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Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s1.t2: The Absolute and the External World

Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s1.t2

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The Absolute and the External World

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We must more closely examine the various meanings attached by the Indian mind to the idea of the Âtman, the Brahma, alone and in its connection with the material world, for it is in and by these thoughts that those tendencies, which have given to the Buddhist world its characteristic stamp, were, at first imperceptibly but subsequently more decidedly, developed.

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The doctrines of the Brahmans regarding the Âtman do not form a system: their mind has, it is true, the courage and strength for a great venture; but how could it, in the excitement of this creation, preserve at the same time the cool equanimity, necessary for arranging and harmonizing its creation? While the mind is ever seeking new paths, ever making new comparisons, which shall explain the enigma of the Âtman; while, no matter whether man's inquiry be as to the remote past of the world's beginning, or as to the future of the human soul in a world to come, the first and last word is invariably the Âtman, who can be astonished if often, in the accumulated masses of these notions, the most irreconcilable differences remained in juxtaposition, probably without their inherent contradictions having been even noticed?

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I shall now abstract from one of the most important monuments which have come down to us from those times, from the concluding sections of the "Brâhmana of the hundred paths," a passage which seems to be connected with the first rude efforts of speculation regarding the Âtman. If the being who created the worlds out of himself, here also bears that name, which later times have given him, Âtman, one may well be tempted to believe that the thoughts themselves with their antique and crude stamp belong to the preceding age.

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"The Âtman," it says, "existed in the beginning, in a spirit form; he looked round him and saw nothing else but himself; he spoke the first word: 'I am;' hence comes the name 'I;' therefore even now also, whoever is addressed by another, says first: 'It is I,' and then he names the other name which he bears. . . . He was afraid; therefore whoever is alone is afraid. Then he thought: 'There is nothing else but I, of what then am I afraid?' So his fear vanished. Of what had he to be afraid? Man experiences fear of another. But he did not feel content; therefore whoever is alone does not feel content. He desired another. He combined in himself the natures of female and male which are locked in each other's embrace. He divided this nature of his into two parts: by this came husband and wife; therefore each of us alike, is a half, says Yâjnavalkya; therefore is this void (of a man's nature) filled up by the woman. He joined himself to her; thus were men born."

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It is then further narrated, how the two halves of the creating Âtman, as sire and dam, assume all animal forms after the human, and produce the animal kingdom, and how then the Âtman produces from himself fire and moisture, or the divinities Agni and Soma. "This is Brahma's creation superior to himself. Inasmuch as he has created gods greater than he himself is, inasmuch as he, a mortal, has created immortals, therefore it is a creating of the superior to himself. Whosoever has this knowledge, finds his place in this, his superior creation."

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As the foregoing text may apparently resemble those ancient cosmogonies which begin: "In the beginning was Prajâpati"—so, internally also, this naïve conception of the highest being—or of the original being, for it is not the highest yet—scarcely differs from that which a preceding age had conceived in Prajâpati, the creator and ruler of the world. The Âtman here resembles a powerful first man more than a god, not to say the one great bëent, in whom all other being lives and moves. This Âtman is afraid in his loneliness, like a man; he feels desire, like a man; he begets and brings forth like human beings. It is true, gods are among his creatures, but these creatures are higher than the creator; creating greater than himself, he, a mortal, produces from himself immortal deities.

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Side by side with this cosmogony we place other fragments of the same text, which are of an age probably not much later than the passage quoted.

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Yâjnavalkya, the renowned Brahman, is about to leave his home, to wander as a mendicant. He divides his property between his two wives. Then his wife Maitreyî says to him as he is departing, "If my property included the whole earth, would I therefore be immortal?" He replies, "Thy life would be like the life of the rich: but of immortality riches bring no hope." She says, "If I cannot be immortal, what use is all this to me? Tell me, exalted one, whatever thou knowest." And he addresses her regarding the Âtman.

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"As when the drum is beaten, a man cannot prevent its sound going forth, but if he seize the drum or the drummer, the sound is stayed;—as when the lute is played, a man cannot prevent its sound going forth, but if he seize the lute or the lute-player, the sound is stayed;—as when the trumpet is blown, a man cannot prevent its sound going forth, but if he seize the trumpet or the trumpeter, the sound is stayed;—as from a fire, in which a man places damp wood, clouds of smoke issue here and there, so truly is the exhalation of this great being; he is Rig Veda, he is Yajur Veda, he is Sâma Veda, the Atharvan and Angiras songs, tale and legend, knowledge and sacred doctrine, verses, rules, he is the explanation and the second explanation; all this is his exhalation.—As a lump of salt, which is thrown into the water, dissolves and cannot be gathered up again, but wherever water is drawn, it is salty, so truly it is with this great being, the endless, the unlimited, the fulness of knowledge: from these (earthly) beings it came into view and with them it vanishes. There is no consciousness after death; hearken, thus I declare unto thee." Thus spoke Yâjnavalkya. Then Maitreyî said, "This speech

