Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume I Part 17

Suppose, the Buddha once said to ananda[446], there were no birth, would there then be any old age or death? Clearly not. That is the meaning of saying that old age and death depend on birth: if birth were annihilated, they too would be annihilated. Similarly birth depends on Bhava which means becoming and does not imply anything self-existent and stationary: all the world is a continual process of coming into existence and pa.s.sing away. It is on the universality of this process that birth (jati) depends. But on what does the endless becoming itself depend? We seem here on the threshold of the deepest problems but the answer, though of wide consequences, brings us back to the strictly human and didactic sphere. Existence depends on Upadana. This word means literally grasping or clinging to and should be so translated here but it also means fuel and its use is coloured by this meaning, since Buddhist metaphor is fond of describing life as a flame. Existence cannot continue without the clinging to life, just as fire cannot continue without fuel[447].

The clinging in its turn depends on Ta?ha, the thirst or craving for existence. The distinction between ta?ha and upadana is not always observed, and it is often said ta?ha is the cause of karma or of sorrow.

But, strictly speaking, upadana is the grasping at life or pleasure: ta?ha is the incessant, unsatisfied craving which causes it. It is compared to the birana, a weed which infests rice fields and sends its roots deep into the ground. So long as the smallest piece of root is left the weed springs up again and propagates itself with surprising rapidity, though the cultivator thought he had exterminated it. This metaphor is also used to ill.u.s.trate how ta?ha leads to a new birth.

Death is like cutting down the plant: the root remains and sends up another growth.

We now seem to have reached an ultimate principle and basis, namely, the craving for life which transcends the limits of one existence and finds expression in birth after birth. Many pa.s.sages in the Pitakas justify the idea that the force which constructs the universe of our experience is an impersonal appet.i.te, a.n.a.logous to the Will of Schopenhauer. The shorter formula quoted above in which it is said that the sankharas come from ta?ha also admits of such an interpretation. But the longer chain does not, or at least it considers ta?ha not as a cosmic force but simply as a state of the human mind. Suffering can be traced back to the fact that men have desire. To what is desire due? To sensation. With this reply we leave the great mysteries at which the previous links seemed to hint and begin one of those enquiries into the origin and meaning of human sensation which are dear to early Buddhism. Just as there could be no birth if there were no existence, so there could be no desire if there were no sensation. What then is the cause of sensation?

Contact (pha.s.so). This word plays a considerable part in Buddhist psychology and is described as producing not only sensation but perception and volition (cetana)[448]. Contact in its turn depends on the senses (that is the five senses as we know them, and mind as a sixth) and these depend on name-and-form. This expression, which occurs in the Upanishads as well as in Buddhist writings, denotes mental and corporeal life. In explaining it the commentators say that form means the four elements and shape derived from them and that name means the three skandhas of sensation, perception and the sankharas. This use of the word nama probably goes back to ancient superst.i.tions which regarded a man's name as containing his true being but in Buddhist terminology it is merely a technical expression for mental states collectively.

Buddhaghosa observes that name-and-form are like the playing of a lute which does not come from any store of sound and when it ceases does not go to form a store of sound elsewhere.

On what do name-and-form depend? On consciousness. This point is so important that in teaching ananda the Buddha adds further explanations.

"Suppose," he says, "consciousness were not to descend into the womb, would name-and-form consolidate in the womb? No, Lord. Therefore, ananda, consciousness is the cause, the occasion, the origin of name-and-form." But consciousness according to the Buddha's teaching[449] is not a unity, a thinking soul, but mental activity produced by various appropriate causes. Hence it cannot be regarded as independent of name-and-form and as their generator. So the Buddha goes on to say that though name-and-form depend on consciousness it is equally true that consciousness depends on name-and-form. The two together make human life: everything that is born, and dies or is reborn in another existence[450], is name-and-form plus consciousness.

What we have learnt hitherto is that suffering depends on desire and desire on the senses. For didactic purposes this is much, but as philosophy the result is small: we have merely discovered that the world depends on name-and-form plus consciousness, that is on human beings.

The first two links of the chain (the last in our examination) do not leave the previous point of view-the history of individual life and not an account of the world process-but they have at least that interest which attaches to the mysterious.

"Consciousness depends on the sankharas." Here the sankharas seem to mean the predispositions anterior to consciousness which accompany birth and hence are equivalent to one meaning of Karma, that is the good and bad qualities and tendencies which appear when rebirth takes place.

