When the Buddha was dying ananda wept because he was about to lose so kind a master and the Buddha"s own language to him is even more affectionate. He cared not only for the organization of the order but for its individual members. He is frequently represented as feeling that some disciple needed a particular form of instruction and giving it. Nor did he fail to provide for the comfort of the sick and weary. For instance a ballad[385] relates how Panthaka driven from his home took refuge at the door of the monastery garden. "Then came the Lord and stroked my head and taking me by the arm led me into the garden of the monastery and out of kindness he gave me a towel for my feet." A striking anecdote[386] relates how he once found a monk who suffered from a disagreeable disease lying on the ground in a filthy state. So with ananda"s a.s.sistance he washed him and lifting him up with his own hands laid him on his bed. Then he summoned the brethren and told them that if a sick brother had no special attendant the whole order should wait on him. "You, monks, have no mothers or fathers to care for you. If you do not wait one on the other, who is there who will wait on you?
Whosoever would wait on me, he should wait on the sick." This last recalls Christ"s words, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these brethren, ye have done it unto me." And, if his approval of monks being deaf to the claims of family affection seems unfeeling, it should also be mentioned that in the book called _Songs of the Nuns_[387] women relate how they were crazy at the loss of their children but found complete comfort and peace in his teaching. Sometimes we are told that when persons whom he wished to convert proved refractory he "suffused them with the feeling of his love" until they yielded to his influence[388]. We can hardly doubt that this somewhat c.u.mbrous phrase preserves a tradition of his personal charm and power.
The beauty of his appearance and the pleasant quality of his voice are often mentioned but in somewhat conventional terms which inspire no confidence that they are based on personal reminiscence, nor have the most ancient images which we possess any claim to represent his features, for the earliest of them are based on Greek models and it was not the custom to represent him by a figure until some centuries after his death. I can imagine that the truest idea of his person is to be obtained not from the abundant effigies which show him as a somewhat sanctimonious ascetic, but from statues of him as a young man, such as that found at Sarnath, which may possibly preserve not indeed the physiognomy of Gotama but the general physique of a young Nepalese prince, with powerful limbs and features and a determined mouth. For there is truth at the bottom of the saying that Gotama was born to be either a Buddha or a universal monarch: he would have made a good general, if he had not become a monk.
We are perhaps on firmer ground when we find speakers in the Pitakas[389] commenting on his calm and bright expression and his unruffled courtesy in discussion. Of his eloquence it is hard to judge.
The Suttas may preserve his teaching and some of his words but they are probably rearrangements made for recitation. Still it is impossible to prove that he did not himself adopt this style, particularly when age and iteration had made the use of certain formulae familiar to him. But though these repet.i.tions and subdivisions of arrangement are often wearisome, there are not wanting traces of another manner, which suggest a terse and racy preacher going straight to the point and driving home his meaning with homely instances.
Humour often peeps through the Buddha"s preaching. It pervades the Jataka stories, and more than once he is said to have smiled when remembering some previous birth. Some suttas, such as the tales of the Great King of Glory, and of King Maha Vijita"s sacrifice[390], are simply Jatakas in another form-interesting stories full of edification for those who can understand but not to be taken as a narrative of facts. At other times he simply states the ultimate facts of a case and leaves them in their droll incongruity. Thus when King Ajatasattu was moved and illuminated by his teaching, he observed to his disciples that His Majesty had all the makings of a saint in him, if only he had not killed that excellent man his own father. Somewhat similar is his judgment[391] on two naked ascetics, who imitated in all things the ways of a dog and a cow respectively, in the hope of thus obtaining salvation. When pressed to say what their next birth would be, he opined that if their penance was successful they would be reborn as dogs and cows, if unsuccessful, in h.e.l.l. Irony and modesty are combined in his rejection of extravagant praise. "Such faith have I, Lord[392]" said Sariputta, "that methinks there never has been nor will be nor is now any other greater or wiser than the Blessed One." "Of course, Sariputta"
is the reply, "you have known all the Buddhas of the past." "No, Lord."
"Well then, you know those of the future." "No, Lord." "Then at least you know me and have penetrated my mind thoroughly." "Not even that, Lord." "Then why, Sariputta, are your words so grand and bold."
