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

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Europeans in discussing such questions as the nature of the soul and
immortality are prone to concentrate their attention on death and
neglect the phenomena of birth, which surely are equally important. For
if a soul survives the death of this complex of cells which is called
the body, its origin and development must, according to all analogy, be
different from those of the perishable body. Orthodox theology deals
with the problem by saying that God creates a new soul every time a
child is born[35] but free discussion usually ignores it and taking an
adult as he is, asks what are the chances that any part of him survives
death. Yet the questions, what is destroyed at death and how and why,
are closely connected with the questions what comes into existence at
birth and how and why. This second series of questions is hard enough,
but it has this advantage over the first that whereas death abruptly
closes the road and we cannot follow the soul one inch on its journey
beyond, the portals of birth are a less absolute frontier. We know that
every child has passed through stages in which it could hardly be called
a child. The earliest phase consists of two cells, which unite and then
proceed to subdivide and grow. The mystery of the process by which they
assume a human form is not explained by scientific or theological
phrases. The complete individual is assuredly not contained in the first
germ. The microscope cannot find it there and to say that it is there
potentially, merely means that we know the germ will develop in a
certain way. To say that a force is manifesting itself in the germ and
assuming the shape which it chooses to take or must take is also merely
a phrase and metaphor, but it seems to me to fit the facts[36].

The doctrines of pre-existence and transmigration (but not, I think, of
karma which is purely Indian) are common among savages in Africa and
America, nor is their wide distribution strange. Savages commonly think
that the soul wanders during sleep and that a dead man's soul goes
somewhere: what more natural than to suppose that the soul of a new born
infant comes from somewhere? But among civilized peoples such ideas are
in most cases due to Indian influence. In India they seem indigenous to
the soil and not imported by the Aryan invaders, for they are not
clearly enunciated in the Rig Veda, nor formulated before the time of
the Upanishads[37]. They were introduced by Buddhism to the Far East and
their presence in Manichaeism, Neoplatonism, Sufiism and ultimately in
the Jewish Kabbala seems a rivulet from the same source. Recent research
discredits the theory that metempsychosis was an important feature in
the earlier religion of Egypt or among the Druids[38]. But it played a
prominent part in the philosophy of Pythagoras and in the Orphic
mysteries, which had some connection with Thrace and possibly also with
Crete. A few great European intellects[39]--notably Plato and
Virgil--have given it undying expression, but Europeans as a whole have
rejected it with that curiously crude contempt which they have shown
until recently for Oriental art and literature.

Considering how fixed is the belief in immortality among Europeans, or
at least the desire for it, the rarity of a belief in pre-existence or
transmigration is remarkable. But most people's expectation of a future
life is based on craving rather than on reasoned anticipation. I cannot
myself understand how anything that comes into being can be immortal.
Such immortality is unsupported by a single analogy nor can any instance
be quoted of a thing which is known to have had an origin and yet is
even apparently indestructible[40]. And is it possible to suppose that
the universe is capable of indefinite increase by the continual addition
of new and eternal souls? But these difficulties do not exist for
theories which regard the soul as something existing before as well as
after the body, truly immortal _a parte ante_ as well as _a parte post_
and manifesting itself in temporary homes of human or lower shape. Such
theories become very various and fall into many obscurities when they
try to define the nature of the soul and its relation to the body, but
they avoid what seems to me the contradiction of the created but
immortal soul.

