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Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) by Charles Eliot

C >> Charles Eliot >> Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3)




The Buddha's aversion to speculation did not prevent him from insisting
on the importance of a correct knowledge of our mental constitution, 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 passion, 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 constitution 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 _samskara_, 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
(phasso) 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 class 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 passages 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 Vinnana, frequently rendered by consciousness. But
this word is unsuitable in so far as it suggests in English some unified
and continuous mental state. Vinnana 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. Vinnana is divided into eighty-nine classes
according as it is good, bad or indifferent, but none of these classes,
nor all of them together, can be called the self.

These five groups--body, feeling, perception, the sankharas, thought--are
generally known as the Skandhas[415] signifying in Sanskrit collections
or aggregates. The classification adopted is not completely logical, for
feeling and perception are both included in the Sankharas and also
counted separately. But the object of the Buddha was not so much to
analyze the physical and mental constitution of a human being as to show
that this constitution contains no element which can be justly called
self or soul. For this reason all possible states of mind are
catalogued, sometimes under more than one head. They are none of them
the self and no self, ego, or soul in the sense defined above is
discernible, only aggregates of states and properties which come
together and fall apart again. When we investigate ourselves we find
nothing but psychical states: we do not find a psyche. The mind is even
less permanent than the body[416], for the body may last a hundred years
or so "but that which is called mind, thought or consciousness, day and
night keeps perishing as one thing and springing up as another." So in
the Samyutta-Nikaya, Mara the Tempter asks the nun Vajira by whom this
being, that is the human body, is made. Her answer is "Here is a mere
heap of _sankharas_: there is no 'being.' As when various parts are
united, the word 'chariot[417]' is used (to describe the whole), so when
the _skandhas_ are present, the word 'being' is commonly used. But it is
suffering only that comes into existence and passes away." And
Buddhaghosa[418]says:

"Misery only doth exist, none miserable;
No doer is there, naught but the deed is found;
Nirvana is, but not the man that seeks it;
The path exists but not the traveller on it."


Thus the Buddha and his disciples rejected such ideas as soul, being and
personality. But their language does not always conform to this ideal of
negative precision, for the vocabulary of Pali (and still more of
English) is inadequate for the task of discussing what form conduct and
belief should take unless such words are used. Also the Atta (Atman),
which the Buddha denies, means more than is implied by our words self
and personality. The word commonly used to signify an individual is
puggalo. Thus in one sutta[419] the Buddha preaches of the burden, the
bearer of the burden, taking it up and laying it down. The burden is the
five skandhas and the bearer is the individual or puggalo. This, if
pressed, implies that there is a personality apart from the skandhas
which has to bear them. But probably it should not be pressed and we
should regard the utterance as merely a popular sermon using language
which is, strictly speaking, metaphorical.


2

The doctrine of Anatta--the doctrine that there is no such thing as a
soul or self--is justly emphasized as a most important part of the
Buddha's teaching and Buddhist ethics might be summarized as the
selfless life. Yet there is a danger that Europeans may exaggerate and
misunderstand the doctrine by taking it as equivalent to a denial of the
soul's immortality or of free will or to an affirmation that mind is a
function of the body. The universality of the proposition really
diminishes its apparent violence and nihilism. To say that some beings
have a soul and others have not is a formidable proposition, but to say
that absolutely no existing person or thing contains anything which can
be called a self or soul is less revolutionary than it sounds. It
clearly does not deny that men exist for decades and mountains for
millenniums: neither does it deny that before birth or after death there
may be other existences similar to human life. It merely states that in
all the world, organic and inorganic, there is nothing which is simple,
self-existent, self-determined, and permanent: everything is compound,
relative and transitory. The obvious fact that infancy, youth and age
form a series is not denied: the series may be called a personality and
death need not end it. The error to be avoided is the doctrine of the
Brahmans that through this series there runs a changeless self, which
assumes new phases like one who puts on new garments.

The co-ordination and apparent unity observable in our mental
constitution is due to _mano_ which is commonly translated mind but is
really for Buddhism, as for the Upanishads, a _sensus communis_. Whereas
the five senses have different spheres or fields which are independent
and do not overlap, _mano_ has a share in all these spheres. It receives
and cognizes all sense impressions.

