Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c12.s2.14

c12.s2.14

a perpetual condition of becoming. There is, moreover, a clear similarity in both systems in regard to the idea that the process is ruled by causality. True, the comparison of the Sāṃkhya system of the development of the twenty-four principles from nature downwards is a metaphysical explanation of empirical being, and therefore differs seriously from the Buddhist chain of causation of misery; hence the efforts of Professor Jacobi¹ and Pischel to work out a parallelism between the two has led to untenable comparisons, such as that of name and form with the individuation of the Sāṃkhya or of grasping with good and evil (*dharmādharmau*). But there is a real element of truth in the comparison; the idea of orderly development, which is already in the *Katha*, is the source of the seeking of causal order in the Buddhist formula. But the connexion goes further than that; the vital element in the chain is the conception that ignorance of truth in the individual—not a cosmic force—produces in the substitute for a self impressions which until counteracted by knowledge, result in producing ignorance in a future birth and so on *ad infinitum*, and in the Sāṃkhya and Yoga, where the doctrine is more fully expounded, we have the same idea of ignorance—here of the non-connexion of spirit and matter—producing impressions; both systems likewise recognize the importance of the factor of desire. In both systems of thought, therefore, we have the same picture of a world of process as in a sense a self-contained and closed system; there are two differences of importance, which we may judge Buddhist innovations. The first is the disappearance of nature as an ultimate reality when evolution takes place; this obviously would have countered too violently Buddhist insistence on becoming. With it fall the Guṇas,² or constituents of being; indeed, the inclusion among them of the element of goodness (*sattva*) would have prevented Buddhism incorporating the conception in a system which asserted the misery of empirical reality as a ground for seeking release. Secondly, to the Sāṃkhya the whole process is unconscious save through reflection or other contact with spirit;