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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11: Chapter VI. The Path of Salvation, the Saint, and the Buddha

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11

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Contents

Chapter VI. The Path of Salvation, the Saint, and the Buddha

1. The Path of Salvation

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THE end of man is to free himself, if possible, in this life from the intoxicants, the lust of being born again in this world, or in the world of subtle matter, or the world without matter, and the ignorance of the four noble truths. His aim is to break the chain of causation, to destroy any one of its members and thus end the whole; to free himself from desire or appetite, aversion and dullness. There are, it is clear, two sides involved; there is the extinction of desire, and the extinction of ignorance; true the two are intimately related; there can be no extinction of desire if ignorance prevails, and therefore the extinction of ignorance is fundamental. But it is not surprising that a purely intellectual solution for the removal of ignorance is not accepted by Buddhism; the training of conduct may be, and indeed is, a lower plane of endeavour, but it is essential, and, unlike the sage of the Upaniṣads, the seeker for liberation must accept the duty of a strict morality. Hence the doctrine that conduct (sīla) concentration (samādhi) and wisdom or intuition (paññā) are all essential; that concentration pervaded by conduct is fruitful; that intuition pervaded by concentration is fruitful; and that the self, pervaded by intuition, is freed from the corruption of desire, becoming, false views and ignorance. But concentration is rather a stage in the attainment of intuition than an independent entity, and a Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya mentions conduct and intuition as the essential pair, both inseparably united, since neither without the other performs its part.¹

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¹ DN. i. 124.

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Conduct, it follows, from the end of man,¹ must be such as to aid him in his end; it must secure for him either progress to Nirvāṇa or rebirth at least in a superior form of life. The action of Karman may not be unbroken or absolutely regular, but it is assumed for practical purposes to have these qualities, and man will profit or suffer according to his own deeds and deserts. Moreover, man has the power to act; strange as it may seem when one ground of the denial of a self is remembered, and the apparent determinism of the chain of causation, the Buddha has no doubt whatever that the determinism of Makkhali Gosāla is the most detestable of all heresies. The position is the more remarkable, because one of the arguments in the Canon and later against the existence of a self is that such a thing must be autonomous, while all in the world is conditional and causally determined. But the issue is solved by the simple process of ignoring it, and Buddhism rejoices in being freed from any error of determinism to menace moral responsibility.

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¹ Including women, admitted reluctantly to the order at the cost of halving the duration of the faith; CV. x. 1 ff. Women played some part in the early history of Buddhist discussion, as also in Brahmanism, but later disappear as serious factors; cf. JRAS. 1893, pp. 517 ff., 763 ff.; and Mrs. Rhys Davids, trs. of the Therīgāthā, PTS. 1909.

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There is no attempt to create a reasoned moral system based on a calculus of goods. The main tenets are adopted from Brahmanical tradition; they are, however, extended and deepened; the prohibition to kill is applied to all living things to the inconvenience of the monks in daily life; all forms of illegitimate appropriation are forbidden, and restrictions placed on those allowed; the order not to commit adultery becomes one of celibacy for the monks; the injunction to avoid falsehood is expanded into a eulogy of friendly speech and the bringing about of concord. But monastic orders are nothing if not fond of regulations, and the simple lists are expanded by forbidding all sorts of luxuries harmless and otherwise, as well as the practice of many useful modes of livelihood, a rule which resulted in the monks living a life almost without possibility of useful work other than the duties arising from the necessities of daily life in a simple community, whose members supplied food and clothing and, later, vied in providing monasteries.

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Nothing illustrates better the true character of Buddhist ethics than the conception of friendship or love (mettā) which Pischel¹ has compared with the love inculcated, however vainly, by Christianity. The Buddhist will endure injuries and insults; he will seek no revenge and offer no resistance; but he does so because selfmastery is greater to him than anything else. As part of his meditations to secure the saving grace of indifference to the world, he will in a lonely place practise the generation of a feeling of friendship for all things, hostile or not; the practise has potent magic powers; by it the Buddha stayed the onslaught of the elephant instigated against him by the traitor Devadatta, and the mere ordinary man can guard himself against snake-bite by it. The element of calculating prudence is ever present; the prince who spares his enemy in lieu of revenging his murdered parents wins a kingdom. Moreover, the power deprives others of the ability effectively to injure us; the wise man can build round himself a protection which the enemy cannot pierce. But, of course, in practice, we may well believe, the love of the Buddhist was as truly emotional as that of the Christian, and was neither limited nor motved by formal rules; there are traces of the affection of the monks and nuns in their Gāthās, and the spirit of affection for the wild beasts of the woods is as attractive as it is an undeniable feature of the life of the Buddhist wanderer.

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¹ Buddha, p. 80. See Oldenberg *Aus Indien und Iran*, p. 121; *Aus dem alten Indien*, pp. 1 ff.; Beckh (*Buddhismus*, ii. 132 ff.) exaggerates its rôle in the legend of the future Buddha, Metteyya. The essential value of love is that it frees the heart (*cittavimutti*) from desire; as universal feeling—not action—it counteracts particular passion (DN. ii. 251; MN. i. 297, 351; ii. 207; AN. ii. 129). Sympathy in joy and sorrow, and indifference do the same, but love is extolled in *Itivuttaka*, p. 19 f. as pre-eminent, but this is isolated.

