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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3

V >> Various >> Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3




The threefold division of craving at the end of the second truth might be
rendered "the lust of the flesh, the lust of life and the love of this
present world." The two last are said elsewhere to be directed against two
sets of thinkers called the Eternalists and the Annihilationists, who held
respectively the everlasting-life-heresy and the
let-us-eat-and-drink-for-tomorrow-we-die-heresy.[4] This may be so, but in
any case the division of craving would have appealed to the five hearers as
correct.

The word translated "noble" in Noble Path, Noble Truth, is _ariya_, which
also means Aryan.[5] The negative, un-Aryan, is used of each of the two low
aims. It is possible that this rendering should have been introduced into
the translation; but the ethical meaning, though still associated with the
tribal meaning, had probably already become predominant in the language of
the time.

The details of the Path include several terms whose meaning and implication
are by no means apparent at first sight. Right Views, for instance, means
mainly right views as to the Four Truths and the Three Signs. Of the
latter, one is identical, or nearly so, with the First Truth. The others
are Impermanence and Non-soul (the absence of a soul)--both declared to be
"signs" of every individual, whether god, animal or man. Of these two again
the Impermanence has become an Indian rather than a Buddhist idea, and we
are to a certain extent familiar with it also in the West. There is no
Being, there is only a Becoming. The state of every individual is unstable,
temporary, sure to pass away. Even in the lowest class of things, we find,
in each individual, form and material qualities. In the higher classes
there is a continually rising series of mental qualities also. It is the
union of these that makes the individual. Every person, or thing, or god,
is therefore a putting together, a compound; and in each individual,
without any exception, the relation of its component parts is ever
changing, is never the same for two consecutive moments. It follows that no
sooner has separateness, individuality, begun, than dissolution,
disintegration, also begins. There can be no individuality without a
putting together: there can be no putting together without a becoming:
there can be no becoming without a becoming different: and there can be no
becoming different without a dissolution, a passing away, which sooner or
later will inevitably be complete.

Heracleitus, who was a generation or two later than the Buddha, had very
similar ideas;[6] and similar ideas are found in post-Buddhistic Indian
works.[7] But in neither case are they worked out in the same
uncompromising way. Both in Europe, and in all Indian thought except the
Buddhist, souls, and the gods who are made in imitation of souls, are
considered as exceptions. To these spirits is attributed a Being without
Becoming, an individuality without change, a beginning without an end. To
hold any such view would, according to the doctrine of the Noble (or Aryan)
Path, be erroneous, and the error would block the way against the very
entrance on the Path.

So important is this position in Buddhism that it is put in the forefront
of Buddhist expositions of Buddhism. The Buddha himself is stated in the
books to have devoted to it the very first discourse he addressed to the
first converts.[8] The first in the collection of the _Dialogues of Gotama_
discusses, and completely, categorically, and systematically rejects, all
the current theories about "souls." Later books follow these precedents.
Thus the _Katha Vatthu_, the latest book included in the canon, discusses
points of disagreement that had arisen in the community. It places this
question of "soul" at the head of all the points it deals with, and devotes
to it an amount of space quite overshadowing all the rest.[9] So also in
the earliest Buddhist book later than the canon--the very interesting and
suggestive series of conversations between the Greek king Menander and the
Buddhist teacher Nagasena. It is precisely this question of the "soul" that
the unknown author takes up first, describing how Nagasena convinces the
king that there is no such thing as the [v.04 p.0689] "soul" in the
ordinary sense, and he returns to the subject again and again.[10]

After Right Views come Right Aspirations. It is evil desires, low ideals,
useless cravings, idle excitements, that are to be suppressed by the
cultivation of the opposite--of right desires, lofty aspirations. In one of
the Dialogues[11] instances are given--the desire for emancipation from
sensuality, aspirations towards the attainment of love to others, the wish
not to injure any living thing, the desire for the eradication of wrong and
for the promotion of right dispositions in one's own heart, and so on. This
portion of the Path is indeed quite simple, and would require no commentary
were it not for the still constantly repeated blunder that Buddhism teaches
the suppression of all desire.