The doctrine of metempsychosis is also interesting as affecting the
relations of men and animals. The popular European conception of "the
beasts which perish" weakens the arguments for human immortality. For if
the mind of a dog or chimpanzee contains no element which is immortal,
the part of the human mind on which the claim to immortality can be
based must be parlously small, since _ex hypothesi_ sensation, volition,
desire and the simpler forms of intelligence are not immortal. But in
India where men have more charity and more philosophy this distinction
is not drawn. The animating principle of men, animals and plants is
regarded as one or at least similar, and even matter which we consider
inanimate, such as water, is often considered to possess a soul. But
though there is ample warrant in both Brahmanic and Buddhist literature
for the idea that the soul may sink from a human to an animal form or
_vice versa_ rise, and though one sometimes meets this belief in modern
life[41], yet it is not the most prominent aspect of metempsychosis in
India and the beautiful precept of ahimsa or not injuring living things
is not, as Europeans imagine, founded on the fear of eating one's
grandparents but rather on the humane and enlightened feeling that all
life is one and that men who devour beasts are not much above the level
of the beasts who devour one another. The feeling has grown stronger
with time. In the Vedas animal sacrifices are prescribed and they are
even now used in the worship of some deities. In the Epics the eating of
meat is mentioned. But the doctrine that it is wrong to take animal life
was definitely adopted by Buddhism and gained strength with its
diffusion.

One obvious objection to all theories of rebirth is that we do not
remember our previous existences and that, if they are connected by no
thread of memory, they are for all practical purposes the existences of
different people. But this want of memory affects not only past
existences but the early phases of this existence. Does any one deny his
existence as an infant or embryo because he cannot remember it[42]? And
if a wrong could be done to an infant the effects of which would not be
felt for twenty years, could it be said to be no concern of the infant
because the person who will suffer in twenty years time will have no
recollection that he was that infant? And common opinion in Eastern
Asia, not without occasional confirmation from Europe, denies the
proposition that we cannot remember our former lives and asserts that
those who take any pains to sharpen their spiritual faculties can
remember them. The evidence for such recollection seems to me better
than the evidence for most spiritualistic phenomena[43].

Another objection comes from the facts of heredity. On the whole we
resemble our parents and ancestors in mind as well as in body. A child
often seems to be an obvious product of its parents and not a being come
from outside and from another life. This objection of course applies
equally to the creation theory. If the soul is created by an act of God,
there seems to be no reason why it should be like the parents, or, if he
causes it to be like them, he is made responsible for sending children
into the world with vicious natures. On the other hand if parents
literally make a child, mind as well as body, there seems to be no
reason why children should ever be unlike their parents, or brothers and
sisters unlike one another, as they undoubtedly sometimes are. An Indian
would say that a soul[44] seeking rebirth carries with it certain
potentialities of good and evil and can obtain embodiment only in a
family offering the necessary conditions. Hence to some extent it is
natural that the child should be like its parents. But the soul seeking
rebirth is not completely fixed in form and stiff: it is hampered and
limited by the results of its previous life, but in many respects it may
be flexible and free, ready to vary in response to its new environment.

But there is a psychological and temperamental objection to the doctrine
of rebirth, which goes to the root of the matter. Love of life and the
desire to find a field of activity are so strong in most Europeans that
it might be supposed that a theory offering an endless vista of new
activities and new chances would be acceptable. But as a rule Europeans
who discuss the question say that they do not relish this prospect. They
may be willing to struggle until death, but they wish for
repose--conscious repose of course--afterwards. The idea that one just
dead has not entered into his rest, but is beginning another life with
similar struggles and fleeting successes, similar sorrows and
disappointments, is not satisfying and is almost shocking[45]. We do not
like it, and not to like any particular view about the destinies of the
soul is generally, but most illogically, considered a reason for
rejecting it[46].

12.

It must not however be supposed that Hindus like the prospect of
transmigration. On the contrary from the time of the Upanishads and the
Buddha to the present day their religious ideal corresponding to
salvation is emancipation and deliverance, deliverance from rebirth and
from the bondage of desire which brings about rebirth. Now all Indian
theories as to the nature of transmigration are in some way connected
with the idea of _Karma_, that is the power of deeds done in past
existences to condition or even to create future existences. Every deed
done, whether good or bad, affects the character of the doer for a long
while, so that to use a metaphor, the soul awaiting rebirth has a
special shape, which is of its own making, and it can find re-embodiment
only in a form into which that shape can squeeze.

