Buddhism is the oldest world religion, named after its founder Buddha Shakyamuni. Buddhists themselves count the time of its existence from the moment of the death of the Buddha, but opinions about the years of his life differ. According to the schools of Southern Buddhism, he lived from 624 to 544. BC e. — thus, Buddhism is older than Christianity by five, and Islam by twelve centuries. This religion is called world because it is not tied to any one people and easily overcomes national and state borders. Anyone can profess it, regardless of race, nationality, gender and age: the main thing is that a person strives to work with his own consciousness.
Buddhism is alien to any limitations, since its core is the movement towards spiritual perfection, which is above all barriers. This is probably why, as the domestic Buddhist scholar F.I. Shcherbatskaya wrote, this religion “burns with a bright flame of living faith in the hearts of millions of its followers… embodies the highest ideals of goodness, love for one’s neighbor, spiritual freedom and moral perfection.”
Buddhism plays a special role in the history of the entire Eurasian continent, the spiritual space of which has been formed under its influence over the past two millennia. Many cultures of the East are imbued with its spirit – Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Mongolian, etc. Scientists argue: can Buddhism be considered a religion? After all, it does not have a god like the Christian or Islamic; there are no such numerous gods as in Hinduism, the main religion of India, where Buddhism originated. There is no church in it, a mediator between God and people, just as there are no ideas about the soul and its immortality, characteristic of most religions. Buddhism never needed an inquisition.
In its context, it is impossible to imagine the situation of Galileo’s renunciation, Spinoza’s excommunication or the burning of Giordano Bruno. Finally, this religion does not threaten eternal hellish torment, but also does not promise heavenly bliss or salvation in heaven, but promises nirvana – nothingness, non-existence, or, in other words, the realization of the highest spiritual potential of man.
It is not surprising that to many in the West Buddhism seems a strange departure from the very concept of religion, of which Christianity is often the model. This view was expressed by a 19th century Buddhist scholar. J. Barthelemy-Saint-Hilaire: “The only, but at least enormous, service that Buddhism can provide is to give us, with its sad contrast, a reason to appreciate even more the inestimable dignity of our faith.”
However, now the view of Buddhism has changed. Many of its features turned out to be in tune with modern Western culture. Writers J. David Salinger and J. Kerouac, artists Vincent Van Gogh and Henri Matisse, composers Gustav Mahler and John Cage were interested in the ideas of Zen Buddhism. Signs of his influence are noticeable in sports, in the art of arranging bouquets, and in the tea ceremony. Some Western scientists generally believe that Zen Buddhism is a symbol of the culture of our time and that in it one can find the origins of such important ideas of our time as the theory of relativity, the theory of probability, the concept of modeling, the physical and mathematical categories of function and field.
Perhaps the closest thing to modern man is the perception of Buddhism as a science, and a real science about man. It was probably in this capacity that it arose; all the religious paraphernalia appeared later. In fact, Buddha acted and behaved like an experimental scientist, without any discounts on those distant times. But the material, object and instrument of his research were not external objects or abstract intellectual constructs, but the mind observing and examining itself.
The founder of the new teaching acquired true, not ostentatious and not bookish wisdom, not by studying dusty scientific tomes, not in conversations with learned men, and not in self-torture. No, he achieved it in the simple silence of absorption in himself, in his own depths – the path is not at all supernatural and is accessible to each of us. The result was a great miracle of insight, renewal of consciousness, meaningfulness of every moment of life, spiritual nobility, harmony with the world around us.
Thus, the Buddha did not impose dogmas, principles, rituals, or spiritual practices. He taught us to look at the world with clear eyes and believe in ourselves, in our own experience. This constitutes the main core of his teaching, his discovery and the feat of his life. According to legend, residents of one of the villages once asked Buddha how to identify those worthy of trust among the many religious teachers. Buddha replied that one should not blindly trust anyone – neither parents, nor books, nor teachers, nor traditions, nor him, Buddha. You need to look closely at your own experience and observe what things lead to more hatred, greed, anger. You need to get away from these things, and cultivate those that lead to greater love and wisdom.