Of the remaining stages of the Path it is only necessary to mention two.
The one is Right Effort. A constant intellectual alertness is required.
This is not only insisted upon elsewhere in countless passages, but of the
three cardinal sins in Buddhism (_raga_, _dosa_, _moha_) the last and worst
is stupidity or dullness, the others being sensuality and ill-will. Right
Effort is closely connected with the seventh stage, Right Mindfulness. Two
of the dialogues are devoted to this subject, and it is constantly referred
to elsewhere.[12] The disciple, whatsoever he does--whether going forth or
coming back, standing or walking, speaking or silent, eating or
drinking--is to keep clearly in mind all that it means, the temporary
character of the act, its ethical significance, and above all that behind
the act there is no actor (goer, seer, eater, speaker) that is an eternally
persistent unity. It is the Buddhist analogue to the Christian precept:
"Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the
glory of God."

Under the head of Right Conduct the two most important points are Love and
Joy. Love is in Pali _Metta_, and the _Metta Sutta_[13] says (no doubt with
reference to the Right Mindfulness just described): "As a mother, even at
the risk of her own life, protects her son, her only son, so let him
cultivate love without measure towards all beings. Let him cultivate
towards the whole world--above, below, around--a heart of love unstinted,
unmixed with the sense of differing or opposing interests. Let a man
maintain this mindfulness all the while he is awake, whether he be
standing, walking, sitting or lying down. This state of heart is the best
in the world."

Often elsewhere four such states are described, the Brahma Viharas or
Sublime Conditions. They are Love, Sorrow at the sorrows of others, Joy in
the joys of others, and Equanimity as regards one's own joys and
sorrows.[14] Each of these feelings was to be deliberately practised,
beginning with a single object, and gradually increasing till the whole
world was suffused with the feeling. "Our mind shall not waver. No evil
speech will we utter. Tender and compassionate will we abide, loving in
heart, void of malice within. And we will be ever suffusing such a one with
the rays of our loving thought. And with that feeling as a basis we will
ever be suffusing the whole wide world with thought of love far-reaching,
grown great, beyond measure, void of anger or ill-will."[15]

The relative importance of love, as compared with other habits, is thus
described. "All the means that can be used as bases for doing right are not
worth the sixteenth part of the emancipation of the heart through love.
That takes all those up into itself, outshining them in radiance and glory.
Just as whatsoever stars there be, their radiance avails not the sixteenth
part of the radiance of the moon. That takes all those up into itself,
outshining them in radiance and glory--just as in the last month of the
rains, at harvest time, the sun, mounting up on high into the clear and
cloudless sky, overwhelms all darkness in the realms of space, and shines
forth in radiance and glory--just as in the night, when the dawn is
breaking, the morning star shines out in radiance and glory--just so all
the means that can be used as helps towards doing right avail not the
sixteenth part of the emancipation of the heart through love."[16]

The above is the positive side; the qualities (_dhamma_) that have to be
acquired. The negative side, the qualities that have to be suppressed by
the cultivation of the opposite virtues, are the Ten Bonds (_Samyojanas_),
the Four Intoxications (_Asava_) and the Five Hindrances (_Nivaranas_).

The Ten Bonds are: (1) Delusion about the soul; (2) Doubt; (3) Dependence
on good works; (4) Sensuality; (5) Hatred, ill-feeling; (6) Love of life on
earth; (7) Desire for life in heaven; (8) Pride; (9) Self-righteousness;
(10) Ignorance. The Four Intoxications are the mental intoxication arising
respectively from (1) Bodily passions, (2) Becoming, (3) Delusion, (4)
Ignorance. The Five Hindrances are (1) Hankering after worldly advantages,
(2) The corruption arising out of the wish to injure, (3) Torpor of mind,
(4) Fretfulness and worry, (5) Wavering of mind.[17] "When these five
hindrances have been cut away from within him, he looks upon himself as
freed from debt, rid of disease, out of jail, a free man and secure. And
gladness springs up within him on his realizing that, and joy arises to him
thus gladdened, and so rejoicing all his frame becomes at ease, and being
thus at ease he is filled with a sense of peace, and in that peace his
heart is stayed."[18]

