The Philosophical Doctrines of Buddhism

LECTURE V. 
The Philosophical Doctrines of Buddhism.

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One of the most noteworthy points in the early history of Buddhistic thought is that while Gautama Buddha denied the existence of Brahmā as a personal Creator, and repudiated the Veda and all Vedic sacrifices and ceremonial observances, he at the same time made the philosophical teaching of the Brāhmans the point of departure for his own peculiar philosophical teaching.

Another noteworthy point is that while Buddhism was undoubtedly a modification of philosophical Brāhmanism, the latter was also modified by an interchange with Buddhistic ideas.

It may certainly be questioned whether Gautama himself, in the early stages of his career, ever caused much offence to the most orthodox Brāhmans by the free expression of his opinions. He did not spare either his criticism or sarcasm, but it is well known that the Brāhmans were not only tolerant of criticism; they were equally critical themselves, and delighted in controversial discussions, as they do to this day.

In the Tevijja-Sutta an account is given of a discussion in which, though Gautama expressed himself strongly, he does not seem to have excited any wrath in his opponent—a Brāhman named Vāsettha.

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The argument attributed to the Buddha is so remarkable that a portion of it may be given here:—

‘Then you say, Vāsettha, that not one of the Brāhmans, or of their teachers, or of their pupils, even up to the seventh generation, has ever seen Brahman (the God of the Brāhmans) face to face. And that even the Ṛishis of old, the utterers of the ancient verses, which the Brāhmans of to-day so carefully intone and recite precisely as they have been handed down—even they did not pretend to know or to have seen where or whence or whither Brahman is. So that the Brāhmans versed in the three Vedas have forsooth said thus: “To a state of union with that which we know not and have not seen, we can show the way and can say: ‘This is the straight path, this is the direct way which leads him who acts according to it, into a state of union with Brahman[44].’”

‘Now what think you, Vāsettha? Does it not follow, this being so, that the talk of the Brāhmans, versed though they be in the three Vedas, is foolish talk?

‘Verily, Vāsettha, that Brāhmans versed in the three Vedas should be able to show the way to a state of union with that which they do not know, neither have seen—such a condition of things has no existence.

‘As when a string of blind men are clinging one to the other, neither can the foremost see, nor can the middle one see, nor can the hindmost see, just so is the talk of the Brāhmans versed in the three Vedas[44].’

These no doubt were trenchant words, but it might easily be shown that the Brāhmans themselves did not 95 scruple to use almost as strong language against their own revelation. For instance, the Ćhāndogya Upanishad (p. 473) speaks of the Veda as ‘mere name’ (nāma eva). The Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad declares that when a man is in a condition of knowledge, ‘the gods are no gods to him, and the Veda no Veda;’ and the Muṇḍaka describes the sacrificial Veda as inferior to Brahma-vidyā.

And in truth every Hindū was allowed to choose one of three ways of securing his own salvation.

The first was ‘the way of works’ (Karma-mārga), that is to say, of sacrifices (Yajña), of ceremonial rites, of lustral washings, penances and pilgrimages, as enjoined in the Mantra and Brāhmaṇa portion of the Veda, in Manu, the Law-books and parts of the Purāṇas.

The second was ‘the way of faith’ (bhakti), meaning by that term devotion to one or other of certain commonly worshipped personal deities,—a way leading in later times to the worship of Ṡiva and Vishṇu (unfolded in the Purāṇas), and involving merely heart-devotion, without sacrificial or ceremonial acts.

The third was ‘the way of knowledge’ (Jñāna), as set forth in the Upanishads.

The mediæval Brāhman Kumārila—a really historical teacher—advocated the first way; another teacher of less note, Ṡāṇḍilya, advocated the second; another celebrated historical teacher, Ṡaṅkara, advocated the third.

Even in Gautama’s time any one of these ways or all three together might be chosen, so long as the authority of the Brāhmans was not impugned.

This, at least, is the general teaching of the Bhagavad-gītā—an 96 eclectic work which is the most popular exponent of the Hindū creed[45].

Yet even the Author of the Bhagavad-gītā had a preference for the way of knowledge. In one passage (II. 42) he describes the Veda as ‘mere flowery doctrine’ (pushpitā vāć), and is careful to point out that works must be performed as acts of devotion leading to absorption into the Supreme (Brahma-nirvāṇam).

Indeed there can be no doubt that it was generally held by the Brāhmans of Buddha’s time that the way of knowledge was the highest way. But this way was not open to all. It was reserved for the privileged few—for the more intellectual and philosophically-minded Brāhmans. The generality of men had to content themselves with the first and second ways.

What the Buddha then did was this:—First he stretched out the right hand of brotherhood to all mankind by inviting all without exception to join his fraternity of celibate monks, which he wished to be co-extensive with the world itself. Then he abolished the first and second ways of salvation (p. 95), that is, Yajña, ‘sacrifices,’ and Bhakti, ‘devotion to personal gods,’ and substituted for these meditation and moral conduct as the only road to true knowledge and emancipation. And then, lastly, he threw open this highest way 97 of true knowledge to all who wished to enter it, of whatever rank or caste or mental calibre they might be, not excepting the most degraded.