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Much more disappointing is the lavish praise given to liberality, provided that its object was the monk; the wild exaggerations of Brahmanical admiration of asceticism, which the Buddha traditionally reproved, are here reproduced, and the inclusion of the Vimānavatthu in the Pali Canon is sufficient proof that nothing of this kind was too exaggerated to excite distaste among the redactors of the Canon. Prince Vessantara, driven from his Kingdom hands over all his goods to beggars, and goes to the wild with his wife and children; the god Sakka comes to try his faith in the shape of a Brahmin, and receives his two children, and then on a second errand his wife as a free gift. Sakka’s rôle is reminiscent of the actions of the gods in sending nymphs to seduce ascetics when the fervour of their asceticism menaces the gods themselves, and it is Sakka again who accepts the wise hare’s gift of his body as alms in the lack of anything else worthy of presentation to a guest. But, be it noted, self-sacrifice like this is demanded only of one who will not in the present life attain enlightenment, and the Buddha performs none of these deeds in his last earthly life.¹

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¹ Ch. i. 9, 10; DP. 428; on Sakka cf. Rhys Davids, SBB. iii. 294 ff.; on prohibited occupations, DN. i. 58 f; on gifts, ii. 356 ff.; SBB. ii. 347 f.; AN. iv. 236, 246; KV. vii. 4.

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The due observance of the rules of conduct brings with it the assurance of the power of self-restraint and corresponding satisfaction. But there are still further matters to be observed by the disciple, which cannot be formulated, like the rules of conduct, in precise directions but must be carried out at his own discretion.² He must be watchful over the sense intimations which come to him whether direct or as ideas; he must practise to disinterest himself in them, and to prevent any evil states of mind arising which would foster desire. Secondly, he must be mindful and self-possessed; in all his deeds the monk must keep ever before him the nature of the act; its ethical significance; whether or not it conduces to the end at which he aims; and the real facts underlying the mere phenomenon of the outward act; the rule is the Buddhist analogue to the Christian order: ‘Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, all to the glory of God.’ Thirdly, the monk must study contentment and be satisfied with the bare minimum of robes and food wherewith he may travel like a bird with its wings. In diverse fashions these principles are inculcated; the habit of self-observation is ever insisted upon as the most effective way to root out those evil cravings which lead to rebirth and its miseries.

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² DN. i. 62 ff.; and parallels, SBB. ii. 59 f.

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By these means the monk is qualified to lay aside hankering for the things of the world; the desire to injure; torpor of heart and mind, or mind and body; flurry and worry; and perplexity, the five hinderances (*nīvaraṇa*); he is as one freed from debt, disease, prison, slavery, or wandering on a desert road; he is filled with great joy and peace, and is ready to enter on the First Meditation (*jhāna*), and thereafter to advance to the final intuition and enlightenment.

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But this scheme of procedure which is laid down in the Sāmaññaphala Sutta is not the only possibility; indeed, it is clear that the ethical and other prescriptions are the result of much co-operative work and redaction. The oldest form of the plan of emancipation may be the noble eightfold way, which is the fourth of the noble truths, and possibly, therefore, to be attributed to the Buddha himself. It demands right views, knowledge of the four noble truths; right aspiration towards renunciation, benevolence, and kindness; right speech, abstaining from lying, slander, abuse and idle talk; right action, abstaining from taking life, or what is not given, or from carnal indulgence; right livelihood, abstaining from any of the forbidden modes of living; right effort, to suppress the rising of evil states, to eradicate those which have arisen, to stimulate good states, and to perfect those which have come into being; right-mindfulness, the looking on the body and the spirit in such a way as to remain ardent, self-possessed and mindful, having overcome both hankering and dejection; and right concentration, in the shape of the Four Meditations. The lack of system and clearness of the path is probable enough evidence of its age; the scheme seems to have been remodelled upon it.¹

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¹ Cf. Franke, ZDMG. lxix. 482 ff.

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Without the meditations, to which either system leads up as the normal climax, the whole makes a natural system of moderately rigorous ethics intended for monks. For laymen the Buddha has much the same creed without the elaborate paraphernalia of minor regulations, and he has five good reasons for righteousness on the part of householders; the wicked man becomes poor through sloth; of evil repute; loses his place in society; dies in anxiety; and is rewarded by an evil rebirth, while the reverse of these woes is secured for the good man. The Sigālovāda Sutta¹ has a charming little picture of lay ethics; the Buddha reinterprets the worship of the quarters, and instead inculcates the duties of parents to guide and protect their children; of children to honour their parents and maintain the family traditions; of teachers to instruct their pupils and to receive due honour in return; of husbands to be courteous, faithful, and respectful to their wives, to give them authority in the home, and provide them ornaments in return for fidelity, and due performance of their duties; of friends to show courtesy, generosity, and benevolence to one another, to observe the golden rule, and to keep faith; of masters to give just labour tasks to their servants, to feed and pay them, tend them in illness, and afford them luxuries, if possible, and recreation, and of servants to rise before and retire after their masters, to be content, work well and praise their employers; of laymen to show affection by act, word, and thought to monks, and to supply their temporal needs, and of monks to teach laymen and restrain them from evil.

