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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c8.s3: 3. The Absolute and Nirvāṇa

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c8.s3

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3. The Absolute and Nirvāṇa

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The emphasis laid by Buddhism on the impermanence and non-substantiality of the world is plainly in harmony with the depreciation of all empirical existence by the thinkers of the Upaniṣads who exalted the permanence of the one absolute. The question, therefore, inevitably presents itself whether the Buddhist condemnation of the world of experience stands on the same basis or whether, as at first sight appears the case, the condemnation survived, and was even emphasized from the period of earlier thought,¹ but the ground of that depreciation was abandoned, presumably as a matter incapable of proof, and therefore a mere idle speculation of constructive imagination.

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¹ Cf. below, ch. vii., § 2.

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It is noteworthy on examination to find that in the great sermon at Benares on the characteristics of that which is not the self, the doctrine extends emphatically to deny the permanence as existent of all empirical things; it does not, in point of fact, deny in express terms that there may exist another realm of existence which is exempt from empirical determination, and which therefore might be regarded as absolutely real. Whether such a realm does exist arises in a concrete form for Buddhism in the shape of the issue as to the fate of the enlightened man on the passing away of his physical life. Nirvāṇa, there is no doubt, can be attained and normally is attained before the bodily death of the sage; it brings with it happiness of the highest order,² and inspires the poetry of many of the stanzas of the Theru- and Therīgāthās. But, when the bodily apparatus ceases to operate, what is the condition of the enlightened one? Are we to believe that at this stage the existence of the enlightened one ceases, as is the view which appeals to modern rationalism? Or does the Parinirvāṇa mean the final severance of connexion with the world of experience, and the enjoyment of another sphere of existence which is true reality, and accordingly exempt from possibility of explanation by empirical descriptions? The problem of the continued existence of the Tathāgata after death is in the ultimate issue the same as the problem of the existence of a true self; if such exists, then the enlightened one must necessarily, as the highest product of the world, be the possessor of such a self.

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² It is accompanied by consciousness of the destruction of existence and rebirth; DN. i. 84; Beckh, *Buddhismus*, ii. 112 ff.

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The answer given by the Buddha in the Canon is clear enough; it is a definite relegation of the issue to the sphere of the indeterminates, marking the issue as one on which the master has not thought right to declare any doctrine. When Vacchagotta¹ asks the Buddha if the self exists, the latter remains silent and, questioned by Ānanda as to the cause of this reticence, explains his reasons convincingly enough. To assert the existence of the self would be understood as acceptance of the adherents of the permanent self of the Upaniṣad type; to deny the self would be to approve the doctrine of those who believe that the self, without purification to ensure liberation, does not on death transmigrate but is utterly destroyed. Again, to assert the existence of the self would certainly not have lead Vacchagotta to accept the essential doctrine that all the empirical world is essentially not-self, while to deny it would have thrown him into confusion: ‘My self, did it not previously exist? Now it exists no more.’ The reasons are essentially pragmatic, but, even if we may feel that in such a passage the idea is hinted at that the true answer implies the negation of an absolute, it is perfectly obvious that we have no right to go beyond the plain assertion of the text as to the doctrine of the Buddha. We have the same doctrine expressed with much force in the Māluṅkyāputta dialogue of the Majjhima Nikāya,² where the disciple very energetically presses the Buddha to answer the puzzles of the limits of the world in space and time and the continued existence of the enlightened man after death. The Buddha’s refusal is perfectly categoric; he insists that he made no undertaking to instruct his disciples in these matters. He is instead a physician who gives such instruction as leads to the freeing of man from bondage, and information on the points in question tends in no way to the desired end, and therefore is not imparted by the master.

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¹ SN. iv. 400.

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² i. 426; cf. AN. iv. 67 ff.

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To deny that the teaching of the Buddha himself stopped at this attitude of agnosticism appears contrary to every sound principle of criticism. It is true that it has been suggested that it is impossible to conceive that the master would be contented with offering nothing more positive in the way of a hope for the future, but this is obviously to beg the question. By leaving the matter unexplained the Buddha allowed men to frame their own conceptions of the future of the enlightened man after death; those who entertained strong desires for some permanent form of life, even after liberation, were as entitled to cherish the hope, as were others to accept utter annihilation as the due result, and we really have no means of saying to what proportion of the disciples either prospect would appeal; western analogies show sufficiently that there are many earnest thinkers who believe in the reality and purpose of the universe—which the Buddha did not—and yet accept the destruction of the individual on death with satisfaction or resignation. It has, however, been urged¹ that we cannot suppose that so able a thinker as the Buddha was without personal convictions on such a vital issue, even though he may have deemed on good grounds that it was neither advantageous nor necessary to explain his opinions to his disciples. Here again we are confronted with bare possibilities; it is quite legitimate to hold that the Buddha was a genuine agnostic, that he had studied the various systems of ideas prevalent in his day without deriving any greater satisfaction from them than any of us to-day do from the study of modern systems, and that he had no reasoned or other conviction on the matter. From the general poverty of philosophical constructive power exhibited by such parts of the system as appear essentially Buddha's, one is inclined to prefer this explanation.

