Studies in the Origins of Buddhism c19.2

c19.2

The Way and the Truth.—Setting out to solve the problem of Suffering, Buddha discovered its answer in that transcendental illusion (Avidyā) under the force of which our minds construct for themselves a stable universe of separate individuals and substances, finite “selves” and objects, where life after life is spent in the unavailing pursuit of phantasms. Depending on a beginningless Ignorance, arise Name-and-Form, a world of individual persons and things, and depending on this arises experience by way of contact, and thence pleasure and pain, love and hate. Craving and striving, ‘we’ lay down the weary burden of one life only to pick up that of another. Thus moves on the impersonal process of Suffering, uncreated, but contingent. It ceases when its basic condition—Avidyā—is removed by Perfect Knowledge (Sambodhi), and Nirvāṇa is thus attained. That knowledge should lead to final deliverance, is in perfect accord with Upaniṣadic ideas.¹ The Way to Nirvāṇa is really the Way to Awakening.²