Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c9.s1.t7: The Saint—The Ego—The Nirvâna

Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c9.s1.t7

Language: English

The Saint—The Ego—The Nirvâna

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Sitting under the tree of knowledge Buddha says to himself: "Difficult will it be for men to grasp the law of causality, the chain of causes and effects. And this also will be very hard for them to grasp, the coming of all conformations to an end, the loosening from everything earthly, the extinction of desire, the cessation of longing, the end, the Nirvâna." These words divide the circle, which Buddhist thought describes, into its two natural halves. On the one side the earthly world, ruled by the law of causality. On the other side—is it the eternal? Is it the Nothing? We may doubt. We know this much only to begin with, that it is the domain over which the law of causality has no power.

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Our sketch will follow this clearly indicated division.

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From the flames of becoming, decease, and suffering, the believer, he who has knowledge, saves himself in the world of "extinction" (Nirvâna), in the cool quiet of everlasting peace. He overcomes ignorance and thereby sets himself free from the painful fruits which are bound up with it through the natural necessity of the law of causality. He knows the four sacred truths, and "while he thus knows and apprehends, his soul is freed from the calamity of desire, freed from the calamity of becoming, freed from the calamity of error, freed from the calamity of ignorance. In the delivered there arises the knowledge of his deliverance; ended is re-birth, fulfilled the law, duty done, there is no more any returning to this world: this he knows."

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Buddha's disciple hopes to attain this happiness not merely in the hereafter. He who has conquered ignorance and got rid of desire enjoys the supreme reward already in this life.

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His outer man may still be detained in the world of suffering; he knows that it is not he himself whom the coming and going of the Sankhâras affects. Buddhist proverbial philosophy attributes in innumerable passages the possession of Nirvâna to the saint, who still treads the earth:

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“The disciple who has put off lust and desire, rich in wisdom, has here on earth attained the deliverance from death, the rest, the Nirvâna, the eternal state.”

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“He who has escaped from the trackless, hard mazes of the Sansâra, who has crossed over and reached the shore, self-absorbed, without stumbling and without doubt, who has delivered himself from the earthly, and attained Nirvâna, him I call a true Brahman.”*

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It is not an anticipation in parlance, but it is the absolutely exact expression of the dogmatic thought, when not merely the hereafter, which awaits the emancipated saint, but the perfection which he already attains in this life, is called the Nirvâna. What is to be extinguished has been extinguished, the fire of lust, hatred, bewilderment. In unsubstantial distance lie hope and fear; the will, the hugging of the hallucination of egoity is subdued, as a man throws aside the foolish wishes of childhood. What matters it whether the transitory state of being, the root of which is nipped, lay aside its indifferent phenomenal life instantaneously or in after ages?

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If the saint will even now put an end to his state of being he can do so, but the majority stand fast until nature has reached her goal: of such may those words be said which are put in the mouth of the most prominent of Buddha’s disciples: “I long not for death, I long not for life; I wait till mine hour come, like a servant who awaiteth his reward. I long not for death, I long not for life; I wait till mine hour come, alert and with watchful mind.”*

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∗ “Suttasangaha,” fol. cû; “Dhammapada,” 414. The prose texts contain very numerous similar expressions. For instance, a Brahmanical ascetic addresses to Sâriputta this question: “Nirvâna, nirvâna, so they say, friend Sâriputta. But what is the Nirvâna, friend?” “The subjugation of desire, the subjugation of hatred, the subjugation of perplexity; this, O friend, is called Nirvâna.” Thereon follows in the same way the question: “Holiness, holiness (arahatta), so they say,” &c. The answer is word for word similar to the preceding (“Samy. Nik.” ii, ñam).

