Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c7.s2.6

c7.s2.6

Other four groups are formed by equivocators, who are agnostics of the most pronounced sort, and not merely, like the Buddha, unwilling to speculate on certain topics. Their motives differ; some fear error, and the remorse arising from thus hindering their development; others fear to create the grasping spirit which causes rebirth and produces remorse; others feel conscious that they know neither good nor evil and that they could not explain them, so that they might be rebuked, if they tried, by others, and feel remorse; while yet others are simply too stupid. All agree in such answers to any question as these: ‘I don’t take it thus. I don’t take it the other way. But I advance no different opinion. And I don’t deny your position. And I don’t say it is neither the one nor the other.’ These fascinating views they are represented as applying impartiality to the propositions: There is another world. There is not another world. There both is and is not another world. There neither is nor is not another world. Similarly they reason on the interesting question of the existence, &c., of chance beings, those that come into existence through former merit without the tedious intervention of human parents; of the fruit of good deeds and, last not least, of the continued existence of the Tathāgata, the perfect saint, after death. Amusing as the position is, it has the merit of every appearance of historical reality; Sañjaya of the Belaṭṭha clan, appears in Sāmaññaphala Sutta¹ as expounding these precise views, and the love of the fourfold exposition of possible views is prominent in Buddhism itself.