Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The History of Buddhist Thought c17: Chapter IX

The History of Buddhist Thought c17

Language
English

Chapter IX

c17.1

JUST as the conception of an ātman in brahminical speculation can be traced from the notion of a small entity residing in the heart to that of the universal reality of all things, so the doctrine of karma, “action,” develops until it becomes a universal principle of ethics. Any act as judged by its results may be good or bad. This is a far wider conception than the question of right and wrong. Early man’s welfare depended on his being able to discover from his experience what actions were advantageous and what injurious. He had to form theories. Two of these are the belief in magic and the belief in divine beings. How these beliefs began is not our present concern, for the earliest Indian societies were far from being primitive in the sense of being near the actual beginnings of human development.

c17.2

Magic is the belief that by the performance of certain prescribed actions and the repetition of formulas certain desired results will follow. It has been held to have been an attempt at natural science, for early man would have no means of distinguishing the working of a rainmaking-spell from the equally mysterious production of fire by the use of the fire-drill. But whatever its origin, magic came to be an independent science or pseudo-science based on the ritual performance of certain actions. Its growth was favoured by its connection with an elaborate mythology which helped to make it plausible, and by the desire to believe the wonderful results promised and no doubt often achieved.

c17.3

Ritual is found in sacrifice as well as in magic, but in India we find sacrifice, at least in the earliest period, existing quite distinct from the rites of magic. Along with sacrifice there was the belief in gods, personal beings who were the authors of many events beyond human control. The gods might be influenced, especially by being placated with offerings that served them as food. They came down to receive it, and grass was strewn at the sacrifice for them to sit on. Thus they were benefited, and the worshipper offered his sacrifice expecting a fair return.

c17.4

The sacrifice thus looked upon as an appeal to the gods to be gracious is entirely different from a magical ceremony, in which a result follows merely from the performance of a prescribed act. Yet the belief became established that if the sacrifice were duly performed a certain result would inevitably follow. The performance alone produced the result, not the favour of a divine being. To the extent which this idea predominates, the ritual of sacrifice becomes indistinguishable from that of magic. This appears as the prevailing notion in the later Vedic period of the Brāhmaṇas. In the Brāhmaṇa of the Hundred Paths rules are given for the proper building of the altar. To get the desired result the altar must be of a prescribed size, and this is explained by the myth of the gods who were instructed by the god Prajāpati how to build an altar.

c17.5

The gods performed these sacrifices : the Fire sacrifice, the New and Full Moon sacrifices, the Four-monthly sacrifices, the Animal sacrifice, the Soma sacrifice. They sacrificing with these sacrifices did not obtain immortality. . . .

c17.6

Then went on praising and performing austerity, desiring to obtain immortality. Prajāpati addressed them : ye do not put down my forms ; ye either leave out or carry out too fully, therefore ye do not become immortal.

c17.7

They said : Tell us this, how we may put down all thy forms. He said : Sixty and three hundred enclosing stones lay down, and sixty and three hundred yajushmati-bricks, also six and thirty ; of lokampṛṇa-bricks put down ten thousand and eight hundred ; thus ye will put down all my forms, and will become immortal. The gods thus put them down. Thence the gods were immortal.

c17.8

Death spoke to the gods : surely thus all men will become immortal. Now what shall be my share ? They said : henceforth no other shall be immortal with his body, but only when thou shalt have taken that body as thy share. Thus having parted with his body he shall be immortal who is to be immortal through knowledge or karma. Now in that they said this : through knowledge or karma, it is this fire-altar that is the knowledge, and this fire-altar that is the karma.

c17.9

So they who know this, or they who do this karma, having died are born again, thus being born again they are born again to immortality. Thus they who do not know, or they who do not know this karma, on dying are born again, they become the food of Death again and again.¹

c17.10

¹ Śatapatha Br., x, 4, 3, 4–10.