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of thine, exalted one, perplexes me; there is no consciousness after death.” Then said Yâjnavalkya, “I tell thee nothing perplexing; it is quite comprehensible; where there is a duality of existences, one can see the other, one can smell the other, one can speak to the other, one can hear the other, one can think of the other, one can apprehend the other. But where for each everything has turned into his ego (the Âtman), by whom and whom shall he see, by whom and whom shall he smell, by whom and to whom shall he speak, by whom and whom shall he hear, think and apprehend? By whom shall he apprehend him through whom he apprehends this universe? Through whom shall he apprehend him, the apprehender?”

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This is the farewell conversation of Yâjnavalkya with his wife. Between this and those cosmogonic speculations, which we have already described, there lies a development of thought, which is not much less than a revolution. There is the Âtman, who is afraid, who soliloquizes, who experiences desire, who can be compared with his creatures, as to whether he or they be the greater, and who must fall back behind the highest of his creatures. Here is the Âtman, who is free from all limits of personal, human-like existence. Can there, man now inquires, be perception, thought, consciousness, in the Universe-Being? No, for all perception rests upon a duality, on the opposition of subject and object. In the external world with its unlimited plurality there is everywhere a field for this opposition, but in the absolutely existent all plurality ceases, and with it necessarily all perception, and all consciousness, which have their origin in a plurality. The Âtman is not blind and deaf—he is on the contrary the one great seer and hearer, who does all the seeing and hearing in the external world—but in his own domain he sees not and hears not, for in the unity, which there prevails, the opposition of seeing and seen, of hearing and heard, is removed. Like the ultimate supreme One of the Neoplatonics, which cannot be regarded as intellect nor yet as intelligible, but transcends the reason (ὑπερβεβηκὸς τὴν νοῦ φύσιν), the Âtman also, as these farewell words of Yâjnavalkya represent him, transcends the personal, is the root of all personality, the comprehensive fulness of all those powers, in which personal life finds its termination: but these powers come into operation only in this phenomenal world, not in the domain of the everlasting One, the everlasting unchangeable itself.

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The one bëent is neither great nor small, neither long nor short, neither hidden nor revealed, neither within nor without; the "No, No" is his name, inasmuch as he cannot be comprehended by any epithets, and yet his representative is the syllable of affirmation, Om;* he is the ens realissimum.

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There yet remained for Indian speculation the task of finding its way back from this ultimate ground of all being to the empirical state of being, to define the relation which subsists between the Âtman and the external world. Is the external world something separate, side by side with the Âtman; such that, apart from that which the Âtman is or works in it, something else, howsoever it have to be apprehended, may yet be left, which is not Âtman? or is the world of plurality absolved without residuum in the Âtman?

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It was necessary to approach this question in some form, more or less definite, as soon as men came to speak at all of the Âtman and the material world; but the question is hinted at by the Indian thinkers of these ancient times, rather than put directly or point blank. In their estimation, this alone is of all things most important, that the Âtman may be recognized as the sole source of life in all that lives, and as the thread in which all plurality finds its unity; but where the attempt is made to show how the problem of the co-existence of that plurality and this unity, or of their existence in each other, finds a solution, they speak in the vague language of similes and symbols, rather than in expressions which admit of their signification being sharply defined.

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∗ In Sanscrit the same expression (ekam aksharam) has the same double meaning, "the one imperishable," namely, the Âtman; and "the one syllable," namely, the Om.

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The Âtman, they say, pervades things, as the salt, which has dissolved in water, pervades the water; from the Âtman things spring, as the sparks fly out from the fire, as threads from the spider, as the sound comes from the flute or the drum. "As all the spokes are united together in the nave and the felly of a wheel, so in this Âtman are united all breath-powers, all worlds, all gods, all beings, all these ego-ities."

