Religions of Man; 1; The Relevance of the Religions of Man

Washington University and KETC St. Louis Educational Television Station presents a course for television. The religions of man. Well, Dr. Houston Smith, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Washington University. You have been looking at some objects of religious art from all over the world. This, for example, is a quanying, a goddess of mercy, which comes from China in the Buddhist tradition.

It's really a museum piece, and that's all religionist for many people, a museum piece. But that's not the sense in which we're going to be studying this year tonight. Some of these objects, they're very different in kind. Some of them are very lovely. Take, for example, this wood carving of a monk. It comes from Europe around Oberamago, I believe. It's beautiful. And yet, I'm not an art critic, concerned to analyze the style of these various objects and compare them. Some of these objects are very old. Take, for example, this figure of Shiva, the dancing sheep, comes from South India. I don't know how old this particular object is, but the Shiva figure is the oldest object, religious object, which the archaeologists have dug up from India.

So back, I was about 5,000 years. But, again, I'm not an antiquarian interested in digging up the past and dusting it off. Some of these objects are very strange. There are some strange ones up there on the shelf. Some of these are different. If one puts, for example, these two objects side by side, the Christian monk, and this Hindu dancing figure. What a different impression they've made. But I'm not an anthropologist interested in comparing and contrasting the various culture patterns of the world. Some of these objects also have some very strange aspects to them. Take, for example, this head of the Buddha.

The head itself is very serene. But there were many things about Buddha's life, which would sound very strange, as to you. For example, how in his quest for enlightenment he tried for a period of time to live on one being a day. Until, as he tells us, when he reached for his stomach, he seized his spine. How he used to press the tongue up against the roof of his mouth and hold his breath so long that he would hear as he tells us the roaring of the ocean in his ears. And until it felt like a sword was cleaving his skull. Sometimes, when he was trying to concentrate all his attention upon his spirit, he would neglect his body completely, not even bothering to wash it. Until again, as the records tell us, the dirt would accumulate until it fell off by itself. But I'm not an tourist guy interested in the shock value of the strange, bizarre, fantastic.

No, when I turn to these religious objects, I don't turn to them as relics. I don't turn to them even as historical forces, which had great vitality and power and influence in the past, but somehow have become fossilized and outlived their usefulness. I don't turn to these sacred books, the Brahma Sutra, the Torah in here. The other sacred books here assemble. I don't turn to them as if they were simply great literature with high poetic values, or items which would allow us to inspect the past to give us some idea how the old boys felt. No, when I turn to this religious material, when I turn to the religions of man, it is because I find here the most profound insights and answers which have ever been offered to the basic problems of life.

The inescapable problems, the problems that I myself haven't been able to get away from. What, for example? Well, take the problem of suffering. I was just saying, pointing out some strange things about this man Buddha, but there's another aspect to his life which is the parts of really interesting. And this is the part of his life and teachings which speak to every man. Somehow they transcend time and state and go right to the heart of problems which are terribly near home. Buddha said, you can put my whole philosophy really in a nutshell. I show you suffering and I show you the end of suffering. He would say to those who were gathered around him on the dusty roads of India,

that he asked you just one question. Are you really as happy as you would like to be as you think you might be? What about those six points, those dangerous thoughts in life? What about the trauma of birth? The pathology of sickness, the morbidity of decrepitude and old age when the body begins to fade. The phobia of death. What about those other two danger points? When you find yourself trapped with that which you hate and there's no exit, there's nothing you can do about it. Are the other side of the coin when you find yourself separated from that which you love? How is life going? How will it go when it comes to you in this less friendly guy? If the answer is well enough indeed then Buddha would say in effect to his friend, go your way.

I have nothing to say. But if there be any pain, those of you who know the meaning of pain and want relief, stay around. There may be some things I can say which will help you. And I, for one, when I hear those words, I find myself lingering. Yes, I found some things in Buddhism which speak to me very meaningfully about the problem of suffering. As likewise, I have also found in Judaism in the words, the writing of the phobia. Well, we're going to be talking about suffering. Some of the answers of the world's great religions to this problem. But how about another problem? Well, let's take a problem which is very much in our public mind these days.

The problem of social anarchy. This is what we're really occupied with. It's what the papers are full of. International anarchy. We don't have a world government. And then here we have the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb. This is also the problem of anarchy at home. You must have noticed as I did that our crime rate has jumped 100% in each of the last two years. That's alarming. How long can it go that way and a society still keep together? Not to mention the problem of juvenile delinquency. Now, are these religious problems? Well, in a way, I guess we think they are. But we think of them sort of as secondarily religious. For the most part, we think of them as being political problems.

