Indian Philosophy v1.c4.8

v1.c4.8

Introduction—The evolution of Buddhist thought—Literature of early Buddhism—The three Piṭakas—Questions of King Milinda—Visuddhimagga—Life and personality of Buddha—Conditions of the time—The world of thought—The futility of metaphysics—The state of religion—Moral life—Ethics independent of metaphysics and theology—The positivist method of Buddha—His rationalism—Religion within the bounds of reason—Buddhism and the Upaniṣads—The four truths—The first truth of suffering—Is Buddhism pessimistic?—The second truth of the causes of suffering—Impermanence of things—Ignorance—The dynamic conception of reality—Bergson—Identity of objects and continuity of process—Causation—Impermanence and momentariness—The world order—Being and becoming in the Upaniṣads and early Buddhism—Aristotle, Kant and Bergson—Śaṁkara on the kṣaṇikavāda—The nature of becoming—Is it objective or only subjective?—External reality—Body and mind—The empirical individual—Nairātmyavāda—Nature of the Ātman—Nāgasena’s theory of the soul—Its resemblance to Hume’s—The nature of the subject—Śaṁkara and Kant—Buddhist psychology—Its relation to modern psychology—Sense perception—Affection, will and knowledge—Association—Duration of mental states—Subconsciousness—Rebirth—Pratītyasamutpāda—Nidānas—Avidyā and the other links in the chain—The place of avidyā in Buddha’s metaphysics—The ethics of Buddhism—Its psychological basis—Analysis of the act—Good and evil—The middle path—The eightfold way—Buddhist Dhyāna and the Yoga philosophy—The ten fetters—The Arhat—Virtues and vices—The motive of moral life—The inwardness of Buddhist morality—The charge of intellectualism—The complaint of asceticism—The order of mendicants—Saṅgha—Buddha’s attitude to caste and social reform—The authority of the Vedas—The ethical significance of Karma—Karma and freedom—Rebirth—Its mechanism—Nirvāṇa—Its nature and varieties—The Nirvāṇa of Buddhism and the Mokṣa of the Upaniṣads—God in early Buddhism—The criticism of the traditional proofs for the existence of God—The absolutist implications of Buddhist metaphysics—The deification of Buddha—Compromises with popular religion—Buddhist theory of knowledge—Buddha’s pragmatic agnosticism—Buddha’s silence on metaphysical problems—Kant and Buddha—The inevitability of metaphysics—The unity of thought between Buddhism and the Upaniṣads—Buddhism and the Sāṁkhya theory—Success of Buddhism.