Without doubt the distinguishing feature in the Buddha’s gospel was that no living being, not even the lowest, was to be shut out from true enlightenment.

And here it will be necessary to inquire more closely into the nature of that knowledge which the Buddha thus made accessible to every creature in the universe.

Was it some deep mystery? Some occult doctrine of physical or metaphysical science? Some startling revelation of a law of nature never before imparted to the world? Was the Buddha’s open way very different from the old, well-fenced-off Brāhmanical way?

Of one point we may be certain. He was too sensible to cast aside all ancient traditions. Nor was he a mere enthusiast claiming to be the sole possessor of a new secret for regenerating society.

Unhappily, however, we are here met by a difficulty. The Buddha never, like Muhammad, wrote a book, or, so far as we know, a line. He was the Socrates of India, and we are obliged to trust to the record of his sayings (see p. 38). Still we have no reason to doubt the genuineness of what was for some time handed down orally in regard to the doctrines he taught, and we are struck with the fact that Gautama called his own knowledge Bodhi (from budh, ‘to understand’), and not Veda (from vid, ‘to know’). Probably by doing so he wished to imply that his own knowledge was attainable by all through their own intuitions, inner consciousness, and self-enlightening intellect, and was 98 to be distinguished from Veda or knowledge obtainable through the Brāhmans alone, and by them through supernatural revelation only. Hence, too, he gave to every being destined to become a Buddha the title Bodhi-sattva (Bodhi-satta), ‘one having knowledge derived from self-enlightening intellect for his essence.’

But it should be noted, that even in the choice of a name derived from the Sanskrit root budh, the Buddha only adopted the phraseology of the Sāṅkhya philosophy and of the Brāhmaṇas. The Sāṅkhya system made Buddhi, ‘intellect,’ its great principle (Mahat), and the Ṡatapatha-brāhmaṇa called a man who had attained to perfect knowledge of Self prati-buddha[46]. It may be pointed out, too, that Manu (IV. 204) uses the same root when he calls his wise man Budha.

Moreover, the doctrines which grew out of his own special knowledge Gautama still called Dharma (Dhamma), ‘law,’ using the very same term employed by the Brāhmans—a term expressive of law in its most comprehensive sense, as comprising under it the physical laws of the Universe, as well as moral and social duties.

In what, then, did the Buddha’s Dharma differ from that of the Brāhmans? One great distinction certainly was that it contained no esoteric (rahasya) and metaphysical doctrines in regard to matter and spirit, reserved for the privileged few; yet some of its root-ideas were after all mere modifications of the Sāṅkhya, Yoga, and Vedānta systems of philosophy. His way of knowledge, though it developed into many paths, had 99 the same point of departure. It was a knowledge of the truth, that all life was merely one link in a series of successive existences, and inseparably bound up with misery. Moreover as there were two causes of that misery—lust and ignorance—so there were two cures.

The first cure was the suppression of lust and desire, especially of all desire for continuity of existence.

The second cure was the removal of ignorance. Indeed Ignorance was, according to Gautama, the first factor in the misery of life, and stands first in his chain of causation (p. 102). Not, however, the Vedāntist’s ignorance—not ignorance of the fact that man and the universe are identical with God, but ignorance of the four truths of Buddhism (p. 43):—ignorance that all life is misery, and that the misery of life is caused by indulging lusts, and will cease by suppressing them.

It would be easy to show how all Indian philosophy was a mere scheme for getting rid of the bugbear of metempsychosis, and how common was the doctrine that everything is for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds. This was taught by the Brāhmans five centuries B.C., and continued to be a thoroughly Hindū idea long after the disappearance of Buddhism. Witness the following from the Maitrāyaṇi Upanishad:—

In this weak body, ever liable
To wrath, ambition, avarice, illusion,
To fear, grief, envy, hatred, separation
From those we hold most dear, association
With those we hate; continually exposed
To hunger, thirst, disease, decrepitude,
Emaciation, growth, decline and death,
What relish can there be for true enjoyment?
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Also the following, from Manu (VI. 77):—

This body, like a house composed of the (five) elements, with bones for its rafters, tendons for its connecting links, flesh and blood for its mortar, skin for its covering; this house filled with impurities, infested by sorrow and old age, the seat of disease, full of pain and passion, and not lasting—a man ought certainly to abandon.