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If we are to indicate the precise point at which the goal is reached for the Buddhist, we must not look to the entry of the dying Perfect One into the range of the everlasting—be this either everlasting being or everlasting nothing—but to that moment of his earthly life, when he has attained the status of sinlessness and painlessness; this is the true Nirvâna. If the Buddhist faith really make the saint’s state of being disembody itself into nothingness—we shall come directly to the question whether it does so—still entry into nothingness for nothingness’ sake is not at all the object of aspiration which has been set before the Buddhist. The goal to which he pressed was, we must constantly repeat this, solely deliverance from the sorrowful world of origination and decease. Religious aspiration did not purposely and expressly demand that this deliverance should transport to nothingness, but when this was taught at all expression was merely given thereby to the indifferent, accidental consequences of metaphysical reflections, which prevent the assumption of an everlasting, immutable, happy existence. In the religious life, in the tone which prevailed in the ancient Buddhist order, the thought of annihilation has had no influence. “As the great sea, O disciples, is permeated by but one taste, the taste of salt, so also, O disciples, this Doctrine and this Law are pervaded by but one taste, the taste of deliverance.”

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∗ “Milindapañha,” p. 45, cf. Therag. fol. ko.

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Our speculations must not seek to discover what is the essence of a faith; we must permit the adherents of each faith themselves to determine this, and it is for historical inquiry to point out how they have defined it. If any one describes Buddhism as a religion of annihilation, and attempts to develope it therefrom as from its specific germ, he has, in fact, succeeded in wholly missing the main drift of Buddha and the ancient order of his disciples.

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Has the saint attained the goal of his earthly life, then is true of him what an old text says of Buddha :* “The body of the Perfect One, O disciples, subsists, cut off from the stream of becoming. As long as his body subsists, so long will gods and men see him ; if his body be dissolved, his life run out, gods and men shall no more behold him.” While in the case of beings who are committed to the path of metempsychosis, consciousness (viññâṇa), escaping from the dying, becomes the germ of a new state of being, the consciousness of the dying saint is extinguished without residuum. “Dissolved is the body,” says Buddha, when one of the disciples has entered into Nirvâna, “extinct is perception; the sensations have all vanished away. The conformations have found their repose : the consciousness has sunk to its rest.”†

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When the venerable Godhika has brought about his own death by opening a vein, the disciples see a dark cloud of smoke moving to and fro on all sides round his corpse. They ask Buddha what the smoke means. “That is Mâra, the wicked one, O disciples,” says Buddha: “he is looking for the noble Godhika’s consciousness: ‘where has the noble Godhika’s consciousness found its place?’ ” But the noble

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[^ *]: “Brahmajâlasutta ” (at the end). [^ †]: “ Udâna ” (Phayre MS.), fol. ñu.

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Godhika has entered into Nirvâna; his consciousness nowhere remains.”*

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Does this end of the earthly existence imply at the same time the total cessation of being? Is it the Nothing which receives the dying Perfect One into its dominion?

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Step by step we have prepared the ground so as now to be able to face this question.

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Some have thought to find the answer to this question contained in the word Nirvâna itself, *i.e.*, “Extinction.” It seemed the most obvious construction that extinction is an extinction of being in the Nothing. But doubts were soon expressed as to the propriety of so summary a disposal of this question. It was quite allowable to speak of an extinction in the case—and the term was most incontrovertibly used by the Indians in the case—where being was not annihilated, but where it, freed from the glowing heat of suffering, had found the path to the cool repose of painless happiness.† Max Müller has above all others maintained with warm eloquence the notion of Nirvâna as the completion but not as an extinction of being.‡ His position is, that although later Buddhist metaphysicians have undoubtedly regarded the Nothing as the supreme object of all effort, yet the original teaching of Buddha and the ancient order of his disciples was different: for them the Nirvâna was nothing more than the entry of the spirit upon its rest, an eternal beatitude, which is as highly exalted above the joys, as it is above the sorrow of the transitory world. Would not, asks Max Müller, a religion, which lands us at last in the Nothing, cease to be a religion? It would no longer be what every religion ought to be and purports to be, a bridge from the temporal to the eternal, but it would be a delusive gangway, which suddenly breaks off and shoots a man, just when he fancies he has reached the goal of the eternal, into the abyss of annihilation.

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∗ “Samyutta Nikâya,” vol. i, fol. ghî. The story is also narrated in the commentary to the “Dhammapada,” p. 255.

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† How universally in the language of that age the word Nirvâna denoted the *summum bonum*, without any reference to the close of existence, is clearly shown by the following passage, in which the view considering earthly enjoyments as the highest good is spoken of: “There are, O disciples, many Samanas and Brahmans, who thus teach and thus believe: If the ego moves, gifted and endowed with the pleasure of all the five senses, then has this ego, tarrying in the visible world, attained the highest Nirvâna.”—*Brahmajâlasutta*.

