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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s3: 3. The Equipment of Merit

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s3

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3. The Equipment of Merit

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Merit lies in the abstention from evil, and the performance of good. True, both good and evil are ultimately unreal, like release and transmigration themselves,² but this consideration has no validity for practice, since practice itself is unreal in the same sense; granted evil be unreal, still the doer fetters himself in unreal chains and prolongs the misery of conscious existence unreal as it is. Good action is also unreal, but to practise it ends in aiding enlightenment. Experience shows, then, that to deal with illusion we must accept illusion and combat it by itself, not by the mere occasional introduction of recognition of its illusory nature.

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² See BCA. ix. 8 ff. : thought is an illusion, but one difficult to be rid of; it has produced the false Vijñānavāda belief (ix. 15 ff.); ix. 78.

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What is good, and what evil? The Mahāyāna, as little as the Hīnayāna, develops any theory of the nature of good or evil; good results, it is true, in a pleasant future existence, evil in misery, but there is no attempt to work out the goodness or badness of acts on the basis of their results; on the contrary, it is no doubt rather¹ the truth that an action brings pleasure because it is good, not is good because it brings pleasure, and we have the formal doctrine that an act performed for the sake of pleasure in this life is unmeritorious. But in general the view of Buddhism is that of popular morality; a standard of morals is assumed as recognized, and the Buddhist would be a fool indeed if he could not recognize what even a Cāṇḍāla understands.² But in detail the subject is difficult; we have seen the conflict of schools on the question of the position of volition in sin, and it is necessary that merit should be relative to the end which is release. But, fortunately, the Mahāyāna need not rely on reason to decide what is necessary, for the Buddha is an authority whose words will give the necessary guidance to practice, or at any rate suggest the requisite principles.³

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¹ Poussin, JA. 1903, ii. 405; AKV. (Paris MS.), f. 236 b.

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² BC. vii. 19; cf. Çlokavārttika, p. 209.

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³ Cf. ch. ii, § 1.

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It is necessary, then, to avoid the sins forbidden by the Buddha, to escape from desire, hatred, dullness, and to attain calm (çamatha); to be patient in suffering, recognizing the brevity of such human suffering, and valuing the opportunity afforded to show strength of character and recognition of the non-existence of the self. It is well to reflect on the misery of existence, the horrors of decomposition, the terrors of hell. True, these things are at best only relative reality, or even perhaps wholly imaginary—the product of a mere nightmare,⁴ but such reflections will stay the wicked from evil and anguish, and strengthen even the adept whose final success is hindered by imaginary terrors. They are means, ineffective in absolute reality, but for all practical ends fully accomplishing their purpose.

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⁴ MKV., p. 50.

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But these means are essentially negative, and the Mahāyāna has room for positive action. It is clear that neither intuition of vacuity nor charity or compassion (*karuṇā*) alone is sufficient to lead to the abandonment of existence (*sattva-tyāga*); without compassion vacuity is hard to comprehend; without intuition compassion may be carried too far by the force of passion. We have as emphatic an assertion as in the Hinayāna that intuition alone is not enough.¹ It is obvious that there is difficulty in demanding action from those aware of the vacuity of existence; the insensibility, the wooden immobility,² of the monk of the Hinayāna seems especially appropriate to the adept of the Mahāyāna, but this logical conclusion is not drawn. Instead, the resources of reason are used to establish the propriety of compassion and its efficacy; doubtless it was not by reasoning that the importance of compassion was arrived at; that was demanded by the needs of the heart, and the service rendered by reason was the adaptation of the conception to the system as a whole. Buddhist philosophy, like philosophy generally, exists not to create fundamental beliefs but to defend and explain them in systematic development. Nor pyschologically is it difficult to understand the combination of beliefs in the minds of Mahāyānists; to believe in the self is certainly a hindrance to love of one’s neighbour; to recognize the illusory character of all phenomena is no bad motive for compassion for all creatures

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¹ Ç., pp. 165, 270; *Pañcakrama*, vi. 7; the doctrine is specially Tantric; JA. 1903, ii. 412, n. 1; *Subhāṣitasamgraha*, *Muséon*, v (1904), 250.

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² Hardy, *Eastern Monachism*, p. 312; BCA. v. 50 ff.

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