Also Bhartṛi-hari (Vairāgya-ṡataka III. 32. 50):—

Enjoyments are alloyed by fear of sickness,
High rank may have a fall, abundant wealth
Is subject to exactions, dignity
Encounters risk of insult, strength is ever
In danger of enfeeblement by foes,
A handsome form is jeoparded by women,
Scripture is open to assaults of critics,
Merit incurs the spite of wicked men,
The body lives in constant dread of death—
One course alone is proof against alarm,
Renounce the world, and safety may be won.
One hundred years[47] is the appointed span
Of human life, one half of this goes by
In sleep and night; one half the other half
In childhood and old age; the rest is passed
In sickness, separation, pain, and service—
How can a human being find delight
In such a life, vain as a watery bubble?
No doubt this kind of pessimism has always found advocates in all ages, and among all nations in Europe as well as in Asia. It was a favourite idea with the Stoics, and it has found favour with Schopenhauer, Von Hartmann, and other modern philosophers; and Shakespeare makes Hamlet give expression to it.

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Happily the general tone of European philosophical thought is in another key, and the admirers of Aristotle still constitute a majority in Europe. The great Stagirite described God as ‘Energy,’ and in dealing with Solon’s dictum that ‘no man can be called happy while he lives,’ gave expression to a different belief. A good man’s virtuous energies, he asserted, are in this present life a genuine source of happiness to him; misfortunes cannot shake his well-balanced character; he surmounts the worst sufferings by generous magnanimity[48].

Even in the East a greater than Aristotle and no less an Authority than the true ‘Light of the world’—bade men rejoice and leap for joy under the most trying circumstances of life, and prize His gift of Eternal Life as their highest good.

In India, on the contrary, the Upanishads and systems of philosophy which followed on them, all harped on the same string. They all dwelt on the same minor key-note. Their real object was not to investigate truth, but to devise a scheme for removing the misery believed to result from repeated bodily existence and from all action, good or bad, in the present, previous, and future births.

The Sāṅkhya (I. 1) defines the chief aim of man to be deliverance from the pain incident to bodily life and energy; or according to the Nyāya (I. 2), from the pain resulting from birth, actions, and false knowledge; 102 while the Vedānta considers that ignorance alone fetters the soul of man to a body, and the Yoga defines the divine Purusha (= the perfect man of Buddhism) as a being unaffected by pain (kleṡa), acts, consequences of acts, and impressions derived from acts done in previous births (āṡaya = saṉṡkāra).

Gautama’s sympathy with these ideas is shown by the twelve-linked chain of causation, put forth by him as an accompaniment to his four fundamental truths (p. 43), and thus expressed (Mahā-vagga I. 1. 2):—

From Ignorance comes the combination of formations or tendencies (instincts derived from former births[49]); from such formations comes consciousness (vijñāna); from consciousness, individual being (nāma-rūpa, name and form); from individual being, the six organs of sense (including mind); from the six organs, contact (with objects of sense); from contact, sensation (vedanā); from sensation, desire (lust, thirst, taṉhā = tṛishṇā); from desire, clinging to life (upādāna); from clinging to life, continuity of becoming (bhava); from continuity of becoming, birth; from birth, decay and death; from decay and death, suffering.

It is difficult to discover a strictly logical sequence in this curious twelve-linked chain. The first link is a 103 cause, the ten following are both causes and effects, while the last is an effect only. The second (saṃkhārā) is presented to us afterwards as one of the Skandhas (p. 109), and we have the whole inverted in a kind of circular chain in the form of question and answer, thus:—

What is the cause of misery and suffering? Answer—Old age and death. What is the cause of old age and death? Answer—Birth. Of birth? Answer—Continuity of becoming. Of continuity of becoming? Answer—Clinging to life. Of clinging to life? Answer—Desire. Of desire? Answer—Sensation or perception. Of sensation? Answer—Contact with the objects of sense. Of contact with objects? Answer—The organs of sense. Of the organs? Answer—Name and form, or individual being. Of individual being? Answer—Consciousness (viññāṇa = vijñāna). Of consciousness? Answer—Combination of formations or tendencies (or those material and mental predispositions derived from previous births which tend to form character, compare p. 109). Of such formations? Answer—Ignorance.

In making Ignorance (Avidyā) the first cause of the misery of life, Gautama agreed with the Vedānta (though he explained Ignorance differently, see p. 99), while in the remaining chain of causes (Nidāna) we detect his sympathy with the Sāṅkhya theory of a chain of producers and products.

His own scheme of causation (often called Paṭićća-samuppādo) occupies an important place in Buddhistic philosophy, as supplementary to, and complementary of, the four truths (p. 43). It was thought out before them (see p. 39) and is equally revered.

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It is on this account that the following celebrated formula is constantly repeated like a short creed, and is found carved on numerous Buddhist monuments:—

‘Conditions (or laws) of existence which proceed from a cause, the cause of these hath the Buddha explained, as also the cessation (or destruction) of these. Of such truths is the Great Ṡramaṇa the teacher[50].’

This was the formula repeated by Assaji to Sāriputta and Moggallāna (p. 47), when they wished to join the Buddha and asked for a summary of the spirit (artha), not the letter (vyañjana), of his doctrine (Mahā-v° I. 23. 5). Certainly the sorites-like form of statement in the scheme of causation had charms for Oriental thinkers.