There is much that is human in these pa.s.sages yet we should be making a fancy portrait did we allow ourselves to emphasize them too much and neglect the general tone of the Pitakas. These scriptures are the product of a school; but that school grew up under the Buddha"s personal influence and more than that is rooted in the very influences and tendencies which produced the Buddha himself. The pa.s.sionless, intellectual aloofness; the elemental simplicity with which the facts of life are stated and explained without any concession to sentiment, the rigour of the prescription for salvation, that all sensual desire and attachment must be cut off, are too marked and consistent for us to suppose them due merely to monkish inability to understand the more human side of his character. The Buddha began his career as an Indian Muni, one supposed to be free from all emotions and intent only on seeking deliverance from every tie connecting him with the world. This was expected of him and had he done no more it would have secured him universal respect. The fact that he did a great deal more, that he devoted his life to active preaching, that he offered to all happiness and escape from sorrow, that he personally aided with advice and encouragement all who came to him, caused both his contemporaries and future generations to regard him as a saviour. His character and the substance of his teaching were admirably suited to the needs of the religious world of India in his day. Judged by the needs of other temperaments, which are ent.i.tled to neither more nor less consideration, they seem too severe, too philosophic and the later varieties of Buddhism have endeavoured to make them congenial to less strenuous natures.
Before leaving the personality of the Buddha, we must say a word about the more legendary portions of his biography, for though of little importance for history they have furnished the chief subjects of Buddhist art and influenced the minds of his followers as much as or more than the authentic incidents of his career[393]. The later legend has not distorted the old narrative. It is possible that all its incidents may be founded on stories known to the compilers of the Pitakas, though this is not at present demonstrable, but they are embellished by an unstinted use of the supernatural and of the hyperbole usual in Indian poetry. The youthful Buddha moves through showers of flowers and an atmosphere crowded with attendant deities. He cannot even go to school without an escort of ten thousand children and a hundred thousand maidens and astonishes the good man who proposes to teach him the alphabet by suggesting sixty-four systems of writing.
The princ.i.p.al scenes in this legend are as follows. The Bodhisattva, that is the Buddha to-be, resides in the Tusita Heaven and selects his birth-place and parentage. He then enters the womb of his mother Maya in the shape of a white elephant, which event she sees in a dream. Brahmans are summoned and interpret the vision to mean that her son will be a Universal Monarch or a Buddha. When near her confinement Maya goes to visit her parents but on the way brings forth her son in the Lumbini grove. As she stands upright holding the bough of a tree, he issues from her side without pain to her and is received by deities, but on touching the ground, takes seven steps and says, "I am the foremost in the world." On the same day are born several persons who play a part in his life-his wife, his horse, ananda, Bimbisara and others. Asita does homage to him, as does also his father, and it is predicted that he will become a Buddha and renounce the world. His father in his desire to prevent this secludes him in the enjoyment of all luxury. At the ploughing festival he falls into a trance under a tree and the shadow stands still to protect him and does not change. Again his father does him homage. He is of herculean strength and surpa.s.ses all as an archer.
He marries his cousin Yasodhara, when sixteen years old. Then come the four visions, which are among the scenes most frequently depicted in modern sacred art. As he is driving in the palace grounds the G.o.ds show him an old man, a sick man, a corpse and a monk of happy countenance.
His charioteer explains what they are and he determines to abandon the world. It was at this time that his son was born and on hearing the news he said that a new fetter now bound him to worldly life but still decided to execute his resolve. That night he could take no pleasure in the music of the singing women who were wont to play to him and they fell asleep. As he looked at their sleeping forms he felt disgust and ordered Channa, his charioteer, to saddle Ka??haka, a gigantic white horse, eighteen cubits long from head to tail. Meanwhile he went to his wife"s room and took a last but silent look as she lay sleeping with her child.
Then he started on horseback attended by Channa and a host of heavenly beings who opened the city gates. Here he was a.s.sailed by Mara the Tempter who offered him universal empire but in vain. After jumping the river Anoma on his steed, he cut off his long hair with his sword and flinging it up into the air wished it might stay there if he was really to become a Buddha. It remained suspended; admiring G.o.ds placed it in a heavenly shrine and presented Gotama with the robes of a monk.
