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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c17.s3: 3. The Nature of the Buddha

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c17.s3

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3. The Nature of the Buddha

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Whatever the element of divinity asserted for himself or accorded to the Buddha by his early disciples, the Pali Canon undoubtedly is sincere in emphasizing the humanity of the Buddha; his epithet of ‘superior to the world (*lokuttara*)’ denotes him merely as one who has attained a perfection of enlightenment and release from the cycle of rebirth. But we learn from the *Kathāvatthu* that other philosophical schools took a distinctive view of the nature of the Buddha, and were supernaturalists in the sense that they did not admit the true or complete humanity of the teacher. There was, indeed, an obvious difficulty in the orthodox view; the attainment by the Buddha of enlightenment is accomplished by the same processes as that by which he enters into the state in which he absolutely passes away. It becomes, therefore, obviously not a little difficult to accept the ordinary version of the life of the Buddha; how can a person who has attained in becoming a Buddha the same state as is attained on the final Nirvāṇa be supposed to have been accessible to mere mundane emotions like pity, and the Uttarāpathakas¹ are recorded as denying that the Buddha felt pity. There is the same difficulty regarding the preaching of the law; the older tradition asserts that from the night of the illumination to his passing away the Buddha said nothing false; for this, is substituted the idea that he said nothing at all.² But some explanation of the teaching of the law is required, more satisfactory than picturesque conceptions of the enlightenment being imparted by the bright hairs on the Buddha’s forehead, or the eloquence of the walls of the place of instruction, and a solution for the difficulties is found by the Vetulyakas, a mysterious school, in the doctrine that the Buddha never lived in the world of sense but displayed himself on earth in a specially created form, while the doctrine was preached by the disciple Ānanda.³ This is to carry the matter further than is necessary, and we find among the Lokottaravādins of the Mahāsāṅghikas a more modified concept.⁴ Ṣākyamuni there is represented as having taken, long ages ago in the presence of a Buddha of the same name, the vow to become a Buddha and to have followed up his purpose through the elaborate process of the acquisition of the ten perfections. Then incarnating himself for the last time he enters into the womb of the virgin Māyā, in a mental or spiritual (manomaya)⁵ form in which he is able to give instruction to mankind. A difficulty for the school obviously here presents itself; the traditional account of the Buddha gave him one—or three¹—wives, and in order to enhance the glory of his self-sacrifice in becoming a Buddha, insists on the pleasures of sense which he enjoyed in the harem; a son Rāhula is also attributed to him; he is converted to a sense of the futility of life by the spectacle of a sick man, a corpse, and a monk, but performs vain and prolonged austerities before he attains the desired end. Clearly it is impossible to attribute such actions even to the spiritual form; complaisance with the world (*lokānuvartana*) may be carried too far, and therefore these matters are treated as mere edifying stories, or, at any rate, if they represent fact, the acts were done merely for our edification. Certainly, however, the Buddha in his earthly life was wholly exempt from physical desires and his wife, whose existence is admitted, was a virgin. On the other hand, it is clear that the Nirvāṇa of this spiritual Buddha cannot be treated as imaginary, nor are we to regard his form as merely spiritual. This view asserted by Udāyin is expressly contradicted; the body, if subtle, belongs to the world of matter; it is visible because it is material, spiritual because it is not generated according to the law of physical desire but comes into being spontaneously; indeed, it appears that from the eighth state of their advance in the perfections, future Buddhas possess a body of this kind.

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¹ KV. xviii. 3; see Mil., p. 110.

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² KV. ii. 3; xviii. 8 (Poussin, Buddhisme, p. 253); AN. ii. 24; BCAP. ix. 36; MKV., p. 366.

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³ Ṣlokavārttika, p. 86; KV. xviii. 1; Kashgar frag. of Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, JRAS. 1907, p. 434. Cf. Ṣ., p. 284.

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⁴ Mahāvastu; Poussin, Buddhisme, pp. 248 ff. See also Oltramare, Muséon, 1916, pp. 3 ff.

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⁵ Or, ‘mind made’ possibly; Mhv. i. 218, but this lacks plausibility in view of the regular use, DN. i. 34, 77, 187. Cf. ERE. viii. 329; above, p. 129, n. 4.

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¹ Péri, BEFEO. 1918, no. 2. ² The Vaibhāṣikas treated the Buddha as essentially human; the Sautrāntikas seem to have recognized a large number of Buddhas and the doctrine of the Dharmakāya, body of the law, of each; Wassilieff, *Bouddhisme*, pp. 272, 285 f. ³ pp. 95 ff., 177 f.; KV. xvi. 1-3. Gifts to the dead are approved, Mil., pp. 294 ff.; disapproved as a Rājagirika and Siddhatthika heresy; KV. vii. 6.

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There is obviously much confusion of thought apparent even in the scant sources available. The evidence, however, is interesting as suggesting that the Mahāsānghikas represent a strong and early belief in the divinity of the Buddha, although it is only in a fragmentary and late form that their views are preserved to us.²

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A question of importance is presented by the attitude of the *Milindapañha*³ to the difficult problem of the efficacy of gifts to the Buddha. The issue is clear; the Buddha is absolutely departed; neither in life, nor yet more in death can he accept gifts; if there be no recipient, how can homage to him avail? But Nāgasena insists on the merit of acts of homage and seeks to explain this quality by similes; if a great fire goes out, men kindle one for themselves; so men by erecting a shrine do homage to the supreme god under the form of the jewel treasure of his wisdom and win rebirth as a man, or god, as even release. Seed sown on the earth grows into trees, though the earth is unconscious. Diseases come to men without their consent from former evil deeds; hence, it follows that a good deed must bear fruit apart from consent, just as ill deeds done to a saint bring retribution without his desire. But we have also in the text a reference to the beautiful doctrine that a man may transfer his merit, instead of keeping it to himself alone; if a man were to keep on transferring the merit of his good deeds to others, still he would only increase himself in merit; the stress laid is on the latter part of the proposition but the existence of the former conception is clearly indicated. It is, however, clearly unorthodox, for the *Kathāvatthu* delivers a polemic against the Mahāsānghika doctrine that the attainment of power in this world must include the control of the consciousness of others, so that what one man does another may enjoy. It condemns also the kindred topic that one can help the mind of another, and the Hetuvādin doctrine that one can cause happiness to another, except in the indirect sense of promoting conditions—as did the Buddha by his teaching—whence happiness may be produced, each for himself, by every one.

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The *Kathāvatthu*¹ also is strictly orthodox regarding the career of a Bodhisattva. The idea encouraged by the Jātaka literature that the Buddha adopted deliberately in the past for the benefit of men such evil dooms as existence in hell, rebirth, the performance of hard tasks, and of penance under alien masters, is emphatically rebuked as a heresy of the Andhakas. The reality of the experiences of the Bodhisattva could not, of course, be denied without repudiating the tradition, but to claim that these experiences were voluntarily undergone implies a doctrine which is wholly unacceptable to the Vibhajyavādins. The school denies also the belief of the Andhakas founded on a Sutta that Çākyamuni entered on the path of assurance under the dispensation of the Buddha Kassapa; if this were true, then he must have been a disciple of Kassapa, and this contradicts the essential nature of a Buddha which is to be self-developed.

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¹ xxiii. 3 (J. no. 514); iv. 8 (MN. ii. 46 f.). An anticipation of the later doctrine may be seen in the legends of Piṇḍola and Kācyapa, which contemplate Arhants awaiting Maitreya’s advent; JA. 1916, ii. 196, 270.

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