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¹ Schrader, JPTS. 1904-5, p. 158. The etymology of Nirvāṇa ('without craving (vāna)' according to ADS. vi. 14), 'blowing out,' does not help (cf. JPTS. 1919, pp. 53 ff.; ZDMG. lxix. 477).

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The case² for a positive answer to the existence of an absolute reality, as entertained by a section at any rate of the early disciples, is a totally different question and admits of serious support. Some of the contentions in favour of this view will certainly not bear scrutiny; neither the Buddha nor his disciples strike one as necessarily possessed of sufficient philosophical capacity to be incapable of entertaining a negative view on this topic, even if it be granted as true that philosophy is forced to accept the metaphysical conception of the absolute one, although, if this idea be realized in perfect sharpness, we are as unable to think as to deny that the absolute one is either identical with, or different from, the world. But it may be possible that the fair interpretation of some passages in the Canon supports the belief that the teachers of these doctrines did accept an absolute reality as the basis of their depreciation of the world.

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² Schrader, JPTS. 1904-5, pp. 160 ff., whose views greatly exaggerate the philosophical insight of the Buddha. Equally dubious is Walleser's counter-argument (PP., pp. 8 f.) that denial of a self inevitably carried with it the denial of an absolute.

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The doctrine of non-self (*anattā*) clearly asserts that there are no eternal substances in the world nor yet substances which perish utterly, but that the whole world is a process of becoming; anything in time could not be the true reality. Again the universe in time includes and is equivalent to the five constituents of nature (*khandhas*), namely the four or including ether (*ākāsa*) five material elements and whatever consists of them, and every kind of consciousness or spiritual existence, extending to that of sensual beings like ourselves (*kāmaloka*), of the Great Brahmās and other gods (*rūpabrahmaloka*), and even of the most etherial unlimited consciousness existing in the very highest spheres of nature (*arūpabrahmaloka*). But it does not embrace a being which cannot be called corporeal or spiritual or both (*nāmarūpa*) in any sense, which would be a true absolute. Now in the Alagaddūpama Sutta of the *Majjhima*¹ there is a striking denial by the Buddha, following on an exposition of the doctrine of the not-self and a declaration of the nature of the enlightened one as beyond nature and inconceivable already in this life. The accusation is made that the Buddha holds the destruction of a real entity (*sato satassa*). This he denies absolutely; what he bids men throw off is the non-ego consisting of the five constituents, bodily form, perception, feeling, the dispositions, and intellect; as the owner of a wood, the argument seems to run, is not injured by the taking away of the grass, boughs &c. so the real entity is not destroyed by the laying aside of the constituents. This view may be strengthened by the observation that the Buddhist formula applied to everything in nature: ‘This is not mine; I am not this; this is not myself (n’ etaṁ mama; n’ eso ’ham asmi; na m’ eso attā)’ is applied by the Sāṁkhya¹ school in almost exactly the same form (nāsmi; na me; nāham) to exactly the same object, the whole of material and spiritual nature, but with the single aim of expressing the absolute otherness of the self (puruṣa) from nature. Nor is it inconsistent with this view that the same Sutta contains a very emphatic denial of the reality of a permanent self identical with the world, a view which we must understand in the sense of the self of the Upaniṣads: ‘World and the self are one; that shall I be after death; eternal, firm, everlasting, not subject to change, like the everlasting one; thus shall I stay:’ is not that, O monks, a mere complete doctrine of fools? This doctrine may quite legitimately be interpreted as an emphatic denial of the pantheistic view which appears in certain of the Upaniṣads and which would certainly be wholly repugnant to the Buddha. We may, therefore, see in this passsage a clear recognition that the absolute must be regarded as standing wholly aside from empirical determinations, as being without even the attribute of consciousness (vijñāna) admitted in the Upaniṣads.

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¹ i. 140 ff.

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¹ Sāṁkhyakārikā, 64; Poussin, JA. 1902, ii. 289, n. 1.

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A further argument can be derived from the simile of the flame applied early and frequently to the passing away of the enlightened one. ‘As the flame’, the Suttanipāta² tells us, ‘blown down by the vehemence of the wind goes out, and can be named no more, even so the sage, liberated from individuality, goes out and can be named no more.’ In the Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya³ we have a complete working out of the idea; the flame ceases to appear when the fuel is consumed; similarly, when the different constituents of the enlightened one disappear, the fuel of the Tathāgata’s fire is consumed. But the Tathāgata, liberated from these constituents of spirit and material form, is deep, unmeasurable, difficult to fathom, like the great ocean. The comparison is indeed significant, for there is no doubt that the Indian idea of the extinction of fire was not that which occurs to us of utter annihilation, but rather that the flame returns to the primitive, pure, invisible state of fire in which it existed prior to its manifestation in the form of visible fire. This view is expressly attested in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad,¹ which can reasonably be regarded as good evidence for the period of the coming into existence of the Canon. The same Upaniṣad contains, also, the comparison of the supreme self with a fire, the fuel of which has been consumed, showing emphatically that the extinction of the fuel has nothing to do with the destruction of the fire, though it ceases to be visible, and the Maitreyī Upaniṣad,² a text of the Yoga philosophy, with which Buddhism has much in common, applies the simile to the action of the thinking principle: ‘As fire for want of fuel comes to rest in its own place of birth, so, through the cessation of its motions, the thinking principle comes to rest in its own birthplace.’