Not much is added to the account of his wanderings and austerities as given in the Pitakas, but the attainment of Buddhahood naturally stimulates the devout imagination. At daybreak Gotama sits at the foot of a tree, lighting up the landscape with the golden rays which issue from his person. Sujara a n.o.ble maiden and her servant Pur?a offer him rice and milk in a golden vessel and he takes no more food for seven weeks. He throws the vessel into the river, wishing that if he is to become a Buddha it may ascend the stream against the current. It does so and then sinks to the abode of the Nagas. Towards evening he walks to the Bodhi-tree and meets a gra.s.s-cutter who offers him gra.s.s to make a seat. This he accepts and taking his seat vows that rather than rise before attaining Buddhahood, he will let his blood dry up and his body decay. Then comes the great a.s.sault of the Tempter. Mara attacks him in vain both with an army of terrible demons and with bands of seductive nymphs. During the conflict Mara asked him who is witness to his ever having performed good deeds or bestowed alms? He called on the earth to bear witness. Earthquakes and thunders responded to the appeal and the G.o.ddess of the Earth herself rose and bore testimony. The rout of Mara is supposed to have taken place in the late evening. The full moon[394]
came out and in the three watches of the night he attained enlightenment.
The Pali and early Sanskrit texts place the most striking legendary scenes in the first part of the Buddha"s life just as scribes give freest rein to their artistic imagination in tracing the first letter and word of a chapter. In the later version, the whole text is coloured and gilded with a splendour that exceeds the hues of ordinary life but no incidents of capital importance are added after the Enlightenment[395]. Historical names still occur and the Buddha is still a wandering teacher with a band of disciples, but his miracles continually convulse the universe: he preaches to mankind from the sky and retires for three months to the Tusita Heaven in order to instruct his mother, who had died before she could hear the truth from her son"s lips, and often the whole scene pa.s.ses into a vision where the ordinary limits of s.p.a.ce, time and number cease to have any meaning.
CHAPTER IX
THE BUDDHA COMPARED WITH OTHER RELIGIOUS TEACHERS
The personality of the Buddha invites comparison with the founders of the other world-religions, Christ and Mohammed. We are tempted to ask too if there is any resemblance between him and Confucius, a contemporary Asiatic whose influence has been equally lasting, but here there is little common ground. For Confucius"s interest was mainly in social and ethical problems, not in religion. He laid stress on those ties of kinship and society, respecting which the Indian monk (like Christ) sometimes spoke harshly, although there is a strong likeness between the moral code of the Buddhist layman and Confucianism: he was full of humility and respect for antiquity, whereas Gotama had a good share of that self-confidence which is necessary for all who propound to the world a new religion.[396]
But with Mohammed comparison, or rather contrast, is easier. Both were seekers after truth: both found what they believed to be the truth only when of mature years, Gotama when about thirty-six, Mohammed when forty or more: both lived to be elderly men and possessed great authority. But there the a.n.a.logy ends. Perhaps no single human being has had so great an effect on the world as Mohammed. His achievements are personal and, had he never lived, it is not clear that the circ.u.mstances of the age would have caused some one else to play approximately the same part. He more than Caesar or Alexander was individually the author of a movement which transformed part of three continents. No one else has been able to fuse the two n.o.ble instincts of religion and empire in so perfect a manner, perfect because the two do not conflict or jar, as do the teachings of Christ and the pretensions of his Church to temporal power.
