Early Monastic Buddhism v1.c8.1

v1.c8.1

Besides the six teachers dealt with above there was a number of other teachers who offered, according to their own lights, solutions of the ultimate problems relating to the soul, the world and the *summum bonum* of the man's life, basing them not so much on reasoning as on intuition or inner experiences acquired through meditation. The use of logic was not much in evidence, and if there was any, it was due to the endeavour of the disciples to establish on a firm basis the theories already propounded by their respective teachers. Along with the various expositions of the highest Truth, the pre-Buddhistic religious and philosophical literatures contain a large body of cosmological and metaphysical speculations together with analyses of the elements composing the living beings of this world as also of the various spheres of existences as conceived in their cosmology. The analyses also have as their basis the intuition or meditational experiences, or the traditional beliefs handed down from the hoary past. Though ostensibly Buddhism wanted to offer a rational solution of the ultimate problems, it did not quite succeed to keep itself free from the intuitional and traditional exposition of the metaphysical themes. It inherited a mass of beliefs relating, for instance, to the origin and form of the universe (*tridhātu*), classification of the worlds and beings (*viññāṇaṭṭhitis*) and so forth. The gradual evolution of the world (vide *Aggaññasuttanta*),¹ the existence of heavenly beings (vide *Mahāsamayasuttanta*),¹ the six mystical powers (*chaḷa-abhiññā*), the *mahāpuruṣa-lakṣaṇas*,² the eight causes of earthquake, the seven treasures (vide e.g. *Mahāparinibbānasuttanta*),³ the causes leading to the origin of castes are a few among the various beliefs that were inherited by the early Buddhists. The Buddhist texts, on the other hand, rendered a service to the cause of Indian philosophy by laying bare the irrationality of many of the religious and philosophical views current in Northern India before and after the rise of Buddhism. It has been shown in some of the texts that the views were nothing but inner experiences of persons who had made some progress on the path of spiritual advancement but were far beneath the stage at which the highest truth could be realised. In the Pāli texts these views are summarily dismissed away as untenable without a detailed logical examination of them.⁴