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‡ Introduction to Rogers, “Buddhaghosha’s Parables,” p. xxxix, seq.

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We cannot follow the famous inquirer, when he attempts to trace the limits between the possible and the impossible in the developement of religion. In the sultry, dreamy stillness of India, thoughts spring and grow, every surmise and every sensation grows, otherwise than in the cool air of the west. Perhaps what is here beyond comprehension may there be comprehensible, and if we reach a point which is to us a limit of the comprehensible, we shall permit much to pass and stand as incomprehensible, and await the future, which may bring us nearer the solution of the enigma.

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Max Müller's researches, which could under the then circumstances of the case be based on only a portion of the authentic texts bearing on this branch of the subject, did not fail to attract the attention of native literati in Ceylon, the country which has preserved to the present day Buddhist temperament and knowledge in its purest form. And by the joint labours of eminent Singhalese students of Buddhist literature, such as the late James d'Alwis, and European inquirers, among whom we may mention especially Childers, Rhys Davids, and Trenckner, literary materials for the elucidation of the dogma of Nirvâna have been amply unearthed and ably treated. I have endeavoured to complete the collections, for which we have to thank these learned scholars, in that I have submitted all the testimony of the sacred Pali canon, that contained in the discourses of Buddha as well as that in the writings upon the rights of the Order, to a detailed examination, so that I believe I am in a position to hope that no essential expression of the ancient dogmatics and doctrinal poets has been omitted.* Before I undertook this task, it was my conviction that there is in the ancient Buddhist literature no passage which directly decides the alternative whether the Nirvâna is eternal felicity or annihilation. So much the greater therefore was my surprise, when in the course of these researches I lit not upon one passage, but upon very numerous passages, which speak as expressly as possible upon the point, regarding which the controversy is waged, and determine it with a clearness which leaves nothing to be desired. And it was no less a cause of astonishment to me when I found that in that alternative, which appeared to have been laid down with all possible cogency, viz., that the Nirvâna must have been understood in the ancient Order to be either the Nothing or a supreme felicity, there was finally neither on the one side nor on the other perfect accuracy.

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We shall now endeavour to state the question as it must have presented itself to Buddhist dogmatic on its own premises, and then the answer which the question has received.

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A doctrine which contemplates a future of eternal perfection behind transitory being, cannot possibly admit of the kingdom of the eternal first beginning only at the point where the world of the transient ends, cannot conjure it up immediately, as it were out of the Nothing. In the kingdom of the transient itself there must be contained, veiled perhaps like a latent germ, but still present, an element which bears in itself the pledge of everlasting being stretching out beyond origination and decease. It is possible that, where the claims of strict dialectic sequence are opposed by motives of another kind, thought pauses before accepting this so obvious conclusion; but it is important before we examine these deviations from the logical consequence, which we may possibly expect to find, to obtain a view of the form in which the logical consequence must have presented itself to Buddhist thought.

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∗ In Excursus iii, further quotations are given from the materials here mentioned, and the dogmatic terminology is discussed in detail at greater length than appeared expedient in this place.

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The finite world appears in the dogmatic of Buddhism to rest wholly upon itself. Whatever we see, whatever we hear, our senses as well as the objects which are presented to them, everything is drawn within the cycle of origination and decease; everything is only a Dhamma, a Sankhâra, and all Dhammas, all Sankhâras are transitory. Whence this cycle? No matter whence; it is there from a past beyond ken. The existence of the conditional is accepted as a given fact; thought shrinks from going back to the unconditional.

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This is specially evident in the question as to the soul, the personality. "This is only a heap of Sankhâras; here there is not a person" (p. 258).

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We see: the finite world bears in itself no traces which point to its connection with a world of the eternal. How could it possibly be otherwise? Where the opposition of the transient and eternal is carried to the point which Indian thought has here reached, there can be in fact no union conceived between the two extremes. Had the eternal any share whatsoever in the occurrences of the world of the changeable, a shadow of the changeable would fall on its own unchangeability. The conditional can only be thought of as conditioned through another conditional. If we follow the dialectic consequence solely, it is impossible on the basis of this theory of life to conceive how, where a series of conditions has run out, annihilating itself, anything else is to be recognized as remaining but a vacuum.