But it is precisely this fusion of religion and politics which disqualifies Islam as a universal religion and prevents it from satisfying the intellectual and spiritual wants of that part of humanity which is most intellectual and most spiritual. Law and religion are inextricably mixed in it and a Moslim, more than the most superst.i.tious of Buddhists or Christians, is bound by a vast number of ties and observances which have nothing to do with religion. It is in avoiding these trammels that the superior religious instinct of Gotama shows itself. He was aided in this by the temper of his times. Though he was of the warrior caste and naturally brought into a.s.sociation with princes, he was not on that account tempted to play a part in politics, for to the Hindus, then as now, renunciation of the world was indispensable for serious religion and there is no instance of a teacher obtaining a hearing among them without such renunciation as a preliminary. According to Indian popular ideas a genius might become either an Emperor or a Buddha but not like Mohammed a mixture of the two. But the danger which beset Gotama, and which he consistently and consciously avoided, though Mohammed could not, was to give authoritative decisions on unessential points as to both doctrine and practice. There was clearly a party which wished to make the rule of his order more severe and, had he consented, the religious world of his day would have approved. But by so doing he would have made Buddhism an Indian sect like Jainism, incapable of flourishing in lands with other inst.i.tutions. If Buddhism has had little influence outside Asia, that is because there are differences of temperament in the world, not because it sanctions anachronisms or prescribes observances of a purely local and temporary value. In all his teaching Gotama insists on what is essential only and will not lend his name and authority to what is merely accessory. He will not for instance direct or even recommend his disciples to be hermits. "Whoever wishes may dwell in a wood and whoever wishes may dwell near a village." And in his last days he bade them be a light unto themselves and gave them authority to change all the lesser precepts. It is true that the order decided to make no use of this permission, but the spirit which dictated it has shaped the destinies of the faith.
Akin to this contrast is another-that between the tolerance of Gotama and the persecuting spirit of Islam. Mohammed and his followers never got rid of the idea that any other form of religion is an insult to the Almighty: that infidels should if possible be converted by compulsion, or, if that were impossible, allowed to exist only on sufferance and in an inferior position. Such ideas were unknown to Gotama. He laboured not for his own or his Creator"s glory but simply and solely to benefit mankind. Conversion by force had no meaning for him, for what he desired was not a profession of allegiance but a change of disposition and amid many transformations his Church has not lost this temper.
When we come to compare Gotama and Christ we are struck by many resemblances of thought but also by great differences of circ.u.mstances and career. Both were truly spiritual teachers who rose above forms and codes: both accepted the current ideals of their time and strove to become the one a Buddha, the other Messiah. But at the age when Christ was executed Gotama was still in quest of truth and still on the wrong track. He lived nearly fifty years longer and had ample opportunity of putting his ideas into practice. So far as our meagre traditions allow us to trace the development of the two, the differences are even more fundamental. Peaceful as was the latter part of Gotama"s life, the beginning was a period of struggle and disillusion. He broke away from worldly life to study philosophy: he broke away from philosophy to wear out his body with the severest mortification; that again he found to be vanity and only then did he attain to enlightenment. And though he offers salvation to all without distinction, he repeatedly says that it is difficult: with hard wrestling has he won the truth and it is hard for ordinary men to understand.
Troubled as was the life of Christ, it contains no struggle of this sort. As a youth he grew up in a poor family where the disenchantment of satiety was unknown: his genius first found expression in sermons delivered in the synagogue-the ordinary routine of Jewish ritual: his appearance as a public teacher and his ultimate conviction that he was the Messiah were a natural enlargement of his sphere, not a change of method: the temptation, though it offers a.n.a.logies to Gotama"s mental struggle and particularly to the legends about Mara, was not an internal revolution in which old beliefs were seen to be false and new knowledge arose from their ashes. So far as we know, his inner life was continuous and undisturbed, and its final expression is emotional rather than intellectual. He gives no explanations and leaves no feeling that they are necessary. He is free in his use of metaphor and chary of definition. The teaching of the Buddha on the other hand is essentially intellectual. The nature and tastes of his audience were a sufficient justification for his style, but it indicates a temper far removed from the unquestioning and childlike faith of Christ. We can hardly conceive him using such a phrase as Our Father, but we may be sure that if he had done so he would have explained why and how and to what extent such words can be properly used of the Deity.
The most sceptical critics of the miracles recorded in the Gospels can hardly doubt that Christ possessed some special power of calming and healing nervous maladies and perhaps others. Sick people naturally turned to him: they were brought to him when he arrived in a town.