c17.11

The karma and the knowledge here spoken of is that required for the due performance of the sacrifice. Doubtless the idea of action as moral action already existed. Moral rules grow up inevitably in a society in accordance with the actual social conditions. But in India we find a wider conception than karma. It is dharma, thought of as a universal law of action. It appears in the Vedas expressed by *rta* “law”, the law that everything in the universe has a prescribed course, from the path of the sun to the duties of each individual according to his own caste. Law or dharma thus universalized the conception of karma. It naturally included ritual actions, involving both what we call religious injunctions as well as morality. But in the Upanishads we find a clear distinction arising between mere ritualism and ethical action. Brahma, after having created the castes, is said to have created dharma. “He further created a better form. That was dharma, the power of the power (*kshatra*) which is dharma. Therefore, there is nothing beyond dharma. Hence a weaker man prevails over a stronger as though by a king. Even so that which is dharma is truth. Therefore, of one who speaks truth they say he speaks dharma, or of one who speaks dharma they say he speaks truth. Both indeed are one and the same.”¹ And again: “According as one acts, according as one conducts himself, so does he become. He that does good becomes good; he that does evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous karma, bad by bad karma.”²

c17.12

¹ *Brhad. Up.*, 1, 4, 14.

c17.13

² Ibid., 4, 4, 5.

c17.14

The above Brāhmaṇa passage is also the first in which we hear of rebirth. It was a novelty in brahminism, for there is no trace of it in the Vedas. There we find in one of the funeral hymns the dead person thus addressed:

c17.15

Go forth, go forth, along the paths, where fathers
Of ours before have travelled on aforetime ;
Both kings exulting in their own oblations
God Varuṇa shalt thou behold and Yama.

Come with the fathers, come along with Yama,
With gifts and offerings in the highest heaven ;
Come home again, leaving behind all evil,
Come with thy body, full of life and vigour.³

c17.16

³ *Rigveda*, x, 14, 7-8.

c17.17

The son of the departed was required to make periodical offerings at the grave, as indeed he is still. At some not very ancient period we find the idea of reincarnation coming to hold a definite place in Indian belief. Death is not final repose. Yet when the idea of reincarnation is introduced, the reason for such periodical ceremonies would seem to be removed. The departed person is called *preta* (lit. departed), and he remains such until the funeral rites are performed. The old practice of periodical funeral offerings was continued after the rise of the new doctrine, and it is found also among the Buddhist laity, though with a transformed significance.

c17.18

In the Upanishads, the reincarnation doctrine is fully developed, but that it could not be very old is shown by the fact that the older idea that the father is reborn in his son also occurs there (*Kaush. Up.*, 2,15). But superseding this we find the doctrine of rebirth as another being: “He is born again here as a worm, or as a moth, or as a bird, or as a tiger, or as a lion, or as a fish, or as a boar, or as a man, or as some other being in these states, according to his karma, according to his knowledge.”¹

c17.19

¹ *Kaush. Up.*, i, 2. ² *Ang.*, iii, 240; *Mvst.*, ii, 136. ³ A fourth unhappy state (*apāya*) was later added, that of the asuras, the rebel gods. *Khuddakap. Com.*, 189.

c17.20

The upanishadic teaching, however, did nothing to alter the sacrificial system. It remained the valid and the only valid course for the uninitiated. Buddhism challenged the whole of it in principle. Naturally in the life of the laity much of the older beliefs remained. It was only the monk who could discard his “name and clan” and ignore all the ceremonial practices necessary for social life. That caste and caste distinctions remained among the Buddhist laity is shown in the legend of the five dreams of Buddha on the night before his enlightenment. The fourth of these dreams was that four birds of different colours came from the four quarters and, falling at Buddha’s feet, became entirely white. They are interpreted as laymen of the four castes, who abandon a household life and become enlightened disciples.²

c17.21

Several modifications were introduced by the Buddhists into the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation. The term *preta* (*peta*) was retained, and was applied not to the transitory stage of the departed before the performance of the funeral rites, but was made one of the five possible careers of existence (*gati*) for beings that are reborn. These are (1) hell, (2) birth as an animal, (3) birth as a preta, (4) birth as a man, (5) birth as a god. The first three are specially states of punishment.³ The pretas are ghosts with small mouths and big bellies, tortured by hunger and thirst. They correspond to the homeless ghosts of brahminical belief, who wander as such because the funeral rites have not been performed. But for the Buddhists they are beings in a definite existence, into which they are born in accordance with the karma to be expiated. The *Petavatthu* (stories of petas) is a work in the *Khuddaka-nikāya*, which represents the ghosts as returning to their old homes and depending for their food on what is set out for them by their still living relatives—evidently a reminiscence or continuation of the old practice of libations to the dead.