Moreover the Buddha’s method of clothing old truths in a new dress, or—to adopt another metaphor—his plan of putting new wine into old bottles, had in it something very attractive to all Indian minds.

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Of what kind, then, was the new dress in which Gautama clothed the great central doctrine of Indian philosophy—the doctrine of metempsychosis, involving the perpetuation of the misery of life?

The Buddha, like all Indians, was by nature a metaphysician. 105 He had great sympathy with the philosophy of the Upanishads. How was it that he disbelieved in the existence of Spirit as distinct from bodily organism? A little consideration will perhaps make clear how he was brought to his own peculiar agnostic view.

Probably before his so-called enlightenment and attainment of true knowledge, he was as firm a believer in the real existence of one Universal Spirit as the most orthodox Brāhman. He had become imbued with Brāhmanical philosophy while sitting at the feet of his two teachers Āḷāra and Uddaka (p. 29). At that time there were no definite or formulated philosophical systems, separated from each other by sharp lines. But the Sāṅkhya, Yoga, and Vedānta systems were assuming shape, and the doctrines they embodied had been foreshadowed in the Upanishads, and were orally current.

In short, it had been repeatedly stated in the Upanishads, that nothing really existed but the one universally present impersonal Spirit, and that the whole visible world was really to be identified with that Spirit.

Then it followed as an article of faith that man’s spirit, deluded into a temporary false idea of separate independent personal existence by the illusion of ignorance, was also identical with that One Spirit, and ultimately to be re-absorbed into it.

Further, it followed that man’s spirit, while so deluded and so separated for a time from the One Spirit, was compelled to migrate through innumerable bodily forms, and that such migration entailed misery, from which there was no escape except by a process of 106 disillusionment, that is, by dissipating the illusion of separate individuality, through the acquisition of perfect knowledge leading to re-union with the One Spirit, as the river blends with the ocean. And such knowledge was best gained by suppression of the passions, abandonment of all worldly connexions, and abstinence from all action. Finally, it was held, with apparent inconsistency, that the storing up of merit by good works assisted in effecting this object by raising a man, not yet fit for union with the supreme Spirit, to forms of existence in which such union might be accomplished.

Now it is obvious that to believe in the ultimate merging of man’s personal spirit in One impersonal Spirit, is virtually to deny the ultimate existence of any human spirit at all. Nay more—it is virtually to deny the existence of a supreme universal Spirit also.

For how can a merely abstract universal Spirit, which is unconscious of personality, be regarded as possessing any real existence worth being called true life?

To assert that such a Spirit is pure abstract Entity or (according to Vedānta phraseology) pure Existence (without anything to exist for), pure Thought or even pure Consciousness (without anything to think about, or be conscious about), pure Joy (without anything to rejoice about), is practically to reduce it to pure non-entity.

All that Gautama did, therefore, was to purge Brāhmanism of a dogma which appeared to him to be a mere sham (Brahma-jāla I. 26).

He simply eliminated as incapable of proof the doctrine of a purely abstract, incorporeal spirit or self, 107 whether human or divine. The assertion that any soul or self or Ego really existed (Atta-vādo) was an error. It formed one of the constituents of Upādāna (p. 109), and was the first of the ten fetters (Sakkāya-diṭṭhi, p. 127).

And with the rejection of this dogma, as incapable of demonstration, he found himself compelled to reject also, as beyond the range of man’s cognizance, the doctrine of any Supreme Being higher than the perfectly enlightened man. Like Kapila in the Sāṅkhya aphorisms (I. 92, V. 10) he felt bound to admit: ‘It is not proved that there is a God.’

This, indeed, is the chief foundation on which rests the assertion that Buddhism is a mere system of atheistic negations. And there can be no doubt that from one point of view its statements are steeped in negations, or rather perhaps in evasions. Its morality has been described as more negative than positive; but this is scarcely correct, and it would be fairer to say that it delights in telling men to abstain from doing evil, rather than in urging them to active exertions for the good of others. It has many positive precepts.

But if there was no probability of a soul existing separately from a body after death, how could there be any soul-transmigration? How could there be any agreement between the teaching of the Buddha and that of the Brāhmans, in regard to this important central dogma? The real fact was that the divergence of the Buddhist doctrine from the Brāhmanical, as stated in the Upanishads, was not greater than 108 was to be expected from the difference of belief between the two systems in regard to the existence of soul.

Plato, we know, held that souls ‘found their prisons in the same natures’ at death, so that an effeminate man might be re-born as a woman, a tyrannical man as a wolf, and so on. In Manu’s Law-book is set forth a triple order of soul-transmigration through lower, middle, and higher planes of existence, resulting from good, middling, and bad acts, words, and thoughts. Thus—to instance only the lower—the soul of a man who spoke ill of his teacher was destined to pass into an ass or a dog (II. 201), the soul of a thief might occupy a mouse (XII. 62), the soul of one who neglected his caste-duties might pass into a demon (XII. 71, 72); and greater crimes might lead to the soul’s being condemned to occupy plants, stones, and minerals. Then there was also an intermediate condition of the soul. According to one idea it went to the moon; according to another it became a hungry ghost which required food to be offered to it at the Ṡrāddha ceremonies.