Though the Buddha was occasionally kind to the sick, no such picture is drawn of the company about him and persons afflicted with certain diseases could not enter the order. When the merchant Anathapi??ika is seriously ill, he sends a messenger with instructions to inform the Buddha and Sariputta of his illness and to add in speaking to Sariputta that he begs him to visit him out of compa.s.sion[397]. He does not presume to address the same request to the Buddha. Christ teaches that the world is evil or, perhaps we should say, spoiled, but wishes to remove the evil and found the Kingdom of Heaven: the Buddha teaches that birth, sickness and death are necessary conditions of existence and that disease, which like everything else has its origin in Karma, can be destroyed only when the cause is destroyed[398]. Nor do we find ascribed to him that love of children and tenderness towards the weak and erring which are beautiful features in the portrait of Christ[399]. He had no prejudices: he turned robust villains like Angulimala, the brigand, into saints and dined with prost.i.tutes but one cannot a.s.sociate him with simple friendly intercourse. When he accepted invitations he did not so much join in the life of the family which he visited as convert the entertainment offered to him into an edifying religious service. Yet in propaganda and controversy he was gracious and humane beyond the measure of all other teachers. He did not call the priests of his time a generation of vipers, though he laughed at their ceremonies and their pretensions to superior birth.
Though the Buddha pa.s.sed through intellectual crises such as the biographies of Christ do not hint at, yet in other matters it is he rather than Christ who offers a picture and example of peace. Christ enjoyed with a little band of friends an intimacy which the Hindu gave to none, but from the very commencement of his mission he is at enmity with what he calls the world. The world is evil and a great event is coming of double import, for it will bring disaster on the wicked as well as happiness for the good. "Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." He is angry with the world because it will not hear him. He declares that it hates him and the gospel according to St John even makes him say, "I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me[400]." The little towns of Galilee are worse in his eyes than the wicked cities of antiquity because they are not impressed by his miracles and Jerusalem which has slighted all the prophets and finally himself is to receive signal punishment. The shadow of impending death fell over the last period of his ministry and he felt that he was to be offered as a sacrifice. The Jews even seem to have thought at one time that he was unreasonably alarmed[401].
But the Buddha was not angry with the world. He thought of it as unsatisfactory and transitory rather than wicked, as ignorant rather than rebellious. He troubled little about people who would not listen.
The calm and confidence which so many narratives attribute to him rarely failed to meet with the respect which they antic.i.p.ated. In his life there is no idea of sacrifice, no element of the tragic, no nervous irritability. When Devadatta meditated his a.s.sa.s.sination, he is represented as telling his disciples that they need not be uneasy because it was physically impossible to kill a Buddha. The saying is perhaps not historical but it ill.u.s.trates Indian sentiment. In his previous existences, when preparing for Buddhahood, he had frequently given his life for others, not because it was any particular good to them but in order to perfect his character for his own great career and bring about the selflessness which is essential to a Buddha. When once he had attained enlightenment any idea of sacrifice, such as the shepherd laying down his life for the sheep, had no meaning. It would be simply the destruction of the more valuable for the less valuable. Even the modern developments of Buddhism which represent the Buddha Amida as a saviour do not contain the idea that he gives up his life for his followers.
Gotama inst.i.tuted a religious order and lived long enough to see it grow out of infancy, but its organization was gradual and for a year or two it was simply a band of disciples not more bound by rules than the seventy whom Christ sent forth to preach. Would Christ, had he lived longer, have created something a.n.a.logous to the Buddhist _sangha_, a community not conflicting with national and social inst.i.tutions but independent of them? The question is vain and to Europeans Christ"s sketch of the Christian life will appear more satisfactory than the finished portrait of the Bhikkhu. But though his maxims are the perfect expression of courtesy and good feeling with an occasional spice of paradox, such as the command to love one"s enemies, yet the experience of nearly twenty centuries has shown that this morality is not for the citizens of the world. The churches which give themselves his name preach with rare exceptions that soldiering, financing and the business of government-things about which he cared as little as do the birds and the lilies of the field-are the proper concern of Christian men and one wonders whether he would not, had his life been prolonged, have seen that many of his precepts, such as turning the other cheek and not resisting evil, are incompatible with ordinary inst.i.tutions and have followed the example of the great Indian by founding a society in which they could be kept. The monastic orders of the Roman and Eastern Churches show that such a need was felt.