These views of rebirth and karma have a moral value, for they teach that
what a man gets depends on what he is or makes himself to be, and they
avoid the difficulty of supposing that a benevolent creator can have
given his creatures only one life with such strange and unmerited
disproportion in their lots. Ordinary folk in the East hope that a life
of virtue will secure them another life as happy beings on earth or
perhaps in some heaven which, though not eternal, will still be long.
But for many the higher ideal is renunciation of the world and a life of
contemplative asceticism which will accumulate no karma so that after
death the soul will pass not to another birth but to some higher and
more mysterious state which is beyond birth and death. It is the
prevalence of views like this which has given both Hinduism and Buddhism
the reputation of being pessimistic and unpractical.

It is generally assumed that these are bad epithets, but are they not
applicable to Christian teaching? Modern and medieval Christianity--as
witness many popular hymns--regards this world as vain and transitory, a
vale of tears and tribulation, a troubled sea through whose waves we
must pass before we reach our rest. And choirs sing, though without much
conviction, that it is weary waiting here. This language seems justified
by the Gospels and Epistles. It is true that some utterances of Christ
suggest that happiness is to be found in a simple and natural life of
friendliness and love, but on the whole both he and St Paul teach that
the world is evil or at least spoiled and distorted: to become a happy
world it must be somehow remade and transfigured by the second coming of
Christ. The desires and ambitions which are the motive power of modern
Europe are, if not wrong, at least vain and do not even seek for true
peace and happiness. Like Indian teachers, the early Christians tried to
create a right temper rather than to change social institutions. They
bade masters and slaves treat one another with kindness and respect, but
they did not attempt to abolish slavery.

Indian thought does not really go much further in pessimism than
Christianity, but its pessimism is intellectual rather than emotional.
He who understands the nature of the soul and its successive lives
cannot regard any single life as of great importance in itself, though
its consequences for the future may be momentous, and though he will not
say that life is not worth living. Reiterated declarations that all
existence is suffering do, it is true, seem to destroy all prospect of
happiness and all motive for effort, but the more accurate statement is,
in the words of the Buddha himself, that all clinging to physical
existence involves suffering. The earliest Buddhist texts teach that
when this clinging and craving cease, a feeling of freedom and happiness
takes their place and later Buddhism treated itself to visions of
paradise as freely as Christianity. Many forms of Hinduism teach that
the soul released from the body can enjoy eternal bliss in the presence
of God and even those severer philosophers who do not admit that the
released soul is a personality in any human sense have no doubt of its
happiness.

