contemporary with Lao-tse and Confucius in China, another great teacher of truth arose in India. Gautama Siddhartha was born in the sixth century before Christ in the north Indian province of Nepal. His followers later made it appear that he was the son of a fabulously wealthy ruler, but, in truth, he was the heir apparent to the throne of a petty chieftain who ruled by sufferance over a small and secluded mountain valley in the southern Himalayas.
94:7.2 (1035.2)
Gautama formulated those theories which grew into the philosophy of Buddhism after six years of the futile practice of Yoga. Siddhartha made a determined but unavailing fight against the growing caste system. There was a lofty sincerity and a unique unselfishness about this young prophet prince that greatly appealed to the men of those days. He detracted from the practice of seeking individual salvation through physical affliction and personal pain. And he exhorted his followers to carry his gospel to all the world.
인도에서 혼란되고 극단적인 예찬집단 풍습이 한창일 때, 더 온전하고 절도 있는 고타마의 교훈이 참신한 변화를 가져왔다. 그는 신과 사제들, 그리고 그들의 희생제물을 비난했으나, 우주의 한 분의 인격을 깨닫는 면에서는 매우 심각하게 실패했다. 개별 인간의 혼이 실존한다는 것을 믿지 않았으므로, 혼이 윤회한다는 유서-깊은 믿음에 반대하여 고타마가 단호하게 투쟁한 것은 당연했다. 그는 사람들을 두려움에서 구하고, 거대한 우주에서 그들이 편안함과 안락함을 느끼도록 고귀한 수고를 했지만, 상승하는 필사자의 실제적이고 숭고한 집--곧 낙원--으로 가는, 그리고 영원한 실존으로서 확장된 봉사에 이르는 그 길을 사람들에게 보여주지 못했다.
94:7.3 (1035.3)
Amid the confusion and extreme cult practices of India, the saner and more moderate teachings of Gautama came as a refreshing relief. He denounced gods, priests, and their sacrifices, but he too failed to perceive the personality of the One Universal. Not believing in the existence of individual human souls, Gautama, of course, made a valiant fight against the time-honored belief in transmigration of the soul. He made a noble effort to deliver men from fear, to make them feel at ease and at home in the great universe, but he failed to show them the pathway to that real and supernal home of ascending mortals—Paradise—and to the expanding service of eternal existence.
94:7.4 (1035.4)
Gautama was a real prophet, and had he heeded the instruction of the hermit Godad, he might have aroused all India by the inspiration of the revival of the Salem gospel of salvation by faith. Godad was descended through a family that had never lost the traditions of the Melchizedek missionaries.
고타마는 베나레스에 학교를 설립했고, 이듬해에 바우탄이라는 학생이, 멜기세덱이 아브라함과 맺은 언약에 관하여 살렘 선교사가 전한 전승을 선생에게 전했으며;싯다르타는 우주 아버지에 관하여 아주 분명한 개념을 갖지는 못했어도, 신앙--곧 꾸밈없는 믿음--을 통해서 구원을 얻는다는 진보된 입장을 취했다. 그는 추종자들에게 자기 입장을 강하게 표명하면서, 제자를 60명씩 무리지어 내보내기 시작함으로써, “값없는 구원의 희소식;높은 사람이나 낮은 사람이나, 모든 사람이 의로움과 응보에 의거한 신앙으로 복을 누릴 수 있다”는 것을 인도 사람들에게 선포했다.
94:7.5 (1035.5)
At Benares Gautama founded his school, and it was during its second year that a pupil, Bautan, imparted to his teacher the traditions of the Salem missionaries about the Melchizedek covenant with Abraham; and while Siddhartha did not have a very clear concept of the Universal Father, he took an advanced stand on salvation through faith—simple belief. He so declared himself before his followers and began sending his students out in groups of sixty to proclaim to the people of India “the glad tidings of free salvation; that all men, high and low, can attain bliss by faith in righteousness and justice.”