This theory of transmigration, according to the Hindūs, explained the origin of evil. Evil must proceed from antecedent evil, and the resulting penalty must be borne by the evil-doer in succeeding existences. This was the terrible incubus which it was the great object of Indian philosophers to remove. It was equally Gautama’s object, but how could he accept soul-transmigration, denying as he did the existence of any spirit, as distinct from material organization? He therefore put forth a view of his own, thus:—Every being is composed of five constituent elements 109 called Skandhas (Pāli Khandha), which have their source in Upādāna (p. 103) and are continually combining, dissolving, and recombining, viz. 1. Form (rūpa), i. e. the organized body. 2. Sensation (vedanā) of pain or pleasure, or of neither, arising from contact of eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin, and mind with external objects. 3. Perception (sañña = sañjñā) of ideas through the same sixfold contact. 4. Aggregate of formations (saṃkhāra = saṉskāra, i.e. combination of properties or faculties or mental tendencies, fifty-two in number, forming individual character and derived from previous existences; compare the similar saṃkhārā pl. at p. 102). 5. Consciousness (viññāṇa = vijñāna) or thought[51]. This fifth is the most important. It is the only soul recognized by Buddhists. Theoretically it perishes with the other Skandhas, but practically is continued, since its exact counterpart is reproduced in a new body.

For although, when a man dies, all the five constituents of existence are dissolved, yet by the force resulting from his actions (karma), combined with Upādāna, ‘clinging to existence’ (one form of the fetters at p. 127), a new set of five, of which consciousness is still the dominant faculty, starts into being. The process of the new creation is so instantaneous that it is equivalent to the continuance of the same personality, pervaded by the same consciousness; though each personality is only really connected with the previous by the force of acts done and character 110 formed in each—such force operating through Upādāna. In short, to speak of transmigration of souls in Buddhism gives a wrong idea. Metempsychosis with Buddhists resolves itself into continuous metamorphosis or Palingenesis. For no true Buddhist believes in the passing of a soul from one body to another, but rather in the passing on of what may be called act-force, or of the merit and demerit resulting from a man’s acts, so as to cause a continuous succession of transformations—a succession which may be compared to the rolling on of a wheel through different scenes and over every variety of ground; or to the burning on, through day and night, of a flame which is not the same flame at the beginning of the day and end of the night, and yet is not different. It is this act-force (Karma), combined with Upādāna, ‘clinging to existence’ (=abhi-niveṡa in the Yoga II. 9), which is the connecting link between each man’s past, present, and future bodies.

In its subtle and irresistible operation it may be compared to stored-up chemical or electric energy. It is a force which continually creates and re-creates the whole man, and perpetuates his personal identity through separate forms, whether it compels him to ascend or descend in the scale of being.

Yet to say that personality is transmitted, when there is no consciousness of any continuity of identity, amounts, after all, to denial of continuous existence.

Be it observed, too, that the scale of existence is limited in Buddhism to six classes of beings—gods, men, demons, animals, ghosts, and dwellers in hell (p. 121). Transmigration is not extended, as in the 111 Brāhmanical system, to plants, stocks, and stones; though a man could be born as a tree-god (p. 112).

Gautama Buddha himself was merely the last link in a long chain of corporeal forms, and he had been preceded by twenty-four Buddhas, who were to previous ages of the world what he was to the present. Every one of these Buddhas was gifted with the faculty of recollecting his previous personalities, and Gautama often gave an account of his own former existences. The stories of about five hundred and fifty of his births (Jātakas) are even now daily repeated to eager listeners in every Buddhist country, and are believed to convey important lessons, though full of puerilities.

The interchange of ideas between Brāhmanism and Buddhism is well exemplified not only by the twenty-five Buddhas, who correspond to the fourteen Manus, or representative men, in each world-period (Antara), but also by the birth-stories, many of which are mere modifications of old fables long current in India, while others have been imported from Buddhism into Sanskṛit literature. They constantly remind one of similar stories in the Pañća-tantra, Hitopadeṡa, Rāmāyaṇa, and Mahā-bhārata. The noteworthy point about the repeated births of Gautama Buddha is, that there appears to have been no Darwinian rise from lower to higher forms; but a mere jumble of metamorphoses. Thus we find him born four times as Mahā-brahmā, twenty times as Indra, once as a hare, eighty-three times as an ascetic, fifty-eight as a king, twenty-four as a Brāhman, once as a gamester, eighteen times as a monkey, six as an elephant, eleven as a deer, 112 once as a dog, four times as a serpent, six as a snipe, once as a frog, twice as a fish, forty-three times as a tree-god, twice as a pig, ten times as a lion, four as a cock, twice as a thief, once as a devil-dancer, and so on. He was never born as a woman, nor as an insect, nor as a Preta, nor an inhabitant of hell (p. 119), and in all his births he was a Bodhi-sattva (pp. 98, 135). And in all he suffered and sacrificed himself for the good of the world.

