The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

by Karen Armstrong

The Axial peoples were all becoming acutely aware of the limitations of the human condition, but in other parts of the world, this did not stop them from reaching for the highest goals or developing a spiritual technology that would enable them to transcend the suffering of life. Indeed, it was the agonizing experience of their inherent vulnerability that impelled many of them to find the absolute within their own fragile selves. But the Greeks, it seemed, could see only the abyss.

Men and women believed that they were all caught up in the endless cycle of death and rebirth; their desires impelled them to act, and the quality of their actions would determine their state in the next life. Bad karma would mean that they could be reborn as slaves, animals, or plants. Good karma would ensure their rebirth as kings or gods. But this was not a happy ending: even gods would exhaust this beneficial karma, would die and be reborn in a less exalted state on earth. As this new concept took hold, the mood of India changed and many became depressed. They felt doomed to one transient life after another. Not even good karma could save them. When they looked around their community, they could see only pain and suffering. Even wealth and material pleasure was overshadowed by the grim reality of impending old age and mortality. In fact, they believed, worldly goods “sap . . . the energy of all the senses,” and hastened their decline.102 As this gloom intensified, people struggled to find a way out.

More and more people became disenchanted with the old Vedic rituals, which could not provide a solution to this problem. The best they could offer was rebirth in the world of the gods, but in the light of the new philosophy, this could only be a temporary release from the relentless recurrence of suffering and death. Further, people were beginning to notice that the rites did not even produce the material benefits they promised. Some rejected the ritual science of the Brahmanas. The Upanishads promised final liberation, but this spirituality was not for everybody. It was based on a close familiarity with the minutiae of Vedic thought that most people simply did not have, and many were doubtful about the identity of the brahman and atman, on which the whole system depended. Yoga offered moksha, but how did the yogin interpret the tranced states that he experienced? Could they be reconciled with Vedic orthodoxy? The Upanishads that were composed at about this time asserted that they could. The Katha Upanishad claimed that the atman (the true self) controlled the body in the same way as a rider managed his chariot. The yogin learned to keep his mind and senses under control like the good horses of a chariot driver. In this way, a person who “has understanding is mindful and always pure,” and would achieve release from the endless cycle of rebirth.103 But others were convinced that yoga was not enough. Something more was needed.

Life seemed even more violent and terrifying than when cattle rustling had been the backbone of the economy. Vedic religion appeared increasingly out of touch with contemporary reality. Merchants were constantly on the road, and could not keep the sacred fires burning or observe the traditional household rites. Animal sacrifice may have made sense when stock breeding had been the main occupation, but now that agriculture and trade had taken its place, cattle were becoming scarce and sacrifice seemed wasteful and cruel—too reminiscent of the violence of public life. People needed a different religious solution.

By the sixth century, countless schools had sprung up. Groups of disciples clustered around a teacher who had advocated a special way of life, promising that his dharma (“teaching”) would lead to liberation from death and rebirth. His pupils probably called him the Buddha or the Jina, because they believed that he had discovered the secret of enlightenment.

We know very little about these schools. India was still an oral society and most of these gurus left no written scriptures; often we rely on the polemic of their rivals, who probably distorted their teaching. These teachers had imbibed the competitive spirit of the age and vied fiercely with one another for disciples, taking to the roads to preach their dharma.

Crowds of renouncers in their yellow robes marched along the trade routes beside the merchants’ caravans, and their arrival was anticipated as eagerly as the traders’ wares. When a new teacher came to town, people turned up en masse to listen to him. There were passionate discussions involving all classes of society in the marketplace, the city hall, and the luxuriant tropical parks in the suburbs. Householders, who had no intention of leaving home but felt in need of new spiritual answers, often attached themselves to a school as lay supporters. The renouncers, the “silent sages,” walked quietly through the towns, begging for their food by holding out their bowls, and householders and ...