In Buddhism, faith in the Buddha himself does not play a special role. From the Buddhist point of view, there have already been many Buddhas in the past and there will be many more. In some movements, Buddhists no longer honor Shakyamuni, but other Buddhas, for example, in Japan, for the Amidaists, the most important thing is the cult of Amida Buddha. The ethics of Buddhism are also not unique, although the commandment “Thou shalt not kill!” was formulated in it long before modern religions. In its main principles, it is consonant with many philosophical ethics, religions and, finally, the usual humanity of relations between people.
But Buddhism is not limited to ethics; he goes further, supplementing good abstract calls, which rarely work in real life, with specific and quite effective practices of spiritual self-improvement. The meditation method he proposes is as natural as breathing itself, and useful to everyone, if only because it brings at least health and happiness, and ultimately life on a different, higher spiritual level. It affects the deep psychophysiological mechanisms of a person, which, of course, is less noticeable, but more effective than political, social or even other religious actions that deal with large masses of people.
Finally, Buddhism forces us to recognize that the world does not exist only outside. A very special, breathtakingly bottomless world lurks inside each of us, and there is no more interesting journey than plunging into its depths and experiencing the miracle of this mysterious world and our existence. Wisdom, Strength, Love – this is what can be the result of such internal journeys and activities. Isn’t this the real progress of humanity? Do not consider technological achievements and a purely quantitative increase in dirty energies, which every now and then lead our world to disasters, as manifestations of this!
Did Buddhism become a pan-Asian religion by chance? It reached the peak of its development in the 9th century, when a significant part of Asia and the adjacent islands came under its influence. At that time, Buddhism had a very noticeable influence on other religions of this subcontinent: Hinduism in India, Taoism in China, Shintoism in Japan, Bon in Tibet, shamanism in Central Asia. The influence was mutual: all these national religions not only accepted many Buddhist ideas, but also changed Buddhism themselves. However, after the 9th century. it experienced decline in India. By the 12th century. Buddhism was pushed out of its borders, but its victorious march through the countries of Asia, which began even before the new era, continued.
And now the majority of Asian peoples profess Buddhism and perceive it as a true religion. Most of its adherents live in South, Southeast and East Asia: Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos.
At the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. Buddhism has crossed the borders of Asia; his followers appeared in Europe and America. In France and Germany it has become the third most widespread religion after Christianity and Islam. In our country, Buddhism is traditionally practiced in Buryatia, Kalmykia, Tuva, as well as in the Trans-Baikal district and the Irkutsk region; Buddhist communities also exist in Moscow, St. Petersburg and some other cities.
Surprisingly flexible, Buddhism takes different forms depending on the country in which it is widespread: in Japan it is combined with national Shinto beliefs, in China it speaks the language of Chinese culture to its adherents, and in Sri Lanka it permeates Sinhalese culture.
By the way, it is impossible to name the exact number of Buddhists, since Buddha did not reject the gods of other religions and did not forbid his followers to honor them. No, he only warned that the veneration of the gods may bring temporary relief, but does little to help in the matter of complete spiritual liberation from the painful hardships of worldly life. Therefore, the usually cited number of supporters of Buddhism—about four hundred million—is very arbitrary.
Most of us perceive Buddhism as an exotic, foreign and distant religion. Meanwhile, this is not at all true. From the time of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna until the Stalin era, it was the officially recognized religion of the Russian state. In 1991, an anniversary was modestly and almost imperceptibly celebrated – the two hundred and fifty anniversary of the establishment of Buddhism in the eastern borders of our Fatherland. However, the countdown began from its official recognition; the real penetration of Buddhism into Russia began much earlier.