Here is the substance of an account of Gautama’s birth as a hare, given by himself (Ćariyā-Piṭaka I. 10, translated by Dr. Oldenberg):—

‘In one of my lives I was a hare living in a forest. I ate grass and did no one any harm. An ape, a jackal, and an otter dwelt with me. I used to teach them their duties and tell them to abstain from evil and give alms on the four fast-days in every month. They did as I told them, and gave beans, corn, and rice. Then I said to myself:—Suppose a worthy object of charity passes by, what can I give him? I live on grass only; I cannot offer a starving man grass; I must give him myself. Thereupon the god Ṡakra, wishing to test my sincerity, came in a Brāhman’s form and asked me for food. When I saw him I said joyfully:—“A noble gift will I give thee, O Brāhman; thou observest the precepts; thou painest no creature; thou wilt not kill me for food. But go, collect wood, place it in a heap, and kindle a fire. Then I will roast myself, and thou may’st eat me.”

‘He said:—“So be it,” and went and gathered wood and kindled a fire.

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‘When the wood began to send forth flame, I leaped into the midst of the blazing fire.

‘As water quenches heat, so the flames quelled all the sufferings of life. Cuticle and skin, flesh and sinews, bones, ligaments, and heart—my whole body with all its limbs—I gave to the Brāhman.’

Perhaps the best and most often recited Jātaka is the last birth but one, in which he was born as prince Vessantara (Vaiṡyāntara). This is called the Mahā-jātaka, ‘great birth.’ It may be summarized thus:—

‘Vessantara (afterwards Buddha) was so liberal that he gave to every one who asked. Among his possessions was a white elephant, which had the power of bringing down rain whenever it was needed. At last he gave away this also to a neighbouring country suffering from drought. This so incensed his own people that they persuaded the king his father to banish him with his wife and two children to the forest. They set out in a chariot drawn by horses. First he gave away the horses and next the chariot to Brāhmans who begged for them. Then when another Brāhman asked for the children, Vessantara gave them up too, saying: “May I for this act become a Buddha!” In short his sufferings and theirs in banishment, and his generosity to every one, led to his recall with great rejoicings. When he died he was born again in the Tushita heaven, whence he descended as a white elephant into the womb of Māyā, and was born as Gautama’ (p. 23).

Another wise man of the East, who lived long before Gautama, spoke of ‘the path of the just shining more and more unto the perfect day.’ Of this kind of progressive 114 advance towards higher planes of perfection, the Indian sage knew nothing. Nor to the Buddha, of course, would the Christian idea of ‘original sin,’ or of imputed Perfection have conveyed any meaning whatever. With Gautama, righteousness and unrighteousness, holiness and sin, were the product of a man’s own acts. They were produced by no one but himself, and they were merely troublesome forces (see p. 124) causing, in the one case, a man’s re-birth either in one of the heavens or in higher earthly corporeal forms, and, in the other, his re-birth in one of the hells or in lower corporeal forms. ‘Not in the heavens,’ says the Dhamma-pada (127), ‘not in the midst of the sea, not if thou hidest thyself in the clefts of the mountains, wilt thou find a place where thou canst escape the force resulting from thy evil actions.’

Here also is the substance of a passage in the Deva-dūta-sutta (translated by Dr. Oldenberg):—

‘Do not relatives and friends welcome a man who has been long travelling, when he returns safely to his home? Even so, a righteous man, when he passes from this world to another, is welcomed by his good works, as by friends.

‘Through the six states of transmigration does the power of our actions lead us. A life in the heavens awaits the good. The wardens of hell drag the wicked before the king of hell, Yama, who says to them:—“Did you not, when on earth, see the five divine messengers, sent to warn you—the child, the old man, the sick, the criminal suffering punishment, and the dead corpse?”

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‘And the wicked man answers:—“I did see them.”

‘And didst thou not think within thyself:—“I also am subject to birth, old age, death. Let me be careful to do good works?”

‘And the wicked man answers:—“I did not, sire; I neglected in my folly to think of these things.”

‘Then king Yama pronounces his doom:—“These thy evil deeds are not the work of thy mother, father, relations, friends, advisers. Thou alone hast done them all; thou alone must gather the fruit.” And the warders of hell drag him to the place of torment, rivet him to red-hot iron, plunge him in glowing seas of blood, torture him on heaps of burning coal; and he dies not, till the last residue of his guilt has been expiated.’