94:7.6 (1035.6)
Gautama’s wife believed her husband’s gospel and was the founder of an order of nuns. His son became his successor and greatly extended the cult; he grasped the new idea of salvation through faith but in his later years wavered regarding the Salem gospel of divine favor through faith alone, and in his old age his dying words were, “Work out your own salvation.”
94:7.7 (1036.1)
When proclaimed at its best, Gautama’s gospel of universal salvation, free from sacrifice, torture, ritual, and priests, was a revolutionary and amazing doctrine for its time. And it came surprisingly near to being a revival of the Salem gospel. It brought succor to millions of despairing souls, and notwithstanding its grotesque perversion during later centuries, it still persists as the hope of millions of human beings.
94:8.2 (1036.4)
Buddhism took origin in a historic person, not in a myth. Gautama’s followers called him Sasta, meaning master or teacher. While he made no superhuman claims for either himself or his teachings, his disciples early began to call him the enlightened one, the Buddha; later on, Sakyamuni Buddha.
수난의 교리에 그리고 수난에서 벗어남에 밀접하게 관련된 것은 팔중도{八重道 또는 八正道, 八聖道} 사상이었는데:이는 올바른 통찰, 올바른 염원, 올바른 언변, 올바른 품행, 올바른 생계{生計}, 올바른 노력, 올바른 정신 집중, 및 올바른 성찰이다. 수난에서 탈피하기 위하여 모든 노력과 열망과 애정을 파괴하려고 시도하는 것은 고타마의 뜻이 아니었으며;그의 가르침은 오히려, 현세의 목표와 물질적 대상에게만 전적으로 모든 희망과 갈망을 거는 것이 무익함을 필사적 사람에게 보여주도록 계획됐다. 동료를 사랑하기를 피해야한다는 것이 아니라, 오히려 참 신자는 이 물질 세계의 관계를 뛰어 넘어서, 영원한 미래의 실체들을 또한 바라봐야한다는 것이었다.
94:8.8 (1036.10)
Closely linked to the doctrine of suffering and the escape therefrom was the philosophy of the Eightfold Path: right views, aspirations, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and contemplation. It was not Gautama’s intention to attempt to destroy all effort, desire, and affection in the escape from suffering; rather was his teaching designed to picture to mortal man the futility of pinning all hope and aspirations entirely on temporal goals and material objectives. It was not so much that love of one’s fellows should be shunned as that the true believer should also look beyond the associations of this material world to the realities of the eternal future.
싯다르타는 인간 인격의 불멸성을 거의 믿지 않았으며;그의 사상은 오직 일종의 기능적 연속성만을 고려했다. 그는 열반{涅槃}이라는 교리에 무엇을 포함시키려했는지 명확하게 정의한 적이 없었다. 필사자가 실존하는 동안에 열반을 이론적으로 경험할 수 있다는 사실은, 이것이 전면적인 소멸 상태로 간주되지 않았음을 나타낸다. 열반은 사람을 물질세계에 붙들어 매고 있는 모든 족쇄가 파괴된, 최상의 깨달음과 천상{天上}의 희열이라는 상태를 가리켰으며;필사 인생의 욕망에 매이지 않고, 끝없이 거듭 육신화를 체험한다는 모든 위협으로부터 벗어나는 것이었다.
94:8.16 (1036.18)
Siddhartha hardly believed in the immortality of the human personality; his philosophy only provided for a sort of functional continuity. He never clearly defined what he meant to include in the doctrine of Nirvana. The fact that it could theoretically be experienced during mortal existence would indicate that it was not viewed as a state of complete annihilation. It implied a condition of supreme enlightenment and supernal bliss wherein all fetters binding man to the material world had been broken; there was freedom from the desires of mortal life and deliverance from all danger of ever again experiencing incarnation.
