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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s4: 4. The Virtue of Generosity or Compassion

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s4

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4. The Virtue of Generosity or Compassion

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While insight by intense application of effort aims to eradicate the idea of being and the conception of the self, whose manifestations are directly attacked by the practice of calm of spirit (*çamatha*), generosity as a perfection (*pāramitā*) suppresses, by the abandonment of self-interest which it assumes, the manifestation of action and will; action thus serves effectively to destroy action.

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The giver must not give for any personal advantage; he must practise what he is to realize in theory, the absence of difference between himself and others: what distinction is there between my pain and another’s? If one should be relieved, so should that of another. He who loves himself must not love himself; to guard himself he must refrain from guarding himself. He must treat his neighbour precisely as himself.¹ We may support the idea by analogies; the pain which affects a limb is not that of the hand, yet the hand moves to relieve the injured member.² But a religious motive may have underlain the conception, and it is expressed frankly in Çāntideva;³ every sin committed by us is committed against the saints who suffer from it, and our only method to recompense these blessed benefactors is to show kindness to others.

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¹ BCA. viii. 90 ff.; Ç., p. 357.

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² BCA. viii. 91.

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³ BCA. vi. 119, 122, 124; cf. ii. 51, 54, 64 ff.

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But, whatever the origin of the sentiment, it can be recognized only if accommodated to the system, and, if this forbids egoism, it equally forbids altruism, and sees no merit in the simple pity of the human heart for distress.⁴ Altruism implies existence and is therefore fatal; there is no perfection, compassion, morality, patience (kṣānti), energy, concentration (sāmādhi), unless it be permeated by the essential intuition of nothingness; otherwise these virtues are blind and unavailing.⁵ The gift, therefore, to be useful must be accompanied by the threefold purity—recognition of the non-existence of the gift itself, of the giver, and of the recipient; it must be born of compassion, indeed, but also of vacuity.⁶ There is obvious difficulty in such a prescription; if there is no object to receive the gift, how can there be any giving? The answer⁷ is that the recipient is imagined (parikalpita) by an error which is admitted in view of an end to be obtained (kārya-moha). The true end, of course, is Buddhahood, exempt from all form of imagination, all obscuration; but this is impossible without abstention from all phenomena on the part of the mind. This can be realized only by a long course of perfection of intuition, and the origin of the course lies in compassion, which at first accepts the relative reality of the existence of a suffering being, then dwells on the suffering alone, without accepting the existence of a sufferer, and finally has no object whatever. There are, we must admit, the two realms of truth, absolute and relative; the Buddha as intuition is well aware that there is no reality in the world, but, when moved by compassion, his love for the world is that of a father for his sick child. In the Buddha there is no idea of existence, but his pity is overflowing for beings troubled by the misery of life. There is an object for compassion, in the shape of the empirical individual composed of the aggregates (skandhas), even if that individual has no absolute reality.

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⁴ BCA. iii. 22; v. 87.

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⁵ PP. in BCAP. ix. 2.

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⁶ BCAP. ix. 4; Ç., p. 271. So of love (maitrī), Ç., p. 212.

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⁷ BCA. ix. 76 with comm. Voidness means much more than freedom from lust, hate, and delusion (Ç. trs., p. 247, n. 2).

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But what is the end to be obtained which justifies the imagination of an individual? If there is no reality, how can any end be pursued? Is it not wrong to seek an illusion, since ignorance is essentially what must be laid aside to attain release? The answer is that there are two kinds of illusion: that which leads to implication in transmigration is evil, but that which holds out as our end the pursuit of the supreme truth with a view to save mankind is a noble belief to be commended and cherished. This element of seeking to assuage the sufferings of others robs the pursuit of enlightenment of its apparent egoism; the supreme end is to realize the vacuity of all things; but to attain this end it is necessary to accept the illusion of the end: the absolute truth must be approached through the realm of relativity.

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The practical effect of the doctrine is to encourage the ideal of compassion for all beings; the taking of the vow not to attain Buddhahood¹ until all creatures have been delivered is the logical outcome of the spirit of this reasoning; the true Bodhisattva cannot be delivered until all creatures are delivered, and egoism is thus entirely annihilated. Such general compassion demands great energy in giving, for which even study should be sacrificed.² But generosity has its own reward; the Çrāvaka claims that his meditation is the more rapid way of gaining release, but in truth the Mahāyānist attains enlightenment (bodhi) and Buddhahood more rapidly by his practice of generosity;³ when he takes the resolve to become a Buddha for the good of others, all his thoughts are dominated by the thought of enlightenment (bodhi-citta), all in him becomes meritorious, and the car of the Mahāyāna bears him inevitably to the enlightenment which he does not desire for himself but seeks to attain solely for others. From physical suffering he is exempt, since he sins not; from moral suffering because he has knowledge; while others strive vainly for unsatisfying ends, he has pure delight in his own action of compassion.¹

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¹ For its terms cf. cit. in Ç., pp. 14, 228; Sukhāvatīvyūha, §§ 8 ff.

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² BCA. v 101.

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³ BCA. vii. 29.

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¹ BCAP. ix. 76; BCA. i. 18 f.; vii. 27 f.; 63. On Bodhicitta, see JRAS. 1908, p. 891, correcting Suzuki, MB., pp. 52, 299 ff.; possessed of it, a man is Buddhagarbha, an embryo Buddha; Ç., p. 103.

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Compassion is a perfection of peculiar merit; while the rule is that the perfections should be practised in order of merit, an inferior being postponed to a superior, there is an exception for compassion, which is always permissible.² But what is more important, compassion excuses sin; it may be that its power is sufficient to turn desire, which else had secured torment in hell, into virtue rewarded by rebirth in the heaven of Brahmā; but even if it has not this power, yet a Bodhisattva will for the sake of compassion face the tortures of hell with alacrity.³ The way is thus opened for the rehabilitation in some measure of desire; there is admitted a noble pride, which consists in combating pride and claiming the performance of distressing duties; the Bodhisattva may enjoy the pleasures of life, but by his power of intuition still secure rebirth in Brahmā’s heaven; the virtue of charity covers a multitude of sins, while hatred is utterly condemned; there are means to counteract the errors of desire, which are hardly avoidable in the action of compassion.⁴

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² BCA. v. 83; Ç., p. 11.

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³ BCA. vi. 120; Ç., p. 167; cf. BCA. v. 42, 84.

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⁴ Ç., p. 165; on good māna see BCA. vii. 49, 54; cf. Mahāvastu, ii. 279; NP., p. 87. On hate see Ç., p. 165.

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Compassion, however, must not lead to folly in generosity; Çāntideva has no illusions as to the folly of the man who hands over his body to the wild beast for food when he could confer on others the precious gift of knowledge of the true faith. Excessive giving is reprobated; there must be borne in mind the good of beings in general; neither egoism nor indiscriminate action is wise. Charity is one thing in the novice, another in him who has entered effectively into the path of salvation. The Mahāyāna may exaggerate the virtues of generosity, as is natural in a community which lived on the exercise of that virtue by their patrons, but the relative sobriety of the doctrine is noteworthy.¹

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¹ Ç., pp. 19 ff.; cf. p. 281; BCA. viii. 105.

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