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This is the consequence. Does Buddhism actually admit this?

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We must here insert a few remarks upon the standard technical terms, which our texts are wont to use in dealing with these questions.

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The word which we have translated "Person" (Satta) in the passages quoted, is not the precise technical term which the Brahmanical speculation, discussed by us at an earlier stage, had coined as the most exact and special expression for the eternal in man: Âtman, "the self," "the ego." The Buddhist texts deal with the Âtman (in Pâli: Attâ) also. If the demands of dialectic alone be regarded, it cannot be understood how the question regarding the "ego" was to be answered otherwise than the question as to the "person"—it seems clear enough that both words are only different names for the same idea, and that he who denies the existence of the "person," cannot maintain the existence of the "ego" or even admit it possible.

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Beside the expression Âtman (attâ) we place another, of which the same may be said, the name Tathâgata, "the Perfect One." Buddha is in the habit of calling himself Tathâgata in his Buddhahood (p. 126). If a question be raised as to the essentiality and everlasting continuance of the Tathâgata, this is altogether parallel to the question regarding the essentiality and continuance of the ego; if there be an ego, the sacred perfect personality of the Tathâgata must undoubtedly be the ego, which deserves this name in the highest sense, which bears in itself the greatest claim to everlasting being. But as we might expect, with the lot of the "person" (satta) the lot of the Tathâgata, as well as that of the ego (attâ), is cast.

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Let us see whether the expressions of the Buddhist texts are in accordance with this view.

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"Then the wandering monk* Vacchagotta went to where the Exalted One was staying. When he had come near him, he saluted him. When, saluting him, he had interchanged friendly words with him, he sat down beside him. Sitting beside him the wandering monk Vacchagotta spake to the Exalted One, saying: "How does the matter stand, venerable Gotama, is there the ego (attâ)?"

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When he said this, the Exalted One was silent.

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"How then, venerable Gotama, is there not the ego?"

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And still the Exalted One maintained silence. Then the wandering monk Vacchagotta rose from his seat and went away.

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But the venerable Ânanda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta had gone to a distance, soon said to the Exalted One: "wherefore, sire, has the Exalted One not given an answer to the questions put by the wandering monk Vacchagotta?"

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"If I, Ânanda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me: 'Is there the ego?' had answered: 'the ego is,' then that, Ânanda, would have confirmed the doctrine of the Samanas and Brahmanas who believe in permanence.† If I, Ânanda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me:

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∗ A monk of a non-Buddhist sect. The dialogue here translated is to be found in the "Samyuttaka Nikâya," vol. ii, fol. tan.

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† "A few Samanas and Brahmanas, who believe in permanence, teach that the ego and the world are permanent."—Brahmajâlasutta.

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‘is there not the ego?’ had answered: ‘the ego is not,’ then that, Ānanda, would have confirmed the doctrine of the Samanas and Brahmanas, who believe in annihilation.* If I, Ānanda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me: ‘is there the ego?’ had answered: ‘the ego is,’ would that have served my end, Ānanda, by producing in him the knowledge: all existences (dhamma) are non-ego?”

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“That it would not, sire.”

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“But if I, Ānanda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me: ‘Is there not the ego?’ had answered: ‘The ego is not,’ then that, Ānanda, would only have caused the wandering monk Vacchagotta to be thrown from one bewilderment into another: ‘My ego, did it not exist before? but now it exists no longer!’”

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We see: the person who has framed this dialogue, has in his thought very nearly approached the consequence, which leads to the negation of the ego. It may almost be said, that, though probably he did not wish to express this consequence with overt consciousness, yet he has in fact expressed it. If Buddha avoids the negation of the existence of the ego, he does so in order not to shock a weak-minded hearer. Through the shirking of the question as to the existence or non-existence of the ego, is heard the answer, to which the premises of the Buddhist teaching tended: The ego is not. Or, what is equivalent: The Nirvâna is annihilation.