And this Buddhist theory of every man’s destiny being dependent on his own acts is quite in keeping with Brāhmanical ideas. ‘In that (new body) he is united with the knowledge gained in the former body, and then again goes on working for perfection; for even against his will he is forced on (from one body to another) by his former works’ (Bhagavad-gītā VI. 43, 44). And again:—‘The act committed in a former birth (pūrva-janma-kṛitaṃ karma), that is called one’s destiny;’ and again, ‘As from a lump of clay a workman makes what he pleases, even so a man obtains whatever destiny he has wrought out for himself’ (Hitopadeṡa, Introduction). In Brāhmanism the influence of Karma or ‘act’ in determining every being’s form at the time of his own re-birth is universal.

Thus also the Nyāya of Gautama (III. 132) affirms 116 that the new body (after death) is produced through the irresistible force of actions done in the previous body (pūrva-kṛita-phalānubandhāt tad-utpattiḥ). The cosmogony of the same philosophy (Vaiṡeshika branch), taught that the concurrence of eternal atoms to form the world was the result of Adṛishṭa or the ‘unseen force’ derived from the acts of a previous world.

We are reminded, too, of our poet’s own sentiment: ‘Our deeds still travel with us from afar, And what we have been makes us what we are;’ and of Don Quixote’s saying, ‘Every man is the son of his own works;’ and of Wordsworth’s, ‘The child is father of the man;’ and of Longfellow’s, ‘Lives of great men all remind us, we can make ourselves sublime.’

In short, we are the outcome of ourselves. Nor can ceremonies avail aught, nor can devotion to personal gods avail aught, nor can anything whatever possess the slightest efficacy to save a man from his own acts.

It is said that Buddhism leaves the will unfettered; but surely fatalism is taught when the force of one’s own deeds in previous births is held to be irresistible.

The only creator, then, recognized by true Buddhists is Act-force. ‘My action is the womb that bears me,’ says the Aṅguttara Nikāya. It is this Act-force that creates worlds. It is this Act-force, in conjunction with Upādāna (p. 109), that creates all beings in any of the six classes into which they are divided—gods, men, demons, animals, ghosts, and the dwellers in hell. We often talk of the force of a dead man’s acts—of his being dead and yet speaking. It is this force which in Buddhism resists death; for no force can ever be lost.

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And what does the modern Positivist philosopher assert? He maintains that both body and mind are resolved into their elements at death. The only immortal part of us consists in the good deeds, words, thoughts, and influences we leave behind us, to be made use of by our descendants and improved on for the elevation of humanity. And the aggregate of these, combined with the force of will, constitute, according to the Buddhist, a power strong enough to re-create not only human beings but the whole material world.

It was thus that the force of Gautama’s own acts had constantly re-created him through a long chain of successive personalities, terminating in the perfect Buddha, who has no further births to undergo.

Turn we now to that division of the Buddhist system which concerns itself with the external universe, and seeks to explain its constitution, form, and the various divisions of which it consists.

And here we must be careful to note the peculiar views of Buddhism, notwithstanding the large admixture of Brāhmanical ideas.

For Buddhism has no cosmogony like the Sāṅkhya, Vedānta, and Vaiṡeshika. Nor does it explain the creation of the universe, in our sense. It only concerns itself with cosmology, and it dissents from Brāhmanical cosmology in declining to admit the eternity of anything whatever, except change or revolution or a succession of revolutions. Buddhism has no Creator, no creation, no original germ of all things, no soul of the world, no personal, no impersonal, no supramundane, no antemundane principle.

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It might indeed have been supposed that since Gautama denied the eternal existence of either a personal God or of Spirit, he would at least have given eternal existence to matter.

But no; the only eternal things are the Causality of Act-force and the succession of cause and effect—the eternity of ‘Becoming,’ not of ‘Being.’

The Universe around us, with all its visible phenomena, must be recognized as an existing entity, for we see before our eyes evidence of its actual existence. But it is an entity produced out of nonentity, and destined to lapse again into nonentity when its time is fulfilled.

For out of nothingness it came, and into nothingness must it return—to re-appear again, it is true, but as a new Universe brought into being by the accumulated force of its predecessor’s acts, and not evolved out of any eternally existing spiritual or material germ of any kind.

It is thus that Universe after Universe is like a succession of countless bubbles for ever forming, expanding, drifting onwards, bursting and re-forming, each bubble owing its re-formation to the force generated by its vanished predecessor. The poet Shelley might have been called a Buddhist when he wrote:

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay;
Like the bubbles on a river,
Sparkling, bursting, borne away. (Hellas.)
Or like lotuses, for ever unfolding and then decaying, each decay containing the germ of a new plant; 119 or like an interminable succession of wheels for ever coming into view, for ever rolling onwards, disappearing and reappearing; for ever passing from being to non-being, and again from non-being to being. It was this ceaseless rotation that led to the wheel being adopted as the favourite symbol in Buddhism (p. 122).

Christianity recognizes in a very different way this ‘law of circularity’ in the physical world, as the Rev. Hugh Macmillan has ably pointed out.