The latest teachings had a number of common elements: life was dukkha; to become free, you must rid yourself of the desire that led to activity, by means of asceticism and meditation. There were no elaborate texts and commentaries. These dharmas were strictly practical. The guru taught a method that was accessible to anybody who wanted to learn it; you did not have to be a scholar or a ritual expert. The program was usually based on a teacher’s own experience. If it worked and brought his disciple intimations of liberation and enlightenment, the dharma was valid. If it did nothing for him, he felt no compunction about abandoning his ...

One of the most important of these teachers was Makkhali Gosala (d. c. 385). A taciturn man and a severe ascetic, he preached religious fatalism: “Human effort is ineffective.” People were not responsible for their behavior. “All animals, creatures, beings and souls lack power and energy. They are bent this way and that by fate, by the necessary condition of their class, and by their individual nature.”

Gosala was said to have been a disciple of Vardhamana Jnatrputra (c. 497–425), who became one of the most important teachers of this period. His disciples called him Mahavira, “Great Hero.”

Indeed, for Mahavira, a deva was simply a creature who had attained kevala by perceiving and respecting the divine soul that existed in every single creature.

But, Mahavira was convinced, anybody who followed his regimen would automatically attain this ineffable state, and become a Jina. Hence his followers were known as the Jains, and his dharma was “the Way of the Conquerors.”

Jains were not interested in yoga but practiced their own type of meditation. Standing motionless, their arms hanging by their sides but not touching the body, monks rigorously suppressed every hostile thought or impulse, while, at the same time, they made a conscious effort to fill their minds with love and kindness toward all creatures.119 An experienced Jain would achieve a quasi-meditative state called samayika (“equanimity”), in which he knew, in every fiber of his person, that all creatures on the face of the earth were equal; at this time he felt exactly the same goodwill to all things, had no favorites, no pet hates, and did not distinguish a single being, however lowly, unpleasant, or insignificant, from himself.

During the fifth and fourth centuries, the Bible was compiled by editors and the more inclusive traditions of Israel and Judah were also represented. The traditions of P, who had insisted that no human beings were unclean, dominated the first three books of the Pentateuch and qualified the more exclusive vision of the Deuteronomists. Other books reminded Jews that King David himself was descended from Ruth, a woman of Moab. And the book of Jonah showed a Hebrew prophet being compelled by Yahweh to save the city of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire, which had destroyed the kingdom of Israel in 722.

The first phase of the Axial Age of Israel was over, but, as we shall see in the final chapter, it would enjoy a second flowering: Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam would all build on Israel’s Axial insights, and create a faith based upon the Golden Rule and the spirituality of “yielding,” empathy, and concern for everybody.

The exercise of logic was an essential part of the catharsis of tragedy. Aristotle would later claim that the “ability to reason well” was a sine qua non for the purifying emotion of pity.28 Without analytical rigor, you could not see the other’s point of view. For the Greeks, logic was not coolly analytical, but fraught with feeling.

Like Confucius, Socrates taught by discussion, and never proposed a definitive thesis.

Throughout the Axial Age, sages had been preoccupied with death. Socrates showed that it was possible for a human being to enjoy a serenity that transcended his circumstances, in the midst of pain and suffering.

Like many other renouncers, Gotama was convinced that life was dukkha, and that desire was responsible for our suffering.

Chinese meditation was based on the management of qi, a word that is difficult to translate. Qi was the raw material of life, its basic energy, and its primal spirit. It animated all beings and gave everything its distinctive shape and form. The dynamic, ceaselessly active substructure of reality, qi was not unlike the atoms of Democritus, except that it was more mystical. Under the guidance of the Way, the ultimate controlling force, it periodically accumulated in various combinations to form a rock, a plant, or a human being. But none of these creations was permanent. Eventually the qi would disperse: the person or plant would die, and the rock would disintegrate. But the qi was still alive; it would continue to roil in the cauldron of ceaseless change, and would eventually regroup and take on a different shape. Everything in the universe, therefore, shared the same life, albeit in different degrees of intensity.

The Greek word idea did not mean “idea” in the modern English sense. An idea or eidos was not a private, subjective mental construct, but a “form,” “pattern,” or “essence.” A form or idea was an archetype, the original pattern that gave each particular entity its distinctive shape and condition.

