The preceding digression was necessary in order to be able to define the limits of the position properly belonging to Buddhistic culture. The Greeks designated the Brâhman caste as the status of the philosopher And rightly so. The founders of Brâhmanism concerned themselves with metaphysics, Buddha with ethics. He drew the boundary very clearly, and warned transgressors with the words, "It is only for a Buddha to know the highest truth". Passages of similar import to the following recur continually. "So also, O disciples, that which I know and do not teach you is much more than that which I have taught you. And why have I not taught it you, O disciples ? Because, O disciples, it will bring you no gain; because it does not lead to the putting off of the earthly, to the annihilation of desire, to the cessation of the transitory, to peace, to knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nirvâna, therefore have I not taught it you". We must consider the ethical character of Buddhism as well as the metaphysical profundity of the idea of Re-birth in order to find a practical application of the higher knowledge. Before Buddha, and also contemporaneous with him, other teachers came forward, who, independently of Vedic tradition, endeavoured to show the way to emancipation. Some entirely rejected the doctrine of metempsychosis, others, like Makkhale and Pûrana Kassapa, denied that eternal justice manifested itself in Re-birth, and taught that every being goes through an appointed round of Re-births, at the end of which the fool as well as the sage experiences an end of sorrow. The mischief that was done through unreasonable dependence upon the Vedas was increased by a still more senseless opposition, until Buddha stepped forward and gave the people a religion, and rescued the kernel of the Vedas from those who fought around the husk.
It has been stated that we have to seek the genesis of the doctrine of metempsychosis in the Brâhmanical recognition of earthly transitoriness. This transitoriness was also the corner-stone of the work accomplished by Buddha. Buddha said --
"Many a House of Life
Hath held me, seeking ever him who wrought
These prisons of the senses, sorrow-fraught;
Sore was my ceaseless strife.
But now,
Thou Builder of this tabernacle -- Thou !
I know Thee ! Never shalt Thou build again
These walls of pain,
Nor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay
Fresh rafters on the clay.
Broken Thy house is, and the ridge-pole split!
Delusion fashioned it.
Safe pass I thence -- deliverance to obtain".
-- Light of Asia.
"Check the stream with force; banish all desire from thee, O Brâhman; when thou shalt know the end of the transitory, then art thou the knower of the uncreated, O Brâhman".
The last words of the wise Hindu, "Now, O disciples, I speak to you; everything that is is transitory; wrestle without ceasing", bring his teachings harmoniously to an end, while they correspond to a return to the keynote. Starting from a knowledge of the transitory character of this world, Buddha, like the old Indian philosophers, spoke of repeated death. In his first discourse he said, "Give ear, ye monks; freedom from death is found". Then he spoke, in agreement with the Brâhmans, against a life of pleasure, and, in opposition to them, against a life of self-mortification. He taught that a healthy body is necessary in the struggle for knowledge and the conquest of sorrow's cause. Pointing out the fruitlessness and hurtfulness of self-mortification brought him into conflict with most of the sects of his time. In the positive part of his teaching, he placed himself before all those who had lost faith in eternal justice. Tradition relates that during the first night in which the Bodhisattwa watched, free from temptation, in contemplative peace beneath the Bodha-tree, he perceived the justice of the requital that the good and bad experience after death; during the second night-watch he saw the former lives of himself and others, and recognised the joys and sorrows of the present life as the consequences of former deeds, their effect in the present manifesting character. In the third and last watch he knew the constant desire of ignorance to be the cause of all sorrow.
The sequence is significant as showing the ethical character of Buddhism. The knowledge that the present is the result of the past precedes any speculation as to the requital in the future.
"Brahm", as the source of all being, or, to express it better, as the transcendental basis of all appearance, was not mentioned by Buddha. He was satisfied with teaching, "The wandering of being, O disciples, had its beginning in eternity. No origin can be known from which being strays and wanders, confused in ignorance, fettered by the thirst for existence" (Samyuttaka. Nikâya). He thus re-states in this and other places the oft-repeated theme, and, faithful to the object of his teaching, continues: "What think you, disciples, which is the greater, the water that is in the four great seas, or the tears shed by you and forgotten as you wander and stray on this wide path sorrowing and weeping because what you hate is apportioned to you, what you love is not given you?". When Buddha expressed himself definitely on questions touching the sphere of immanence of the universe, his explanations were less complete. "There is, O disciples, an unborn, non-becoming, uncreated, unformed; were there not, O disciples, this unborn, non-becoming, uncreated, unformed, there would be no way out of the world of the born, the becoming, the created, the formed".