The philosophy of early Buddhism deals with psychology rather than with
metaphysics. It holds it profitable to analyze and discuss man's mental
constitution, because such knowledge leads to the destruction of false
ideals and the pursuit of peace and insight. Enquiry into the origin and
nature of the external world is not equally profitable: in fact it is a
vain intellectual pastime. Still in treating of such matters as
sensation, perception and consciousness, it is impossible to ignore the
question of external objects or to avoid propounding, at least by
implication, some theory about them. In this connection we often come
upon the important word Dhamma (Sanskrit, Dharma). It means a law, and
more especially the law of the Buddha, or, in a wider sense, justice,
righteousness or religion[420]. But outside the moral and religious
sphere it is commonly used in the plural as equivalent to phenomena,
considered as involving states of consciousness. The Dhamma-sangani[421]
divides phenomena into those which exist for the subject and those which
exist for other individuals and ignores the possibility of things
existing apart from a knowing subject. This hints at idealism and other
statements seem more precise. Thus the Samyutta-Nikaya declares:
"Verily, within this mortal body, some six feet high, but conscious and
endowed with mind, is the world, and its origin, and its passing
away[422]." And similarly[423] the problem is posed, "Where do the four
elements pass away and leave no trace behind." Neither gods nor men can
answer it, and when it is referred to the Buddha, his decision is that
the question is wrongly put and therefore admits of no solution.
"Instead of asking where the four elements pass away without trace, you
should have asked:

Where do earth, water, fire and wind,
And long and short and fine and coarse,
Pure and impure no footing find?
Where is it that both name and form[424]
Die out and leave no trace behind?"


To that the answer is: In the mind of the Saint.

Yet it is certain that such passages should not be interpreted as
equivalent to the later Yogacara doctrine that only thought really
exists or to any form of the doctrine that the world is Maya or
illusion. The Pitakas leave no doubt on this point, for they elaborate
with clearness and consistency the theory that sensation and
consciousness depend on contact, that is contact between sense organs
and sense objects. "Man is conceived as a compound of instruments,
receptive and reacting[425]" and the Samyutta-Nikaya puts into the
Buddha's mouth the following dogmatic statement[426]. "Consciousness
arises because of duality. What is that duality? Visual[427]
consciousness arises because of sight and because of visible objects.
Sight is transitory and mutable: it is its very nature to change.
Visible objects are the same. So this duality is both in movement and
transitory."

The question of the reality of the external world did not present itself
to the early Buddhists. Had it been posed we may surmise that the Buddha
would have replied, as in similar cases, that the question was not
properly put. He would not, we may imagine, have admitted that the human
mind has the creative power which idealism postulates, for such power
seems to imply the existence of something like a self or atman. But
still though the Pitakas emphasize the empirical duality of sense-organs
and sense-objects, they also supply a basis for the doctrines of
Nagarjuna and Asanga, which like much late Buddhist metaphysics insist
on using logic in regions where the master would not use it. When it is
said that the genesis of the world and its passing away are within this
mortal frame, the meaning probably is that the world as we experience it
with its pains and pleasures depends on the senses and that with the
modification or cessation of the senses it is changed or comes to an
end. In other words (for this doctrine like most of the Buddha's
doctrines is at bottom ethical rather than metaphysical) the saint can
make or unmake his own world and triumph over pain. But the theory of
sensation may be treated not ethically but metaphysically. Sensation
implies a duality and on the one side the Buddha's teaching argues that
there is no permanent sentient self but merely different kinds of
consciousness arising in response to different stimuli. It is admitted
too that visible objects are changing and transitory like sight itself
and thus there is no reason to regard the external world, which is one
half of the duality, as more permanent, self-existent and continuous
than the other half. When we apply to it the destructive analysis which
the Buddha applied only to mental states, we easily arrive at the
nihilism or idealism of the later Buddhists. Of this I will treat later.
For the present we have only to note that early Buddhism holds that
sensation depends on contact, that is on a duality. It does not
investigate the external part of this duality and it is clear that such
investigation leads to the very speculations which the Buddha declared
to be unprofitable, such as arguments about the eternity and infinity of
the universe.