Plato may have harked back to an ancient mythical perception, but he was also inspired by the mathematics of his day. Inscribed over the door of the Academy was the motto “Let no one unacquainted with geometry enter here.”

Like the Pythagoreans, Plato believed that the cosmos was ordered on the fundamental ideas of number and geometry.

Like Plato, Aristotle believed that theologia, the study of God, was the “first philosophy” because it was concerned with the highest cause of being. He fully accepted Plato’s cosmic religion, seeing the universe as divine, the stars as living gods, and imagining a supreme being that existed beyond the divine craftsman and his creation. Aristotle’s God was not the first cause, because the universe was divine and eternal. Instead, he saw God as the Unmoved Mover. He noticed that everything that moved had been activated by something else.

Qin had a large barbarian population, which knew next to nothing about Zhou traditions, and the nobility was too weak and impoverished to put up any effective opposition to Shang’s revolutionary program. His reform, which flouted many of the major principles of the Axial Age, made the backward, isolated kingdom of Qin the most powerful and advanced state in China. At the end of the third century, as a result of Shang’s far-reaching measures, Qin would conquer all the other states, and in 221 its ruler would become the first historical emperor of China.

Everybody was subject to the same laws: even the crown prince was executed when found guilty of a minor offense.

Xunzi was convinced that if they used their intelligence and reasoning powers, people would realize that the only way to restore peace and good order was to create a moral society. Education was crucial. He took a leaf out of the Legalists’ book by admitting that the less intelligent would not understand this, and would have to be compelled, by a judicious system of law and punishments, to submit to a program of moral education.

It was our attitude, not our action, that determined the outcome of what we did. People were always able to sense the feeling and motivation that lay behind our words and deeds. The sage must learn to absorb hostility; if he retaliated to an atrocity there would certainly be a fresh attack.

Laozi was the last great Chinese sage of the Axial Age. His was an essentially utopian ideal. It is difficult to see how a sage who had reached this level of “emptiness” would ever come to power, since he would be incapable of the calculation that was necessary to win office.55 Like Mencius, Laozi may have nurtured some kind of messianic hope that the horrors of his time would impel the people to gravitate spontaneously toward a mystically inclined ruler. But, of course, it was not a Daoist sage but the Legalist state of Qin that ended the violence of the Warring States and unified the empire. This spectacular success seemed to prove that universal kingship could not be achieved without recourse to military power. It brought a peace of sorts, but spelt the death knell to the Axial hopes for morality, benevolence, and nonviolence. Under the empire, the Axial spiritualities would effect a synthesis and transmute into something quite different.

The Stoics taught that it was possible to align yourself with the divine process of nature only if you understood scientifically that it was programmed by the Logos and could not be altered.

The Bhagavad-Gita was one of the last great texts of the Axial Age, and it marks a moment of religious transition.

The spiritual revolution of the Axial Age had occurred against a backcloth of turmoil, migration, and conquest. It had often occurred between two imperial-style ventures. In China, the Axial Age finally got under way after the collapse of the Zhou dynasty and came to an end when Qin unified the warring states. The Indian Axial Age occurred after the disintegration of the Harappan civilization and ended with the Mauryan empire; the Greek transformation occurred between the Mycenaean kingdom and the Macedonian empire.

Karl Jaspers suggested, “The Axial Age can be called an interregnum between two ages of great empire, a pause for liberty, a deep breath bringing the most lucid consciousness.”1 Even the Jews, who had suffered so horribly from the imperial adventures in the Middle East, had been propelled into their Axial Age by the terrifying freedom that had followed the destruction of their homeland and the trauma of deportation that severed their link with the past and forced them to start again.

But by the end of the second century, the world had stabilized. In the empires that were established after the Axial Age, the challenge was to find a spirituality...

Because this was a new era, the emperor did not claim that he had received the mandate of Heaven. Instead he broke with tradition and appealed to a school of philosophers who had taken no part in the Chinese Axial Age.

