There have been certain times in the history of man when events of the same kind have taken place in quite a number of parts of the earth. One such time was about the year 500 B.C. Within a hundred years on either side of that time the greatest teachers of religion were born in China, in India and in Greece.
In China there were two great religious teachers living at the same time, one in north China, by name K’ung-fu-tzu (Kung being the name of the tribe and ‘fu-tzu’ meaning ‘great teacher.’ The Latin form of this name is Confucius.
The great teacher in South China was Lao-Tze (the Old Wise Man). To this day the Chinese remember these two men with deep respect and the everyday life of China is chiefly ordered according to their teachings.
The teaching of Confucius was rather like the laws of Manu of the Hindus. It was chiefly rules about behavior of every sort, and for all sorts of men, from Kings and rulers downwards. Because their lives have been ordered by these wise rules for thousands of years, the Chinese have now great power of self control, and are able to do hard work and put up with troubles without giving up hope.
The teachings of Lao-tze were somewhat like those of the Hindu Upanishads, having to do with the question of what is true existence and how to know what is true.
At about the same time in India, the great teacher GAUTAMA BUDDHA, was teaching similar ideas. He was the son of a King of the Sakya Tribe, one of the Aryan tribes settled in the part of north India which is now Uttar Pradesh. Gautama did not wish to become a king. He was determined to find out the cause of sorrow and suffering which he saw around him, so that it might be got rid of. For many years he tried to get this knowledge. At last he said that he had made the discovery that the cause of all our pain and trouble is desire of three kinds:
- The desire first, to give pleasure to the sense of the body
- To continue our existence after the death of the body
- To have private property and the respect of others
If a man is able to overcome these desires by self control, he will then be completely happy whatever may happen. The Buddha made clear the steps to his self-control, which he named The Noble Eightfold Way. It is the strange fact that the religion of the Buddha has almost completely disappeared in his own country of India, but it has been taken far and wide into other lands like Ceylon, Burma, Siam, China and Japan, and even into Europe and America. Buddhism is still the religion of a larger number of men and women.
At the same time, there was another great teacher in north India, named Mahavira. The religion started by him is named Jainism, the religion of the Jains, the conquerors, or those who have overcome the troubles of life. The religion is somewhat like Buddhism. Like Buddha, Mahavira said that men must live without putting any other creature to death. The Jains take great care to carry out this order, some even covering their mouth so that small insects may not go in.
We know how Aryan tribes went into Europe, and how some settled in Greece and the islands of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. In one of these Greek islands, Samos, the great Greek teacher Pythagoras was born. Later, Pythagoras set up a school in the south of Italy. Another famous wise man of the Greeks was Socrates and after him came Plato who was at first a pupil of Socrates.
The wise men of Greeks are especially important, for with them modern ways of thinking begin. The great questioner was Socrates. He was always putting questions to others and carrying on arguments to make them give closer attention to their own belief, thoughts and acts, testing whether the belief were true or the action is right. Socrates was loved and respected by other wise men like Plato, but he was hated by those who did not wish to think carefully about what they thought and did. In the end these foolish men put Socrates to death, by making him drink poison.
Plato was one of the first men to write a book about a better system of living. In his book he gave an account of the ideas of Socrates; in one book, named The Republic, he described his idea of the best sort of government for a country, and the best way of living. Plato also set up a school in Athens which he named “The Academy”, and one of the pupils in that school was Aristotle who became the teacher of Alexander the Great.
Aristotle was a great scientist, always trying to discover the substance of which things are made, and how they have come into existence and do their work. We may say that modern science really began with Aristotle.
No comments:
Post a Comment