c17.22

The Buddhists also modified the conception of Yama. In the Vedas he is king of the dead in the happy world of the fathers, i.e. the deceased ancestors. For the Buddhists he is still king of the dead, but of those dead who are condemned to a period in hell (niraya), and he is in charge of the tortures inflicted there.

c17.23

The five or six possible careers of existence cover the whole universe. We also find the range of existence divided into the nine abodes of beings (*āvāsā*). There are three planes :

c17.24

(i) *Kāmāvacara*, the plane in which there is enjoyment of the five senses, corresponds to the first abode inhabited by beings with variety of body and variety of perceptions. It includes human beings, some gods, and some beings in the three states of punishment : (*a*) the hells, of which there are eight hot hells, the lowest being *Avīci*.¹ Besides these are eight cold hells and other minor hells, which are probably a later addition ; (*b*) The sphere of the pretas ; (*c*) the world of men ; (*d*) the lower heavens, including the heaven of the four Great Kings, of the Thirty-three gods, ruled by Śakra or Indra, the Yāma gods, Nirmāṇarati gods (delighting in transformation), and the Paranirmitavaśavartin gods (having power over the transformation of others).

c17.25

¹ This term is interpreted uncertainly by the commentators. Literally it is “without a wave”, i.e. with continuous flame, but Kern has shown that it is probably for avācī “below”, and corrupted through analogy with udīcī “above”. For the whole of this cosmology see *State of the Dead* in Hastings, *ERE*.

c17.26

(ii) In *Rūpāvacara*, the world of form, the senses of taste, smell, and touch are absent. It includes four abodes, the (*a*) Brahmā-world (which later is subdivided into four) ; (*b*) the Ābhāsvara gods ; (*c*) the Śubhakṛtsnas, the wholly bright gods, and (*d*) the Asamjñisattvas, beings without perception. Further subdivisions are also found.

c17.27

(iii) *Arūpāvacara* is the formless world, in which there is only the sense of mind. The four abodes are the stages of the four Attainments: (a) in which there is the perception, “space is infinite”; (b) in which there is the perception, “consciousness is infinite”; (c) in which there is the perception, “there is nothing”; (d) the fourth is the stage of neither consciousness nor non-consciousness. It reaches to the limit of existence (bhavāgra), through which a being may transmigrate.

c17.28

It is a Buddhist doctrine that the next state of a being to be reborn is determined by the last wish. Buddhaghosa gives examples of it in discussing the Causal Formula (p. 64). There is no necessary violation of the law of karma in this, for whatever that state is, the individual’s karma will begin to take effect in it. Nor can an individual at the end of a life make an arbitrary wish. It is really determined by the life he has led, by the character which he has come to be. We find a parallel to this in the modern parable of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll did not wish to cease to be Mr. Hyde. His accumulated karma had converted into a Mr. Hyde, and he wished to practise the life of a Mr. Hyde more than ever. What he did not wish was the unpleasant consequences.

c17.29

None of the practices of training in themselves produce final release. So far as they train the mind in turning it from contact with the things of sense they form stages in coming to a realization of the Truths. But the direct result is only to bring about rebirth in the appropriate abode. In all of them there is the fetter of the desire for existence in some form. To practise friendliness is a means of being born in the Brahma-world, and the practice of the highest contemplations, the Attainments, in itself leads only to rebirth in the Formless world. They bring the disciple nearer the goal by the breaking one after another of the fetters.

c17.30

The operation of karma was worked out in detail by the scholastics. Actions have a ripening (vipāka), and a fruit (phala). There are certain crimes which bring their punishment in this present life (ānantariya): murder of a mother, a father, an arahat, shedding the blood of a Buddha, and schism. Karma may be black, white, mixed, or neither black nor white.