Perhaps the best commentary on the statement that consciousness depends on the sankharas is furnished by a Sutta called Rebirth according to the sankharas[451]. The Buddha there says that if a monk possessed of the necessary good qualities cherishes a wish to be born after death as a n.o.ble, or in one of the many heavens, "then those predispositions (sankhara) and mental conditions (viharo) if repeated[452] conduce to rebirth" in the place he desires. Similarly when Citta is dying, the spirits of the wood come round his death-bed and bid him wish to be an Emperor in his next life. Thus a personality with certain predispositions and apt.i.tudes may be due to the thought and wishes of a previous personality[453], and these predispositions, a.s.serts the last article of the formula, depend upon ignorance. We might be tempted to identify this ignorance with some cosmic creative force such as the Unconscious of Hartmann or the Maya of Sankara. But though the idea that the world of phenomena is a delusion bred of ignorance is common in India, it does not enter into the formula which we are considering. Two explanations of the first link are given in the Pitakas, which are practically the same. One[454] states categorically that the ignorance which produces the sankharas is not to know the four Truths.

Elsewhere[455] the Buddha himself when asked what ignorance means replies that it is not to know that everything must have an origin and a cessation. The formula means that it is ignorance of the true nature of the world and the true interests of mankind that brings about the suffering which we see and feel. We were born into the world because of our ignorance in our last birth and of the desire for re-existence which was in us when we died.

Of the supreme importance attached to this doctrine of causation there can be no doubt. Perhaps the best instance is the story of Sariputta's conversion. In the early days of the Buddha's mission he asked for a brief summary of the new teaching and in reply the essential points were formulated in the well-known verses which declare that all things have a cause and an end[456]. Such utterances sound like a scientific dictum about the uniformity of nature or cosmic law. But though the Pitakas imply some such idea, they seem to shrink from stating it clearly. They do not emphasize the orderly course of nature or exhort men to live in harmony with it. We are given to understand that the intelligence of those supermen who are called Buddhas sees that the four Truths are a consequence of the nature of the universe but subsequent instruction bids us attend to the truths themselves and not to their connection with the universal scheme. One reason for this is that Indians were little inclined to think of impersonal laws and forces[457]. The law of karma and the periodic rhythm of growth and decay which the universe obeys are ideas common to Hinduism and Buddhism and not incompatible with the mythology and ritual to which the Buddha objected. And though the Pitakas insist on the universality of causation, they have no notion of the uniformity of nature in our sense[458]. The Buddhist doctrine of causation states that we cannot obtain emanc.i.p.ation and happiness unless we understand and remove the cause of our distress, but it does not discuss cosmic forces like karma and Maya. Such discussion the Buddha considered unprofitable[459] and perhaps he may have felt that insistence on cosmic law came dangerously near to fatalism[460].

Though the number of the links may be varied the Buddha attached importance to the method of concatenation and the impersonal formulation of the whole and in one pa.s.sage[461] he objects to the questions, what are old age and death and who is it that has old age and death. Though the chain of causation treats of a human life, it never speaks of a person being born or growing old and Buddhaghosa[462] observes that the Wheel of existence is without known beginning, without a personal cause or pa.s.sive recipient and empty with a twelvefold emptiness. It has no external cause such as Brahma or any deity "and is also wanting in any ego pa.s.sively recipient of happiness and misery."

The twelve Nidanas have pa.s.sed into Buddhist art as the Wheel of Life.

An ancient example of this has been discovered in the frescoes of Ajanta and modern diagrams, which represent the explanations current in mediaeval India, are still to be found in Tibet and j.a.pan[463]. In the nave of the wheel are three female figures signifying pa.s.sion, hatred and folly and in the s.p.a.ces between the spokes are scenes depicting the phases of human life: round the felly runs a series of pictures representing the twelve links of the chain. The first two links are represented by a blind man or blind camel and by a potter making pots.

The third, or consciousness, is an ape. Some have thought that this figure represents the evolution of mind, which begins to show itself in animals and is perfected in man. It may however refer to a simile found in the Pitakas[464] where the restless, changeable mind is compared to a monkey jumping about in a tree.

5

We have now examined three of the four Truths, for the Chain of Causation in its positive form gives us the origin of suffering and in its negative form the facts as to the extinction of suffering: it teaches that as its links are broken suffering disappears. The fourth truth, or the way which leads to the extinction of suffering, gives practical directions to this effect. The way is the n.o.ble Eightfold Path consisting of: right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right rapture. This formula is comparable not with the Decalogue, to which correspond the precepts for monks and laymen, but rather with the Beat.i.tudes. It contains no commands or prohibitions but in the simplest language indicates the spirit that leads to emanc.i.p.ation. It breathes an air of n.o.ble freedom. It says nothing about laws and rites: it simply states that the way to be happy is to have a good heart and mind, taking shape in good deeds and at last finding expression and fulfilment in the rapture of ecstasy. We may think the numerical subdivisions of the Path pedantic and find fault with its want of definition, for it does not define the word right (samma) which it uses so often, but in thus ignoring ceremonialism and legalism and making simple goodness in spirit and deed the basis of religion. Gotama rises above all his contemporaries and above all subsequent teachers except Christ. In detaching the perfect life from all connection with a deity or outside forces and in teaching man that the worst and best that can happen to him lie within his own power, he holds a unique position.