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¹ DN. iii. 180 ff.; Suttanipāta, ii. 4. 14.

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On political issues there was no room for a Buddhist creed; the Buddha, however, on the occasion of Ajātasattu’s determination to attack the Vajjians predicted their successful resistance so long as they observed their old constitution; met regularly for counsel; acted in concord; made no innovations in institutions; hearkened to the advice of the elders; permitted no detention of women or girls among the clans; honoured the village shrines and kept up religious rites; and paid due reverence to Arahants; a doctrine of pure conservatism, but probably of practical good sense, and evidently containing a pointed warning against the practice of marriage by capture.²

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² DN. ii. 73 ff.

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Precisely the same attitude of conservatism is to be found in the attitude of the Buddha towards the issue of caste distinctions. The clear opposition of the Buddhists to the claims of the Brahmins naturally suggested earlier in the study of Buddhism the conception of the master as striving against the privileges of the Brahmin caste. This theory was, however, so obviously incompatible with the facts that it evoked instead the suggestion that the Buddha failed as a social reformer, since he was content to recruit his order from the upper classes, the Brāhmaṇas or Kṣatriyas, neglecting the claims of the downtrodden multitude, eaten by their greedy kings. To this again exception has been taken, and we are asked instead to believe that caste, as we understand it, did not exist in the Buddha’s time, and that, if his views on it had been followed, social divisions would have developed on western lines and the iniquities of caste would never have been perpetrated.¹

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¹ Rhys Davids, SBB. ii. 99 ff. But see Oldenberg, *Buddha*,⁹ Pt. I, ch. iv. ; Keith, CHI. i. 92 ff. The contract theory (DN. iii. 93) of the origin of Kingship appears also later in the *Mahāvastu* and *Jātaka*; see Law, *Ancient Indian Polity*, pp. 94 ff. No protest is made against barbarous punishments, e. g. DN. ii. 332 ff.

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It is, however, impossible to accept this last opinion; caste, it is true, was by no means as rigid in the Buddha’s period as it has come to be, for the institution is essentially one in constant growth and modification. But there is the clearest proof that the great classes of Brāhmaṇas, Kṣatriyas, Vaiçyas or Çūdras existed, and that the priestly and ruling classes were selfish oppressors in union of the people and the serfs or slaves, while each class was hardening into caste divisions. The Buddha’s formal treatment of the origin of the castes destroys any possibility of treating him as a reformer; on the contrary, in keeping with the doctrine of action, he traces all to their deeds in the beginning of the present world system, and thus enunciates a dangerous conservatism. His own practice was in harmony with his theory; the ascetic communities of his day recognized in theory, and to some extent in practice, the right of any person to be associated with them; the Buddhist excluded slaves unless emancipated, and the majority of their adherents seem to have belonged to the upper classes. The Buddha, we may assume in point of fact, was not a social reformer; he had a message of healing for misery which consisted in denial of anything in the world of enduring value, and such a message was not such as to induce its promulgator or his disciples to strive against the established social order, apart from the dangers which such an effort would have involved to the new faith. The Buddha sought, indeed, it would seem, to establish his followers as Brāhmaṇas, by the adoption of the principle that birth cannot make a man a Brāhmaṇa but only virtue, but this attempt, if seriously intended, failed utterly of success.¹ He did, however, it is clear, hold forth the temporal advantages in the shape of respect and consideration which fell to the lot of a member of the Order, and we know that there were many mixed motives, as was inevitable, among its members, fear of royal tyranny, or of robbers, or worry from debt, while others had no higher motive than that of finding a comfortable means of livelihood.²

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¹ Rhys Davids, SBB. ii. 104 f., 138 f., 141. Cf. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Up., iv. 4. 23.

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² Mil., p. 32. Corruption in the order is attested in Therag. 920 ff., 949 ff.; Therīg. 400 ff. ; hence regarded as late by Winternitz, Ind. Litt. ii. 87 f.

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Though stress is normally laid on conduct and intuition, it must be remembered that the whole edifice of salvation is built up on the fact of faith in the Buddha. It is when a Buddha appears and teaches the holy truth, that it becomes possible for the householder or other person to listen to the teaching, to attain faith in the teacher, and to realize that worldly life is a hindrance to purity, and therefore to abandon it for the existence of a yellow-robed monk.³ Faith thus lies at the root of knowledge, and it is only inferior to knowledge⁴ in the sense that intuition is a higher stage; a monk begins with faith and ends with intuition, as a normal rule at any rate, although saints saved by faith⁵ seem to have been admitted. Faith, however, is not to be regarded as an inferior mode of salvation or as unessential; there can, it is clear, be no intuition unless there has first been faith, save in the case of the Buddha alone.

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³ DN. i. 62; Mil., p. 36; AN. iii. 21; MN. i. 176; Sumaṅ. i. 231. See also SN. ii. 31; Udāna, i. 8.

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⁴ MV. v. 1. 21; SBE. xxxv. 56, n. 1.

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⁵ AN. i. 118; PP. iii. 3.