고타마의 원래 교훈에 의하면, 신의 도움은 별도로 하고, 구원은 인간의 노력으로 성취되며;구원 얻는 신앙, 또는 초인적 능력자에게 드리는 기도는 있을 자리가 없다. 고타마는 인도의 미신을 최소화시키려고 노력하면서, 마술적으로 구원받는다는 뻔뻔스런 주장을 사람이 외면하게 하려고 애썼다. 이렇게 수고하면서 그는, 그의 가르침을 잘못 해석하도록, 그리고 달성하려고 애쓰는 인간의 모든 노력이 혐오스럽고 고통스런 것이라고 선포하도록, 후계자들을 향해서 문을 활짝 열어놓았다. 최고 행복은 바람직한 목표를 총명하게 열심히 추구하는 것과 연결되고, 그런 성취는 시공우주에서 자아를-실현하면서 참으로 진보하는 것이라는 사실을 추종자들은 간과했다.
94:8.17 (1037.1)
According to the original teachings of Gautama, salvation is achieved by human effort, apart from divine help; there is no place for saving faith or prayers to superhuman powers. Gautama, in his attempt to minimize the superstitions of India, endeavored to turn men away from the blatant claims of magical salvation. And in making this effort, he left the door wide open for his successors to misinterpret his teaching and to proclaim that all human striving for attainment is distasteful and painful. His followers overlooked the fact that the highest happiness is linked with the intelligent and enthusiastic pursuit of worthy goals, and that such achievements constitute true progress in cosmic self-realization.
94:8.18 (1037.2)
The great truth of Siddhartha’s teaching was his proclamation of a universe of absolute justice. He taught the best godless philosophy ever invented by mortal man; it was the ideal humanism and most effectively removed all grounds for superstition, magical rituals, and fear of ghosts or demons.
94:8.19 (1037.3)
The great weakness in the original gospel of Buddhism was that it did not produce a religion of unselfish social service. The Buddhistic brotherhood was, for a long time, not a fraternity of believers but rather a community of student teachers. Gautama forbade their receiving money and thereby sought to prevent the growth of hierarchal tendencies. Gautama himself was highly social; indeed, his life was much greater than his preachment.
불교는, 깨달음을 얻은 사람인 부다를 믿음으로써 구원받을 수 있다고 제시했기 때문에 번창했다. 불교는 동 아시아 전역에서 발견될 수 있는 다른 모든 종교 체계보다 멜기세덱의 진리를 더 많이 묘사했다. 그러나 하위-신분계층 군주{君主}였던 아소카가 자기-보호를 위해 신봉하기까지, 불교는 한 종교로서 퍼져나가지 못했는데, 아소카는 멜기세덱과 미가엘 사이에서 이집트의 이크나톤 다음으로 가장 뛰어난 한 집권자였다. 아소카는 불교 선교사들의 포교활동을 통해서 큰 인도 제국을 건설했다. 25년 동안 1만 7천 이상의 선교사를 훈련시켰고, 알려진 온 세계의 가장 먼 변경지대까지 보냈다. 그는 한 세대가 지나기 전에 세계 절반에서 불교가 지배적인 종교가 되게 했다. 불교는 곧 티벳, 카슈미르, 실론, 버마, 자바, 시암, 고려{高麗 Korea}, 중국, 및 일본에 전파됐다. 그리고 일반적으로 말해서, 불교는 불교가 대체하거나 증진시킨 것들보다 훨씬 우수한 종교였다.
94:9.1 (1037.4)
Buddhism prospered because it offered salvation through belief in the Buddha, the enlightened one. It was more representative of the Melchizedek truths than any other religious system to be found throughout eastern Asia. But Buddhism did not become widespread as a religion until it was espoused in self-protection by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikhnaton in Egypt, was one of the most remarkable civil rulers between Melchizedek and Michael. Asoka built a great Indian empire through the propaganda of his Buddhist missionaries. During a period of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than seventeen thousand missionaries to the farthest frontiers of all the known world. In one generation he made Buddhism the dominant religion of one half the world. It soon became established in Tibet, Kashmir, Ceylon, Burma, Java, Siam, Korea, China, and Japan. And generally speaking, it was a religion vastly superior to those which it supplanted or upstepped.
