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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s6: 6. The Breaking of the Chain

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s6

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6. The Breaking of the Chain

c10.s6.1

As the chain itself represents, and sometimes replaces or is woven into, the second noble truth, so the chain in reverse action is occasionally substituted for the third noble truth, the suppression of misery by complete detachment. It differs from it in that, while the noble truth concentrates on the removal of desire, the chain begins with the suppression of ignorance, a distinction of form rather than of essence. But we have, of course, the simpler view of the direct action of the destruction of ignorance on thirst; even after feeling has arisen, the tendency to create grasping can be destroyed by the suppression of the nascent thirst.¹ But the ordinary course of suppression rests on the effect of misery, which, by the terror it inspires, destroys thirst; the process is: from birth comes suffering; thence faith, that is in the Buddha, the law, and the order; thence lightheartedness, thence zest, thence confidence, thence pleasure or contentment, thence concentration, thence the intuition of the truth.² Again, we are told that it is possible to abandon thirst by thirst, the delusion or pride of self by pride; there is a good thirst, a good pride, the desire to be delivered from passions as are the saints.³

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¹ SN. iv. 87.

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² SN. ii. 31; cf. NP., p. 66.

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³ AN. i. 145; cf. NP., p. 87.

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The serious difficulty of conceiving the cessation of the chain is faced in the Poṭṭhapāda Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya⁴ where in connexion with trance the doctrine of the suppression of consciousness is discussed; the views alleged include the act of magicians in infusing consciousness into a man and withdrawing it; the presence and absence of the soul; and the suggestion that ideas come to a man without cause or reason and pass away likewise, consciousness existing or disappearing accordingly. This last assertion is categorically denied by the Buddha, who insists, that it is for a reason and a cause that ideas arise, namely, by training (sikkhā), by which he means the whole scheme of salvation beginning with faith in the Buddha as a teacher. But it is clear that the fundamental difficulty remains; how is the training possible? How can ignorance existing from all time be brought to a cessation?

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⁴ i. 280.

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The Canon cuts the knot by ignoring it; denying any intervention of a deity, it could not adopt the system of divine grace which is found in the *Kaṭha Upaniṣad*, and it was too honestly convinced of the phenomenality of the individual to ascribe to that transient aggregate of factors a power of directing itself to the desired goal. In the Abhidhamma¹ we find a negation of the doctrine of pre-determination, ascribed to the Andhakas, on the score that thus Nirvāṇa would become impossible of attainment by the exclusion of the possibility of breaking the chain of existence. The later doctrine² is equally unable to solve the problem, save by the hint, which cannot be made consistent with the doctrine of impermanency and not-self, that there is an inherent tendency in the individual to attain release.

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¹ KV. xi. 7, 8.

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² See cit. in *Bhāmatī* (1891), p. 25; Pathak, JBRAS. xviii. 343.

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