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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s8: 8. Defects of the New Ideal

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s8

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8. Defects of the New Ideal

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It was natural¹ enough that the Hinayāna should deny the authenticity of Mahāyāna scriptures, should proclaim the doctrine of the void and of the ten stages new inventions without the authority of the master, should inveigh against the blasphemy of multiplying Buddhas and urging each person to become one, and should insist on the supreme importance of Nirvāṇa and the ideal of the Arhant, who is infinitely superior, as legend shows, to any Bodhisattva, even Maitreya himself, who now dwells in the Tuṣita heaven awaiting his descent. They could censure also the strict régime of the new faith which forbade all use of meat,² and not merely that of meat killed expressly for the monks, the foolish mutilations sometimes practised, the idolatry and temple worship of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and the abandonment of monastic discipline. Some of their complaints were justified, if some were not, and the new doctrine undoubtedly presented points of serious weakness. It was doubtless well to realize the difficulty of contending with desire, and to be discontented with the narrow ideal of the Arhant. But there was also dangerous laxity in the concessions made to the spirit of accommodation to life. The doctrine of benefiting others leads to permission to sin if thus the happiness of others can be attained, and it is a vital point that it is left to the judgement of the Bodhisattva to decide for himself whether sin will bring happiness to others; there is no strict code, enacted by authority, to fetter his judgement.³ The sin may bring him pleasure, but that is no reason why he should not commit it if he has the excuse of conferring benefits on others. Marriage thus can always be justified, for it brings pleasure to the other party to the union; any vow, however strict, may be broken for a greater gain, the breaker being the sole judge. There is no disgust with life, no turning away from the world required; indeed one who for incalculable periods will remain in existence after existence could not possibly carry out his plan, if he did not love in his own way the world. A Bodhisattva, then, can enjoy to the full all forms of pleasure of sense, and if he sins in the pursuit, even then he has succour available. The thought of enlightenment will, renewed, secure him immunity from penalty, and beyond this there is available a simple daily rite which removes sin; by confession morning, midday, and evening, by homage to the Buddhas, and the expression of universal love, the Bodhisattva secures his purity, extinguishing at each time the sins committed in the preceding period. He is surrounded in his everyday life by influences interested for his good; his minor transgressions he casts aside by confession to his fellow monks, from ten to one in number according to the nature of his fault, while the grave crimes, such as those of schism, parricide, slaying an Arhant or Buddha, breaking of relics, are pardoned without the necessity of auricular confession by the thirty-five Buddhas of confession.¹ Small wonder if the Mahāyānist can regard his vehicle as drawn by antelopes in comparison with the crawling ox-cart of the Hīnayāna,² with its uncertainty of a successful journey, with dim hope of the remission of sins, without Buddhas to comfort or aid, with strict celibacy and monastic observances, and without the inspiration of benefiting creatures. We have here a very different aspect of the ideal of the Bodhisattva from that which regards him as accepting misery for the sake of the world, and doubtless one more psychologically true. The Mahāyāna claimed adherence generally not as adding to the burdens of men, but as supplying them with an ideal more human, more attractive, than that of the narrow selfish aims of the Arhant.

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¹ Poussin, *Bouddhisme*, pp. 315 ff. ; Wassilieff, *Bouddhisme*, pp. 262 ff.

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² Ç., pp. 132, 174 ; BCA. v. 97.

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³ BCA. v. 84 ; Ç., p. 167.

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¹ Ç., pp. 169 ff.

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² Ç., p. 7.

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One must not, of course, exaggerate the laxity of the system; in many regards the monastic ideal of the Mahāyāna was strict, stricter than the Hīnayāna in its insistence on refraining from the use of meat, and the permission given to the Bodhisattva to sin in the cause of compassion¹ than an invitation to violate the moral law. But the risk of laxity was present, and the danger was made essentially real by the relaxation of the monastic system under whose aegis the Hīnayāna had developed the teaching of the Buddha. The old difficulty regarding the possibility of the layman becoming an Arhant has totally disappeared; the married man is peculiarly suited for the task of a Bodhisattva, for Çākyamuni lived in the world and is his prototype; only he who has a wife is capable of the supreme act of generosity recorded of saints, the gift of wife and children to others, and only a wife can take the typical vow of marital faith, to live with her husband from existence to existence.² In lieu, then, of the rigours of monasticism as the sole path to salvation, we find the attainment of Buddhahood available to the man in family life; religion penetrates into the family life; each family of believers is one of Buddhas to be, with its relics and images, a domestic ritual, and rules laid down by sages for the conduct of domestic life.³

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¹ See also BCA. vii. 67 ff. on control of passion.

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² Possibly this is referred to in KV. xxiii. 1 (Andhakas and Vetulyakas).

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³ Cf. Ç., pp. 78 ff. On the evils resulting cf. Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā, pp. ix f., 28 ff.

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The roots of monasticism were thus threatened; the Hīnayāna had permitted, perhaps illogically,⁴ the withdrawal at pleasure of the monk from his vows, but this sensible provision becomes transformed into the absurdity by which the monastic vows are formally taken and a few days after the monk admits his inability to keep them and asks acceptance instead as a Buddha to be, forthwith returning to the world. In Nepal, as once in Kashmir, the final step was taken; the idea of monasticism was utterly overthrown and a married community, a caste in itself, filled the convents once devoted to celibate monks or nuns.⁵ The discipline had broken to pieces, and yet it must be said that the result was not incompatible with the doctrines of the Mahāyāna.¹

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⁴ VP. iii. 27; Mil., p. 246; Minayeff, Recherches, pp. 271 ff.; Köppen, Rel. des Buddha, i. 338; Hardy, Eastern Monachism, p. 46; De Groot, Code du Mahāyāna, p. 211. The advantages of a temporary acceptance of Buddhist vows in gaining Amitābha's heaven are stated in Ç., p. 175.

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⁵ Hodgson, Essays, pp. 52, 139; S. Lévi, Le Népal, ii. 30; for Kashmir, Rājatarangiṇī, iii. 12.

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¹ In I-Tsing (trs., p. 15) we find already the doctrine of the void as a source of neglect of morality. The *Tathāgataguhyaka* (NBL., pp. 261-4) and *Subhāṣitasamgraha* (ed. Bendall), p. 41, advocate sin as a mode of attaining the end.

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