Indian thought has little sympathy with the question whether morality is utilitarian or intuitionist, whether we do good to benefit ourselves or whether certain acts and states are intrinsically good. The Buddha is a physician who prescribes a cure for a disease-the disease of suffering-and that cure is not a quack medicine which pretends to heal rapidly but a regime and treatment. If we ask whether the reason for following the regime is that it is good for us or that it is scientifically correct; or why we want to be well or whether health is really good: both the Buddha and the physician would reply that such questions are tiresome and irrelevant. With an appearance of profundity, they ask nothing worth answering. The eightfold path is the way and the only way of salvation. Its form depends on the fact that the knowledge of the Buddha, which embraces the whole universe, sees that it is a consequence of the nature of things. In that sense it may be described as an eternal law, but this is not the way in which the Pitakas usually speak of it and it is not represented as a divine revelation dictated by other than human motives. "Come, disciples," the Buddha was wont to say, "lead a holy life for the complete extinction of suffering." Holiness is simply the way out of misery into happiness. To ask why we should take that way, would seem to an Indian an unnecessary question, as it might seem to a Christian if he were asked why he wants to save his soul, but if the question is pressed, the answer must be at every point, for the Christian as much as for the Buddhist, to gain happiness[465].

Incidentally the happiness of others is fully cared for, since both religions make unselfishness the basis of morality and hold that the conscious and selfish pursuit of happiness is not the way to gain it, but if we choose to apply European methods of a.n.a.lysis to the Buddha's preaching, it is utilitarian. But the fact that he and his first disciples did not think such a.n.a.lysis and discussion necessary goes far to show that the temper created in his Order was not religiously utilitarian. It never occurred to them to look at things that way.

The eightfold path is the road to happiness but it is the way, not the destination, and the action of the Buddha and his disciples is something beyond it. They had obtained the goal, for they were all Arhats, and they might, if they had been inspired by that selfishness which some European authors find prominent in Buddhism, have entered into their rest. Yet the Buddha bade them go among men and preach "for the gain and welfare of many" and they continued their benevolent activity although it could add nothing to the reward which they had already won.

The Buddha often commented on the eightfold path, and we may follow one of the expositions attributed to him[466]. What, he asks, is meant by right views (_Sammadi??hi_)? Simply a knowledge of the four truths, and of such doctrines about personality and karma as are implied in them.

But the negative aspects of this _Sammadi??hi_ are more striking than the positive. It does not imply any philosophical or metaphysical system: the Buddha has shaken off all philosophical theories[467].

Secondly, it does not imply that any knowledge or belief is of efficacy in itself, as the lore of the Brahmans is supposed to be or those Christian creeds which save by faith. The Buddha has not a position such as the Church attributes to Christ, or later Buddhism to Amida. All that is required under the head of right belief is a knowledge of the general principles and programme of Buddhism.

The Buddha continues, What is right resolve? It is the resolve to renounce pleasures, to bear no malice and do no harm. What is right speech? To abstain from lying and slandering, harsh words and foolish chatter. What is right conduct? To abstain from taking life, from stealing, from immorality. What is right livelihood? To abandon wrong occupations and get one's living by a right occupation. This is elsewhere defined as one that does not bring hurt or danger to any living thing, and five bad occupations are enumerated, namely, those of a caravan-trader, slave-dealer, butcher, publican and poison seller.

European critics of Buddhism have often found fault with its ethics as being a morality of renunciation, and in the explanation epitomized above each section of the path is interpreted in this way. But this negative form is not a peculiarity of Buddhism. Only two of the commandments in our Decalogue are positive precepts; the rest are prohibitions. The same is true of most early codes. The negative form is at once easier and more practical for it requires a mental effort to formulate any ideal of human life; it is comparatively easy to note the bad things people do, and say, don't. The pruning of the feelings, the cutting off of every tendril which can cling to the pleasures of sense, is an essential part of that mental cultivation in which the higher Buddhism consists. But the Pitakas say clearly that what is to be eliminated is only bad mental states. Desire for pleasure and striving after wealth are bad, but it does not follow that desire and striving are bad in themselves. Desire for what is good (Dhammachando as opposed to Kamachando) is itself good, and the effort to obtain nirvana is often described as a struggle or wrestling[468]. Similarly though absolute indifference to pains and pleasures is the ideal for a Bhikkhu, this by no means implies, as is often a.s.sumed, a general insensibility and indifference, the harmless oyster-like life of one who hurts n.o.body and remains in his own sh.e.l.l. European criticisms on the selfishness and pessimism of Buddhism forget the cheerfulness and buoyancy which are the chief marks of its holy men. The Buddhist saint is essentially one who has freed himself. His first impulse is to rejoice in his freedom and share it with others, not to abuse the fetters he has cut away. Active benevolence and love[469] are enjoined as a duty and praised in language of no little beauty and earnestness. In the Itivuttaka[470] the following is put into the mouth of Buddha. "All good works whatever[471]