The opposition is not so much between Indian thought and the New
Testament, for both of them teach that bliss is attainable but not by
satisfying desire. The fundamental contrast is rather between both India
and the New Testament on the one hand and on the other the rooted
conviction of European races[47], however much Christian orthodoxy may
disguise their expression of it, that this world is all-important. This
conviction finds expression not only in the avowed pursuit of pleasure
and ambition but in such sayings as that the best religion is the one
which does most good and such ideals as self-realization or the full
development of one's nature and powers. Europeans as a rule have an
innate dislike and mistrust of the doctrine that the world is vain or
unreal. They can accord some sympathy to a dying man who sees in due
perspective the unimportance of his past life or to a poet who under the
starry heavens can make felt the smallness of man and his earth. But
such thoughts are considered permissible only as retrospects, not as
principles of life: you may say that your labour has amounted to
nothing, but not that labour is vain. Though monasteries and monks still
exist, the great majority of Europeans instinctively disbelieve in
asceticism, the contemplative life and contempt of the world: they have
no love for a philosopher who rejects the idea of progress and is not
satisfied with an ideal consisting in movement towards an unknown goal.
They demand a religion which theoretically justifies the strenuous life.
All this is a matter of temperament and the temperament is so common
that it needs no explanation. What needs explanation is rather the other
temperament which rejects this world as unsatisfactory and sets up
another ideal, another sphere, another standard of values. This ideal
and standard are not entirely peculiar to India but certainly they are
understood and honoured there more than elsewhere. They are professed,
as I have already observed, by Christianity, but even the New Testament
is not free from the idea that saints are having a bad time now but will
hereafter enjoy a triumph, parlously like the exuberance of the wicked
in this world. The Far East too has its unworldly side which, though
harmonizing with Buddhism, is native. In many ways the Chinese are as
materialistic as Europeans, but throughout the long history of their art
and literature, there has always been a school, clear-voiced if small,
which has sung and pursued the joys of the hermit, the dweller among
trees and mountains who finds nature and his own thoughts an
all-sufficient source of continual happiness. But the Indian ideal,
though it often includes the pleasures of communion with nature, differs
from most forms of the Chinese and Christian ideal inasmuch as it
assumes the reality of certain religious experiences and treats them as
the substance and occupation of the highest life. We are disposed to
describe these experiences as trances or visions, names which generally
mean something morbid or hypnotic. But in India their validity is
unquestioned and they are not considered morbid. The sensual scheming
life of the world is sick and ailing; the rapture of contemplation is
the true and healthy life of the soul. More than that it is the type and
foretaste of a higher existence compared with which this world is
worthless or rather nothing at all. This view has been held in India for
nearly three thousand years: it has been confirmed by the experience of
men whose writings testify to their intellectual power and has commanded
the respect of the masses. It must command our respect too, even if it
is contrary to our temperament, for it is the persistent ideal of a
great nation and cannot be explained away as hallucination or
charlatanism. It is allied to the experiences of European mystics of
whom St Teresa is a striking example, though less saintly persons, such
as Walt Whitman and J.A. Symonds, might also be cited. Of such mysticism
William James said "the existence of mystical states absolutely
overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and
ultimate dictators of what we may believe[48]."

These mystical states are commonly described as meditation but they
include not merely peaceful contemplation but ecstatic rapture. They are
sometimes explained as union with Brahman[49], the absorption of the
soul in God, or its feeling that it is one with him. But this is
certainly not the only explanation of ecstasy given in India, for it is
recognized as real and beneficent by Buddhists and Jains. The same
rapture, the same sense of omniscience and of ability to comprehend the
scheme of things, the same peace and freedom are experienced by both
theistic and non-theistic sects, just as they have also been experienced
by Christian mystics. The experiences are real but they do not depend on
the presence of any special deity, though they may be coloured by the
theological views of individual thinkers[50]. The earliest Buddhist
texts make right rapture (samma samadhi) the end and crown of the
eight-fold path but offer no explanation of it. They suggest that it is
something wrought by the mind for itself and without the co-operation or
infusion of any external influence.

13.

Indian ideas about the destiny of the soul are connected with equally
important views about its nature. I will not presume to say what is the
definition of the soul in European philosophy but in the language of
popular religion it undoubtedly means that which remains when a body is
arbitrarily abstracted from a human personality, without enquiring how
much of that personality is thinkable without a material substratum.
This popular soul includes mind, perception and desire and often no
attempt is made to distinguish it from them. But in India it is so
distinguished. The soul (atman or purusha) _uses_ the mind and senses:
they are its instruments rather than parts of it. Sight, for instance,
serves as the spectacles of the soul, and the other senses and even the
mind (manas) which is an intellectual _organ_ are also instruments. If
we talk of a soul passing from death to another birth, this according to
most Hindus is a soul accompanied by its baggage of mind and senses, a
subtle body indeed, but still gaseous not spiritual. But what is the
soul by itself? When an English poet sings of death that it is "Only the
sleep eternal in an eternal night" or a Greek poet calls it [Greek:
atermona negreton hupnon] we feel that they are denying immortality. But
Indian divines maintain that deep sleep is one of the states in which
the soul approaches nearest to God: that it is a state of bliss, and is
unconscious not because consciousness is suspended but because no
objects are presented to it. Even higher than dreamless sleep is another
condition known simply as the fourth state[51], the others being waking,
dream-sleep and dreamless sleep. In this fourth state thought is one
with the object of thought and, knowledge being perfect, there exists no
contrast between knowledge and ignorance. All this sounds strange to
modern Europe. We are apt to say that dreamless sleep is simply
unconsciousness[52] and that the so-called fourth state is imaginary or
unmeaning. But to follow even popular speculation in India it is
necessary to grasp this truth, or assumption, that when discursive
thought ceases, when the mind and the senses are no longer active, the
result is not unconsciousness equivalent to non-existence but the
highest and purest state of the soul, in which, rising above thought and
feeling, it enjoys the untrammelled bliss of its own nature[53].

