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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c9.s4: 4. Matter and Spirit in the Universe

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c9.s4

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4. Matter and Spirit in the Universe

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On the nature of matter the Canon is practically silent; it accepts from Brahmanical tradition the four elements, earth, fire, air, water; on the vexed question of ether (*ākāsa*) it now counts it with the elements, now omits it from the list, while in the Abhidhamma it is severed from the four elements, which are treated as underived matter, and made a derivate.¹ From the nature of the meditation of the infinity of ether or space, we see that its conception is what remains when all material things are eliminated from the field of experience. In what manner the elements were conceived in early Buddhism there is nothing to show, nor have we any reason to treat as primitive the later atomic view. What is clear is that every material thing is a compound (*saṃkhāra*), which may, as in the case of the body, endure for a long time, but will nevertheless ultimately pass away. Things are impermanent (*anicca*); in early Buddhism they are not literally momentary, a refinement of later thought.

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¹ DS., §§ 638, 722; *Psych. Eth.*, pp. lviii, lix; MN. i. 423; ii. 17.

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Matter exists not merely externally to us, but also as an aggregate (*khanda*) in the empiric individual; the connexion of body and spirit is clear to the insight of the saint, but it is not explained to us, and doubtless was accepted as an obvious datum, connexion and interaction raising no difficulty. There is no suggestion that matter always forms an aggregate of some spirit; the *Milindapañha*² with perfect orthodoxy emphasizes that matter exists as independent of spirit.

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² pp. 136 f., 271. Cf. KV. xvi. 8; ix. 3; vii. 7, 8; xii. 3, 4, all passages showing matter as independent.

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The universe consists of innumerable world systems, each equipped with earth, heavens and hells, and each system or sphere is divided into three regions (*avacaras*), worlds (*loka*) or layers (*dhātu*), the first the realm of desire (*kāma*), the next of matter or material form (*rūpa*), the third that without form (*arūpa*).³ In the first are hells or purgatories eight or more in number, while others exist between the spheres (*lokantarika*; the animal world; the abode of ghosts (pretas); the abode of Asuras or demons; which make up the places of punishment (apāya); then comes the abode of men and then six abodes of gods (devalokas). In the second we have the Brahma-lokas, sixteen in number of sections according to the number of the gods free from desire who abide there; entrance to these is assured to those who practice the four Meditations, and to those who are non-returners among the disciples, and who will therefore attain Nirvāna in heaven in lieu of rebirth on earth.¹ In the world without matter we find the place of those who carry out the Formless Meditations; thus he who frees his mind from any thought save that of infinite space is reborn in such a world, abiding there in that mental condition; he that has attained to infinity of consciousness or intelligence (viññāna) abides in such a world; and so with the world of nothingness, and of neither ideation nor non-ideation.

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³ Cf. Kern, *Ind. Buddh.*, pp. 57 ff.; DN. no. 14; i. 195; 34 ff.; 215 ff.; MN. nos. 49, 129; *Suttanipāta*, iii. 10; on Asuras, SN. i. 216 ff.

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¹ Matter here is subtle; smell, taste, and touch do not exist, only sight, hearing, and mental co-ordination, KV. viii. 7. The abode of Asuras is denied as separate by KV. viii. 1 against Andhakas and Uttarāpathakas on the strength of MN. i. 73. For the gods as long-lived see AN. ii. 33.

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These conceptions are, of course, partly popular, borrowed from the contemporary Brahmanic view of heavens and hells, and partly philosophical in character. The Upaniṣads know a world of Brahmā of celestial delights which is the reward of the soul not yet fitted for emancipation by union with the absolute Brahman; the Buddhists improve upon this idea, and adapt it to the schemes of meditations which they take over from Brahmanism. That these views were accepted as true by disciples as well as the laity we can hardly doubt; the Canon represents the Buddha as visiting the Brahma-loka; he represents himself as having received a visit from Brahmā Sahampati; the gods, Brahmā and Indra especially, play a great part in the tradition, in subordination to the Buddha.² Was this irony? Did the Buddha himself, did the disciples know that there were no gods such as the Brahmins feigned? Or did they really believe in these gods, as superior beings, though not immortal, and not differing in essence from men, to whose place all men may strive? The answer must be in favour of their belief, in the absence of a single hint to the contrary in the texts of early Buddhism, and in face of the belief of pious Buddhists throughout the ages. If the master really laughed at these fancies, we must admit that it has been left to us to discover the fact. The course of Buddhist philosophy and religion has advanced under the conviction of the existence of all these beings, and it is not for an age which tolerates spiritualism to attribute greater reason to early India in the centuries before Christianity.

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² MN. i. 326; 458; AN. ii. 20; iv. 302 ff.; Kern, Ind. Buddh., p. 59; Beckh, Buddhismus, ii. 55 ff.

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Speculative questions on the infinity and duration of the world are among those to which the Buddha declined any answer; if he faced the problem whether there would still persist matter if all the spirits won liberation, he did not answer it; in all probability the idea never occurred to him.¹ He did believe, we are assured by the whole evidence of the Canon, in the doctrine of the periodic dissolution and re-evolution of the universe or the world systems; there are Aeons of evolution, of dissolution, and of both, an idea developed by Jainism at tedious length. Fanciful pictures of the process of evolution as one of decadence, possibly intended as such, are found in the Canon in the Buddha’s mouth, but they contain nothing of interest or value.²

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¹ Above, ch. ii. § 2; Oldenberg, *Buddha*,⁵ p. 387; *lokacintā* is deprecated; AN. iv. no. 77.

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² DN. i. 17 f.; iii. 85 f.; Mhv. i. 338 ff.; Kuhn, *Festschrift Vilhelm Thomsen*, pp. 214 ff.

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Of more interest is the possibility that Buddhism began its philosophical career with a doctrine of six elements, all real, whose interaction explained the existence of the world, to which it added the Nirvāṇa element, the state of release.³ There was a precedent for this in earlier thought,⁴ Pakudha Kaccāyana recognized the ordinary four, the soul, pleasure, and pain, but denied interaction, while Ajita, who asserted four elements only, admitted also tacitly the existence of space, into which the senses, creations of the elements, pass on death. To add the conception of consciousness to the four material elements, to subsume under it pleasure and pain, and to accept space would be a natural and logical construction. We have direct evidence of it both in the *Aṅguttara* and the *Majjhima Nikāyas*; it accords precisely with the conception of the nature of rebirth described in the *Dīgha Nikāya*, and, with the omission of space, is adopted in the later Pali scholasticism. In any case it is essential to note that early Buddhism in its admission of the four material elements was realistic, and also admitted that physical changes were based on such elemental permanent existences.

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³ *Itivuttaka*, 44, 51, 73; immortal element (*amatā dhātu*), AN. iv. 423 f.; SN. v. 139, 232; AN. iii. 356; Beckh, *Buddhismus*, ii. 54, 124 f. It is, of course, absurd to treat these elements as anything but absolutely real; cf. Aung, *Compendium*, pp. 255 f.

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⁴ See below, ch. vii. § 1.

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The distinction between the elements, in the world and as part of the complex which makes the individual, is well brought out in the *Majjhima*, where the latter are styled as appropriated, taken up, assimilated (*upādinna*); they are the matter which the consciousness assumes as the mode of continuing the existence to which it is bound by its earlier actions.¹

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¹ AN. i. 176; MN. iii. 239 f. ; DN. ii. 63 ; Ç., p. 244 ; NP., p. 75 ; Poussin, TDC., pp. 43 f.

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