c17.31

(1) If a man produces injurious aggregations of body, speech, and mind, he is reborn in an injurious world. There he is affected by injurious impressions, and feels injurious feelings extremely painful, such as do those who are beings in hell. Thus the rebirth of a creature is due to the creature. It is through what he does that he is reborn. Thus beings are the heirs of their karma.

c17.32

(2) If a man produces a non-injurious aggregation of body, speech, and mind, he is reborn in a non-injurious world. There he is affected by non-injurious impressions, and feels non-injurious feelings extremely pleasant, such as do the Wholly-bright gods.

c17.33

(3) If a man produces an injurious and non-injurious aggregation of body, speech, and mind, he is reborn in a world both injurious and non-injurious. He is affected by both kinds of impressions and feelings, such as human beings, some gods, and some beings in states of punishment.

c17.34

(4) When the intention is directed to the abandonment of black karma with black ripening, of white karma with white ripening, and of black-white karma with black-white ripening, this is called neither black nor white, producing neither black nor white karma. It tends to the destruction of karma.¹

c17.35

¹ *Majjh.*, i, 389.

c17.36

The different kinds of fruit are also specified according to the character of the deeds. The woman or man who kills or sheds blood is reborn in hell, or if the person attains human form she or he is short-lived. Those who have compassion for the welfare of all living beings are reborn in heaven, or if as human beings they are long-lived. For crimes of violence the fruit is sickness, for anger ugliness, for desiring honour and lordship weakness, for miserliness poverty, for pride and insolence low birth, for not resorting to ascetics and brahmins and asking what is good and what should be done stupidity.² These things are known because, as we are told, “ some ascetic or brahmin by means of austerity, effort, application, and attention produces such concentration of mind that with concentrated mind and purified divine eye surpassing human vision he sees a certain man practising murder, theft, adultery, lying, malicious and harsh speech, frivolous talk, greed, malevolence, false views. He sees the man after death born in an unhappy state or in hell. He says, ‘ surely there are evil karmas and ripening of misdeeds, for I have seen such a man born in hell.’ And he says, ‘ surely he who commits such crimes is born in hell. They who know thus know rightly; the knowledge of those who know otherwise is false.’ ”³

c17.37

² *Majjh.*, iii, 202.

c17.38

³ *Majjh.*, iii, 210.

c17.39

The *Sutta of Death’s messengers* pictures the arrival of the sinner in hell. King Yama questions him about the first messenger. “ Hallo, man, when you were among mankind did you not see the first messenger of Death ? ” “ I did not, sir.” 1 “ Did you not see a woman or a man of eighty, ninety, or a hundred years, bent with age, leaning on a stick, shaking wretchedly, greyhaired or bald, and with discoloured body ?” “ I did, sir.” “ Did you not, when you got intelligence and grew up, think, ‘ I, too, am liable to old age, I must surely do good in deed, word, and thought ?’” “ I could not, sir, I was careless.” “ Through carelessness you did no good in deed, word, or thought. Verily, they shall deal with you according to your carelessness. Your evil karma was not done by your mother or father or brother or sister, not by your friends and companions, not by kinsmen and relations or the gods or ascetics and brahmins. Verily, you did the evil karma, and it is you who will suffer the ripening.”

c17.40

Yama then questions him about the second messenger, the sight of a sick man, and about the third, the sight of a corpse. “ Then the guardians of hell take the fivefold bonds, they put a hot iron stake through one hand and one through the other, one through each foot, and another through his breast. Thus he suffers pain, sharp, keen, piercing torture, nor does he die until his evil karma comes to an end.” 2

c17.41

Even after the criminal has exhausted his karma in hell it is very difficult for him to be born again as a man. If there were a yoke with one hole in it floating on the ocean and borne about by the four winds, it would be easier for a one-eyed turtle rising to the surface once in a hundred years to put its head through the hole than for such a being to attain man’s estate. Even when he does so, he is born as an outcast, or in some low rank of life. Rhys Davids preferred to call hell purgatory, but the Buddhist hells are anything but a preparation and purification for a life of bliss. The being, unless there is some still unripened good karma, must start at the end of the scale again.