2. The Forms of Meditation

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The Canon is singularly rich in diverse devices intended to secure the production of a state of mind in which there shall be no presence of empirical reality. The Yoga practices of which India has ever been so fond were doubtless the object of eager study, and forms of self-hypnosis were the objects of research. We have in all likelihood echoes of these experiments in the records of the power to see heavenly visions and hear heavenly sounds, in the imagination of wrestlings in controversy with the evil Māra,¹ in whom the power of desire and the temptations of the life of the world are personified. The life of the monks and nuns, with their scanty nutriment and eager desire to secure experiences of rapture, must have tended to the abnormal development of psychic powers and the induction of hallucinations and self-hypnosis. All the methods seem to have aimed at one end; despite occasional combination in the texts they may fairly be held to have been originally independent modes of gaining a common end.

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¹ Windisch, Māra und Buddha; Oldenberg, Aus Indien und Iran, pp. 101 f.; SN. i. 103 ff.

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Simplest and least unattractive is the formal practice of regulated breathing accompanied by a simple assertion of the act, a device loved according to tradition by the Buddha himself as occupation for the rainy season when his wandering life of preaching ceased.² Repellent in the extreme is the meditation of impurity, demanding the presence of the monk at a cemetery, and the careful meditation on all the hateful aspects of a corpse in decay, a drastic measure of convincing even the greatest lover of human beauty of the vanity of the love of the flesh, but perhaps necessary for Indian monks, since even the highest ascetics are regarded by Brahmanical tradition as singularly apt to fall victims to female blandishments.³ Of much more attractive kind are the forms of meditation which lead with certainty to rebirth in the world of Brahmā, the Brahma-vihāras. In the wild one first practices the feeling of friendliness to all creatures; then develops sympathy as compassion in its place; then sympathy in their joy; and thence passes to the true end of the meditation, the attainment of absolute indifference of feeling (upekkhā), a striking warning against any conception of love as the end of man.⁴

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² VP. iii. 70 f.; SN. v. 326; Poussin, Bouddhisme (1898), p. 92.

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³ DN. ii. 292 f., 298 f.

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⁴ AN. i. 183; iii. 225; DN. iii. 224.

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More abstruse are the Positions of Mastery (abhibhāyatanāni)⁵ which are essentially modes of contemplating external forms finite or boundless, and coloured blue, yellow, red, white, and appreciating their true impermanence, and thus presumably rendering vacant the mind. Akin to these exercises are the first three of the Stages of Deliverance (*vimokkha*)¹ which seem to be, first the contemplation by a man of his own material form, then of external form, and then the attainment of intentness. Then by passing beyond any conception of matter or idea of sensation, and suppressing the idea of multiformity, he attains the state of mind in which the only idea present is the infinity of space (*ākāsānañca*). On this follows a stage in which the infinity or unboundness of intellect (*viññāṇānañca*) is alone present. The next stage is reached when there is nothing at all present to the mind (*ākiñcaññāyatana*). Then is achieved the stage when neither the presence of ideas nor the absence of ideas is specifically present (*nevasaññānāsaññāyatana*). Finally is attained the state where there is suppression of both sensation and idea (*saññāvedayitanirodha*). The same idea reappears in a different form in the doctrine of the seven Resting Places for Consciousness (*viññāṇaṭhitiyo*) and the two Spheres.² The first of the resting places or stages is that of men, some gods and dwellers in hell; the second of the gods, differing in body but uniform in intelligence, of the Brahma-loka; the third of the gods uniform in body but not in intelligence; the fourth of the All lustrous gods uniform in both; the last three and the two Spheres cover the four stages beginning with the infinity of space, the two Spheres being the realms without idea and where is neither ideation nor yet non-ideation. The four or five rank as the Āruppajhānas, for their essence is that they assume that the adept has left all conception of matter far behind, and advances step by step in the sphere of pure consciousness, and finally the disappearance of any content whatever. We have here an interesting historical record, which explains to us the presence of the fifth form in the shape of the suppression of both idea and feeling; Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, two teachers of the Buddha, had carried their power of meditation to the extent of attaining the meditation of nothingness, and neither the presence nor the absence of ideas; it followed therefore that the Buddha must go further and invent a fifth meditation, in which everything disappears save the life and the warmth of the body; that is, in effect, a cataleptic condition in the fullest sense.¹ We must assume, therefore, that the Buddha approved this form of meditation. But the addition of four of the forms to the ordinary Four Meditations in order to make up eight Perfections or Accomplishments is clearly artificial, for the two forms of meditation differ in essence and cannot be made rationally complementary. They must have been favoured for different purposes and occasions, though with one end.

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⁵ DN. ii. 110; iii. 260; DS. § 204.

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¹ DN. ii. 112 ff. ; 70 f. ; iii. 262 f ; AN. iv. 306, 349 ; DS. §§ 248 ff. ; Franke, DN. pp. 210, n. 4, 212, n. 6.

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² DN. ii. 68 ff. ; AN. iv. 39 f.

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¹ MN. i. 164 f. It is clear there is no disapproval of these states; Oldenberg, GGA. 1917, p. 170. Cf. BC. xii. 45 ff.