Buddhist teaching distinguished six different paths or ways (gati) of being. God, man, animal, demon (asura), ghost (treta), dweller in hell (Nâraka). The three last, or, according to the tradition of the Southern school, the four last, were called unholy paths (apâya); emancipation from death could only be reached as man. "Devenir Dieu", as Burnouf very justly says, "c'était renâitre, pour mourir un jour". Buddha adopted no fixed path of evolution from form to form, and Buddhist writings often mention descent without any intermediate transition from a high path of incarnation to the lowest, even to that of the animal, as well as Re-birth as a god in consequence of acquired merit. According to the Chinese tradition, the horse upon which Buddha escaped was removed after death to the thirty-third heaven, in order later to be born as the son of a Brâhman, and to be blessed as a follower of Buddha. It is characteristic that the age of monks was not reckoned from birth, but from the time of conception, which manner of reckoning was also the one prescribed by the spiritual law of the Brâhmans. To count from the day of birth would have been very inconsistent, because, according to Indian teaching, copulation only offered an opportunity for the entity desiring Re-birth, and in the development of the embryo, the participation of the mother was not considered to be greater than in the nutrition of the infant.
The question arises, could Buddha have overlooked the striking reappearance of the qualities of the parents in the children ? Could he fail to observe that in the generation of the germ through the two parents, not only the peculiarities of the species were transmitted, but also the peculiarities of the individual? It is difficult for us, at the present day, to suppose that the law of transmission should have been so entirely unconsidered by Buddha; but only on the supposition of the failure of this empirical knowledge can we understand the one-sided explanation given by Buddha of the origin of man and the qualities of his character, as the creation of the reincarnating individual only, without accepting dependent or independent co-operation of the qualities of the parent. In the consideration of the possibility of this absence of knowledge, it must be allowed that the Hindu as an individual manifests very few peculiar characteristic features. In all legends the similarity of the dramatis personae must have forcibly struck every European reader. It rests upon an actual absence of special character, not only upon the inability of the authors to reproduce individual features.
Burnouf in his "Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme Indien" (pp. 437-458) gives the explanation of the incarnation of an entity according to Indian ideas. He succeeds just as little in giving a satisfactory result as Colebrooke, Hodgson, Goldstücker, and others did before him, or as any of those who have made a similar attempt after him. The most painstaking endeavors are frustrated by the extraordinary difficulty of arriving at adequate translations of Indian words, which in themselves contain transcendental knowledge, and this is caused not only by difference of language, but from the fact that to "answer questions of immanent knowledge in words necessitates contradictions".
For example, Oldenburg writes thus: "Out of ignorance proceeds form, from form proceeds consciousness".
What we are to understand by ignorance is taught in the words of Buddha. "Not to know sorrow, not to know sorrow's cause, not to know the end of sorrow nor the way to sorrow's end" -- that is ignorance. On the other hand, the word "form" without any commentary gives no idea what Buddha meant, and to translate "vijñâna" as consciousness is certainly unsatisfactory. [Leftmann points out that samjna (p. sañña) is better translated by consciousness, and vidjñâna, (p. viññâna) as knowledge, idea, mind. Schmidt has "the knowing, knowledge"; Csoma de Coros, "cognition". Colebrooke calls it, with Burnouf, "le sentiment ou le commencement de la conscience"; Burnouf himself has often " I'intelligence", but also "le connaître", " la connaissance", and in the passage under consideration he points out that the true sense is to be arrived at through the association of the ideas "sentiment et connaissance"; while Schroter involves too much in the expressions "âme", "vie", "âme raisonable". According to Goldstücker, vijñâna or vidjñâna means the knowledge of that which is (for our senses); vi means manifold, various, without unity; thus, according to the Indian philosophy, the unreal phenomenal world ; djñâna, (or jñâna) expresses transcendental knowledge, the thing in itself, the knowledge of Brahm, of unity; vidjñâna is therefore the knowledge of plurality resting on illusion. As such, it can be designated as the cause of manifestation. In a conversation between Melinda and Nagasena (Spence Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, p. 454) there is a passage which may be taken as an argument for the correctness of this conception. Vidjñâna is compared to a man who, looking at a certain gold coin, only knows its name, while the goldsmith, or true wisdom, knows whether the coin is true or false.] Now even supposing it were of greater importance to find an adequate translation for that word, the word "production" would also have to be avoided. It is caused through the circumlocution in the following series of the sayings of Buddha, which are called "The Theory of the Production of the Successive Causes of Existence". I will try to render them in a translation which shall adhere as closely as possible to the original sense.