are not worth one sixteenth part of love which sets free the heart. Love which sets free the heart comprises them: it s.h.i.+nes, gives light and radiance. Just as the light of all the stars is not worth one sixteenth of the light of the moon: as in the last month of the rains in the season of autumn, when the sky is clear and cloudless the sun mounts up on high and overcomes darkness in the firmament: as in the last hour of the night when the dawn is breaking, the morning star s.h.i.+nes and gives light and radiance: even so does love which sets free the soul and comprises all good works, s.h.i.+ne and give light and radiance." So, too, the Sutta-Nipata bids a man love not only his neighbour but all the world. "As a mother at the risk of her life watches over her own child, her only child, so let every one cultivate a boundless love towards all beings[472]." Nor are such precepts left vague and universal. If some of his acts and words seem wanting in family affection, the Buddha enjoined filial piety as emphatically as Moses or Confucius. There are two beings, he says, namely Father and Mother, who can never be adequately repaid[473]. If a man were to carry his parents about on his shoulders for a hundred years or could give them all the kingdoms and treasures of the earth, he still would not discharge his debt of grat.i.tude[474]. But whereas Confucius said that the good son does not deviate from the way of his father, the Buddha, who was by no means conservative in religious matters, said that the only way in which a son could repay his parents was by teaching them the True Law.

The Buddha defines the sixth section of the path more fully than those which precede. Right effort, he says, is when a monk makes an effort, and strives to prevent evil states of mind from arising: to suppress them if they have arisen: to produce good states of mind, and develop and perfect them. Hitherto we have been considering morality, indispensable but elementary. This section is the beginning of the specially Buddhist discipline of mental cultivation. The process is apt to seem too self-conscious: we wonder if a freer growth would not yield better fruits. But in a comparison with the similar programmes of other religions Buddhism has little to fear. Its methods are not morbid or introspective: it does not fetter the intellect with the bonds of authority. The disciple has simply to discriminate between good and bad thoughts, to develop the one and suppress the other. It is noticeable that under this heading of right effort, or right wrestling as it is sometimes called, both desire and striving for good ends are consecrated. Sloth and torpor are as harmful to spiritual progress as evil desires and as often reprimanded. Also the aim is not merely negative: it is partly creative. The disciple is not to suppress will and feeling, but he is to make all the good in him grow; he should foster, increase and perfect it.

What is right-mindfulness[475], the seventh section of the path? It is "When a monk lives as regards the body, observant of the body, strenuous, conscious, mindful and has rid himself of covetousness and melancholy": and similarly as regards the sensations, the mind and phenomena. The importance of this mindfulness is often insisted on. It amounts to complete self-mastery by means of self-knowledge which allows nothing to be done heedlessly and mechanically and controls not merely recognized acts of volition but also those sense-impressions in which we are apt to regard the mind as merely receptive. "Self is the lord of self: who else should be the lord? With self well subdued, a man finds a lord such as few can find[476]."

Although the Buddha denies that there is any soul or self (atta) apart from the skandhas, yet here his ethical system seems to a.s.sume that a ruling principle which may be called self does exist. Nor is the discrepancy fully explained by saying that the non-existence of self or soul is the correct dogma and that expressions like self being the lord of self are concessions to the exigencies of exposition. The evolution of the self-controlled saint out of the confused mental states of the ordinary man is a psychological difficulty. As we shall see, when the eightfold path has been followed to the end new powers arise in the mind, new lights stream into it. Yet if there is no self or soul, where do they arise, into what do they stream?

The doctrine of Gotama as expressed in his earliest utterance on the subject to the five monks at Benares is that neither the body, nor any mental faculty to which a name can be given, is what was called in Brahmanic theology atman, that is to say an ent.i.ty which is absolutely free, imperishable, changeless and not subject to pain. This of course does not exclude the possibility that there may be something which does not come under any of the above categories and which may be such an ent.i.ty as described. Indeed Brahmanic works which teach the existence of the atman often use language curiously like that of Buddhism. Thus the Bhagavad-gita[477] says that actions are performed by the Gu?as and only he who is deluded by egoism thinks "I am the doer." And the Vishnu Purana objects to the use of personal p.r.o.nouns. "When one soul is dispersed in all bodies, it is idle to ask who are you, who am I[478]?"