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This other set of four² occurs with great frequency in set phraseology, and without the variations in enumeration of the other set. They seem often even in the early school to have been preceded by a form of concentration intended to aid entry into them, the Kasiṇas,³ the essential feature of which is the contemplation, say of earth, water, fire, wind, dark blue, yellow, blood-red, white, light or a narrow aperture. By intense concentrated gazing on the object chosen he obtains a mental reflex, which is devoid of the specific character of a simple mental image. The process is to be carried on to the accompaniment of thoughts on the wretchedness of sensual pleasure, which produce indifference to such pleasures; with reflections on the merits of the Buddha, the doctrine, and the community of monks, which produce joy and gladness; and with the deliberate effort thus to become a partaker of the blessings of isolation. The attainment of this mental reflex opens the way to the first Meditation or Trance.

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² DN. i. 73 ff.; HEILER, KF., pp. 357 ff.

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³ MN. ii. 14; AN. i. 41; v. 46 f., 60; VM. in Warren, HOS. iii. 293 ff.; DS. §§ 160 ff; Poussin, *Bouddhisme* (1898), pp. 94 ff.

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This condition, is one in which, freed from all desire and evil dispositions, the adept enjoys, as a result of isolation and concentration, a condition of zest and pleasure (*pīti-sukha*), while engaged in initial and sustained application, doubtless to the truths of the system. By the suppression of either form of application, he obtains inner peace, the concentration (*ekodibhava*)⁴ of thought (cetas) produced by deep reflection (samādhi), and characterized by zest and pleasure. The third stage is one in which zest with the activity which it implies disappears; the adept remains mindful and intent (satimān), but indifferent (upekkhaka), enjoying, however, pleasure; the interpretation of indifference here is not evidently hedonistic; the state is not one of neutral feeling, but intellectual; the adept looks with impartial tolerance on all mental states. Then, by the putting away of all pleasure and pain, by the destruction of elation or dejection, he attains the fourth state which is one of pure or complete self-possession and indifference (upekkhāsatiparisuddhi) without pleasure or pain. This last state is not altogether easy of interpretation, for the term, which may indicate the purity or completeness of self-possession and indifference, has also been interpreted as denoting the removal¹ of these qualities from the adept, which would result, therefore, in a condition somewhat akin to that produced by the last of the other type of Meditations. In favour of this interpretation can be cited the fact that otherwise the fourth Meditation appears to leave us with a condition which seems indistinguishable from the final intuition of the saint, which it is certainly not to be identified with,² as that is represented as following on the last Meditation; but this objection is not fatal, for intuition is more than self-possession and indifference, which may well be treated as leading up to it. If so, then this series of Meditations clearly leads to a different result spiritually than the first, as it starts with a different procedure, for, although artificial aids to mental concentration are used, the adept engages in mental reflection on Buddhist truths, and not in a mere effort to isolate thought.³ Perhaps this fact was regarded as making it inferior, for the other Meditations appear later to have been preferred to it. Like the former set, it is not doubtful that the Meditations are taken over from Brahmanic practice; there are traces of them in the Yoga and the *Mahābhārata*, and they are not claimed as original or as inventions in Buddhism.

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⁴ On this cf. Franke, DN., p. 39, n. 6; Kern, SBE. XXI. xvii; Lévi, MSA. xiv. 14; Oldenberg, GGA. 1917, p. 170, n. 1.

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¹ Senart, RHL. xlii. 349 f. On sati cf. Rhys Davids, SBB. iii. 322 ff. Cf. Franke, DN. p. 76, n. 5.

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² DN. ii. 156; i. 38. Intuition includes definite recognition of non-rebirth; DN. i. 84. Cf. Beckh, Buddhismus, ii. 48 f.

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³ Meditation (Jhāna) is a narrower idea than Samādhi, concentration, which includes it and is generic; Buddhism has not the YS. iii. 1 ff. distinction of Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna, Samādhi.

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Both sets of meditations are deemed to be distinguished by happiness, a view which seems in obvious contradiction with the absence of pleasure from the last stages in the latter set, and the catalepsy of the last stage of the former set, but the difficulty may be resolved by accepting the distinction between the actual pleasure of the state, and the value of it as tending to the final end; this double use of happiness is another proof of the logical weakness of the Canon.¹

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¹ Ledi Sadaw, *Yamaka*, ii. App., p. 248; *Buddh. Psych.*, pp. 83 ff.

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It is, however, essential to note that there is nothing necessary in regard to these trances, though their use was constant among the monks, and directions are given in the Vinaya to secure that monks adept in meditation should be located together so as not to interfere with one another in trance.² A similar form of meditation is contained in the threefold concentration (*samādhi*), with initial and continued application; with the latter only; without both, and another set of three views things as void, probably of lusts and evil dispositions; without taking note of any special peculiarity, that is indifferently; and without predilection.³ Ānanda, who carried out the former kind of concentration, seems to have had the vision of an aura and of forms. There is much similar matter recorded in the mysticism of the west,⁴ but Christian mystics show distinct characteristics which have been traced to the double origin of their views in Neo-platonic philosophical conceptions and the prophetic tradition; their aim is union with God; they recognize the grace of God in the course of the progress of their meditations, as does the *Kaṭha Upaniṣad*; they show a personal element which distinguishes the state of each mystic from that of another.