What is the cause of Djâramarana, transitoriness?: [Literally decrepitude and death]
Djâti, Birth.
And the cause of Birth?
Bhava, Separate being. [Oldenburg has "becoming" (werden); Spence Hardy, "reproduction of existence"; Köppen, "existence (Dasein). Existentia potentiales"; but Bhava contains at the same time the thought of separateness from unity]
And the cause of Separate being ?
Upâdana, Clinging to the phenomenal world.
And the cause of Upâdâna ?
Trishnâ, Desire,
And the cause of Trishnâ ?
Vedana, Sensation; rather discrimination between pleasure and pain.
And the cause of Vedana ?
Sparca, Contact with the world; rather attraction to the world.
And the cause of Sparca ?
Chadâyatana, The virtual senses (virtualiter).
And the cause of Chadâyatana ?
Nâma rûpa, Desire to continue as a personality. [Literally name and form, by which, however, in my opinion, only detail, particularity, "individual will," is here meant with reference to the splitting up of the transcendental unity into the multiplicity of appearance]
And the cause of Nâma rûpa ?
Vidjñâna, "The confused knowledge in the principiô individuationis, as opposed to the knowledge which transcends it.
And the cause of Vidjñâna?
Samskâra, Illusion called forth by the will. [Veil of Maya]
And the cause of Samskâra ?
Avidyâ, Ignorance.
In this rendering of the communicated doctrine, I differ somewhat materially from the various translations of the same. This divergence has been produced because I do not consider any of the enumerated "successive causes" as causa efficiensis of the foregoing cause in the text, but look upon them altogether as referring to the basis of appearance, not to themselves. I am aware that this conception, which I consider as originally taught by Buddha, is not rigidly adhered to by Buddha's disciples. Sometimes vidjñâna, sometimes Karma (which we have yet to speak of), sometimes upâdâna, sometimes trishnâ, is given as the single conception of the efficient cause. Spence Hardy also points out this contradiction: "It would sometimes appear that upâdâna is the efficient cause of reproduction, and at other times that it is Karma". This confusion sanctions the supposition that this wonderful theory of the great Hindu has been disfigured in its interpretation by ordinary intellect incapable of transcendental knowledge. This is the most important part of the "Abhidharma", the metaphysics of Buddhism, "of the law manifesting the law". The deep wisdom of the Abhidharma is evident from the saying, "The Sutras are for all men, the Vinaya for the priests, 'the Abhidharma for the gods".
I have mentioned "Karma"' which in the Southern tradition is the eleventh member of the chain of causation, instead of Samskâra, and which is frequently translated as "moral nature". Buddha taught that Karma includes kusala (merit) and akusala (demerit). Upon this Mainländer justly remarks: "At the birth of an individual his Karma may be compared to a double balance (as the merchants would call it). The balance from the sum of all good actions in previous existences, after the deduction of those already rewarded in the past, results in merit; the balance from the sum of all bad actions in former lives, after the deduction of those already expiated, results in demerit. At the death of an individual his Karma becomes the Karma of birth reinforced by the good and bad deeds of the closed life, and reduced by the evil atoned for and the good rewarded in that life. The theory of Karma serves to establish faith in eternal justice. It has no other object than to give a clear and precise commentary on the thought briefly stated in the 'Brahmana of the Hundred Paths' in the words: ' As he acts, as he lives, so will it be; he who does well will have a good life; he who does evil will have an evil life.' The following explanation is received as the words of Buddha. ' All sentient beings have their own individual Karma, or the inner kernel of all beings is their Karma. Karma is an inheritance, or that which is inherited (not from the parents, but from a former life) is Karma. Karma is the source of all good, of all evil, or good and evil enter through Karma into manifestation. According to the good or evil quality of Karma, the fate of man shapes itself, so that some are lowly, some are exalted, some are happy, some are miserable". At first Karma may have been understood as only the moral qualities of the individual will, but it was also soon used as including the will itself, as in the following comparison: "Let us imagine a fruit-tree before the blossom. We cannot say that the fruit is in this or that particular part of the tree, and yet it is in the tree. So is Karma in the human body".