The accounts of the Buddhist higher life would be easier to understand if we could suppose that there is such a self: that the pilgrim who is walking in the paths gradually emanc.i.p.ates, develops and builds it up: that it becomes partly free in nirvana before death and wholly free after death. Schrader[479] has pointed out texts in the Pitakas which seem to imply that there is something which is absolute and therefore not touched by the doctrine of anatta. In a remarkable pa.s.sage[480] the Buddha says: Therefore my disciples get rid of what is not yours. To get rid of it will mean your health and happiness for a long time. Form, sensation, perception, etc., are not yours; get rid of them. If a man were to take away, or burn, or use for his needs, all the gra.s.s, and boughs, and branches and leaves in this Jeta wood, would it ever occur to you to say, the man is taking _us_ away, burning _us_, or using _us_ for his needs? Certainly not, Lord. And why not? Because, Lord, it is not our self or anything belonging to our self. Just in the same way, replies the Buddha, get rid of the skandhas. The natural sense of this seems to be that the skandhas have no more to do with the real being of man than have the trees of the forest where he happens to be[481]. This suggests that there is in man something real and permanent, to be contrasted with the transitory skandhas and when the Buddha asks whether anything which is perishable and changeable can be called the self, he seems to imply that there is somewhere such a self. But this point cannot be pressed, for it is perfectly logical to define first of all what you mean by a ghost and then to prove that such a thing does not exist. If we take the pa.s.sages at present collected as a whole, and admit that they are somewhat inconsistent or imperfectly understood, the net result is hardly that the name of self can be given to some part of human nature which remains when the skandhas are set on one side.

But though the Buddha denied that there is in man anything permanent which can be called the self, this does not imply a denial that human nature can by mental training be changed into something different, something infinitely superior to the nature of the ordinary man, perhaps something other than the skandhas[482]. One of his princ.i.p.al objections to the doctrine of the permanent self was that, if it were true, emanc.i.p.ation and sanct.i.ty would be impossible[483], because human nature could not be changed. In India the doctrine of the atman was really dangerous, because it led a religious man to suppose that to ensure happiness and emanc.i.p.ation it is only necessary to isolate the atman by self-mortification and by suppressing discursive thought as well as pa.s.sion. But this, the Buddha teaches, is a capital error. That which can make an end of suffering is not something lurking ready-made in human nature but something that must be built up: man must be reborn, not flayed and stripped of everything except some core of unchanging soul. As to the nature of this new being the Pitakas are reticent, but not absolutely silent, as we shall see below. Our loose use of language might possibly lead us to call the new being a soul, but it is decidedly not an atman, for it is something which has been brought into being by deliberate effort. The collective name for these higher states of mind is _panna_[484], wisdom or knowledge. This word is the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit _prajna_ and is interesting as connecting early and later Buddhism, for _prajna_ in the sense of transcendental or absolute knowledge plays a great part in Mahayanism and is even personified.

The Pitakas imply that Buddhas and Arhats can understand things which the ordinary human mind cannot grasp and human words cannot utter. Later Indian Buddhists had no scruples in formulating what the master left unformulated. They did not venture to use the words atman or atta, but they said that the saint can rise above all difference and plurality, transcend the distinction between subject and object and that nirvana is the absolute (Bhutatathata). The Buddha would doubtless have objected to this terminology as he objected to all attempts to express the ineffable but perhaps the thought which struggles for expression in such language is not far removed from his own thought.

One of the common Buddhist similes for human life is fire and it is the best simile for illuminating all Buddhist psychology. To insist on finding a soul is like describing flames as substances. Fire is often spoken of as an element but it is really a process which cannot be isolated or interrupted. A flame is not the same as its fuel and it can be distinguished from other flames. But though you can individualize it and propagate it indefinitely, you cannot isolate it from its fuel and keep it by itself. Even so in the human being there is not any soul which can be isolated and go on living eternally but the a.n.a.logy of the flame still holds good. Unseizable though a flame may be, and undefinable as substance, it is not unreasonable to trim a fire and make a flame rise above its fuel, free from smoke, clear and pure. If it were a conscious flame, such might be its own ideal.