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² 1074.

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³ i. 487.

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¹ i. 13 (cf. Mil., p. 327); vi. 19.

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² Older than Maitr. Up.

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In an interesting conversation³ between King Pasenadi of Kosala and the nun Khemā we find again the refusal to answer the question as to the continued existence of the Tathāgata after death, and an emphatic assertion of the deep nature of the Tathāgata, illustrated by the impossibility of reckoning the sands of the Ganges or the water drops in the ocean. Is this not to argue that the Tathāgata apart from the mortal constituents is something real but ineffable? True, it is possible to explain the doctrine in the light of the negativism of the Madhyamaka; if all be void (śūnya), the nature of the Tathāgata is a specially deep void, and especially ineffable. But it is unwise to insist on seeing negativism in passages where another explanation is not merely possible, but probably more in accordance with the ideas of the teachers of the early Canon.

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³ SN. iv. 374 ff.; cf. Poussin, JA. 1902, ii. 246; Bouddhisme, pp. 172, 415; Oldenberg, Buddha⁹, p. 324.

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A similar difficulty arises in the case of the discussion of the view of an heretical monk, Yamaka,⁴ who formed the not unnatural conception that the master taught that the enlightened one, who had purified himself from all sin, when his body ceased to harbour life, was utterly annihilated. Sāriputta confronts Yamaka with the question whether the true self of the Tathāgata is his material form, and receives a negative reply. Similar replies are given to the questions whether he is in the material form, or it in him, or different from it, and so on with the four other constituents which make up the apparent individual. Yamaka also admits that the five constituents all taken together do not make up the Tathāgata, nor again is he without the five constituents taken together. Sāriputta then confronts Yamaka with the conclusion that even in life he cannot comprehend in truth and essence the Tathāgata, and that *a fortiori* it is absurd to make assertions of him after his death. Does this mean that even in life Yamaka cannot show the Tathāgata really to exist, and still less of course in death can his nature be stated? The interpretation is possible, and in entire harmony with the Madhyamaka view, but it certainly does not suggest itself here as natural. We have far better reason to assume that we have once more an agnosticism coupled with an indication that there is much more than the mere constituents in the composition of the Tathāgata. Insufficient weight perhaps has been given in the discussion to this aspect of the question; if in life the Tathāgata is ineffable, and not to be regarded as merely made up of the constituents, there is every reason to realize that he is still more ineffable in death.

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⁴ SN. iii. 109 ff. Cf. Paṭisambhidāmagga, i. 143-5.

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We have, however, more positive assurances of the reality of something over and above the empirical world. The end of misery is conceived as a place where there is neither earth nor water, light nor air, neither the infinity of space, nor the infinity of intellect, nor the absence of everything, nor the laying aside both of consciousness and unconsciousness, neither this world nor yonder world, where there is neither movement nor rest, neither birth nor death.¹ Moreover, there is something not born, not having become, not made, not formed; were there not such a thing, there would be no escape for that which is born, has become, been made, been formed. The same text² alludes to the fate of the enlightened who have attained Nirvāṇa; as the path of the fire when extinguished cannot be traced, so we cannot trace the path of those who have been completely set free, who have escaped the fetters of desire, and have attained unchanging happiness (*sukha*). But it is not unimportant to remember that these utterances are from the *Udāna* and that we must not press unduly isolated assertions. Moreover, we must remember that in all likelihood the term Nirvāṇa as indicating the final end was taken over by the Buddhists from existing speculation, for the term is freely found in the philosophic parts of the *Mahābhārata*, which, though late in their present form, represent earlier doctrine, and the Jains also accept it as an apt description of it as the safe, happy, and quiet place which the great sages reach, putting an end to the stream of existence.¹ Associations strictly speaking not characteristic of Buddhism might easily cluster around such a term, and we have in fact proof of this in the term Nirvāṇa, element free from determinations (*anupādi-* or *anupadhi-sesā nibbāna-dhātu*).² Such terminology may be traced back to the distinction between Brahman as the absolute without determinations (*upādhi*), through which the absolute appears as the universe, but on the faith of such an argument to claim that, to the Buddhist, Nirvāṇa is essentially the absolute parallel with the Brahman would be to ignore the fact that Buddhism, like every new belief, was largely compelled to put its wine into old bottles.

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¹ *Udāna*, viii. 1; cf ii. 10.

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² *Ibid.* viii. 3, 10.

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¹ *Āyāraṅga Sutta*, i. 5. 6; ii. 15. 25; for Yoga influence cf. ch. vii, § 3. That Nirvāṇa is positive may be argued from its distinction from the inferior state of nothingness (*ākiñcañña*) attained in meditation; Beckh, *Buddhismus*, ii. 122.

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² Dahlmann, *Nirvāṇa*, pp. 23 f., 114 f.; Oldenberg, *Buddha*¹, pp. 438 f.; ch. vii, § 3.

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