Russia’s ties with the Buddhist East are ancient, their origins go back centuries. Since ancient times, Russian missionaries and merchants were drawn to the East, and travelers looked for routes – by sea and by land – that led to the countries of the East, including the homeland of Buddhism, India. Let’s not forget about geopolitical factors: Russian territories expanded mainly in eastern rather than western directions. As Academician V.P. Vasiliev noted, the Russians were pushed to Asia by the very course of historical events, and it was impossible to establish the limit of this movement in advance.
Throughout our history, the East, due to various circumstances, was close, and therefore an active exchange of spiritual values was inevitable. Let us remember that Russia’s very belonging to the Western world was not always considered definitively established and that the East for us was and remains not only a geographical concept: it is also associated with ideas about other cultural and spiritual values. Russian orientalism manifested itself not only in science, but also in poetry, painting, architecture and, finally, in the philosophy of Russian cosmism.
The first wave of Buddhism approached the southern borders of our Fatherland at the turn of the new era, although this became known reliably relatively recently. Messages from ancient travelers have long led scientists to assume that on the territory of modern Central Asia, before the victorious invasion of the “horsemen of Allah” and establishment there in the 7th–9th centuries. Buddhism existed in Islam. Buddhist pilgrims themselves wrote about the spread of their religion in those parts. Buddhism was then practiced by the majority of the local population, and although it was not the dominant religion there, it played a very significant role in the history and culture of pre-Muslim Central Asia.
This assumption was fully confirmed by archaeological research begun in Central Asia in the 20s. XX century. Now there are about three dozen Buddhist monuments discovered in this region: temples, stupas, monasteries and other buildings dating back to the 20th–10th centuries. n. e. They reveal to us the unknown Buddhist world of Central Asia.
The spread of Buddhism began here in the first centuries of the new era, when the southern lands of this region were part of the powerful Kushan Empire. And although Buddhism did not survive here, it had a significant influence on various aspects of spiritual life, including the character of Islam. He also played an important role as an intermediary, spreading from here to the countries of Central Asia and the Far East.
Another wave of Buddhism had a different fate, which a thousand years later spilled out into the Transbaikal steppes and the Lower Volga region from Tibet and Mongolia. The features of Buddhism stand out more clearly here if we take into account the geographical position of these lands in relation to the rest of the Buddhist world. After all, they lie on its outskirts, and the outskirts often preserve what is destroyed or lost in the center. Likewise, these eastern borders of the then Russian Empire preserved much of that rich spiritual heritage, which in other Buddhist countries had already disappeared by that time and could be at least partially recovered only through archaeological excavations.
“Through Buddhism, India becomes our neighbor along the entire length of our Asian border from Lake Baikal to the Lower Volga,” noted the domestic Buddhist scholar F. I. Shcherbatskaya at the beginning of the 20th century. Having met learned lamas in Transbaikalia, he wrote to his colleague S. F. Oldenburg that he saw living India there: “Everything that happens here in Are is, in all likelihood, a complete copy of what happened in the 7th century. in Nalanda (the most famous Buddhist university in India. – M.A.) <…> Consequently, along with literature, we have here life itself, which we should guess from literature. And on this basis it is necessary to study, in addition to logic and philosophy, such systems as kalachakra and other yogic ones.”
However, interest in Buddhism in Russia was not always of a purely academic nature. Travelers and Orthodox missionaries studied the Buddhist life of the vast territories of the Russian Empire long before scientific Buddhology took shape. At the beginning of the 20th century. Prince E. E. Ukhtomsky wrote in a topical work for that time: “We want to finally consciously take advantage of the fruits of the spontaneous movement of the Cossack freemen into the depths of Asia and become a link connecting the centers of Christian culture with the pagan centers stagnant in darkness.”
So, the history of the second Buddhist wave is not as tightly hidden from us by the veil of time as the history of the first, and is relatively well studied. In addition to historical evidence, a living Buddhist tradition and a special, embodied history are preserved in the form of collections stored in our museums. “Russia has been interested in Buddhism for a long time and began to get acquainted with it more than two hundred years ago.