The eighth and last section of the path is samma-samadhi, right concentration or rapture. Mental concentration is essential to samadhi, which is the opposite of those wandering desires often blamed as seeking for pleasure here and there. But samadhi is more than mere concentration or even meditation and may be rendered by rapture or ecstasy, though like so many technical Buddhist terms it does not correspond exactly to any European word. It takes in Buddhism the place occupied in other religions by prayer-prayer, that is, in the sense of ecstatic communion with the divine being. The sermon[485] which the Buddha preached to King Ajatasattu on the fruits of the life of a recluse gives an eloquent account of the joys of samadhi. He describes how a monk[486] seats himself in the shade of a tree or in some mountain glen and then "keeping his body erect and his intelligence alert and intent" purifies his mind from all l.u.s.t, ill-temper, sloth, fretfulness and perplexity.

When these are gone, he is like a man freed from jail or debt, gladness rises in his heart and he pa.s.ses successively through four stages of meditation[487]. Then his whole mind and even his body is permeated with a feeling of purity and peace. He concentrates his thoughts and is able to apply them to such great matters as he may select. He may revel in the enjoyment of supernatural powers, for we cannot deny that the oldest doc.u.ments which we possess credit the sage with miraculous gifts, though they attach little importance to them, or he may follow the train of thought which led the Buddha himself to enlightenment. He thinks of his previous births and remembers them as clearly as a man who has been a long walk remembers at the end of the day the villages through which he has pa.s.sed. He thinks of the birth and deaths of other beings and sees them as plainly as a man on the top of a house sees the people moving in the streets below. He realizes the full significance of the four truths and he understands the origin and cessation of the three great evils, love of pleasure, love of existence and ignorance. And when he thus sees and knows, his heart is set free. "And in him thus set free there arises the knowledge of his freedom and he knows that rebirth has been destroyed, the higher life has been led, what had to be done has been done. He has no more to do with this life. Just as if in a mountain fastness there were a pool of water, clear, translucent and serene and a man standing on the bank and with eyes to see should perceive the mussels and the sh.e.l.ls, the gravel and pebbles and the shoals of fish as they move about or lie within it."

Similar accounts occur in many other pa.s.sages with variations in the number of stages described. We must not therefore insist on the details as essential. But in all cases the process is marked by mental activity.

The meditations of Indian recluses are often described as self-hypnotism, and I shall say something on this point elsewhere, but it is clear that in giving the above account the Buddha did not contemplate any mental condition in which the mind ceases to be active or master of itself. When, at the beginning, the monk sits down to meditate it is "with intelligence alert and intent": in the last stage he has the sense of freedom, of duty done, and of knowledge immediate and unbounded, which sees the whole world spread below like a clear pool in which every fish and pebble is visible.

6

With this stage he attains Nirva?a[488], the best known word and the most difficult to explain in all the vocabulary of Buddhism.

It is perhaps used more by western students than by oriental believers and it belongs to the same department of religious language as the word saint. For most Christians there is something presumptuous in trying to be a saint or in defining the precise form of bliss enjoyed by saints in heaven and it is the same with nirvana. Yet no one denies that sanct.i.ty and nirvana are religious ideals. In a pa.s.sage already quoted[489], Gotama described how in attaining Buddhahood he sought and arrived at the incomparable security of nirvana in which there is no birth, age, sickness, death, pain or defilement. This, confirmed by many other statements, shows that nirvana is a state attainable in this existence and compatible with a life of intellectual and physical exertion such as he himself led. The original meaning is the state of peace and happiness in which the fires of l.u.s.t, hatred and stupidity are extinguished and the participle _nibbuto_ apparently derived from the same root had pa.s.sed into popular language in the sense of happy[490]. Two forms of nirvana are distinguished. The first is upadi-sesa-nibbanam[491] or nirvana in which the skandhas remain, although pa.s.sion is destroyed.

This state is also called arhats.h.i.+p, the condition of an arhat, meaning originally a worthy or venerable man, and the person enjoying it is alive. The idea that the emanc.i.p.ated saint who has attained the goal still lingers in the world, though no longer of the world, and teaches others, is common to all Indian religions. With the death of an arhat comes the state known as an-upadi-sesa-nibbanam in which no skandhas remain. It is also called Parinibbanam and this word and the participle parinibbuto are frequently used with special reference to the death of the Buddha[492]. The difference between the two forms of nirvana is important though the second is only the continuation of the first.

Nirvana in this life admits of approximate definition: it is the goal of the religious life, though only the elect can even enter the struggle.

Nirvana after death is not a goal in the same sense. The correct doctrine is rather that death is indifferent to one who has obtained nirvana and the difficulty of defining his nature after death does not mean that he has been striving for something inexplicable and illusory.