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But we can well understand why these thinkers, who were in a position to realize this ultimate consequence and to bear it, abandoned the erection of it as an official dogma of the Buddhist order. There were enough, and more than enough, of hopes and wishes, from which he who desired to follow the Sakya’s son, had to sever his heart. Why present to the weak the keen edge of the truth: the victor’s prize of the delivered is the Nothing? True, it is not permissible to put falsehood in the place of truth, but it is allowable to draw a well-meant veil over the picture of the truth, the sight of which threatens the destruction of the unprepared. What harm did it do? That which was alone of intrinsic worth and essential to excite the struggle for deliverance was maintained in unimpaired force, the certainty that deliverance is to be found only where joys and sorrows of this world have ceased. Was the emancipation of him, who knew how to free himself from everything transitory, not perfect enough? Would it become more perfect, if he were driven to acknowledge that beside the transitory there is only the Nothing?

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∗ “A few Samanas and Brahmans, who believe in annihilation, teach that the person (satta) is, and that it undergoes annihilation, destruction, and removal” (ibidem).—It is meant, that the ego, even without being purified from sins, undergoes no transmigration, but becomes extinct in death.

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Therefore the official teaching of the Church represented that on the question, whether the ego is, whether the perfected saint lives after death or not, the exalted Buddha has taught nothing.*

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From the texts, in which this shirking of the question is inculcated, the following epitomized dialogue may be given.†

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† “Cûla-Mâlukya-Ovâda” (Majjhima Nikâya).

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The venerable Mâlukya comes to the Master and expresses his astonishment that the Master’s discourse leaves a series of the very most important and deepest questions unanswered. Is the world eternal or is it limited by bounds of time? Does the perfect Buddha (Tathâgata) live on beyond death? Does the Perfect One not live on beyond death? It pleases me not, says that monk, that all this should remain unanswered, and I do not think it right; therefore I am come to the Master to interrogate him about these doubts. May it please Buddha to answer them if he can. “But when anyone does not understand a matter and does not know it, then a straightforward man says: I do not understand that, I do not know that.”

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∗ The first scholar, who has given the correct interpretation of a text having an important bearing on this connection and has directed attention to this disallowing of the question as to continuance in the hereafter, is, as far as I know, V. Trenckner (“Milinda P.” 424). I am glad to find my independently formed conclusion confirmed by the opinion of this able Danish scholar.

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We see: the question of the Nirvâna is brought before Buddha by that monk as directly and definitely as could ever be possible. And what answers Buddha? He says in his Socratic fashion, not without a touch of irony:—

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“What have I said to thee before now, Mâlukyaputta? Have I said: Come, Mâlukyaputta, and be my disciple; I shall teach thee, whether the world is everlasting or not everlasting, whether the world is finite or infinite, whether the vital faculty is identical with the body or separate from it, whether the Perfect One lives on after death or does not live on, or whether the Perfect One lives on and at the same time does not live on after death, or whether he neither lives on nor does not live on?”

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“That thou hast not said, sire.”

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Or hast thou, Buddha goes on, said to me: I shall be thy disciple, declare unto me, whether the world is everlasting or not everlasting, and so on?

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This also must Mâlukya answer in the negative.

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If a man, Buddha proceeds, were struck by a poisoned arrow, and his friends and relatives called in a skilful physician: what if the wounded man said: “I shall not allow my wound to be treated until I know who the man is by whom I have been wounded, whether he is a noble, a Brahman, a Vaiçya, or Çûdra"—or if he said: "I shall not allow my wound to be treated, until I know what they call the man who has wounded me, and of what family he is, whether he is tall, or small, or of middle stature, and how his weapon was made, with which he has struck me." What would the end of the case be? The man would die of his wound.

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Why has Buddha not taught his disciples, whether the world is finite or infinite, whether the saint lives on beyond death or not? Because the knowledge of these things does not conduce to progress in holiness, because it does not contribute to peace and enlightenment. What contributes to peace and enlightenment, Buddha has taught his own: the truth of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, the truth of the path to the cessation of suffering.* "Therefore, Mâlukyaputta, whatsoever has not been revealed by me, let that remain unrevealed, and what has been revealed, let it be revealed."

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Our researches must accept this clear and decisive solution of the question, recurring often in the sacred texts, as it is given; it needs no interpretation, and admits of no strained construction. Orthodox teaching in the ancient order of Buddhists inculcated expressly on its converts to forego the knowledge of the being or non-being of the perfected saint.