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² *Theragāthā*, 522 f., 537 f.; MN. i. 276; MV. v. 6; CV. iv. 4. 4; Oldenberg, LUAB., p. 322.

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³ MN. iii. 157 ff.; DN. iii. 219; DS. § 344; *Yogāvacara's Manual*, p. xxvii. f.

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⁴ Besides Heiler, see *Buddh. Psych.*, p. 107 ff. The set of four is later alternatively made five by dividing the first into two, initial attention being eliminated in the second; DS. §§ 168 ff.

3. Intuition and Nirvāṇa

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The end of the meditations of the disciple is to lead to the final intuition of the four noble truths which brings with it the recognition that there is no chance of rebirth. This is the essential fact of Nirvāṇa; the monk is freed from the intoxicants or defilements (āsava)¹ of desire, of becoming, of false views, of ignorance; all appetite, all aversion, all dullness and confusion are departed; the outward form remains, it is true, while life lasts, but the essential result is achieved, and what happens to the monk when physical death sets in cannot alter this fact; we can understand how the Buddha was willing to rule such questionings out as inadmissible, because he had formed a conception of the summum bonum as Nirvāṇa, which provided for its being attained in this life. The conception is entirely parallel to the man released in life (jivanmukta) of the Vedānta and of the Upaniṣads, and was doubtless adopted from earlier speculation. Should then, since the monk knows that he has attained release, he remain longer alive in the world? The answer is that, as the world is indifferent to him, so he craves neither for life nor death, but awaits like a servant his wages—a strange confusion of ideas but characteristic; yet suicide is permissible now and then as Godhika’s case shows.² On death there is now no continuity of consciousness; the Viññāṇa transmigrates no longer, for the chain of causation is broken for ever. Man has attained the Nirvāṇa element (nibbāna-dhātu) without any remainder of empirical existence; the Milindapañha co-ordinates Nirvāṇa with the ether which is uncreate and endless, and the Abhidhamma classifies Nirvāṇa as the uncompound element, distinguishing it radically from all the passing world.³

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¹ That of false views (diṭṭhi) is omitted in DN. i. 83; MN. i. 23, 155; AN. i. 167; SN. iv. 256. For the four, DN. ii. 98; DS. § 1096; ‘intoxicant’ (ā-su) is possible, SBB. ii. 92, n. 3; iii. 28, n. 2; āsrava is probably a mere Sanskritization; āçraya is possible, TDC., p. 8; āsnava, IF. xxiii. 267.

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² Mil., p. 45; cf. Theragāthā, 1002 f. On suicide, see SN. i. 120 f.; DPC., p. 255; (Vakkali), SN. iii. 123 f.

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³ Mil., p. 271; Psych. Eth., p. 367 f.

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Positively of the state there is asserted happiness or holiness of release or enlightenment (vimutti—, sambodha—, sukha); the terms seem at first sight contradictory since pleasure (sukha) is empirical, and therefore out of place; ‘Nirvāṇa is happiness’, Sāriputta asserts, and, when asked how that can be when feeling does not exist, he asserts that it is happiness because there is no feeling.¹ Feeling, as we have seen, is transitory and therefore in the wide sense misery; happiness therefore must be distinct from feeling, but beyond that we cannot go. All empirical qualifications are unfitted to describe the ineffable. What we are assured by the overwhelming evidence of the Canon is that Nirvāṇa is the blissful end for which every one must strive and which, when attained, is worth the pains to win it.

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¹ AN. v. 414; cf. VP. i. 2, 3; Nirvāṇa as happiness, Mil., p. 313.

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This is the general aspect of Nirvāṇa, but there are indications also of a more prosaic kind of the nature of the intuitive consciousness, which is the final product of the Meditations and other exercises, and from the elaboration with which details of this state are set out in the Canon and later we would err gravely if we treated Nirvāṇa in any abstract way. It was, while life lasted, a state of extremely marked psychic powers, conferring on the saint powers of a varied, and to western ideas, incongruous kind.² The first is the power of perceiving the interrelation of consciousness and the body,³ and this leads to the second, higher fruit of the power to create a body made by,⁴ or of, mind, a conception to which we owe, it may be feared, the astral body of Spiritualism and other follies. Then he enjoys magic power (iddhi); he can multiply himself and become one again; be visible or invisible; penetrate a wall as if air, or the ground as if water; walk on water; fly like a bird in the sky; touch sun and moon, and reach in body the heaven of Brahmā. The next power is less remarkable; he can hear sounds celestial and human, far and near. Then he knows the minds of others, in all their manifold natures and conditions. Then he can remember his former births, through many an Aeon in all details and modes. Then with the heavenly eye he discerns the destinies of all persons dying and being reborn according to their deserts. Then he directs his mind to the destruction of the intoxicants of desire, becoming, ignorance, by the knowledge first of the four noble truths, and then by like knowledge of the intoxicants, their origin, their cessation, and the path. In him then is accomplished liberation from the intoxicants; ‘Rebirth has been destroyed; the higher life has been fulfilled; what had to be done has been done; after this present life there will be no beyond.’ This is the highest fruit of the life of the recluse, to see as clearly as one can in a clear pool the shells and the pebbles, and the swimming shoals of fish.

