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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s2: 2. The Equipment of Knowledge

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s2

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English

2. The Equipment of Knowledge

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The essential cause of transmigration and bondage is the act accomplished with belief in the self; this delusion is the source of false views, of passion; it leads men to believe in the eternity or the destruction of the self, to love it or hate it. It is, then, essential to extirpate the delusion, to clear the mind of all the desires in which the self finds pleasure, and to realize the nothingness of all phenomena. But the task is a difficult one, for to achieve it directly involves an antinomy. The Vedāntin may desire release directly without injury, and may declare his identity with the absolute, because he is a believer in reality. But the Buddhist who seeks to be rid of the illusion of the self, or asserts boldly that he is void, is falling into the fatal error of holding as real, if not the self, at least the illusion of the self, and his action is in effect egoistic. The desire for non-existence (*vibhava-tṛṣṇā*) leads directly into the fatal heresy of belief in existence.³ The Jinas have declared the vacuity as the remedy for all false views, but those who falsely attach themselves to vacuity they have declared beyond redemption. What does not exist cannot be the subject of a negation; to deny unreal appearances is really to affirm them. Employed untimely, the idea of vacuity is no better than poison; it is to practise negation, which is in essence affirmation and involves the heresy of the doctrine of destruction, an idea utterly repugnant to the schools, which agree that, if the illusion of the self really existed, it would be eternal.

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³ Udāna, iii. 10; *Itivuttaka*, 49; AN. i. 83, ii. 11; MKV., p. 531; xxv. 10; BCAP. ix. 33; *Subhāṣitasaṃgraha*, JA. 1903, ii. 398; VP. i. 10; SN. v. 421; MN. i. 65; DN. ii. 308, iii. 216; DS., § 1314; SBB. ii. 340, n. 1; Beckh, *Buddhismus*, ii. 123. The sense is really clear.

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The destruction of the idea of the self is, therefore, hardly to be achieved by direct means; it must in some degree come about by itself, as the result of far back causes, and as the outcome of following the methods laid down by ancient teachers. Meditation on the void is necessary, despite the danger of the method, for mere insistence on the void is even more evil than insistence on reality. Properly managed, like a magic rite duly accomplished, it attains its end, for, after causing the idea of existence to disappear, it ends with producing the disappearance of the idea of non-existence also. Just so a man who suffers from ophthalmia, if he learns that there are no real hairs floating before his eyes, first conceives the idea of the non-existence of the hairs, but, acting as if he saw none, finally comes to ignore even the illusion. Similarly, meditation on non-existence leads on to further advance culminating in the realization of the voidness of the void (śūnyatā-śūnyatā), and the mind freed from the ideas of existence and non-existence will rest for ever in the absence of any content or categories. The essential aim is to repudiate either affirmation or negation, or the combination of both or the denial of both; this is as ever the true middle way of the Buddhist.¹

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¹ BCA. ix. 32, 35; BCAP. ix. 2; Mvy. 37; Dharmasaṃgraha, 41; MKV., p. 1; cf. BCA. ix 78.

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Nonetheless, it must be recognized that even the attainment of this way is not the absolute truth, for that is silence, unconsciousness, neither to be described in words nor to be comprehended by thought, which is burned in seeking to penetrate it.² The absolute is beyond speech, beyond knowledge, even that of the completely equipped Buddha, but it reveals itself to the Ārya, a conception closely parallel to the doctrine of the revelation of the absolute in the Vedānta.³

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² MKV., p. 57; BCA. ix. 2.

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³ BCAP. ix. 2; MKV., p. 373 (with n. 2).

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It is, however, fully realized in the Mahāyāna that, despite all elaboration of meditation, the attainment of the end is far more difficult than is suggested in the Hinayāna, where realization of the truth is presented as something comparatively simple, often to be achieved even in the present life. To attain a state of trance is possible, but there is constant need for effort, since consciousness is active, and even in unconscious ecstasy (asaṃjñi-samāpatti) it is apt to come into activity despite the utmost efforts of concentration on vacuity.¹ Even if one as a god attains the heaven of unconsciousness, there comes a time of awakening, just as, though infinitely more rapidly, the monk who attains trance must pass out of it. In face of this fact it is necessary to remember the other side of the picture of life. Our actions, until final enlightenment is reached, are ever active, compelling us to new births; if, then, it is so hard to attain full enlightenment, and if no action of our intelligence can directly effect it, as we have seen, it is all the more incumbent on us to practise morality, to aim at the production of the perfection of virtue, thus assuring ourselves of progressive happiness in the course of our lives, and rendering more and more favourable the change of release, if indeed we actually demand release, for the Mahāyāna is conscious that the demand of the average man is not for a mysterious and ineffable condition, but for the delights of happier lives to come. The pursuit of virtue thus enters into a new career of usefulness.

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¹ BCA. ix. 49. For this state cf. Mvy. 68, 104; Dharmasaṃgraha, 82; MKV., p. 48. The Andhakas assert consciousness even of gods in it, KV. iii. 11 f.

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