As we have seen, the concept of yin and yang probably originated with the peasant communities of China, and the correlative cosmology adopted by the Qin could date back to the Neolithic period. Its resurgence at this point represented an intellectual regression, almost an escape from the challenging demands of the Axial Age. Its aim was to find correspondences between human and natural phenomena.

The bodhisattva was a new model of compassion, one that translated the old ideal of the Axial Age into a new form.

Christianity began as another of the first-century movements that tried to find a new way of being Jewish. It centered on the life and death of a Galilean faith healer who was crucified by the Romans in about 30 CE; his followers claimed that he had risen from the dead.

Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion and was deeply Jewish. Many of his sayings, recorded in the gospel, were similar to the teachings of the Pharisees. Like Hillel, Jesus taught a version of the Golden Rule.50 Like the rabbis, he believed that the commandments to love God with your whole heart and soul and your neighbor as yourself were the greatest mitzvoth of the Torah.51

The person who made Christianity a gentile religion was Paul, the first Christian writer, who believed that Jesus had also been the messiah, the anointed one (in Greek, christos). Paul was a diaspora Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia; a former Pharisee, he wrote in koine Greek. Bridging both worlds, he was convinced that he had a mission to the goyim, the foreign nations: Jesus had been a messiah for the gentiles as well as the Jews. Paul had the universal—“immeasurable”—vision of the Axial Age. God felt “concern for everybody.” He was convinced that Jesus’ death and resurrection had created a new Israel, open to the whole of humanity.

But because of this humiliating “descent,” God had raised him high and given him the supreme title kyrios (“Lord”), to the glory of God the Father. This vision was not dissimilar to the ideal of the bodhisattva, who voluntarily laid aside the bliss of nibbana for the sake of suffering humanity. Christians would come to see Jesus as an avatara of God, who had made a painful “descent” out of love in order to save the human race. But Paul did not quote the hymn to expound the doctrine of the incarnation. As a former Pharisee, he knew that religious truth had to be translated into action. He therefore introduced the hymn with this instruction to the Christians of Philippi: “In your minds, you must be the same as Christ Jesus.” They must also empty their hearts of egotism, selfishness, and pride. They must be united in love, “with a common purpose and a common mind.”

Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.58

The gospels, written between 70 and about 100 CE, follow Paul’s line. They did not present Jesus teaching doctrines, such as the Trinity or original sin, which would later become de rigueur. Instead they showed him practicing what Mozi might have called jian ai, “concern for everybody.”

To the dismay of some of his contemporaries, Jesus regularly consorted with “sinners”—prostitutes, lepers, epileptics, and those who were shunned for collecting the Roman taxes. His behavior often recalled the outreach of the Buddha’s “immeasurables,” because he seemed to exclude nobody from his radius of concern. He insisted that his followers should not judge others.59

The people who would be admitted to the kingdom would be those who practiced practical compassion, feeding the hungry and visiting people who were sick or in prison.60 His followers should give their wealth to the poor.61 They should not...

The final flowering of the Axial Age occurred in seventh-century Arabia, when the prophet Muhammad brought the Qur’an, a divinely inspired scripture, to the people of the Hijaz. Muhammad, of course, had never heard of the Axial Age, but he would probably have understood the concept. The Qur’an did not claim to be a new revelation, but simply to restate the message that had been given to Adam, the father of humanity, who was also the first prophet. It insisted that Muhammad had not come to replace the prophets of the past but to return to the primordial faith of Abraham, who lived before the Torah and the gospel—before, that is, the religions of God had split into warring sects.

God had sent messengers to every people on the face of the earth, and today Muslim scholars have argued that had the Arabs known about the Buddha or Confucius, the Qur’an would have endorsed their teachings too.

Like all the great Axial sages, Muhammad lived in a violent society, when old values were breaking down.

The Meccans were now rich beyond their wildest dreams, but in the stampede for wealth, old tribal values, which demanded that the community take care of the weaker members of the clan, had been forgotten.

There was widespread malaise, and the old pagan faith, which had served the Arabs well in their nomadic days in the desert, no longer met their altered circumstances.