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² DN. i. 76 ff.

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³ The terminology and idea here are decidedly not Sāṃkhya-Yoga. The relation is real.

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⁴ Sumaṅg. i. 222, not followed by Franke; ‘of mind’, SBB. ii. 88; Buddh. Psych., p. 127. This is borne out by DN. i. 195; below, p. 209, n. 5.

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We need not suppose that all these powers were either claimed or enjoyed by all saints; the last is obviously the essential intuition, but the whole body of the potencies beginning with the celestial ear is given the style of super knowledge (*abhiññā*), and, with the prior members, of aggregate of intuition (*paññā-khandha*) or simply intuition or knowledge (*vijjā*).¹ Or, again, the wisdom of the saint is described as the eye of intuition (*paññā-cakkhu*) which ranks not merely above the heavenly eye—Ānanda had it but not the latter—but also above the eye of the law (*dhamma-cakkhu*), the technical term for entering on the path which leads to liberation.² We need not doubt that the possession of such powers was duly believed in by adepts, nor need we ascribe them to anything more wonderful than the hallucinations ³ which the meditations were certain to produce; that in the east men claim to-day to remember previous births aids in explaining the origin of such ideas; it confers no validity upon them.⁴

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¹ The technical sense of *abhiññā* is found in VP. iii. 87, but is late; SBB. ii. 62, n. 1, but see DN. iii. 281. On *iddhi* see DN. i. 211 f.; SBB. ii. 88 f., 372 f.

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² *Itivuttaka*, § 61; SBB. ii. 95, n. 1.

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³ See e. g. James, *The Varieties of Religious Experience*, pp. 219, 251 f., &c.

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⁴ Contrast Eliot, *Hinduism and Buddhism*, I, lvii.; Rhys Davids, *Buddh. Psych.*, p. 129.

4. The Saint and the Buddha

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The narrative of the Buddha’s work of conversion shows the simple form of a disciple realizing forthwith the impermanence and misery of existence, whence, if he persist in this assurance and strive hard, he will attain by the destruction of desire Nirvāṇa even in this life.¹ So simple a conception was certain to be elaborated, especially if the faith were to meet the views of those who, doubtless many in number, were not altogether enamoured of Nirvāṇa and could be better won to the cause if they could be offered the chance of happier rebirth, an idea which appealed with irresistible force to many lay adherents. Hence we find a classification by four stages. The first is he who has entered on the stream (*sotāpanna*); he is rid of the first three bonds (*saṃyojana*) of the false belief in individuality, doubt, and belief in the efficacy of ceremonial; he is assured that he cannot be reborn in the worlds of hell, or animals, or ghosts. The once-returner (*sakadāgāmin*) has further reduced to a minimum affection (*rāga*), aversion, and dullness; he will once more only return to be born on earth. The non-returner (*anāgāmin*) has destroyed the fourth and fifth bonds, attachment to things of sense, and antipathy; he will be reborn only in a Brahma-loka, and there will he find liberation. The last is the saint, Arahant, who has freed himself from all the bonds, in whom no defilements remain, who will never suffer rebirth.²

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¹ MV. i. passim.

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² DN. ii. 92 f., 200.

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There is no early evidence that these stages must be strictly observed, but from the first the rule was clear that Nirvāṇa must normally be confined to the monk. The exception, however, was allowed that a layman, who adhered to the faith, might attain the extinction of rebirth, if his last thought were directed to this end, and later the general doctrine is laid down that a layman may attain liberation, but only either by dying on the day he does so, or by entering the order at the moment when he attains it; he who has gained Nirvāṇa cannot remain in secular life. Later also is the idea that in the barber's shop at the time of the tonsure on admission to the order the highly gifted novice attains Nirvāṇa.³

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³ SN. v. 410; Mil., p. 265; KV. iv. 1.

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The qualities of the saint are elaborated in the texts; he has four Paṭisambhidās, powers of comprehension and exegesis;

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intuition (*paññā*, *abhiññā*), true insight (*vipassanā*), quietude (*samatha*); he works miracles by fourfold exertion (*padhāna*); he is *par excellence* noble (*ariya*); as a hearer of the doctrine (*sāvaka*) he can be so designated, though the term applies to any disciple. But he is inferior to the individual, Pacceka, Buddha,¹ the solitary, who in an age when no universal Buddha exists and the order is dissolved, attains enlightenment but cannot preach it, and who is inferior in omniscience to the Buddha proper; the later view is clear that he cannot coexist with a true Buddha, but this is unknown earlier. In any case the idea is of little consequence.

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¹ DN. ii. 142; *Apadāna*; PP. ix. 1. He appears later as a hermit philosopher, Mhv. i. 301; Kern, *Ind. Budd.*, p. 61.