The doctrine of Anatta is counterbalanced by the doctrine of causation.
Without this latter the Buddha might seem to teach that life is a chaos
of shadows. But on the contrary he teaches the universality of law, in
this life and in all lives. For Hindus of most schools of thought,
metempsychosis means the doctrine that the immortal soul passes from one
bodily tenement to another, and is reborn again and again: karma is the
law which determines the occurrence and the character of these births.
In Buddhism, though the Pitakas speak continually of rebirth,
metempsychosis is an incorrect expression since there is no soul to
transmigrate and there is strictly speaking nothing but karma. This
word, signifying literally action or act, is the name of the force which
finds expression in the fact that every event is the result of causes
and also is itself a cause which produces effects; further in the fact
(for Indians regard it as one) that when a life, whether of a god, man
or lower creature, comes to an end, the sum of its actions (which is in
many connections equivalent to personal character) takes effect as a
whole and determines the character of another aggregation of skandhas--in
popular language, another being--representing the net result of the life
which has come to an end. Karma is also used in the more concrete sense
of the merit or demerit acquired by various acts. Thus we hear of karma
which manifests itself in this life, and of karma which only manifests
itself in another. No explanation whatever is given of the origin of
karma, of its reason, method or aims and it would not be consistent with
the principles of the Buddha to give such an explanation. Indeed, though
it is justifiable to speak of karma as a force which calls into being
the world as we know it, such a phrase goes beyond the habitual language
of early Buddhism which merely states that everything has a cause and
that every one's nature and circumstances are the result of previous
actions in this or other existences. Karma is not so much invoked as a
metaphysical explanation of the universe as accorded the consideration
which it merits as an ultimate moral fact.

It has often been pointed out that the Buddha did not originate or even
first popularize the ideas of reincarnation and karma: they are Indian,
not specifically Buddhist. In fact, of all Indian systems of thought,
Buddhism is the one which has the greatest difficulty in expressing
these ideas in intelligible and consistent language, because it denies
the existence of the ego. Some writers have gone so far as to suggest
that the whole doctrine formed no part of the Buddha's original teaching
and was an accretion, or at most a concession of the master to the
beliefs of his time. But I cannot think this view is correct. The idea
is woven into the texture of the Buddha's discourses. When in words
which have as strong a claim as any in the Pitakas to be regarded as old
and genuine he describes the stages by which he acquired enlightenment
and promises the same experiences to those who observe his
discipline[428], he says that he first followed the thread of his own
previous existences through past aeons, plumbing the unfathomed depths of
time: next, the whole of existence was spread out before him, like a
view-seen from above, and he saw beings passing away from one body and
taking shape in another, according to their deeds. Only when he
understood both the perpetual transformation of the universe and also
the line and sequence in which that transformation occurs, only then did
he see the four truths as they really are.

It is unfortunate for us that the doctrine of reincarnation met with
almost universal assent in India[429]. If some one were to found a new
Christian sect, he would probably not be asked to prove the immortality
of the soul: it is assumed as part of the common religious belief.
Similarly, no one asked the Buddha to prove the doctrine of rebirth. If
we permit our fancy to picture an interview between him and someone
holding the ordinary ideas of an educated European about the soul, we
may imagine that he would have some difficulty in understanding what is
the alternative to rebirth. His interlocutor might reply that there are
two types of theory among Europeans. Some think that the soul comes into
existence with the body at birth but continues to exist everlasting and
immortal after the death of the body. Others, commonly called
materialists, while agreeing that the soul comes into existence with the
birth of the body, hold that it ceases to exist with the death of the
body. To the first theory the Buddha would probably have replied that
there is one law without exception, namely that whatever has a beginning
has also an end. The whole universe offers no analogy or parallel to the
soul which has a beginning but no end, and not the smallest logical need
is shown for believing a doctrine so contrary to the nature of things.
And as for materialism he would probably say that it is a statement of
the processes of the world as perceived but no explanation of the mental
or even of the physical world. The materialists forget that objects as
known cannot be isolated from the knowing subject. Sensation implies
contact and duality but it is no real explanation to say that mental
phenomena are caused by physical phenomena. The Buddha reckoned among
vain speculations not only such problems as the eternity and infinity of
the world but also the question, Is the principle of life (Jiva)
identical with the body or not identical. That question, he said, is not
properly put, which is tantamount to condemning as inadequate all
theories which derive life and thought from purely material
antecedents[430]. Other ideas of modern Europe, such as that the body is
an instrument on which the soul works, or the expression of the soul,
seem to imply, or at least to be compatible with, the pre-existence of
the soul.