There are many resemblances between the Gospels and the teaching of the Buddha but the bases of the two doctrines are different and, if the results are sometimes similar, this shows that the same destination can be reached by more than one road. It is perhaps the privilege of genius to see the goal by intuition: the road and the vehicle are subsidiary and may be varied to suit the minds of different nations. Christ, being a Jew, took for his basis a refined form of the old Jewish theism. He purged Jehovah of his jealousy and prejudices and made him a spirit of pure benevolence who behaves to men as a loving father and bids them behave to one another as loving brethren. Such ideas lie outside the sphere of Gotama"s thought and he would probably have asked why on this hypothesis there is any evil in the world. That is a question which the Gospels are chary of discussing but they seem to indicate that the disobedience and sinfulness of mankind are the root of evil. A G.o.dly world would be a happy world. But the Buddha would have said that though the world would be very much happier if all its inhabitants were moral and religious, yet the evils inherent in individual existence would still remain; it would still be impermanent and unsatisfactory.
Yet the Buddha and Christ are alike in points which are of considerable human interest, though they are not those emphasized by the Churches.
Neither appears to have had much taste for theology or metaphysics.
Christ ignored them: the Buddha said categorically that such speculations are vain. Indeed it is probably a general law in religions that the theological phase does not begin until the second generation, when the successors of the founder try to interpret and harmonize his words. He himself sees clearly and says plainly what mankind ought to do. Neither the Buddha, nor Christ, nor Mohammed cared for much beyond this, and such of their sayings as have reference to the whence, the whither and the why of the universe are obscure precisely because these questions do not fall within the field of religious genius and receive no illumination from its light. Argumentative as the Buddhist suttas are, their aim is strictly practical, even when their language appears scholastic, and the burden of all their ratiocination is the same and very simple. Men are unhappy because of their foolish desires: to become happy they must make themselves a new heart and will and, perhaps the Buddha would have added, new eyes.
Neither the Buddha nor Christ thought it worth while to write anything and both of them ignored ceremonial and sacerdotal codes in a way which must have astounded their contemporaries. The law-books and sacrifices to which Brahmans and Pharisees devoted time and study are simply left on one side. The former are replaced by injunctions to cultivate a good habit of mind, such as is exemplified in the Eightfold Path and the Beat.i.tudes, the latter by some observances of extreme simplicity, such as the Patimokkha and the Lord"s Prayer. In both cases subsequent generations felt that the provision made by the Founders was inadequate and the Buddhist and Christian Churches have multiplied ceremonies which, though not altogether unedifying, would certainly have astonished Gotama and Christ.
For Christ the greatest commandments were that a man should love G.o.d and his neighbours. This summary is not in the manner of Gotama and though love (metta) has an important place in his teaching, it is rather an inseparable adjunct of a holy life than the force which creates and animates it. In other words the Buddha teaches that a saint must love his fellow men rather than that he who loves his fellow men is a saint.
But the pa.s.sages extolling _metta_ are numerous and striking, and European writers have, I think, shown too great a disposition to maintain that _metta_ is something less than Christian love and little more than benevolent equanimity. The love of the New Testament is not eros but agape, a new word first used by Jewish and Christian writers and nearly the exact equivalent of _metta_. For both words love is rather too strong a rendering and charity too weak. Nor is it just to say that the Buddha as compared with Christ preaches inaction. The Christian nations of Europe are more inclined to action than the Buddhist nations of Asia, yet the Beat.i.tudes do not indicate that the strenuous life is the road to happiness. Those declared blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry, the pure and the persecuted.
Such men have just the virtues of the patient Bhikkhu and like Christ the Buddha praised the merciful and the peacemakers. And similarly Christ"s phrase about rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar"s seems to dissociate his true followers (like the Bhikkhus) from political life. Money and taxes are the affair of those who put their heads on coins; G.o.d and the things which concern him have quite another sphere.