Arhats.h.i.+p is the aim and sum of the Buddha's teaching: it is a.s.sociated in many pa.s.sages with love for others, with wisdom, and happiness and is a condition of perfection attainable in this life. The pa.s.sages in the Pitakas which seem to be the oldest and the most historical suggest that the success of the Buddha was due to the fact that he subst.i.tuted for the chilly ideal of the Indian Munis something more inspiring and more visibly fruitful, something akin to what Christ called the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus we are told in the Vinaya that Bhaddiya was found sitting at the foot of a tree and exclaiming ecstatically, O happiness, happiness. When asked the reason of these e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, he replied that formerly when he was a raja he was anxious and full of fear but that now, even when alone in the forest, he had become tranquil and calm, "with mind as peaceful as an antelope's."

Nirvana is frequently described by such adjectives as deathless, endless and changeless. These epithets seem to apply to the quality, not to the duration of the arhat's existence (for they refer to the time before the death of the body) and to signify that in the state which he has attained death and change have no power over him. He may suffer in body but he does not suffer in mind, for he does not identify himself with the body or its feelings[493].

Numerous pa.s.sages could be quoted from the poetical books of the Pali Canon to the effect that nirvana is happiness and the same is stated in the more dogmatic and logical portions. Thus we hear of the bliss of emanc.i.p.ation and of the happiness which is based on the religious life[494] and the words "Nirvana is the greatest happiness" are put into Gotama's own mouth[495]. The middle way preached by him is declared to be free from all distress, and those who walk in it make an end of pain even in this life[496]. In one pa.s.sage[497] Gotama is found meditating in a wood one winter night and is asked if he feels well and happy. The night is cold, his seat is hard, his clothes are light and the wind bitter. He replies emphatically that he is happy. Those who live in comfortable houses suffer from the evils of l.u.s.t, hatred and stupidity but he has made an end of those evils and therefore is happy. Thus nirvana is freedom and joy: it is not extinction in the sense we give the word but light to them that sit in darkness, release to those in prison and torture. But though it is legitimately described in terms which imply positive happiness it transcends all human standards of good and evil, pleasure and pain. In describing the progress to it we all-whether Indians or Europeans-necessarily use such words as better, higher, happier, but in truth it is not to be expressed in terms of such values. In an interesting sutta[498] a Jain argues that happiness is the goal of life. But the Buddha states categorically first that perfect happiness is only attainable by abandoning the conscious pursuit of happiness and secondly that even absolute happiness when attained is not the highest goal: there is a better state beyond, and that state is certainly not annihilation or extinction of feeling, for it is described in terms of freedom and knowledge.

The Dhamma-sanga?i speaks of Nirvana as the Uncompounded Element[499]

and as a state not productive of good or evil. Numerous a.s.sertions[500]

are made about it incidentally but, though we hear that it is perfected and supramundane, most of the epithets are negative and amount to little more than that it transcends, or is absolutely detached from, all human experience. Uncompounded (asankhato) may refer to the pa.s.sing away of all sankharas but what may be the meaning of dhatu or element in this context, I do not presume to conjecture. But whatever else the word may mean, it clearly does not signify annihilation. Both here and in the Questions of Milinda an impression is produced in the mind of the reader, and perhaps was not absent in the mind of the writer, that nirvana is a sphere or plane of existence resembling though excelling s.p.a.ce or ether. It is true that the language when carefully examined proves to be cautious and to exclude material interpretations but clearly the expositor when trying to make plain the inexplicable leaned to that side of error rather than towards annihilation[501].

Somewhat similar is the language attributed to the Buddha in the Udana[502]. "There is a state (ayatanam) where there is neither earth nor water, fire nor air, nor infinity either of s.p.a.ce or of consciousness, nor nothingness, nor the absence of perception or non-perception[503], neither this world nor another, neither sun nor moon. That I call neither coming, going, nor standing, neither death nor birth. It is without stability, without movement, without basis: it is the end of sorrow, unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, uncompounded[504]."

The statements about nirvana in the Questions of Milinda are definite and interesting. In this work[505], Nagasena tells King Milinda that there are two things which are not the result of a cause, to wit s.p.a.ce and Nirvana. Nirvana is unproduceable (which does not mean unattainable) without origin, not made of anything and uncompounded. He who orders his life aright pa.s.ses beyond the transitory, and gains the Real, the highest fruit. And when he has gained that, he has realized Nirvana[506].