If these views sound mysterious and fanciful, I would ask those
Europeans who believe in the immortality of the soul what, in their
opinion, survives death. The brain, the nerves and the sense organs
obviously decay: the soul, you may say, is not a product of them, but
when they are destroyed or even injured, perceptive and intellectual
processes are inhibited and apparently rendered impossible. Must not
that which lives for ever be, as the Hindus think, independent of
thought and of sense-impressions?

I have observed in my reading that European philosophers are more ready
to talk about soul and spirit than to define them[54] and the same is
true of Indian philosophers. The word most commonly rendered by soul is
_atman_[55] but no one definition can be given for it, for some hold
that the soul is identical with the Universal Spirit, others that it is
merely of the same nature, still others that there are innumerable souls
uncreate and eternal, while the Buddhists deny the existence of a soul
_in toto_. But most Hindus who believe in the existence of an atman or
soul agree in thinking that it is the real self and essence of all human
beings (or for that matter of other beings): that it is eternal _a parte
ante_ and _a parte post_: that it is not subject to variation but passes
unchanged from one birth to another: that youth and age, joy and sorrow,
and all the accidents of human life are affections, not so much of the
soul as of the envelopes and limitations which surround it during its
pilgrimage: that the soul, if it can be released and disengaged from
these envelopes, is in itself knowledge and bliss, knowledge meaning the
immediate and intuitive knowledge of God. A proper comprehension of this
point of view will make us chary of labelling Indian thought as
pessimistic on the ground that it promises the soul something which we
are inclined to call unconsciousness.

In studying oriental religions sympathy and a desire to agree if
possible are the first requisites. For instance, he who says of a
certain ideal "this means annihilation and I do not like it" is on the
wrong way. The right way is to ascertain what many of our most
intelligent brothers mean by the cessation of mental activity and why it
is for them an ideal.

14. _Eastern Pessimism and Renunciation_

But the charge of pessimism against Eastern religions is so important
that we must consider other aspects of it, for though the charge is
wrong, it is wrong only because those who bring it do not use quite the
right word. And indeed it would be hard to find the right word in a
European language. The temperament and theory described as pessimism are
European. They imply an attitude of revolt, a right to judge and
grumble. Why did the Deity make something out of nothing? What was his
object? But this is not the attitude of Eastern thought: it generally
holds that we cannot imagine nothing: that the world process is without
beginning or end and that man must learn how to make the best of it.

The Far East purged Buddhism of much of its pessimism. There we see that
the First Truth about suffering is little more than an admission of the
existence of evil, which all religions and common sense admit. Evil
ceases in the saint: nirvana in this life is perfect happiness. And
though striving for the material improvement of the world is not held up
conspicuously as an ideal in the Buddhist scriptures (or for that matter
in the New Testament), yet it is never hinted that good effort is vain.
A king should be a good king.

Renunciation is a great word in the religions of both Europe and Asia,
but in Europe it is almost active. Except to advanced mystics, it means
abandoning a natural attitude and deliberately assuming another which it
is difficult to maintain. Something similar is found in India in the
legends of those ascetics who triumphed over the flesh until they become
very gods in power[56]. But it is also a common view in the East that he
who renounces ambition and passion is not struggling against the world
and the devil but simply leading a natural life. His passions indeed
obey his will and do not wander here and there according to their fancy,
but his temperament is one of acquiescence not resistance. He takes his
place among the men, beasts and plants around him and ceasing to
struggle finds that his own soul contains happiness in itself.