c17.42

It has been said that the annihilation of karma is the aim of the disciple, and that this constitutes salvation. This is only indirectly true in the sense that karma is produced by craving or by craving in the three forms of greed, hatred, and stupidity.³ The mere absence or neutralizing of karma without the destruction of its cause is vain. On this point Buddhism was in direct opposition to Jainism. The actual historical relations of Buddhism to Jainism do not here concern us. We find certain doctrines discussed and opposed, but the actual historical statements are due to a later tradition, and their interpretation is a matter of dispute. We find the Jains, under the name of Nigaṇṭhas, represented as holding the doctrines of the omniscience of their leader and of the annihilation of karma as the means of obtaining release. But the Achelakas, the naked ascetics, are also opposed, and their practices of austerity are much the same as what we know of the Jains. There is a sutta in which a Nigaṇṭha gives a list of these practices, but he attributes them to other teachers. Jacobi consequently held that the original Nigaṇṭhas were the followers of Pārśva, the predecessor of Mahāvīra, and that Mahāvīra, the Jain leader, probably borrowed the rigid rules from the Achelakas or Ājīvikas, the followers of Gosāla.¹ Here the naked ascetics concern us only as the representatives of a rival way of salvation.

c17.43

¹ These messengers were also the first three of the four signs sent by the gods to Gotama while at the height of his glory to remind him of his destiny. The fourth sign was a man who had renounced the world. Jāt., i, 59.

c17.44

² Ang., i, 138.

c17.45

³ Ang., i, 134; they are called the three roots of demerit.

c17.46

¹ *Jaina Sūtras*, transl. by H. Jacobi, vol. ii.

c17.47

One way of regarding the performance of austerities is to consider it as the heaping up of good karma or as neutralizing bad, but the list of the naked ascetic's practices is considered from a different point of view, in their possessing value as a means of training the mind. In the *Kassapasi-hanāda-sutta* (*Dīgha*, i, 161) the question raised is, “ among those things which are bad and accounted bad, blameworthy, to be shunned, ignoble and wicked, and accounted such, who is there who has put them utterly away, is it the ascetic Gotama or other reverend leaders of schools ? ” It is Gotama, and it is by means of the Noble Eightfold Path. That is the true meaning of becoming an ascetic and brahmin. The naked ascetic replies by giving a long list of repulsive practices in begging, eating, and sleeping.² They are rejected by Buddha because “ unless the attainments of morality, mental training, and full knowledge have been practised and realized he is far from being an ascetic, far from being a brahmin. It is in so far as a monk practises the thought of friendliness without hatred or ill-will, and with the destruction of the āsavas (lust, desire for existence, false views), and abides in this actual life having himself grasped and realized emancipation of mind and emancipation of knowledge, that freed from the āsavas he is a (true) ascetic and brahmin ”.

c17.48

² In *Majjh.*, i, 77, Buddha is said to have formerly practised them himself.

c17.49

These practices and other frightful kinds of self-mortification are also discussed from the point of view of their value in the training of mind and body. The Mahā-Saccaka-sutta (Majjh., i, 237) represents austerities as being practised by Gotama during his six years’ search for the right method. A man is trained in body when, if pleasant feelings arise, they do not overpower his mind, and he is trained in mind when his mind is not overpowered by painful feelings. Since the time when Gotama left his home and donned the yellow dress, on no occasion did pleasant or painful feeling overpower his mind. He found that only those ascetics and brahmins in whom sensual passions are calmed are capable of knowledge and highest enlightenment. Without his mind being once overcome by painful feeling he practised stoppage of breathing until the gods thought he was dead; he took less and less food until he was reduced to a skeleton; but he found that with the sharpest austerities he could not reach superhuman truly noble knowledge and insight. Then he remembered how once when his father was working he sat under the shade of a rose-apple tree and attained the first trance.¹ Perhaps that was the way to enlightenment. Thinking that there was no danger in the pleasure that was without sensual desires and without evil ideas he took solid food again. His five followers then left him, but he went on to practise the four trances, and found that the pleasant feeling which arose did not overpower his mind. The rest of the sutta is the description of attaining enlightenment in the same words as are used of every disciple who attains it, as described above (p. 47). The only difference is that Buddha was the discoverer of the method.