불교가 인도 원산지로부터 아시아 전역으로 퍼져나간 것은, 진지한 종교인들이 영적으로 헌신하고 끈질기게 선교한 감격적인 이야기 가운데 하나다. 고타마의 복음을 가르치는 선생들은, 그의 신앙 메시지를 모든 민족에게 전파하려고, 육로의 대상{隊商} 통로에서 당하는 위험에 담대히 맞설 뿐만 아니라, 아시아 대륙을 지나 사명을 수행하는 중에 중국해의 위험에도 용감하게 대처했다. 그러나 이 불교는 더 이상 고타마의 단순한 교리가 아니었으며;그를 신으로 만든, 초자연적인 것으로 변경된 복음이었다. 그리고 불교가 원산지인 인도에서 멀리 퍼질수록, 불교는 고타마의 교훈에서 더욱 멀어졌고, 불교가 밀어냈던 종교들과 더욱 비슷해졌다.
94:9.2 (1037.5)
The spread of Buddhism from its homeland in India to all of Asia is one of the thrilling stories of the spiritual devotion and missionary persistence of sincere religionists. The teachers of Gautama’s gospel not only braved the perils of the overland caravan routes but faced the dangers of the China Seas as they pursued their mission over the Asiatic continent, bringing to all peoples the message of their faith. But this Buddhism was no longer the simple doctrine of Gautama; it was the miraculized gospel which made him a god. And the farther Buddhism spread from its highland home in India, the more unlike the teachings of Gautama it became, and the more like the religions it supplanted, it grew to be.
94:9.3 (1038.1)
Buddhism, later on, was much affected by Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Christianity in Tibet. After a thousand years, in India Buddhism simply withered and expired. It became Brahmanized and later abjectly surrendered to Islam, while throughout much of the rest of the Orient it degenerated into a ritual which Gautama Siddhartha would never have recognized.
94:9.5 (1038.3)
But even before the collapse in India, the Chinese and north Indian groups of Gautama’s followers had begun the development of the Mahayana teaching of the “Great Road” to salvation in contrast with the purists of the south who held to the Hinayana, or “Lesser Road.” And these Mahayanists cast loose from the social limitations inherent in the Buddhist doctrine, and ever since has this northern division of Buddhism continued to evolve in China and Japan.
94:9.6 (1038.4)
Buddhism is a living, growing religion today because it succeeds in conserving many of the highest moral values of its adherents. It promotes calmness and self-control, augments serenity and happiness, and does much to prevent sorrow and mourning. Those who believe this philosophy live better lives than many who do not.
94:10.1 (1038.5)
In Tibet may be found the strangest association of the Melchizedek teachings combined with Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Christianity. When the Buddhist missionaries entered Tibet, they encountered a state of primitive savagery very similar to that which the early Christian missionaries found among the northern tribes of Europe.
순진한 이 티벳인들은 오래된 마술과 마법장신구를 전적으로 포기하려하지는 않았다. 오늘날 티벳에서 행하는 제례식의 종교 예식절차를 살펴보면, 머리를 깎은 사제 단체가 과도하게 발달된 것을 볼 수 있게 되는데, 이들은, 방울, 영창{詠唱}, 향{香}, 행렬, 묵주, 형상, 장식물, 그림, 성수{聖水}, 화려한 의복, 그리고 정교하게 준비된 성가대를 포함하는 복잡한 제례식을 거행한다. 그들은 엄격한 교의와 정형화된 신조 곧 신비로운 제례와 특별한 금식을 행한다. 그들의 계층제도는 승려와 여승과 주지 및 달라이 라마 등으로 구성된다. 천사와 성인과 성모{聖母} 및 신들에게 기도한다. 고해성사{告解聖事}를 하고 연옥{煉獄}을 믿는다. 그들의 절은 규모가 크고 사원은 웅장하다. 신성시되는 제례식을 끝없이 반복하고, 그런 예식절차가 구원을 준다고 믿는다. 기도문을 바퀴에 붙이고, 바퀴가 돌아갈 때 탄원했던 것이 응답된다고 믿는다. 현대에 어떤 다른 민족 가운데서도, 그들처럼 그토록 많은 종교로부터 그렇게 많은 관례를 준수하는 경우를 찾아볼 수 없으며;그런 누적된 예배의식 때문에, 지나칠 정도로 방해받고 과도하게 부담되는 것은 필연이었다.