The first Buddhist objects ended up in a museum set up by Peter the Great, called the Kunstkamera, and are still kept in the Academy of Sciences. Since then, Russian scientists have been studying Buddhism a lot and, studying Asia, with which Russia is closely connected through centuries-old relations, made trips to Buddhist countries and brought from there many objects for Russian museums,” wrote S. F. Oldenburg in an essay dedicated to the first Buddhist exhibition In Petersburg.
It took place in 1919. In a hungry, cold and deserted city, where it was dark and deserted in the evenings, Russia became acquainted with examples of art from one of the three world religions. The organization of this exhibition was the work of the scientific and artistic intelligentsia, concentrated in the Hermitage, the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAE), the Asian Museum of the Academy of Sciences and the Russian Museum. It was decided to show the general public the treasures of the Buddhist visual tradition, vivid examples of which were kept in the largest museums of St. Petersburg – Petrograd and in some private collections.
The organizers of the exhibition set themselves noble educational goals, continuing the best traditions of the Russian intelligentsia. S. F. Oldenburg concluded his essay as follows: “Modern humanity, which is still weakly and ineptly striving for the brotherhood of peoples, needs to become as familiar as possible with what has already been done by humanity in this regard, and therefore is of such great importance to us study and understanding of the Buddhist world, which this exhibition should contribute to.”
It was a huge success and caused a real explosion of cultural enthusiasm. It was believed that the revolution had really opened the doors to the broad masses of the people into the unknown world of Eastern religious ideas and that the acquaintance with Buddhism, which began so promisingly, would have a fruitful continuation, contributing to the establishment of worldwide brotherhood, as the organizers of the exhibition hoped. But in reality it turned out differently. The years of economic ruin, Civil War, foreign intervention, repression and stagnation stretched in a gloomy succession.
Any interest in Buddhism, as indeed in any other religion, was severely and cruelly suppressed. And of the former experts on Buddhism, the organizers of the 1919 exhibition, only F.I. Shcherbatskaya survived the atheistic storms of those years on the path of a Buddhist scholar, and even then not completely: the last years of his life were tragic. In the 20s he managed to create the Institute of Buddhist Culture (1927–1930), which later became the Indo-Tibetan Cabinet of the Institute of Oriental Studies. The students and colleagues of F.I. Shcherbatsky who united here in a short period of time managed to write many high-quality works on various issues of the history and philosophy of Buddhism.
At the beginning of the 20th century, St. Petersburg – Petrograd – Leningrad declared itself as a real international center for Buddhist studies. But in the 30s. this was put to an end. Almost all of F.I. Shcherbatsky’s students and colleagues were repressed, and Buddhist studies in Russia officially ceased to exist. In those years, Buddhist scholars, like Buddhists, were more likely to be found in the vastness of the Gulag than in academic institutes or lecture halls.
But both Buddhology and the living tradition of Buddhism, despite the trials of those terrible years, did not disappear in Russia without a trace, and now the threads of long-standing historical ties between Russia, and including St. Petersburg, with the Buddhist East are being stretched out again. And near the Northern capital they developed in a very special way. Buddhists, mainly Kalmyks and Buryats, appeared in the city on the banks of the Neva from the very beginning of its foundation. They were among the working people expelled by order of Peter I from various provinces of Russia to build a new city, this “all-Russian construction project of the century.” Many of them, having served their time, remained in St. Petersburg: here the numerous boyars had plenty of work.
At the very end of the 19th century. A Buddhist community began to take shape in St. Petersburg. It included people from the eastern outskirts of the Russian Empire, mainly the same Kalmyks and Buryats from Transbaikalia, Astrakhan and Stavropol provinces, and the region of the Don Army. They settled on the St. Petersburg side or in the Liteinaya part, served in Cossack units, and studied in the capital’s educational institutions. The Northern capital was also home to many Buddhists from China, Japan, Thailand and other Buddhist countries with which Russia maintained diplomatic and trade relations.