c17.50

¹ The Pāli commentary places this event in early childhood, but it is explained in three other ways in Sanskrit works: cf. The Life of Buddha, p. 44; below, p. 136.

c17.51

The view that extinction of pain is brought about by the exhaustion of karma is attributed to the Nigaṇṭhas. It is the most extreme form of the doctrine of action (kiriyavāda). Karma is conceived as something flowing into the individual. An action produces so much karma, whether it was intended or not. As represented by the Buddhists, the Nigaṇṭhas hold that “ whatever an individual experiences, whether pleasurable, painful, or indifferent, is all the effect of his previous karma, and that so by the extinction of old karmas through austerity and by the non-performance of new karmas there is no outflow in the future, and that through there being no outflow in the future there will be destruction of karma, through destruction of karma destruction of pain, through the destruction of pain destruction of feeling, and through destruction of feeling all pain will be exhausted". The view that an act of killing, even if unintentional, involved retribution is rejected in *Kathāvatthu*, xx, 1. The Jains are charged with holding it in *Abhk.*, iv, 73; *cf. Jaina Sūtras*.

c17.52

GOTAMA PRACTISING AUSTERITIES

c17.53

Buddhism by making the ethical character of an action depend upon the motive and not upon the external performance transformed the doctrine of karma. The aim was no longer to attend to external actions, but to the motives that inspire them. As Buddhaghosa puts it, the Buddhas are like lions which when shot attack the hunter; they make the pain to cease and teach the cessation of pain by referring to the cause. The heretics are like dogs which attack the stick that hit them; they teach the cessation of pain by teaching the application of self-mortification and such things; they refer to the effect, not the cause.¹ Doubtless this teaching was not entirely new. We find truly ethical concepts in the Upanishads. But it was an important protest against a rival view of karma, which was carried to its extreme by the Jains.

c17.54

¹ Vism., 507.

c17.55

The whole scheme of Buddhist training came to be arranged in four stages of the Noble Eightfold Path. Even those who do not go beyond faith and love towards Buddha are destined to heaven. They whose practice is in accordance with the Doctrine and faith are destined to enlightenment. To enter on the Path requires an intellectual change.

c17.56

They who have cast off the three fetters of belief in a permanent individuality (*sakkāya*), doubt, and belief in mere morality and rites are those who have reached the first stage of Entering the stream (*sotāpatti*). They are not liable to be reborn in an unhappy existence, and are destined to enlightenment. They who have cast off the three fetters and weakened the bonds of passion, hatred, and stupidity have reached the second stage of the Once-returner (*sakadāgāmin*). They will return once to this world before making an end of pain.

c17.57

They who have cast off the five lower fetters (the three above with sensual passion and malice), and who arise by apparitional birth ¹ in a higher stage of existence, and there attain Nirvāṇa, without returning to this world, have reached the third stage of the Non-returner (anāgāmin).

c17.58

¹ There are four kinds of birth—oviparous, viviparous, birth from moisture (as insects), and apparitional (opapātika), which takes place in the higher planes of existence without any physiological process, and the individual reborn (as a god or still higher being) simply appears there.

c17.59

They who are arahats have destroyed the āsavas (lust, desire for existence, ignorance), they have completed what was to be done, they have laid down the burden, obtained their end, and with the destruction of the fetter of desire for existence are liberated with complete knowledge. Their course cannot be pointed out.²

c17.60

² Majjh., i, 141.

c17.61

This scheme is not a course of training, like the four contemplations or the three stages of morality, concentration, and full knowledge, but it is a scholastic elaboration of the stages attained by liberation from the ten fetters. Each stage is also subdivided into the path and the fruit. It depends upon the training, not upon any external act, for a man may enter the Order and yet be far from entering the stream. We are told of a learned disciple who had learnt the three Piṭakas and expounded them to five hundred disciples. He was able to answer Buddha’s questions about the Trances and the Attainments, but he was put to shame by an ignorant monk who had won insight, for he was unable to answer a question about Entering the stream.³

c17.62

³ Dhp. com., i, 154.

Linked texts (21)