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But, besides the question as to what was recognized as the orthodox dogma, there is yet another which we have to take up. Who would believe that he has fathomed the faith and hope of the devout heart, when he knows the dogma, which the Church prescribed and to which the believer subscribed? Was the waiving of the question which the religious consciousness cannot cease altogether to put to itself over and over again, sufficient to eliminate from the spirits of Buddha’s disciples the craving for a Yes or No? Certainly the Yes or the No might not be declared as doctrine; this would be heretical disobedience of Buddha’s injunction. But it might make itself perceptible like a vibration, like a gentle flutter of light or shadow, something felt rather than definable; it might, even where the honest purpose to faithfully enunciate the dogma existed, betray itself between the lines, in an incautious expression, in a word too many or too few. In the dialogue between Buddha and Ānanda (p. 272, seq.), a trace seemed to show itself of how some resolute spirits in the order were not far from perceiving that the conclusion of the doctrine involves the negation of the ego, the negation of an eternal future. But this very circumstance, that the official dogmatic abstained from answering these questions, was sure to lead to greater liberty and variety in the solutions which individual thought worked out, than could be the case with regard to problems, for which a recognized orthodox solution had been furnished. Could not that negative answer, which we have come to recognize as the true answer of close dialectic, be met by an affirmative also? Might not hearts, that quailed before the Nothing, that could not relinquish the hope of everlasting weal, gather from Buddha’s silence above all this one response, that it was not forbidden to them to hope?

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∗ The wording of the passage of which an epitome is here given is identical with that given before at p. 204.

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It appears to me that among the many utterances on these questions, which are bound up together in the great complex of the sacred writings, traces of such agitations, as I have here described, are unmistakably enough to be seen.

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King Pasenadi of Kosala, we are told,* on one occasion on a journey between his two chief towns, Sâketa and Sâvatthi, fell in with the nun Khemâ, a female disciple of Buddha, renowned for her wisdom. The king paid his respects to her, and inquired of her concerning the sacred doctrine.

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“Venerable lady,” asked the king, “does the Perfect One (Tathâgata) exist after death?”

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“The Exalted One, O great king, has not declared: the Perfect One exists after death.”

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“Then does the Perfect One not exist after death, venerable lady?”

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“This also, O great king, the Exalted One has not declared: the Perfect One does not exist after death.”

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“Thus, venerable lady, the Perfect One does exist after death, and at the same time does not exist after death?—thus, venerable lady, the Perfect One neither exists after death, nor does he not exist?”

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The answer is still the same: the Perfect One has not revealed it. We see how great pains are taken, with that somewhat clumsy subtlety which is characteristic of thought at every step in this stage of development, not merely to exhaust the two alternatives immediately confronting each other, but in the most careful manner to close up all joinings and loopholes, by which the true facts of the case might escape being caught in the logical net. But it is in vain; the Exalted One has not revealed this.

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The king is astonished. “What is the reason, venerable lady, what is the ground, on which the Exalted One has not revealed this?"

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∗ “Samyutta Nikâya,” vol. ii, fol. ṇo, seq.

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"Permit me," answers the nun, "now to ask thee a question, O great king, and do thou answer me as the case seems to thee to stand. How thinkest thou, O great king, hast thou an accountant, or a mint-master, or a treasurer, who could count the sands of the Ganges, who could say: there are there so many grains of sand, or so many hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of grains of sand?"

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"No, venerable lady, I have not."

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"Or hast thou an accountant, a mint-master or a treasurer, who could measure the water in the great ocean, who could say: there are therein so many measures of water, or so many hundreds or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of measures of water?"

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"No, venerable lady, I have not."

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"And why not? The great ocean is deep, immeasurable, unfathomable. So also, O great king, if the existence of the Perfect One be measured by the predicates of corporeal form:* these predicates of the corporeal form are abolished in the Perfect One, their root is severed, they are hewn away like a palm-tree, and laid aside, so that they cannot germinate again in the future. Released, O great king, is the Perfect One from this, that his being should be gauged by the measure of the corporeal world: he is deep, immeasurable, unfathomable as the great ocean. 'The Perfect One exists after death,' this is not apposite; 'the Perfect One does not exist after death,' this also is not apposite; 'the Perfect One at once exists and does not exists after death,' this also is not apposite; ‘the Perfect One neither does nor does not exist after death,’ this also is not apposite.”