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The universal Buddha ranks high over all saints or Pacceka Buddhas. The Canon, we have seen, contains traces of the abnormal character of the Buddha of history, but a strong tendency to treat emphatically the human side is apparent; the Buddha compares himself in his destruction of the enveloping covering of ignorance to the first chicken which breaks its shell;² he is the eldest but not in essence different from others; they must free themselves, though they follow his teaching. But even in the most orthodox view the Buddha possesses characteristics tediously scholasticized which assign to him the perfection of power, of wisdom, of peace, of mercy. He claims himself to be omniscient, all overcoming; he who has taught himself without a master; peerless in the worlds; the perfectly enlightened one, the highest teacher; who has attained Nirvāṇa. He is a hero born for the joy of the world to bring gladness to gods and men. The disciple follows his teaching; he does not aspire to become a Buddha, for from the mere fact that he is a disciple he can make no claim to attain such a result. Whether he could become a Pacceka Buddha is left obscure in the texts.

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² *Suttavibhaṅga*, *Pārājika*, i. 1. 4; MN. i. 265. Contrast MV. i. 6. 8; AN. i. 22. See ch. ii. § 2.

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Beside the historic Buddha, however, there are others through the ages, all born in eastern India, with varying length of life, but in essence of one type; each preaches the doctrine, and it abides for a period, only to pass away again; that of the Buddha is to abide five hundred years only, for the admission of nuns has shortened the thousand years it else might have claimed.¹ No two universal Buddhas can coexist at least in one world system, though possibly even the Canon recognizes that there may be other Buddhas in other such systems.

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¹ DN. ii. 2 f.; CV. xii. 2. 3; x. 1. 6. As to coexistence see AN. i. 27; Mhv. i. 123 ff.; Mil., pp. 236 ff.

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But, if these Buddhas exist and from the teaching of each men attain knowledge and liberation, will the time come when every individual shall be set free? The Mahāparinibbāna Sutta suggests an affirmative reply, with the implication that the necessity of Buddhas themselves would cease, but the Milindapañha suggests a negative reply and this prevails in the later doctrine.²

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² DN. ii. 157; Mil., p. 69; Mhv. i. 126.

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The relation of the disciple to the Buddha is one of peculiar character. To the layman³ was permitted and inculcated the merit of the worship of the relics of the dead master by his special command, and they did not fail to enshrine them in Stūpas, and to adore them at festivals with offerings of flowers, lights, and ceremonial ablutions. We need not deny the religious quality of such reverence; whether the Buddha himself claimed divine power and origin or not, the laity made him divine. But to the monks and nuns no less than the laity was it enjoined by the master himself to make pilgrimage, with assurance of reward if dying in the task, to one or other of the four holy places, of his birth, enlightenment, setting in motion the wheel of the law, and death. Moreover, every monk and nun can attain liberation only by taking refuge in the Buddha, the law, and the order. The Buddha doubtless is dead; he can extend no grace to the disciple; but he is the finder of the way, who taught the saving texts, and founded the order within whose bosom alone is sainthood to be won. The reverence he inspires can hardly, then, be denied the name of religion; there are races who recognize high gods, though they have ceased or never begun to make them offerings or to pray to them, and gratitude for the ineffable boon of liberation is surely cause enough for true religious emotion.

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³ The Arahant is assumed to pay adoration at relic shrines; KV. xvii. 1.

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It is in accord with a primitive spirit of devotion and reverence that we find no idea in early Buddhism of seeking to become a Buddha; the Buddhas are few and far between; the advent of one Buddha to be, namely Metteyya, is recognized in the Canon,¹ but the full conception of Bodhisattvas² makes its appearance only in late texts. Metteyya appears as the Buddha of age to come, to supervene on a period of exaggerated evil and sin. At last, wearied of self-destruction, men will practise virtue and abstain from sin, growing in length of life generation by generation as a reward, until the age of man reaches 80,000 years, and maidens are marriageable at 500 years. It is tempting to regard this as a picture of a Kingdom of Love ruled over by a Prince of Love (*metta*), but it would be to remodel, not to interpret the Buddhist record, which does not here develop the conception of love though it recognizes human solidarity. Nor do the many versions of the *Maitreyasamiti* known to us alter essentially the picture.³

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¹ DN. iii. 76; cf. Beckh, *Buddhismus*, i. 132 f.

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² The exact sense of the term is doubtful; normally it may be held to denote ‘one whose existence (*sattva*) or essence is enlightenment’; cf. ERE. ii. 739. But it has also been rendered ‘a being (destined to become possessed of) enlightenment’ (cf. Winternitz, *Ind. Litt.* ii. 89, 367); ‘one who has the will (*sattva*) for enlightenment’, a result also obtainable by taking *sattva* as a misrendering of Pali *satta*, for *çakta*, ‘having power’, a view defended by Walleser (*Prajñāpāramitā*, p. 5, n. 3) by the analogy of *Sutta*, mistaken in his view for *Sūtra* in Sanskrit in lieu of *sūkta*, ‘well said’—an implausible hypothesis. Senart (RHR. xlii. 360, n.) finds the explanation of the phrase in the Sāmkhya idea of *Sattva* as the highest of the Guṇas, but essentially implicated in material existence as opposed to Puruṣa.

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³ See E. Leumann, *Die Maitreyasamiti*, Strassburg, 1919, who re-edits also the Pali *Anāgatavaṃsa*, a short poem on Metteyya, and fragments of the story in the unknown Iranian dialect styled North-Aryan by Leumann, and ascribed to the Ҫakas by Konow (GGA. 1912, pp. 551 f.) and Lüders (SBA. 1919, pp. 734 ff.).

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