Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c8.s1.33

c8.s1.33

The same frank realism meets us once more in the doctrine of perception. Already in the Canon¹ the process of sensation is compared with the rubbing of two sticks to produce fire, the simile clearly applying to the contact of the organ of sense and the object. Nor was this view abandoned even in the late Milindapañha, where the contact of the eye and the object is likened to the butting of two rams or the clashing against each other of cymbals. Naïve realism no doubt, but unmistakable, and the genuineness of the feeling is shown by the effect it has on the doctrine of the act. The Canon² no less than the Milindapañha admits that accidental happenings are possible; disease and the forces of nature may overwhelm with misfortune a man who has deserved no such ills, a dogma which is frankly destructive of the full efficacy of the doctrine, and whose acceptance shows how little early Buddhism was able to rise above the simple and natural realism of early thought throughout the world.³