Buddhism originated as an atheistic system, with a philosophy and a code of morals higher, perhaps, than any heathen religion had reached before, or has since attained. It taught that the souls of all men had lived in a previous state of existence, and that all the sorrows of this life and punishments for sins committed in a previous state. Each human soul has whirled through countless eddies of existence, and has still to pass through a long succession of birth, pain, and death. All is fleeting -- nothing is real -- this life is all a delusion. After death, the soul must migrate for ages through stages of life, inferior or superior, until, perchance, it arrives at last in Nirvana, or absorption in Buddha. The true estate of the human soul, according to the Buddhist, is blissful annihilation.
Besides the cardinal prohibitions against murder, stealing, adultery, lying, drunkenness, and unchastity, “every shade of vice, hypocrisy, anger, pride, suspicion, greediness, gossiping, cruelty to animals, is guarded against by special precepts. Among the virtues recommended, we find not only reverence of parents, care of children, submission to authority, gratitude, moderation in time of prosperity, submission in time of trial, equanimity at all times; but virtue such as the duty of forgiving insults, and not rewarding evil with evil.” Whatever the practice of the people may be, they are taught, as laid down in their sacred books, the rules thus summarized above.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