94:10.2 (1038.6)
These simple-minded Tibetans would not wholly give up their ancient magic and charms. Examination of the religious ceremonials of present-day Tibetan rituals reveals an overgrown brotherhood of priests with shaven heads who practice an elaborate ritual embracing bells, chants, incense, processionals, rosaries, images, charms, pictures, holy water, gorgeous vestments, and elaborate choirs. They have rigid dogmas and crystallized creeds, mystic rites and special fasts. Their hierarchy embraces monks, nuns, abbots, and the Grand Lama. They pray to angels, saints, a Holy Mother, and the gods. They practice confessions and believe in purgatory. Their monasteries are extensive and their cathedrals magnificent. They keep up an endless repetition of sacred rituals and believe that such ceremonials bestow salvation. Prayers are fastened to a wheel, and with its turning they believe the petitions become efficacious. Among no other people of modern times can be found the observance of so much from so many religions; and it is inevitable that such a cumulative liturgy would become inordinately cumbersome and intolerably burdensome.
94:11.1 (1038.8)
Buddhism entered China in the first millennium after Christ, and it fitted well into the religious customs of the yellow race. In ancestor worship they had long prayed to the dead; now they could also pray for them. Buddhism soon amalgamated with the lingering ritualistic practices of disintegrating Taoism. This new synthetic religion with its temples of worship and definite religious ceremonial soon became the generally accepted cult of the peoples of China, Korea, and Japan.
94:11.2 (1039.1)
While in some respects it is unfortunate that Buddhism was not carried to the world until after Gautama’s followers had so perverted the traditions and teachings of the cult as to make of him a divine being, nonetheless this myth of his human life, embellished as it was with a multitude of miracles, proved very appealing to the auditors of the northern or Mahayana gospel of Buddhism.
94:11.3 (1039.2)
Some of his later followers taught that Sakyamuni Buddha’s spirit returned periodically to earth as a living Buddha, thus opening the way for an indefinite perpetuation of Buddha images, temples, rituals, and impostor “living Buddhas.” Thus did the religion of the great Indian protestant eventually find itself shackled with those very ceremonial practices and ritualistic incantations against which he had so fearlessly fought, and which he had so valiantly denounced.
94:11.4 (1039.3)
The great advance made in Buddhist philosophy consisted in its comprehension of the relativity of all truth. Through the mechanism of this hypothesis Buddhists have been able to reconcile and correlate the divergencies within their own religious scriptures as well as the differences between their own and many others. It was taught that the small truth was for little minds, the large truth for great minds.
94:11.5 (1039.4)
This philosophy also held that the Buddha (divine) nature resided in all men; that man, through his own endeavors, could attain to the realization of this inner divinity. And this teaching is one of the clearest presentations of the truth of the indwelling Adjusters ever to be made by a Urantian religion.
94:11.6 (1039.5)
But a great limitation in the original gospel of Siddhartha, as it was interpreted by his followers, was that it attempted the complete liberation of the human self from all the limitations of the mortal nature by the technique of isolating the self from objective reality. True cosmic self-realization results from identification with cosmic reality and with the finite cosmos of energy, mind, and spirit, bounded by space and conditioned by time.
94:11.7 (1039.6)
But though the ceremonies and outward observances of Buddhism became grossly contaminated with those of the lands to which it traveled, this degeneration was not altogether the case in the philosophical life of the great thinkers who, from time to time, embraced this system of thought and belief. Through more than two thousand years, many of the best minds of Asia have concentrated upon the problem of ascertaining absolute truth and the truth of the Absolute.
94:11.8 (1039.7)
The evolution of a high concept of the Absolute was achieved through many channels of thought and by devious paths of reasoning. The upward ascent of this doctrine of infinity was not so clearly defined as was the evolution of the God concept in Hebrew theology. Nevertheless, there were certain broad levels which the minds of the Buddhists reached, tarried upon, and passed through on their way to the envisioning of the Primal Source of universes:
94:11.9 (1039.8)
1. The Gautama legend. At the base of the concept was the historic fact of the life and teachings of Siddhartha, the prophet prince of India. This legend grew in myth as it traveled through the centuries and across the broad lands of Asia until it surpassed the status of the idea of Gautama as the enlightened one and began to take on additional attributes.