These extracts demonstrate that the basis of manifestation or the continuity of the being of man was no more considered as sensuously conceivable by esoteric Buddhism than by esoteric Brâhminism, but that which constitutes the identity of the different embodiments of the same being through death and Re-birth was recognised as transcendental, against which conception exoteric Buddhism erred more rarely than exoteric Brâhmanism.
I have said that Buddha explained that there was no natural transmission in conception, but that it presented only an opportunity of embodiment to the incoming entity; yet it would be ridiculous to ascribe to Buddha himself those fancies the appearance of which are rendered possible by such one-sidedness; as when the commentators on his doctrine assert that besides conception there are yet eight other opportunities given for the incarnation of an individual will; as, for instance, when a voluptuous woman listens to the sweet voice of a man. These eight opportunities are given in Spence Hardy's "Manual of Buddhism", and in German in Mainländer's "Philosophie der Erlösung". I think the originators of these statements attached no other importance to them than that of being efficacious means of exhortation to withdraw at once every apparently dangerous occasion of excitement from the mind. The inestimably high moral power of Buddhism is forcibly presented in the instructive collection of the Jâtaka birth-stories (histories of former births). The doubters of eternal justice obtained peaceable satisfaction through Buddha. He gently instructed those who complained: "Once thou didst the same wrong that today thine enemy inflicts upon thee; bearing it patiently, thou atonest for thine own sin". He intended not only to give consolation to those torn by pain, but in the generally poetically imagined narratives he offers at the same time peace to those possessed by anger. He not only dries the tears of the one, but he also loosens the closely clenched fists of the other, teaching him to look for the cause of his injury, not in his adversary, but in his own heart, in the qualities of his own individual will.
The poetical legends of Buddha's life, as well as the occurrences he experienced in numerous births as god, man, and animal, in order at last to obtain the knowledge of the highest truth, evidently offer representations of the idea of Re-birth. I will only give a few references from the legends, knowledge of which I must take for granted. When the father of the future Buddha asked the Brâhmans how his son should be prevented from becoming an ascetic (a conqueror or overcomer of the world was the alternative of the prophecy at his birth), he was told that the boy must never look upon an aged man, nor a sick person, nor a corpse, nor a hermit. But the sight and knowledge of the perishability of all things came to him in spite of the forethought of his royal father. Sorrow and compassion drew his heart, and when, in the encounter with the worthy hermit, the sight of religious peace was revealed to him, he became irresistibly constrained to depart into exile.
Not only in the definite narrative of Buddha's life, but also in other traditions the traces may be seen of the invincible power of will, which instigated those who desired to free themselves from all that was dear to them in this world; it caused them to tear asunder all family ties in order to obtain in lonely contemplation the negation of the will to live, and, in so doing, to withdraw themselves from the law of Re-birth. The return to a worldly life was, however, not denied to any one separating himself from the activity of the world and professing Buddha, the law, and the congregation; he could again seek wife and child, pleasure and suffering, again come and again go. This freedom from constraint is surprising to the Western mind, because the time given for development is limited to the period from childhood to death; but he who has drawn his knowledge from the source of Indian wisdom knows that night but separates day from day, death life from life; he knows that denial of enjoyment comes hard to one filled with the unsatiated love of life, and to him whom living and suffering leads nearer to the goal, so long as the privation endures it means a step farther upon the way. He knows that each one must tread his own path, and that the change experienced by the individual will during one period of life, the portion of the way traversed within that limit of the appointed course, is as immeasurably small as the apparent movement of many heavenly bodies, which the life of man is insufficient to perceive. Buddha expressly taught: "None of my disciples should say, Today or tomorrow my spirit will be free from all impurity, but he must wait till his time comes, till emancipation shall be his". But then, when he has acquired the knowledge that his senses only owe their existence to the fire of desire, when through this knowledge he becomes satiated with the world of sense, then "he will become free from desire; free from desire, he becomes liberated. In liberation is the knowledge, I am liberated; Re-birth is destroyed, salvation is accomplished, and duty is performed; no return takes place to this world; thus he knows" (Mahavagga). In later times different grades of advancement were distinguished and the classes separated : the Sakadâgâmi, i.e., those who return once more to this world, and then reach the end of sorrow; and the Anâgâmi, those who do not return, whose destiny it is (contrary to the original teaching) to purify the last remnants of sinful being in celestial existence, and who receive emancipation not as men, but as Devas.
