Buddhism came to touch the heart, to fire the imagination, to feed the intellect, to offer a code of lofty morals, to point out a pure life through self-denial, to awe the ignorant, and to terrify the doubting. A well-fed and clothed Anglo-Saxon, to whom conscious existence seems the very rapture of joy, and whose soul yearns for an eternity of life, may not understand how a human soul could ever long for utter absorption of being and personality, even in God, much less for total annihilation.
But, among the Asiatic poor, where ceaseless drudgery is often the lot for life, where a vegetable diet keeps the vital force low, where the tax-gatherer is the chief representative of government, where the earthquake and typhoon are so frequent and dreadful, and where the forces of nature are feared as malignant intelligences, life does not wear such charms as to lead the human soul to long for an eternity of it.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