The parts of the Pitakas which seem oldest leave the impression that those who heard and understood the Buddha's teaching at once attained this blissful state, just as the Church regards the disciples of Christ as saints. But already in the Pitakas[507] we find the idea that the struggle to obtain nirvana extends over several births and that there are four routes leading to sanctification. These routes are described by the names of those who use them and are commonly defined in terms of release from the ten fetters binding man to the world[508]. The first is the Sotapanno, he who has entered into the stream and is on his way to salvation. He has broken the first three fetters called belief in the existence of self, doubt, and trust in ceremonies or good works. He will be born again on earth or in some heaven but not more than seven times before he attains nirvana. He who enters on the next stage is called Sakadagamin or coming once, because he will be born once more in this world[509] and in that birth attain nirvana. He has broken the fetters mentioned and also reduced to a minimum the next two, l.u.s.t and hate. The Anagamin, or he who does not return, has freed himself entirely from these five fetters and will not be reborn on earth or any sensuous heaven but in a Brahma world once only. The fourth route is that of the Arhat who has completed his release by breaking the bonds called love of life, pride, self-righteousness and ignorance and has made an end of all evil and impurity. He attains nirvana here and is no more subject to rebirth. This simple and direct route is the one contemplated in the older discourses but later doctrine and popular feeling came to regard it as more and more unusual, just as saints grow fewer as the centuries advance further from the Apostolic age. In the dearth of visible Arhats it was consoling to think that nirvana could be won in other worlds.

The nirvana hitherto considered is that attained by a being living in this or some other world. But all states of existence whatever come to an end. When one who has not attained nirvana dies, he is born again.

But what happens when an Arhat or a Buddha dies? This question did not fail to arouse interest during the Buddha's lifetime yet in the Pitakas the discussion, though it could not be stifled, is relegated to the background and brought forward only to be put aside as unpractical. The greatest teachers of religion-Christ as well as Buddha-have shown little disposition to speak of what follows on death. For them the centre of gravity is on this side of the grave not on the other: the all important thing is to live a religious life, at the end of which death is met fearlessly as an incident of little moment. The Kingdom of Heaven, of which Christ speaks, begins on earth though it may end elsewhere. In the Gospels we hear something of the second coming of Christ and the Judgment: hardly anything of the place and character of the soul's eternal life. We only gather that a child of G.o.d who has done his best need have no apprehension in this or another world. Though expressed in very different phraseology, something like that is the gist of what the Buddha teaches about the dying Saint. But this reticent att.i.tude did not satisfy ancient India any more than it satisfies modern Europe and we have the record of how he was questioned and what he said in reply.

Within certain limits that reply is quite definite. The question, does the Tathagata, that is the Buddha or perfected saint, exist after death, which is the phraseology usually employed by the Pitakas in formulating the problem, belongs to the cla.s.s of questions called not declared or undetermined[510], because they do not admit of either an affirmative or a negative answer. Other problems belonging to this cla.s.s are: Is the world eternal or not: Is the world infinite or not: Is the soul[511] the same as the body or different from it? It is categorically a.s.serted that none of these questions admit of a reply: thus it is not right to say that _(a)_ the saint exists after death, _(b)_ or that he does not exist, _(c)_ or that he both does and does not exist, _(d)_ or that he neither exists nor does not exist. The Buddha's teaching about these problems is stated with great clearness in a Sutta named after Malunkyaputta[512], an enquirer who visits him and after enumerating them says frankly that he is dissatisfied because the Buddha will not answer them. "If the Lord answers them, I will lead a religious life under him, but if he does not answer them, I will give up religion and return to the world. But if the Lord does not know, then the straightforward thing is to say, I do not know." This is plain speaking, almost discourtesy. The Buddha's reply is equally plain, but unyielding.

"Have I said to you, come and be my disciple and I will teach you whether the world is eternal or not, infinite or not: whether the soul is identical with the body, or separate, whether the saint exists after death or not?" "No, Lord." "Now suppose a man were wounded by a poisoned arrow and his friends called in a physician to dress his wound. What if the man were to say, I shall not have my wound treated until I know what was the caste, the family, the dwelling-place, the complexion and stature of the man who wounded me; nor shall I let the arrow be drawn out until I know what is the exact shape of the arrow and bow, and what were the animals and plants which supplied the feathers, leather, shaft and string. The man would never learn all that, because he would die first." "Therefore" is the conclusion, "hold what I have determined as determined and what I have not determined, as not determined."

This sutta may be taken in connection with pa.s.sages a.s.serting that the Buddha knows more than he tells his disciples. The result seems to be that there are certain questions which the human mind and human language had better leave alone because we are incapable of taking or expressing a view sufficiently large to be correct, but that the Buddha has a more than human knowledge which he does not impart because it is not profitable and overstrains the faculties, just as it is no part of a cure that the patient should make an exhaustive study of his disease.

With reference to the special question of the existence of the saint after death, the story of Yamaka[513] is important. He maintained that a monk in whom evil is destroyed (khinasavo) is annihilated when he dies, and does not exist. This was considered a grave heresy and refuted by Sariputta who argues that even in this life the nature of a saint pa.s.ses understanding because he is neither all the skandhas taken together nor yet one or more of them.