As to the question from whom? or whence? or how? came the original force or impetus that started the first movement, the Buddha hazarded no opinion. He held this to be an inexplicable mystery—an insoluble riddle. He confessed himself to be a thorough Agnostic. He saw nothing but countless cycles of causes and effects, and never undertook to explain the first cause which set the first wheel in motion. It was not, then, without a deep significance that Gautama placed Ignorance first in his chain of Causation (p. 102. Note, however, the explanation given at p. 99).

After all, these Buddhistic speculations amount to little else than Brāhmanism stripped of some of its transcendental mysticism. We know, for example, that the true Vedānta philosophy makes the Universe proceed out of an eternal Illusion, or Ignorance associated with the impersonal Spirit Brahman, into which it is again absorbed.

Can it be affirmed, then, a Buddhist might say, that either this pure impersonal Spirit (or Ignorance) is virtually very different from pure nothingness?

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What says the author of Ṛig-veda X. 120?—

In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught,
Then there was neither sky nor atmosphere above.
Then first came darkness hid in darkness, gloom in gloom;
Next all was water, all a chaos indiscreet,
In which the One lay void, shrouded in nothingness.
Then as to the vast periods called Kalpas or ages, during which (as in Brāhmanism) constant Universes are supposed to appear, disappear, and re-appear:—

Let it be supposed, say Buddhist writers, that a solid rock forming a vast cube sixteen miles high, and the same in length and breadth, were lightly rubbed once in a hundred years with a piece of the finest cloth, and by this slight friction reduced in countless ages to the size of a mango-seed; that would still give you no idea of the immense duration of a Buddhist Kalpa.

And what, in conclusion, is the existing Universe? Buddhist writers make it consist of an infinite number of Ćakkavālas (Ćakra-vālas) or vast circular planes, which for convenience may be called spheres. Each sphere has thirty-one Satta-lokas (Sattva-lokas) or dwelling-places of six classes of living beings, rising one above the other and distributed under three world-systems, built up in successive tiers through infinite space, below, upon, and above Mount Meru (or Sumeru)—the ideal central point of the whole. This gigantic mythical mountain forms the mighty base or pivot of the sphere.

First comes Hell with 136 divisions, to receive 136 varieties of offenders, all in tiers one above the other, and lying deep under the earth in the lower regions of the 121 Ćakra-vāla. To be re-born in Hell (Naraka) is the worst of all the six kinds of existence, reserved for the worst evil-doers, and although the punishment is not eternal, its shortest duration is for five hundred years of Hell, each day equalling fifty years of Earth. In Brāhmanism there are twenty-one hells (Manu IV. 88-90). Buddhism originally had only eight. The most terrific (Avīći) is for revilers of Buddha and his Law.

Above the subdivisions of Hell come the other sensuous worlds (Kāma-lokas), thus:—(2) the world of animals; (3) that of Pretas or ghosts; (4) that of Asuras or demons; (5) the earth, or world of men, with concentric circles of seven seas.

Having distributed all possible places of habitation for migrating beings under the three heads of Hell, four lower worlds, and twenty-six heavens (described at p. 206), Buddhism holds that there are only six forms or ways (gati) of existence through which living beings can pass, and under which every thing that has life must be classed, and of these the first two ways are good, the last four bad, thus:—1. Gods; 2. Men; 3. Asuras, or demons, inhabiting spaces under the earth; 4. Animals; 5. Pretas, or ghosts, recently inhabitants of earth, and ever consumed with hunger and thirst; 6. Beings undergoing torment in the hells.

As to the gods, bear in mind that Buddhism recognized most of the deities of Hindūism. See p. 206.

Such gods existed in subtle corporeal forms, and, though not omnipotent, were capable of working benefit or harm. They were subject to the universal law of dissolution, and after death were succeeded by others, so 122 that there was not one Brahmā or one Ṡakra, but many successive deities so named, and many classes of deities under them. They had no power of effecting any person’s salvation. On the contrary, they had to see to their own, and were inferior to the perfected man.

Moreover, to be born in the world of the gods seems not to have implied any vast accumulation of merit, for we read of a certain frog that from simply listening to the Buddha’s voice, while reciting the Law, was born as a god in the Trayastriṉṡa heaven (Hardy, p. 392).

In short, the constant revolving of the wheel of life in one eternal circle, according to fixed and immutable laws, is perhaps after all the sum and substance of the philosophy of Buddhism. And this eternal wheel or circle has, so to speak, six spokes representing six forms of existence.

When any one of the six classes of beings dies, he must be born again in some one of these same six classes, for there are no other possible ways (gati) of life, and he cannot pass into plants, stones, and inorganic matter, as in the Brāhmanical system (see p. 108). If he be born again in one of the hells he is not thereby debarred from seeking salvation, and even if he be born in heaven as a god, he must at some time or other leave it and seek after a higher state still—that of the perfect man who has gained Nirvāṇa and is soon to achieve the one consummation worth living for, the one crown worth striving for—extinction of personal existence in Pari-nirvāṇa (see pp. 138-142).