94:11.10 (1040.1)
2. The many Buddhas. It was reasoned that, if Gautama had come to the peoples of India, then, in the remote past and in the remote future, the races of mankind must have been, and undoubtedly would be, blessed with other teachers of truth. This gave rise to the teaching that there were many Buddhas, an unlimited and infinite number, even that anyone could aspire to become one—to attain the divinity of a Buddha.
3. 절대 부다. 부다의 수가 무한에 이르게 된다는 생각을 하게 되자, 이런 거대한 개념을 다시 통합시킬 필요성이 당시 지성인에게 제기됐다. 따라서, 모든 부다가 존재하지만, 더 높은 어떤 실체 곧 무한하고 제한없는 실존인 어떤 영원한 한 분, 모든 실체의 절대 근원인 어떤 존재가 있다고 가르치기 시작했다. 이때부터 불교의 신격 개념은, 최고 형태를 취하면서 고타마 싯다르타의 인간적 인물로부터 분리되기 시작했고, 속박해왔던 의인화된 제한조건에서 벗어나게 됐다. 영원한 부다라는 이런 최종 생각은 절대자와, 때로는 무한한 자존자{自存者}와도, 쉽게 동일시될 수 있다.
94:11.11 (1040.2)
3. The Absolute Buddha. By the time the number of Buddhas was approaching infinity, it became necessary for the minds of those days to reunify this unwieldy concept. Accordingly it began to be taught that all Buddhas were but the manifestation of some higher essence, some Eternal One of infinite and unqualified existence, some Absolute Source of all reality. From here on, the Deity concept of Buddhism, in its highest form, becomes divorced from the human person of Gautama Siddhartha and casts off from the anthropomorphic limitations which have held it in leash. This final conception of the Buddha Eternal can well be identified as the Absolute, sometimes even as the infinite I AM.
94:11.12 (1040.3)
While this idea of Absolute Deity never found great popular favor with the peoples of Asia, it did enable the intellectuals of these lands to unify their philosophy and to harmonize their cosmology. The concept of the Buddha Absolute is at times quasi-personal, at times wholly impersonal—even an infinite creative force. Such concepts, though helpful to philosophy, are not vital to religious development. Even an anthropomorphic Yahweh is of greater religious value than an infinitely remote Absolute of Buddhism or Brahmanism.
94:11.13 (1040.4)
At times the Absolute was even thought of as contained within the infinite I AM. But these speculations were chill comfort to the hungry multitudes who craved to hear words of promise, to hear the simple gospel of Salem, that faith in God would assure divine favor and eternal survival.
불교의 우주론에서 큰 약점은 두 가지였는데:하나는 인도와 중국의 많은 미신으로 불교가 오염된 것이었고, 다른 하나는 고타마에 대한 불교의 이상화{理想化}, 즉 처음에는 통달한 존재로, 그다음에는 영원한 부다로 삼은 것이었다. 그리스도교가 잘못된 많은 인간 철학을 흡수함으로써 수난을 당해왔듯이, 불교 역시 인간적 출생흔적을 지니고 있다. 그러나 고타마의 교훈은 지난 2천 500년 동안 계속 진화해왔다. 계몽된 그리스도교인에게 여호와 개념이 호렙산의 정령{精靈}과 일치하지 않는 것처럼, 계몽된 불교도에게 부다 개념은 이제 더 이상 고타마의 인간 인격이 아니다. 오래된 명명법{命名法}을 감상적으로 유지함과 함께, 용어가 부족함으로 말미암아, 진화하는 종교 개념의 참된 의미를 이해하지 못하도록 유도되는 경우가 흔하다.