It is probable too that the Buddha would have said, and a modern
Buddhist would certainly say, that the fact of rebirth can easily be
proved by testimony and experience, because those who will make the
effort can recall their previous births. For his hearers the difficulty
must have been not to explain why they believed in rebirth but to
harmonize the belief with the rest of the master's system, for what is
reborn and how? We detect a tendency to say that it is Vinnana, or
consciousness, and the expression patisandhivinnanam or
rebirth-consciousness occurs[431]. The question is treated in an
important dialogue in the Majjhima-Nikaya[432], where a monk called Sati
maintains that, according to the Buddha's teaching, consciousness
transmigrates unchanged. The Buddha summoned Sati and rebuked his error
in language of unusual severity, for it was evidently capital and fatal
if persisted in. The Buddha does not state what transmigrates, as the
European reader would wish him to do, and would no doubt have replied to
that question that it is improperly framed and does not admit of an
answer.

His argument is directed not so much against the idea that consciousness
in one existence can have some connection with consciousness in the
next, as against the idea that this consciousness is a unity and
permanent. He maintains that it is a complex process due to many causes,
each producing its own effect. Yet the Pitakas seem to admit that the
processes which constitute consciousness in one life, can also produce
their effect in another life, for the character of future lives may be
determined by the wishes which we form in this life. Existence is really
a succession of states of consciousness following one another
irrespective of bodies. If _ABC_ and _abc_ are two successive lives,
_ABC_ is not more of a reality or unity than _BCa_. No personality
passes over at death from _ABC_ to _abc_ but then _ABC_ is itself not a
unity: it is merely a continuous process of change[433].

The discourse seems to say that tanha, the thirst for life, is the
connecting link between different births, but it does not use this
expression. In one part of his address the Buddha exhorts his disciples
not to enquire what they were or what they will be or what is the nature
of their present existence, but rather to master and think out for
themselves the universal law of causation, that every state has a cause
for coming into being and a cause for passing away. No doubt his main
object is as usual practical, to incite to self-control rather than to
speculation. But may he not also have been under the influence of the
idea that time is merely a form of human thought? For the ordinary mind
which cannot conceive of events except as following one another in time,
the succession of births is as true as everything else. The higher kinds
of knowledge, such as are repeatedly indicated in the Buddha's
discourse, though they are not described because language is incapable
of describing them, may not be bound in this way by the idea of time and
may see that the essential truth is not so much a series of births in
which something persists and passes from existence to existence, as the
timeless fact that life depends upon tanha, the desire for life. Death,
that is the breaking up of such constituents of human life as the body,
states of consciousness, etc., does not affect tanha. If tanha has not
been deliberately suppressed, it collects skandhas again. The result is
called a new individual. But the essential truth is the persistence of
the tanha until it is destroyed.

Still there is no doubt that the earliest Buddhist texts and the
discourse ascribed to the Buddha himself speak, when using ordinary
untechnical language, of rebirth and of a man dying and being born[434]
in such and such a state. Only we must not suppose that the man's self
is continued or transferred in this operation. There is no entity that
can be called soul and strictly speaking no entity that can be called
body, only a variable aggregation of skandhas, constantly changing. At
death this collocation disperses but a new one reassembles under the
influence of tanha, the desire of life, and by the law of karma which
prescribes that every act must have its result. The illustration that
comes most naturally is that of water. Waves pass across the surface of
the sea and successive waves are not the same, nor is what we call the
same wave really the same at two different points in its progress, and
yet one wave causes another wave and transmits its form and movement. So
are beings travelling through the world (samsara) not the same at any
two points in a single life and still less the same in two consecutive
lives: yet it is the impetus and form of the previous lives, the desire
that urges them and the form that it takes, which determine the
character of the succeeding lives.

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