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∗ Afterwards, what is here said of corporeal form, will be repeated in detail regarding the four other groups of elements, of which earthly being is constituted (sensations, perceptions, conformations, consciousness).

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“But Pasenadi, the king of Kosala, received the nun Khemâ’s discourse with satisfaction and approbation, rose from his seat, bowed reverently before Khemâ the nun, turned and went away.”*

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We shall scarcely be astray in supposing that we discover in this dialogue a marked departure from the sharply defined line to which the course of thought confines itself in the previously quoted conversation between Buddha and Mâlukya (p. 274, seq.). True, the question as to the eternal duration of the Perfect One is as little answered here as there, but why can it not be answered? The Perfect One’s existence is unfathomably deep, like the ocean: it is of a depth which terrestrial human thought with the appliances at its command, cannot exhaust. The man who applies to the strictly unconditional predicates such as being and non-being, which are used properly enough of the finite, the conditional, resembles a person who attempts to count the sands of the Ganges or the drops of the ocean.

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When such a reason is assigned for the waiving of the question as to whether the Perfect One lives for ever, is not this very giving of a reason itself an answer? And is not this answer a Yes? No being in the ordinary sense, but still assuredly not a non-being: a sublime positive, of which thought has no idea, for which language has no expression, which beams out to meet the cravings of the thirsty for immortality in that same splendour, of which the apostle says: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”

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∗ The texts relates then how the king at a later opportunity addressed the same questions to Buddha and obtained from him word for word the same answers which he had received on this occasion from the nun Khemâ.

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We here proceed to insert another passage,* which adopts a position on this question similar to that last quoted.

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“At this time a monk named Yamaka had adopted the following heretical notion: ‘I understand the doctrine taught by the Exalted One to be this, that a monk who is free from sin, when his body dissolves, is subject to annihilation, that he passes away, that he does not exist beyond death.’”

c9.s1.t7.88

Whoever names the absolute Nothing as the goal, in which, according to the Buddhist creed, the life of the Perfect One ends, may learn from the opening words of this passage, that the monk Yamaka advocated this very interpretation and that he had thereby been guilty of heresy.

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The venerable Sâriputta undertakes to instruct him.

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“How thinkest thou, friend Yamaka, is the Perfect One (Tathâgata) identical with the corporeal form (i.e., does Buddha’s body represent his true ego)? Dost thou hold this?”

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“I do not, my friend.”

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“Is the Perfect One identical with the sensations? the perceptions? the conformations, the consciousness? Dost thou hold this?”

c9.s1.t7.93

“I do not, my friend.”

c9.s1.t7.94

“How thinkest thou, friend Yamaka, is the Perfect One comprised in the corporeal form (. . the sensations, and so on)? Dost thou hold this?”

c9.s1.t7.95

“I do not, my friend.”

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“Is the Perfect One separate from the corporeal form? Dost thou hold this?”

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[^ *]: “Samyutta Nikâya,” vol. i, fol. de, seq.

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“I do not, my friend.”

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“How thinkest thou, friend Yamaka, are the corporeal form, sensations, perceptions, conformations, and consciousness (in their aggregate) the Perfect One? Dost thou hold this? “I do not, my friend.”

c9.s1.t7.100

“How thinkest thou, friend Yamaka, is the Perfect One separate from corporeal form, sensations, perceptions, conformations, and consciousness? Dost thou hold this? “I do not, my friend.”

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“Thus then, friend Yamaka, even here in this world the Perfect One is not to be apprehended by thee in truth. Hast thou therefore a right to speak, saying, ‘I understand the doctrine taught by the Exalted One to be this, that a monk who is free from sin, when his body dissolves, is subject to annihilation, that he passes away, that he does not exist beyond death’?”

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“Such, indeed, was hitherto, friend Sâriputta, the heretical view which I ignorantly entertained. But now when I hear the venerable Sâriputta expound the doctrine, the heretical view has lost its hold of me, and I have learned the doctrine.”

