Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume I Part 25

[Footnote 30: According to the Census of 1911.]

[Footnote 31: There are curious survivals of paganism in out of the way forms of Christianity. Thus animal sacrifices are not extinct among Armenians and Nestorians. See _E.R.E._ article "Prayer for the Dead" at the end.]

[Footnote 32: The Buddhism of Siam and Burma is similar but in Siam it is a mediaeval importation and the early religious history of Burma is still obscure.]

[Footnote 33: Although stability is characteristic of the Hinayana its later literature shows a certain movement of thought phases of which are marked by the Questions of Milinda, Buddhaghosa's works and the Abhidhammattha Sangaha.]

[Footnote 34: _E.g._ the way a monastic robe should be worn and the Sima.]

[Footnote 35: I believe this to be the orthodox explanation but it is open to many objections.

(1) It is a mere phrase. If to create means to produce something out of nothing, then we have never seen such an act and to ascribe a sudden appearance to such an act is really no explanation. Perhaps an act of imagination or a dream may justly be called a creation, but the relation between a soul and its Creator is not usually regarded as similar to the relation between a mind and its fancies.

(2) The responsibility of G.o.d for the evil of the world seems to be greatly increased, if he is directly responsible for every birth of a child in unhappy conditions.

(3) Animals are not supposed to have souls. Therefore the production of an animal's mind is not explained by this theory and it seems to be a.s.sumed that such a complex mind ag a dog's can be explained as a function of matter, whereas there is something in a child which cannot be so explained.

(4) If a new immortal soul is created every time a birth takes place, the universe must be receiving incalculably large additions. For some philosophies such an idea is impossible. (See Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, p. 502. "The universe is incapable of increase. And to suppose a constant supply of new souls, none of which ever perished, would clearly land us in the end in an insuperable difficulty.") But even if we do not admit that it is impossible, it at least destroys all a.n.a.logy between the material and spiritual worlds. If all the bodies that ever lived continued to exist separately after death, the congestion would be unthinkable. Is a corresponding congestion in the spiritual world really thinkable?]

[Footnote 36: This seems to be the view of the Chandogya Up. VI. 12. As the whole world is a manifestation ol Brahman, so is the great banyan tree a manifestation of the subtle essence which is also present in its minute seeds.]

[Footnote 37: The Brihad Ar. Up. knows of samsara and karma but as matters of deep philosophy and not for the vulgar: but in the Buddhist Pitakas they are a.s.sumed as universally accepted. The doctrine must therefore have been popularized after the composition of the Upanishad.

But some allowance must be made for the fact that the Upanishads and the earliest versions of the Buddhist Suttas were produced in different parts of India.]

[Footnote 38: Yet many instances are quoted from Celtic and Teutonic folklore to the effect that birds and b.u.t.terflies are human souls, and Caesar's remarks about the Druids may not be wholly wrong.]

[Footnote 39: Several other Europeans of eminence have let their minds play with the ideas of metempsychosis, pre-existence and karma, as for instance Giordano Bruno, Swedenborg, Goethe, Lessing, Lavater, Herder, Schopenhauer, Ibsen, von Helmont, Lichtenberg and in England such different spirits as Hume and Wordsworth. It would appear that towards the end of the eighteenth century these ideas were popular in some literary circles on the continent. See Bertholet, _The Transmigration of Souls_, pp. 111 ff. Recently Professor McTaggart has argued in favour of the doctrine with great lucidity and persuasiveness. Huxley too did not think it absurd. See his _Romanes Lecture, Evolution and Ethics, Collected Essays_, vol. IX. p. 61. As Deussen observes, Kant's argument which bases immortality on the realization of the moral law, attainable only by an infinite process of approximation, points to transmigration rather than immortality in the usual sense.]

[Footnote 40: The chemical elements are hardly an exception. Apparently they have no beginning and no end but there is reason to suspect that they have both.]

[Footnote 41: I know well-authenticated cases of Burmese and Indians thinking that the soul of a dead child had pa.s.sed into an animal.]

[Footnote 42: Or again, when I wake up in the morning I am conscious of my ident.i.ty because innumerable circ.u.mstances remind me of the previous day. But if I wake up suddenly in the night with a toothache which leaves room for no thought or feeling except the feeling of pain, is the fact that I experience the pain in any way lessened if for the moment I do not know who or where I am?]

[Footnote 43: I believe that a French savant, Colonel Rochas, has investigated in a scientific spirit cases in which hypnotized subjects profess to remember their former births and found that these recollections are as clear and coherent as any revelations about another world which have been made by Mrs Piper or other mediums. But I have not been able to obtain any of Col. Rochas's writings.]

[Footnote 44: I use the word _soul_ merely for simplicity, but Buddhists and others might demur to this phraseology.]

