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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s1: 1. The Path of Salvation

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s1

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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.

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