CHAPTER X
THE TEACHING OF THE BUDDHA
1
When the Buddha preached his first sermon[402] to the five monks at Benares the topics he selected were the following. First comes an introduction about avoiding extremes of either self-indulgence or self-mortification. This was specially appropriate to his hearers who were ascetics and disposed to over-rate the value of austerities. Next he defines the middle way or eightfold path. Then he enunciates the four truths of the nature of suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the method of bringing about that cessation. This method is no other than the eightfold path. Then his hearers understood that whatever has a beginning must have an end. This knowledge is described as the pure and spotless Eye of Truth. The Buddha then formally admitted them as the first members of the Sangha. He then explained to them that there is no such thing as self. We are not told that they received any further instruction before they were sent forth to be teachers and missionaries: they were, it would seem, sufficiently equipped. When the Buddha instructs his sixth convert, Yasa, the introduction is slightly different, doubtless because he was a layman. It treats of "almsgiving, of moral duties, of heaven, of the evil, vanity and sinfulness of desires, of the blessings which come from abandoning desires." Then when his catechumen"s mind was prepared, he preached to him "the chief doctrine of the Buddhas, namely suffering, its cause, its cessation and the Path." And when Yasa understood this he obtained the Eye of Truth.
It is clear, therefore, that the Buddha regarded practice as the foundation of his system. He wished to create a temper and a habit of life. Mere acquiescence in dogma, such as a Christian creed, is not sufficient as a basis of religion and test of membership. It is only in the second stage that he enunciates the four great theorems of his system (of which one, the Path, is a matter of practice rather than doctrine) and only later still that he expounds conceptions which are logically fundamental, such as his view of personality. "Just as the great ocean has only one taste, the taste of salt, so has this doctrine and discipline only one taste, the taste of emanc.i.p.ation[403]." This practical aim has affected the form given to much of the Buddha"s teaching, for instance the theory of the Skandhas and the chain of causation. When examined at leisure by a student of to-day, the dogmas seem formulated with imperfect logic and the results trite and obvious.
But such doctrines as that evil must have a cause which can be discovered and removed by natural methods: that a bad unhappy mind can be turned into a good, happy mind by suppressing evil thoughts and cultivating good thoughts, are not commonplaces even now, if they receive a practical application, and in 500 B.C. they were not commonplaces in any sense.
And yet no one can read Buddhist books or a.s.sociate with Buddhist monks without feeling that the intellectual element is preponderant, not the emotional. The ultimate cause of suffering is ignorance. The Buddha has won the truth by understanding the universe. Conversion is usually described by some such phrase as acquiring the Eye of Truth, rather than by words expressing belief or devotion. The major part of the ideal life, set forth in a recurring pa.s.sage of the Digha Nikaya, consists in the creation of intellectual states, and though the Buddha disavowed all speculative philosophy his discourses are full, if not of metaphysics, at least of psychology. And this knowledge is essential. It is not sufficient to affirm one"s belief in it; it must be a.s.similated and taken into the life of every true Buddhist. All cannot do this: most of the unconverted are blinded by l.u.s.t and pa.s.sion, but some are incapacitated by want of mental power. They must practise virtue and in a happier birth their minds will be enlarged.
The reader who has perused the previous chapters will have some idea of the tone and subject matter of the Buddha"s preaching. We will now examine his doctrine as a system and will begin with the theory of existence, premising that it disclaims all idea of doing more than a.n.a.lyze our experience. With speculations or a.s.sertions as to the origin, significance and purpose of the Universe, the Buddha has nothing to do. Such questions do not affect his scheme of salvation. What views-if any-he may have held or implied about them we shall gather as we go on. But it is dangerous to formulate what he did not formulate himself, and not always easy to understand what he did formulate. For his words, though often plain and striking, are, like the utterances of other great teachers, apt to provoke discordant explanations. They meet our thoughts half way, but no interpretation exhausts their meaning.
When we read into them the ideas of modern philosophy and combine them into a system logical and plausible after the standard of this age, we often feel that the result is an anachronism: but if we treat them as ancient simple discourses by one who wished to make men live an austere and moral life, we still find that there are uncomfortably profound sayings which will not harmonize with this theory.