[Footnote 45: But for a contrary view see _Reincarnation, the Hope of the World_ by Irving S. Cooper. Even the Brihad Aran. Upan. (IV. 4. 3.

4) speaks of new births as new and more beautiful shapes which the soul fas.h.i.+ons for itself as a goldsmith works a piece of gold.]

[Footnote 46: The increase of the human population of this planet does not seem to me a serious argument against the doctrine of rebirth for animals, and the denizens of other worlds may be supplying an increasing number of souls competent to live as human beings.]

[Footnote 47: Perhaps Russians in this as in many other matters think somewhat differently from other Europeans.]

[Footnote 48: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 427. The chapter contains many striking instances of these experiences, collected mostly in the west.]

[Footnote 49: Compare _St Teresa's Orison of Union_, W. James, _l.c._ p.

408.]

[Footnote 50: Indian devotees understand how either Siva or Krishna is all in all, and thus too St Teresa understood the mystery of the Trinity. See W. James, _l.c._ p. 411.]

[Footnote 51: Turiya or caturtha.]

[Footnote 52: Indians were well aware even in early times that such a state might be regarded as equivalent to annihilation. Br. Ar. Up. II.

4. 13; Chand. Up. VIII. ii. 1.]

[Footnote 53: The idea is not wholly strange to European philosophy. See the pa.s.sage from the _Phaedo_ quoted by Sir Alfred Lyall. "Thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her-neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure-when she has as little as possible to do with the body and has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after being."]

[Footnote 54: Mr Bradley _(Appearance and Reality_, p. 498) says "Spirit is a unity of the manifold in which the externality of the manifold has utterly ceased." This seems to me one of the cases in which Mr Bradley's thought shows an interesting affinity to Indian thought.]

[Footnote 55: But also sometimes _purusha_.]

[Footnote 56: Even when low cla.s.s yogis display the tortures which they inflict on their bodies, their object I think is not to show what penances they undergo but simply that pleasure and pain are alike to them.]

[Footnote 57: The sense of human dignity was strongest among the early Buddhists. They (or some sects of them) held that an arhat is superior to a G.o.d (or as we should say to an angel) and that a G.o.d cannot enter the path of salvation and become an arhat.]

[Footnote 58: Cf. Bosanquet, _Gifford Lectures_, 1912, p. 78. "History is a hybrid form of experience incapable of any considerable degree of being or trueness. The doubtful story of successive events cannot amalgamate with the complete interpretation of the social mind, of art, or of religion. The great things which are necessary in themselves, become within the narrative contingent or ascribed by most doubtful a.s.sumptions of insight to this actor or that on the historical stage.

The study of Christianity is the study of a great world experience: the a.s.signment to individuals of a share in its development is a problem for scholars whose conclusions, though of considerable human interest, can never be of supreme importance."]

[Footnote 59: The Chinese critic Hsieh Ho who lived in the sixth century of our era said: "In Art the terms ancient and modern have no place."

This is exactly the Indian view of religion.]

[Footnote 60: _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp. 525-527 and _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 310.]

[Footnote 61: And in Russia there are sects which prescribe castration and suicide.]

[Footnote 62: This, of course, does not apply to Buddhism in China, j.a.pan and Tibet.]

[Footnote 63: This is not true of the more modern Upanishads which are often short treatises specially written to extol a particular deity or doctrine.]

[Footnote 64: Mahaparinibbana sutta. See the table of parallel pa.s.sages prefixed to Rhys Davids's translation, _Dialogues of the Buddha_, II.

72.]

[Footnote 65: Much the same is true of the various editions of the Vinaya and the Mahavastu. These texts were produced by a process first of collection and then of amplification.]

[Footnote 66: The latter part of Mahabharata XII.]

[Footnote 67: Though European religions emphasize man's duty to G.o.d, they do not exclude the pursuit of happiness: e.g. Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647). Question 1, "What is the chief end of man? _A._ Man's chief end is to glorify G.o.d and to enjoy him for ever."]

[Footnote 68: Mrs Rhys Davids has brought out the importance of the will for Buddhist ethics in several works. See _J.R.A.S._ 1898, p. 47 and _Buddhism_, pp. 221 ff. See also Maj. Nik. 19 for a good example of Buddhist views as to the necessity and method of cultivating the will.]

[Footnote 69: Kaush. Up. III. 8.]

[Footnote 70: The words are kamacara and akamacara. Chand. Up. 8. 1-6.]

[Footnote 71: Mahavag. I. 6. _E.g._ Ajatasattu (Dig. Nik. 2, _ad fin._) would have obtained the eye of truth, had he not been a parricide. The consequent distortion of mind made higher states impossible.]