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There is great danger, in interpreting such similes, of not keeping within the faint line which separates that which it was intended they should convey and that which lies in them beyond this, accidentally and unintentionally; yet he who would avoid this danger altogether must simply forbear to lift the veil which lies over the Indian world of thought, shrouded in types and symbols. And we, for our part, think we can detect behind these similitudes, by which men strove to bring the living power of the Âtman in the universe near to his understanding, a conviction, though at the same time but a half-conscious conviction, of the existence of an element in things separate from the Âtman. The Âtman, says the Indian, pervades the universe, as the salt the water in which it has dissolved; but we may easily go on to add, as a complement to this, although no drop of the salt water is without salt, the water continues, notwithstanding, to be something separately constituted from the salt. The spokes of the wheel are all fitted into the nave and the felly, and fastened in, and still the spoke is something which the nave and the felly are not. And thus we may infer, the Âtman is to the Indian certainly the sole actuality, light-diffusing, the only significant reality in things; but there is a remainder left in things, which he is not. “He who dwells in the earth,” it is said of the Âtman, “being within the earth, whom the earth knows not, whose body is the earth, who operates within the earth, that is the Âtman, the in-dwelling ruler, the immortal. He who dwells in the water, who dwells in the fire, who dwells in the æther, who dwells in the wind, who dwells in the sun, moon, and stars, who dwells in space, who dwells in lightning and thunder, who dwells in all worlds, who is illatent in all Vedas, all offerings, all beings, whom all beings know not, whose body all beings are, who operates within all beings, that is the Âtman, the in-dwelling ruler, the immortal.” And in another part of the same dialogue, from which these propositions have been excerpted: “by the command of this unchangeable being heaven and earth stand fast; by the command of this unchangeable being sun and moon stand fast, days and nights, half months and months, seasons and years stand fast; by the command of this unchangeable being some rivers flow from the snowy mountains to the east, and others to the west and other points of the heavens; by the command of this unchangeable being men commend the giver, the gods the offerer, and the libation made with the spoon is the proper part belonging to the Manes.”

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Though thus varied is the garb in which thought wraps itself in all these expressions, yet it is always the same, viz., that the Âtman, as the sole directing power, is in all that lives and moves, but that the world of creatures operated on stands side by side with the directing power, pervaded by his energy, and yet separate from him.

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Though here and there, by all means, the language seems more free, and expressions are found which convey a hint that the Âtman is everything which lives and moves, yet, I take it, the contradiction lies more in the words employed than in the thought. Is it not allowable, for the bold language in which these hazardous ventures of young thought clothe themselves, to say that the Âtman is the universe, even where the thought, if it were accurately expressed, is only this, that in the universe the Âtman is the only valuable, the source of all life and all light?

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Since, then, there remains in things a residue which is not Âtman, we ask: in what light was this residue viewed? whence comes it? what significance has it? Naturally comes the expectation that it was conceived to be matter, or dark chaos, which, formless in itself, receives its form from the Âtman, the source of forms and light. Our texts have preserved for us but few hints on this subject. The knowledge of the Âtman itself, which was inseparably associated with the ideas of the deliverance of the spirit from the domain of sorrow-fraught impermanence, had such unlimited value for the Indian, that the other side of the problem receded in speculative importance before it into the background. But where utterances bearing on these questions are found, they do actually point to the notion of a chaos, a world of potentialities, from which the operation of the Âtman produces realities. The bëent, that was in the beginning alone, Uddâlaka thus instructs his son,[*] thought: may I become a plurality. It sent forth fire from itself: the fire sent forth water from itself: the water produced food. "Then thought this being: let me now enter these three beings with this living self and let me then reveal names and forms.” And it enters with its breath of life into the fire, into the water, and into the food, mixes the elements of the one with those of the other, and thus the real world is prepared from the three original existents by the demiurgic operation of the Âtman.

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∗ "Chândogya Upan.," vi. 2, etc. Similar but much more involved is "Çat. Br.," xi. 2, 3.

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It is clear that those three oldest existents, those original creations of the Âtman, in which he then reveals name and form by his breath of life, are treated before this act of revealing as a chaotic something, which is there, but is not as yet anything precisely determinate, older than the world of things we see, and not eternal like the Âtman, but the Âtman’s first creation. But these attempts to demonstrate what in things is matter, bear very perceptibly the marks of immaturity. One would expect to find in the chaos, before the breath of life of the demiurgus produces in it “name and form,” a nameless and formless, an absolute, indeterminate something, and yet it is in the very beginning organic, of the threefold nature, of fire, water, and food, and thus it has thereby originally in itself an element of distinctness and nomination. And similarly, on the other hand, is the Âtman, the creator and vivifier of the chaotic, less firmly maintained in that paramount position resulting from the abstraction which we found attained in the farewell discourse of Yâjnavalkya. It is not the simple One, from whose nature, for his unity’s sake, all reflection and projection must be excluded, as involving the duality of subject and object; he thinks, and this, indeed, is his thought: may I become a plurality. Those thinkers who have pursued the idea of the unity in the nature of the Âtman to its ultimate consequence, would scarcely have ventured to attempt, in the way entered upon here, a solution of the problem of matter and its evolution from the Âtman; it is surely no mere accident that those passages in our texts also, which accentuate those consequences with the most marked emphasis, are silent on these problems: men may have felt that thought had here reached a chasm, over which to throw a bridge was not in their power.

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