Finally, in high society and in the circles of the liberal intelligentsia there were people who rejected orthodox Christianity and were keen on the teachings of Ancient India, China, Tibet, including Buddhism. By the end of the 19th century. In Russia, many fundamental works on Buddhology have already appeared, belonging to domestic and Western scientists: V. P. Vasiliev, I. P. Minaev, A. M. Pozdneev, F. I. Shcherbatsky, T. V. Rhys-Davids, G. Oldenberg and others. At the same time, they became interested in theosophy, which had an Indo-Buddhist basis, and some perceived it as a universal religion of the future.
At the turn of the century, many aristocrats and commoner intellectuals read not only the “Secret Doctrine” of H. P. Blavatsky, but also the translation of the poem by the English scientist E. Arnold “The Light of Asia,” which expounded the teachings of the Buddha. Largely thanks to H. P. Blavatsky and her associate Colonel G. S. Olcott, the founders of the Theosophical Society, at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. Buddhism began to spread in Russia and among Russians.
Our country at that time was no exception among European countries. In London, Paris, Vienna, Rome, the “Buddhist movement” turned out to be very popular. With its help, they hoped to “replace the old, crumbling ideals of personal and public life with ones more in line with the current development of mankind, to develop a new worldview that would give answers to all the questions that trouble a person, would fill his spiritual emptiness,” reported in the magazine “Russian Messenger” ” dated May 17, 1890. Buddhism won especially many adherents (several thousand) in Paris, where the Buddhist Catechism was even published.”
And although it was signed with a Buddhist name, it was compiled, according to experts, by one of the Europeans who knew this Eastern teaching well. By the end of the 20th century. The West has experienced more than one wave of enthusiasm for Buddhism in its various forms. Of all the Russian cities at that time, St. Petersburg was most drawn to Buddhism. At the turn of the century, it was engulfed in mystical sentiments; as they wrote in the press, “a whole whirlpool of small religions, cults and sects” formed in it, among which Buddhism took its place. All local faiths had their own churches in the Northern capital; Buddhists were the last to receive their temple: it was built in 1910–1914.
Permission for its construction was not immediately obtained. P. A. Stolypin helped, to whom orientalists F. I. Shcherbatskaya, S. F. Oldenburg, artist N. K. Roerich and the representative of the Dalai Lama in St. Petersburg, Agvan Dorzhiev, turned to him. In 1913, the first service was held in the temple in honor of the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty. “The northernmost monument of Tibetan architecture” was built on Primorsky Avenue, on the banks of the Bolshaya Nevka.
This temple played the role of the center of Buddhist culture in Petrograd-Leningrad until the lamas had to leave Petrograd in 1917. In 1937 it was closed. Until 1990, the building was occupied by various government agencies before it was returned to the Buddhist community. Nowadays, the entrance to the temple is still decorated with the Wheel of Teaching, on both sides of which rise copper figures of deer – a symbol of the first sermon of the Buddha.
And Buddha taught the most important things for every person – “to understand why he lives, and, having understood, to know how to live in order to fulfill the purpose of his life,” as S. F. Oldenburg said at the first Buddhist exhibition in St. Petersburg. And what could be more important than finding answers to the most important questions? Without them, your whole life can pass automatically, like puppets, whose strings are pulled by malice, fear, envy, greed, anger and voluptuousness. To understand yourself and your life – this is what Buddhism teaches.
However, the conversation about Buddhism should be preceded by one important remark: there is no “Buddhism in general” and there never was. From the very beginning, it was a collection of many schools and movements, which were sometimes so different that they were more like different religions. As they say in Tibet, “each valley has its own language, each teacher has its own teaching.” But all varieties of this religion are united by the personality of Buddha Shakyamuni himself, the First Teacher, as well as a certain range of basic ideas that are present in one form or another in all areas of Buddhism, although their interpretation may be different.
