Page 358 - Islam and Far Eastern Religions

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There is no doubt that the above extract shows what a great error
and perversion Buddhism actually is. Huxley was an admirer of
Buddhism because of these perverse aspects. According to the author

of the article entitled “Buddhism in Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics”
Vijitha Rajapakse,from the University of Hawaii, Huxley’s admiration
for Buddhism was partly due to the similarities he identified between
Buddhism and the ancient, pagan and atheist Greek philosophy:
“Huxley's evident tendency to link Buddhist thought with Western ideas,
which comes to the fore strikingly in his comments on the concept of sub-
stance, was further exemplified at other levels of his discussion as well. He
found the nontheistic stance taken by the early Buddhists to be analogous to
the outlook of Heracleitus and referred, in
addition, to "many parallelisms of
Stoicism and Buddhism." 152
Rajapakse notes not
only Huxley’s, but also

some other 19th century
atheists’ great admira-
tion for Buddhism.
One of the parallels
drawn at that time be-
tween Buddhism and
Western philosophy
involves the thought
of David Hume’s. The
18th century Scottish
thinker, Hume, was an

The 18the century atheist and
hostile-to-religion philoso-
pher David Hume

Islam And Far Eastern Religions