The Buddha"s aversion to speculation did not prevent him from insisting on the importance of a correct knowledge of our mental const.i.tution, the chain of causation and other abstruse matters; nor does it really take the form of neglecting metaphysics: rather of defining them in a manner so authoritative as to imply a reserve of unimparted knowledge. Again and again questions about the fundamental mysteries of existence are put to him and he will not give an answer. It would not conduce to knowledge, peace, or freedom from pa.s.sion, we are told, and, therefore, the Lord has not declared it. _Therefore_: not, it would seem, because he did not know, but because the discussion was not profitable. And the modern investigator, who is not so submissive as the Buddha"s disciples, asks why not? Can it be that the teacher knew of things transcendental not to be formulated in words? Once[404] he compared the truths he had taught his disciples to a bunch of leaves which he held in his hand and the other truths which he knew but had not taught to the leaves of the whole forest in which they were walking. And the story of the blind men and the elephant[405] seems to hint that Buddhas, those rare beings who are not blind, can see the const.i.tution of the universe. May we then in chance phrases get a glimpse of ideas which he would not develop? It may be so, but the quest is temerarious. "What I have revealed[406] hold as revealed, and what I have not revealed, hold as not revealed." The gracious but authoritative figure of the Master gives no further reply when we endeavour to restate his teaching in some completer form which admits of comparison with the ancient and modern philosophies of Europe.
The best introduction to his theory of existence is perhaps the instruction given to the five monks after his first sermon. The body[407] is not the self, he says, for if it were, it would not be subject to disease and we should be able to say, let my body be or not be such and such. As the denial of the existence of the self or ego (Atta in Pali, atman in Sanskrit) is one of the fundamental and original tenets of Gotama, we must remember that this self whose existence is denied is something not subject to decay, and possessing perfect free will with power to exercise it. The Brahmanic atman is such a self but it is found nowhere in the world of our experience[408]. For the body or form is not the self, neither is sensation or feeling (_vedana_) for they are not free and eternal. Neither is perception (_sanna_)[409] the self. Neither, the Buddha goes on to say, are the _Sankharas_ the self, and for the same reason.
Here we find ourselves sailing on the high seas of dogmatic terminology and must investigate the meaning of this important and untranslateable word. It is equivalent to the Sanskrit _sa?skara_, which is akin to the word Sanskrit itself, and means compounding, making anything artificial and elaborate. It may be literally translated as synthesis or confection, and is often used in the general sense of phenomena since all phenomena are compound[410]. Occasionally[411] we hear of three Sankharas, body or deed, word and thought. But in later literature the Sankharas become a category with fifty-two divisions and these are mostly mental or at least subjective states. The list opens with contact (pha.s.so) and then follow sensation, perception, thought, reflection, memory and a series of dispositions or states such as attention, effort, joy, torpor, stupidity, fear, doubt, lightness of body or mind, pity, envy, worry, pride. As European thought does not cla.s.s all these items under one heading or, in other words, has no idea equivalent to Sankhara, it is not surprising that no adequate rendering has been found, especially as Buddhism regards everything as mere becoming, not fixed existence, and hence does not distinguish sharply between a process and a result-between the act of preparing and a preparation.
Conformations, confections, syntheses, co-efficients, tendencies, potentialities have all been used as equivalents but I propose to use the Pali word as a rule. In some pa.s.sages the word phenomena is an adequate literary equivalent, if it is remembered that phenomena are not thought of apart from a perceiving subject: in others some word like predispositions or tendencies is a more luminous rendering, because the Sankharas are the potentialities for good and evil action existing in the mind as a result of Karma[412].
The Buddha has now enumerated four categories which are not the self.
The fifth and last is Vinna?a, frequently rendered by consciousness. But this word is unsuitable in so far as it suggests in English some unified and continuous mental state. Vinna?a sometimes corresponds to thought and sometimes is hardly distinguished from perception, for it means awareness[413] of what is pleasant or painful, sweet or sour and so on.
But the Pitakas continually insist[414] that it is not a unity and that its varieties come into being only when they receive proper nourishment or, as we should say, an adequate stimulus. Thus visual consciousness depends on the sight and on visible objects, auditory consciousness on the hearing and on sounds. Vinna?a is divided into eighty-nine cla.s.ses according as it is good, bad or indifferent, but none of these cla.s.ses, nor all of them together, can be called the self.