The History of Buddhist Thought c16.6

c16.6

We have seen what the dogmatic position of the earliest ascertainable form of Buddhism was. There was a teacher revivifying the moral consciousness of his contemporaries, and with the insight of a prophet preaching an ethical doctrine that swept away much of the old ritualism. There was the new conception of the destiny of man, which promised a happiness not to be found in the weary round of earthly or heavenly existences, and there was the teaching of the Way, a definite course of life which, if followed out, led to escape, liberation. Not liberation in a distant future, but, as is said over and over again, a state to be realized diṭṭhe dhamme, in this actual life, by the disciple. Its fundamental dogma, the fact of pain, was put forward not as a theory to be considered, but as an actual fact, which only needed a right understanding to be accepted; and escape from pain was to be won by a method, the Noble Eightfold Way. This method does not seem to leave much room for theorizing, nor do we find any in the earliest description of the disciple's training. But theory lay dormant in the doctrines of the nature and destiny of man.