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Thus are all attempts to define dialectically the ego of the Perfect One, repelled. The idea is certainly not that some other attempt might prove successful, but is kept in concealment by Sâriputta; no more does the unavailingness of all these attempts to find a solution imply that the Perfect One does not exist at all. Thought, Sâriputta means to say, has here reached an unfathomably deep mystery, on the solution of which it must not insist. The monk, who seeks the happiness of his soul, has something else to pursue.

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One who clearly and indefinitely renounced an everlasting future would speak in another strain; behind the veil of the mystery there flies the longing for escape from opposing reason, which declines to admit the conceivableness of everlasting existence, the hope for an existence, which is beyond reason and conception.

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The terms, which can be applied to such an existence, are obviously exclusively negative. “There is, O disciples, a state, where there is neither earth nor water, neither light nor air, neither infinity of space, nor infinity of reason, nor absolute void, nor the co-extinction of perception and non-perception, neither this world nor that world, both sun and moon. That, O disciples, I term neither coming nor going nor standing, neither death nor birth. It is without basis, without procession, without cessation: that is the end of sorrow.”*

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“There is, O disciples, an unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed. Were there not, O disciples, this unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed, there would be no possible exit from the world of the born, originated, created, formed.”†

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These words seem to sound as if we heard Brahmanical philosophers talking of the Brahma, the unborn, intransient which is neither great nor small, the name of which is “No, No,” for no word can exhaust its being. Yet these expressions, when viewed in the connection of Buddhist thought, convey something wholly different. To the Brahman the uncreated is so veritable a reality, that the reality of the created pales before it; the created derives its being and life solely from the uncreated. For the Buddhist the words “there is an uncreated” merely signify that the created can free himself from the curse of being created‡—there is a path from the world of the created out into dark endlessness. Does the path lead into a new existence? Does it lead into the Nothing? The Buddhist creed rests in delicate equipoise between the two. The longing of the heart that craves the eternal has not nothing, and yet the thought has not a something, which it might firmly grasp. Farther off the idea of the endless, the eternal could not withdraw itself from belief than it has done here, where, like a gentle flutter on the point of merging in the Nothing, it threatens to evade the gaze.

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∗ “Udâna,” fol. ghau. † “Udâna,” fol. ghau’. ‡ In the “Dhammapada” it is said (v. 383) : “If thou hast learned the destruction of the Sankhâra, thou knowest the uncreated.” Max Müller (Introduction, l.c., p. xliv) adds to these words the remark : “This surely shows that even for Buddha a something existed which is not made, and

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I close with a few sentences from the collections of aphorisms of ancient Buddhist literature. These aphorisms may add nothing new to what has been said, but they will show more clearly than all abstract treatment, what melodies were awakened in the circle of that ancient monastic order, when the chord of the Nirvâna was touched.

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“Plunged into meditation, the immovable ones who valiantly which, therefore, is imperishable and eternal.” It appears to me, that we can find in the expression another meaning, and if we consider it in connection with the Buddhist theory of the world, we must find another meaning: Let thine own aim be, to discover the cessation of impermanence. If thou knowest that, thou hast the highest knowledge. Let others pursue the uncreated by their erroneous paths, which will never carry them beyond the realm of the created. As for thee let the attainment of the uncreated consist in this, that thou reachest the cessation of the created. In the “Alagaddûpama Sutta” (Majjh. N.) we read: “The belief which says: ‘This is the world, this is the self (attâ), this shall I dying become, firm, durable, everlasting, unchangeable; so shall I be yonder in eternity’—is not that, O disciples, merely sheer folly?”— “How can it be, sire, aught else but sheer folly?”—“How think ye then, O disciples, is corporeal form everlasting or impermanent?”—and then there follow the familiar doctrines of the impermanence of the five complexes (*vide supra*, p. 218), a significant commentary to the allegation, that the Buddhist asking after the eternal is the same as asking after the cessation of the impermanent.

Cites (9)

Dhammapada — Pāli
Milindapañha — Pāli
Theragāthā — Pāli
Udāna — Pāli
Brahmajālasutta — Pāli
Alagaddūpamasutta — Pāli
Cūḷamālukyasutta — Pāli
Majjhimanikāya — Pāli
Saṃyuttanikāya — Pāli