Oh, it's true that the President of the United States now opens his cabinet meetings with a prayer. But somehow, we think of the solution to these as going on in a social sphere. But there are people on the other side of the world who do this very differently. Who's written focuses in the social problems of men? How do we get along with one another? Without destroying each other. How can we live together in the maximum harmony and creativeness? This really is the heart of Confucius concern. He was a believer in God. He prayed to God. He was a believer in ritual, but it was really the social problem. Which part would happen? Now, I don't have an object of an image of Confucius here tonight. There aren't any images of Confucius in China.

I do have a little table that I happen to have picked up when I was at the place of his birth. And I wanted a little memento. Look like anything to you, but I wanted a little remembrance of that place. But let's go beyond the man to his teaching. When I first encountered the intellect of Confucius, which contained, really, the heart of his doctrine, it was one of the most surprising experiences I'd ever had. Because here I knew that this man had influenced the civilization like few other man had ever influenced any civilization before. And yet, the amazing thing was how ordinary he was. How unimpressed it. The things that he would say, for example, they seemed so obvious. Sawed and old Maxson, he reminded me, you know who he reminded me of in our culture.

He reminded me a little bit of Bernard Baruch, senior state. But what has Baruch ever said that was really dramatic? The things that he says are always the obvious sorts of things. Have a plan or prepare for the worst, this kind of statement. And yet, he has worked his way to the senior statesman in our society by general acclaim. Confucius was sort of like that. Now, why? Why this tremendous impact? And it's suddenly dawned on me that the reason was that this man had hold of the crucial question. And he refused to be distracted from it. Well, in the weeks ahead, we're going to be looking into what Confucius had to say about the social problem. And we're going to look at what some of the other religions had to say, again, coming back to Judaism,

with the profits of Israel, those tremendous interest. What they had to say about social justice. Yes, the social problems of our day will come into a kind of religious focus as we proceed in this course. Well, let me mention just one other problem. So problem of selfishness. Here's one that we all have with us all the time. Logically speaking, every man ought to count for just one. And I ought to be as concerned tonight about a child that doesn't have food in China as I am about my own child. But I don't need all that. Let me put it this way. Suppose I were to show you a picture, a group picture, in which you were a member. What space would you look for first? Well, you don't need to tell me.

We all search the road to see how we came out in that picture. And yet we know that this kind of selfishness often works against our true happiness. We find ourselves in our self-concern, standing in our own life as it works. Well, there are things in these religions. There are things in Christianity, which helped me with this problem. It helped me as to how to overcome this to some extent. And how to live with myself, to accept myself even with that part, which I am unable to overcome. Christianity has helped me on that problem. I can do with them. Also has some marvelous things to say on that stuff. When we turn them to the religions of man, the basic reason, which we will always have before us in this course, is that here we find answers.

Final answers may be, but certainly helpful answers to the deepest and most inescapable problems of human life. Now, there's another reason, however, that makes me interested in this mixture. And that is that there's power here. There's real power. These religions, they affect nations. They are moving forces, channeling forces, in the affairs of nations. We hear of religion as a power that moves mountains. Well, it's true. More than mountains moves whole nations. Let's look, for example, at India. Here it is. Everybody knows about India. She's very much in the news today. She doesn't like some of the things we're doing. We don't like some of the things she's doing.

But never mind, she's very much there and exercising a tremendous place in world of faith. Now, let's look from the nation to a man. This man, who is it? Well, I don't need to tell him. Tell me. You know him. Everybody knows who this man is. Someone once said, are there any people who, if their pictures were pledged on a screen anywhere in the world, would be recognized? And at this time, when the person was asking that question, he suggested there were three. Charlie Chaplin, Mickey Mouse, and this man's gun. So universally known that they would be recognized every. Here is the man who was the power behind free Indians. But now let's take it back one step first. If this was the man behind the country,

and it's moved for liberation, what's there a power behind the man? And I think the answer is yes. And for that power, we need to look at a book. Here it is. The Bhagavad Gita, an awkward name, you'll be learning to pronounce it as we go along. Gandhi's secretary once said that Gandhi's like every moment of it was a conscious attempt to fulfill the spirit of this book. Well, this is going to be one of the texts that we are reading in this course. And that, which was a part of Gandhi, will also become a part of peace. And I, for my part, will be more proud because there are people in our community

who know this great religious classic of another land. So we study the religions of the world then, not only because they give us health in our personal problems, the ones we can't get away from. We also study them because they are moving forces in world history. But there's another reason, a final reason, why I turn to this religious material, to the religions of me. And that is because it helps us understand the other people of the world. Someone is once asked this question. The historians, 500 years, a thousand years down the line when they're writing the record of the 20th century.

