The materialistic cultus of Fo

The Histoire de la magie of Éliphas Lévi includes a brief section on China. After extolling the occult wisdom of the I Ching and Confucius, Lévi has this to say about the next development in Chinese thought:

After Confucius came the materialistic Fo, who substituted the traditions of Indian sorcery for the remnants of Egyptian Transcendental Magic. The cultus of Fo paralysed the progress of the sciences in China, and the abortive civilisation of this great people collapsed into routine and stupor.

Who is this Fo? Have you never heard of him? Well, you probably have, but under a different name. Fó (佛), from the Old Chinese *but, is nothing other than the Chinese transliteration of a Pali and Sanskrit word we have adopted into English with minimal modification: Buddha. Fo is the Buddha, Siddharta Gautama, and the cultus of Fo is Buddhism.

Did Lévi realize this? Apparently not. His reference to "Indian sorcery" suggests an awareness that Fo was an Indian teacher whose thought was later adopted by the Chinese; on the other hand, he characterizes Confucianism as "Egyptian," so that may not mean much! His ignorance of the identity of Fo is evident in his statement that he came "after Confucius," when in fact the two lived at roughly the same time. Confucius lived c. 551-479 BC, and the Buddha's dates are generally given as either 563-483 or 480-400 BC. However, Buddhism (Fójiào, "doctrine of Fo") did not enter China until much later, in the first century AD, and Lévi apparently assumes that Fo was a Chinese person of that era.

Lévi's highly negative assessment of "Fo" can be contrasted with what he has to say about "Buddha" in India:

To the revelation of Krishna succeeded that of Buddha, who married the purest religion to philosophy of the highest kind. The happiness of the world was thus held to be secured and there was nothing further to expect, pending the tenth and final incarnation, when Vishnu will return in his proper form.

I take this as conclusive proof that Lévi did not know that Fo was the Buddha. How could he knowingly have said that the man "who married the purest religion to philosophy of the highest kind" was "materialistic" and caused the spiritual collapse of the Chinese civilization?

How is it possible to know anything at all about Fo-ism and its influence on Chinese civilization without also knowing that Fo is the Buddha? I attribute it to Lévi's being French. The English who went to China would already have been quite familiar with India, and would immediately have recognized Fo as the Chinese name for an Indian figure they already knew. The first French missionaries to China, in contrast, may well have known little or nothing about India and may have written about "Fo" without knowing who he was, and Lévi's understanding of Chinese religious history is presumably based on such French works.

I have been quoting A. E. Waite's English translation of Lévi's book. Waite always adds a footnote anytime he disagrees with Lévi or thinks he is in error, and yet he has nothing to say about "Fo," so he was also apparently unaware of the Fo-Buddha identity. But that is only to be expected. Waite would have learned about China by reading English books, written by people who knew who Fo was and therefore translated the title as Buddha. Like anyone else who reads Lévi without knowing any Chinese, he would probably have assumed that "Fo" was some Chinese figure he didn't happen to have heard of and wouldn't have found anything remarkable in that.

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The name Buddha has strongly positive connotations for most people. Even those who are not Buddhists generally think of him as someone who was very wise and deeply spiritual. What happens, though, if you read about the teachings of "Fo" and their influence on the Chinese civilization, but do so through a veil of ignorance, without knowing that this "Fo" is none other than the vaunted Buddha? Well, you might end up with an anomalous assessment like Lévi's: (1) that Fo was materialistic, (2) that he promoted low "sorcery" as opposed to high magic, and (3) that his influence put an end to the creativity of Chinese civilization.

How just is that assessment, if not of the historical Buddha himself, at least of Chinese Buddhism personified as "Fo"? I have no special knowledge of Chinese history, but here are my impressions as someone who has lived in Taiwan for nearly 20 years and has known many Chinese Buddhists.

To start with the second charge, sorcery in modern Taiwan is overwhelmingly a Taoist phenomenon, and orthodox Buddhists disapprove of it. Of course the line between the two religions can be very blurry, with many temples featuring statues of the Buddha or Guanyin (Avalokiteshvara) alongside those of the Taoist gods, but with very few exceptions all the Chinese sorcery I have ever seen or heard of has been purely Taoist in character, with little or no discernible Buddhist influence. Buddhist sorcery is apparently a thing (see Tibet), but plays little role in Chinese Buddhism as I know it.

About Buddhism's effect on Chinese creativity, it is an interesting possibility. It seems clear enough that ancient China was highly creative, and that modern China is not, but I'm not convinced that Buddhism is the reason. Journey to the West, for example, is a highly creative work of literature which is Buddhist -- though it can be argued that the Buddhism is only superficial and that its "heart" is still very Taoist. (Taoist influence in Journey to the West is perhaps comparable to "pagan" influence in The Divine Comedy.)

Materialism is the most interesting charge, though, and I think the most astute. At first glance, it seems absurd to say that Buddhism is more materialistic than the doctrine of Confucius, who had a deliberate policy of not saying anything about gods or spirits. Buddhism rejects the material as illusory, scorns money and physical pleasure, and teaches reincarnation, which implies the existence of spirits. How can that be called materialistic? On the other hand, Buddhism is notoriously the favorite religion of atheists, which must mean something.

Whether or not spirit is ontologically separate from matter (monism vs. dualism) is not really the point of materialism. Joseph Smith taught that "all spirit is matter" (D&C 131:7), but he was not in any meaningful sense a materialist. A true materialist is one who takes the features of material objects -- impermanence, determinism, ontological complexity, lack of inherent meaning -- and attributes them to everything. Chinese Buddhism as I know it (mostly through the late Chan Master Sheng-yen and his disciples) does that. There is a strong focus on the "causes and conditions" underlying everything, including human actions. Everything, including the human soul, is impermanent and lacking in reality because it is made up of parts whose current relationship or configuration will not last forever -- very close to "atoms and the void." Nothing, including human love, is ultimately real or has any significance; and the only real goal is the negative and highly materialistic one of the cessation of all suffering.

This may or may not be a distortion of what the Buddha originally taught, but I have read a bit of modern Chinese Buddhist literature and had long philosophical discussions with modern Chinese Buddhists, and I believe I am representing their thought -- "Fo" as he appears today -- fairly. And I believe that this "materialistic cultus of Fo" grew out of the original Buddhism just as naturally and inevitably as Epicureanism grew out of the thought of Plato.