94:12.1 (1040.5)
The great weakness in the cosmology of Buddhism was twofold: its contamination with many of the superstitions of India and China and its sublimation of Gautama, first as the enlightened one, and then as the Eternal Buddha. Just as Christianity has suffered from the absorption of much erroneous human philosophy, so does Buddhism bear its human birthmark. But the teachings of Gautama have continued to evolve during the past two and one-half millenniums. The concept of Buddha, to an enlightened Buddhist, is no more the human personality of Gautama than the concept of Jehovah is identical with the spirit demon of Horeb to an enlightened Christian. Paucity of terminology, together with the sentimental retention of olden nomenclature, is often provocative of the failure to understand the true significance of the evolution of religious concepts.
94:12.2 (1040.6)
Gradually the concept of God, as contrasted with the Absolute, began to appear in Buddhism. Its sources are back in the early days of this differentiation of the followers of the Lesser Road and the Greater Road. It was among the latter division of Buddhism that the dual conception of God and the Absolute finally matured. Step by step, century by century, the God concept has evolved until, with the teachings of Ryonin, Honen Shonin, and Shinran in Japan, this concept finally came to fruit in the belief in Amida Buddha.
이 신자들 가운데서는, 죽음을 체험한 혼은 궁극 실존 상태인 열반{涅槃}에 들어가기 전에 낙원에 머물기를 즐기기로 선택할 수 있다고 가르친다. 서쪽에 있는 낙원의 하나님 곧 아미다의 신성한 자비와 사랑의 보살핌에 대한 신앙으로 새로운 구원이 달성된다고 선포한다. 그들의 사상에서는, 아미다를 믿는 사람은 모든 유한 필사자의 파악 능력을 뛰어넘는 무한한 실체를 굳게 붙잡고 있으며;그들의 종교에서는, 온전히-자비로운 아미다, 즉 세상을 너무도 사랑하기 때문에, 진실한 신앙과 순수한 심성으로 그의 이름을 부르는 자는 누구에게든지, 낙원의 숭고한 행복 달성에서 실패하는 고통을 주지 않을 그런 존재에 대한 신앙을 고수한다.
94:12.3 (1041.1)
Among these believers it is taught that the soul, upon experiencing death, may elect to enjoy a sojourn in Paradise prior to entering Nirvana, the ultimate of existence. It is proclaimed that this new salvation is attained by faith in the divine mercies and loving care of Amida, God of the Paradise in the west. In their philosophy, the Amidists hold to an Infinite Reality which is beyond all finite mortal comprehension; in their religion, they cling to faith in the all-merciful Amida, who so loves the world that he will not suffer one mortal who calls on his name in true faith and with a pure heart to fail in the attainment of the supernal happiness of Paradise.
94:12.4 (1041.2)
The great strength of Buddhism is that its adherents are free to choose truth from all religions; such freedom of choice has seldom characterized a Urantian faith. In this respect the Shin sect of Japan has become one of the most progressive religious groups in the world; it has revived the ancient missionary spirit of Gautama’s followers and has begun to send teachers to other peoples. This willingness to appropriate truth from any and all sources is indeed a commendable tendency to appear among religious believers during the first half of the twentieth century after Christ.
94:12.5 (1041.3)
Buddhism itself is undergoing a twentieth-century renaissance. Through contact with Christianity the social aspects of Buddhism have been greatly enhanced. The desire to learn has been rekindled in the hearts of the monk priests of the brotherhood, and the spread of education throughout this faith will be certainly provocative of new advances in religious evolution.
94:12.6 (1041.4)
At the time of this writing, much of Asia rests its hope in Buddhism. Will this noble faith, that has so valiantly carried on through the dark ages of the past, once again receive the truth of expanded cosmic realities even as the disciples of the great teacher in India once listened to his proclamation of new truth? Will this ancient faith respond once more to the invigorating stimulus of the presentation of new concepts of God and the Absolute for which it has so long searched?
94:12.7 (1041.5)
All Urantia is waiting for the proclamation of the ennobling message of Michael, unencumbered by the accumulated doctrines and dogmas of nineteen centuries of contact with the religions of evolutionary origin. The hour is striking for presenting to Buddhism, to Christianity, to Hinduism, even to the peoples of all faiths, not the gospel about Jesus, but the living, spiritual reality of the gospel of Jesus.