For what will they remember? Will it be because we were the ones who unlocked the secrets of the atomic bomb? Will our century be remembered for the spread of communism during the first half of the century? I don't think so. There's something about our century, which overshadows the others forces. And in comparison with which the atomic bomb and communism itself will in the perspective of history look like mere episodes. The most important thing, I believe, about the 20th century and after which we will be remembered, is that this is the first century in which East and West have met each other not merely significantly, but as equal. Now there's been plenty of meetings in the past. On an insignificant and equal basis,

there have also been meetings on a momentous basis, but as unequal. But today for the first time, we find these two have the worst, looking across at one another as equal. Now in this situation, nothing is more important than world understand. We live in a day when science has annihilated space, when the world has become not so much of globe as a globule. We live in a time when Formosa is on our backyard, and India is our next-door media. Now, in a time like this, nothing is more important than that the peoples of the world understand what else. Now, I'm not saying that there has been no understanding in the past, certainly their past. The role, for example, over a hundred years ago,

could say that his life had been made by two books, and that they are nature and the Bhagavad Gita, which we were just looking at. Shopenhauer, the day of the Upanishads, one of which we shall also be reading, that in the whole world there is no study so beautiful, and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death. Certainly there have been exchanges in the past. But, now today these exchanges are Crescendu. That which was merely a trickle is becoming a torrent of interchange. That which was only a whisper is now becoming a rule. Our very lives now are closely interlocked with the lives of other men. The daily paper carries an account of stories from twenty-six

in those words. Some of the interrelations between the people are of a very trivial nature. You know, for example, Cracker Jack, if everybody knows about Cracker Jack, my children like to pull out little savors, whistles in the life. Last summer, do you know what one of my girls pulled out from a Cracker Jack spot? Here it is. Let's see if we can see it. Using it? It's a coral reproduction of Shiva. This is Shiva. The image that we were just looking at. Well, Cracker Jack, it's trivial. It's a humorous symbol of the West. And yet, Cracker Jack and Shiva. The kind of symbol of our country. Now, not all the symbols are trivial of this kind. Let me tell you one other.

Which, again, to me is a kind of symbol. This is in concerned Robert Oppenheimer. I suppose there's no one whose name the public links more with the discovery of the atomic bomb than Robert Oppenheimer. He stands in a way as a kind of symbol for the West. Well, do you remember back to 1945 when the first experimental bomb was exploded on the desert of the sands of Alamo Gorge. We didn't know about it. It was secret then. But the story came out later. And the reporters crowded around Oppenheimer afterwards. And they asked him, what went through your mind during those final seconds as they were taking away four, three, two, one down to zero. And Oppenheimer said, well, frankly, I can't remember. I suppose I was concentrating so much on whether the bomb would go off to think about anything else. But I do remember that when the explosion took place,

the brilliant blinding flight and the mushroom cloud rose up. There flashed through my mind a verse from the Bhagavadhi. They hold, I am come as death, the wasteor of Jesus. This, too, is a kind of symbol to me of man interrelating. This man, a symbol of the West. But in this crucial moment in human history, what flashes through his mind? A verse from halfway around the world over 2,000 years ago. We live then in a time when any man who is only an amount, who is only a European or only an aviatic, is only half human. The other universal aspect of this life has yet to be born.

And those of you who follow us through this material will emerge, I feel sure, citizens of the world in a dimension that you have never been before. Now, let me come back in closing to religious art. It's wonderful, it's beautiful. We could fill the studio with marvelous examples. Michelangelo, this 16 ceiling we could have the reproductions here. We could have box music filling this room. They're not here. They won't be here. And why not? The answer is because we're not really interested in the aesthetic style. We're interested in the source of this great art, the idea. In a way, you and I here will be standing parallel to Michelangelo and to Bach. We'll be looking at the things that they look at when they create these works.

Now, this is going to be a course. They're going to be system in it. There's going to be rigor. There's going to be a good deal of hard work, too. I just thought this morning is rather a surprise. I'm going to be on TV. I'm going to have a program. I'm going to be a performer in a way. And yet, I'm not. I'm not a performer. I'm a teacher. And those of you who follow me seriously are students. They're going to be reading assignments. You're going to take an examination. Will it be worth it? Well, ultimately the answer is yours. But two quotations come into my mind. And one is that of the medical teacher who says to his students, we're going to be dealing with flesh, with nerves, with sinus. We're going to be dealing with them in a cold, blooded way.

But never forget, fellows. This stuff is a long. And that's what I hope you will never forget during these lessons. The final quote, I think, really, is to come back to Buddha, when he says to his people, those of you who have no problems go your way. We have nothing to do with that. But if there be any pain, then lean. Those of you who know the meaning of pain and wish, follow me. Thank you. Thank you.

The religions of man is produced by Washington University and KETC, the St. Louis Educational Television and Production Center. This is National Educational Television. Thank you.

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