The dwellings of the blessed or of the gods are divided into Deva-lokas and Brahma-lokas (but here also there are many traditions). The first, which are described with exuberant fancy, although not without poetical power, offer the highest known happiness, that of almost uninterrupted contemplative meditation on pure knowledge. Their inhabitants only need bodily nourishment at great intervals and breathe but once in forty hours. The Brahma-lokas, however, give to their inhabitants a deep unconscious sleep, which lasts for long periods, but not for ever, and then there is. again return to earth
Agreeing with the teaching of Brâhmanism -- "All by all paths come unto me" -- tradition after the death of Buddha also proclaimed --
"All the beings of the world shall lay down the body,
Even as now Buddha the Conqueror, the highest Lord of all,
The Mighty, the Perfect One, Nirvâna has entered in".
Nirvâna! It means the blowing out, the extinguishing; and when we keep close to the original meaning, we can substitute no other word. Many writings on Nirvâna are entangled in the senseless question, is Nirvâna a something, or is it -- nothing? The only answer to this question is, that to the one confused by the illusion of the principii individuationis it signifies the annihilation of that which he considers as real; to the sage, on the contrary, it signifies the disappearance of the world of illusion. To the former, Nirvâna is annihilation; to the latter, the only reality, "the ocean in which the flowing streams attain their rest". Samsâra is the world of continual Re-birth; Nirvâna the liberation from it. "Sorrow only arises where something has existence; sorrow disappears when that something disappears".
In the strict sense, Nirvâna signifies the extinguishing of the fire of desire, of which the natural consequence is the impossibility of Re-birth; for "as the wind carries the flame, so desire, clinging to existence, bears the Individual Will from manifestation to manifestation". "The disciple who has renounced pleasure and desire, rich in wisdom, has attained here below freedom from death, the rest of Nirvâna, the eternal condition".The wise among Buddha's pupils took good care not to formulate in words that about which their master was silent. To the question of the babbler, "Is Buddha the Perfect One beyond death?" they answered with the question, "Canst thou count the sand of the Ganges or measure the water of the ocean?" and to the earnest inquirer they answered, "The Perfect One is freed therefrom, that his being may be numbered with the number of the worldly bodies; like the great ocean, he is deep, immeasurable, and fathomless". After having considered the high metaphysical signification of the idea of Re-birth as it is represented in the Vedas of the Brâhmans and the Abhidharma of the Buddhists, we can confidently face any attack. What can be said of writers and savants who, like Köppen, speak of the "disgusting doctrine of Rebirth?" or, like Gough, of the degrading consequences springing from "the growing belief in metempsychosis?" Still more astonishing is it, if possible, that, to the hopeful believers in "continual progress", Indian wisdom should appear unpleasant, and that even praiseworthy investigators of Indian literature find it necessary, after every three lines of valuable information, to interpolate their-own opinions, in order unaccused to protest against it, and assure their readers that all this "phantastic miraculous wisdom" is useless for "historical advancement", and appears to them throughout objectionable. They think it dead as they excavate it, and know not that it will yet rise up again with living power. At any rate, that "continual historical progress" that can be known and certified -- as, for example, that, unlike the Greeks, we no longer possess slaves -- is not striven after in Buddhism; for it the world-conqueror is no victor (Jina), but the world-overcomer!
It must be allowed that what we know of the origin of the doctrine of metempsychosis can but be incompletely represented with these extracts. No proof can be found that the doctrine was peculiar to the Egyptians; the latest works of Maspero, A. Erman, and others to whom Egyptology is greatly indebted, appear rather to sanction the supposition that the doctrine was not indigenous to them.