To have realized the Truths, and traversed the Path; to have broken the
Bonds, put an end to the Intoxications, and got rid of the Hindrances, is
to have attained the ideal, the Fruit, as it is called, of Arahatship. One
might fill columns with the praises, many of them among the most beautiful
passages in Pali poetry and prose, lavished on this condition of mind, the
state of the man made perfect according to the Buddhist faith. Many are the
pet names, the poetic epithets bestowed upon it--the harbour of refuge, the
cool cave, the island amidst the floods, the place of bliss, emancipation,
liberation, safety, the supreme, the transcendent, the uncreated, the
tranquil, the home of peace, the calm, the end of suffering, the medicine
for all evil, the unshaken, the ambrosia, the immaterial, the imperishable,
the abiding, the farther shore, the unending, the bliss of effort, the
supreme joy, the ineffable, the detachment, the holy city, and many others.
Perhaps the most frequent in the Buddhist text is Arahatship, "the state of
him who is worthy"; and the one exclusively used in Europe is Nirvana, the
"dying out"; that is, the dying out in the heart of the fell fire of the
three cardinal sins--sensuality, ill-will and stupidity.[19]

The choice of this term by European writers, a choice made long before any
of the Buddhist canonical texts had been published or translated, has had a
most unfortunate result. Those writers did not share, could not be expected
to share, the exuberant optimism of the early Buddhists. Themselves giving
up this world as hopeless, and looking for salvation in the next, they
naturally thought the Buddhists must do the same, and in the absence of any
authentic scriptures, to correct the mistake, they interpreted Nirvana, in
terms of their own belief, as a state to be reached after death. As such
they supposed the "dying out" must mean the dying out of a "soul"; and
endless were the discussions as to whether this meant eternal trance, or
absolute annihilation, of the "soul." It is now thirty years since the
right interpretation, founded on the canonical texts, has been given, but
outside the ranks of Pali scholars the old blunder is still often repeated.
It should be added that the belief in salvation in this world, in this
life, has appealed so strongly to Indian sympathies that from the time of
the rise of Buddhism down to the present day it has been adopted as a part
of general Indian belief, and _Jivanmukti_, salvation during this life, has
become a commonplace in the religious language of India.

_Adopted Doctrines._--The above are the essential doctrines of [v.04
p.0690] the original Buddhism. They are at the same time its distinctive
doctrines; that is to say, the doctrines that distinguish it from all
previous teaching in India. But the Buddha, while rejecting the sacrifices
and the ritualistic magic of the brahmin schools, the animistic
superstitions of the people, the asceticism and soul-theory of the Jains,
and the pantheistic speculations of the poets of the pre-Buddhistic
_Upanishads_, still retained the belief in transmigration. This belief--the
transmigration of the soul, after the death of the body, into other bodies,
either of men, beasts or gods--is part of the animistic creed so widely
found throughout the world that it was probably universal. In India it had
already, before the rise of Buddhism, been raised into an ethical
conception by the associated doctrine of _Karma_, according to which a
man's social position in life and his physical advantages, or the reverse,
were the result of his actions in a previous birth. The doctrine thus
afforded an explanation, quite complete to those who believed it, of the
apparent anomalies and wrongs in the distribution here of happiness or woe.
A man, for instance, is blind. This is owing to his lust of the eye in a
previous birth. But he has also unusual powers of hearing. This is because
he loved, in a previous birth, to listen to the preaching of the law. The
explanation could always be exact, for it was scarcely more than a
repetition of the point to be explained. It fits the facts because it is
derived from them. And it cannot be disproved, for it lies in a sphere
beyond the reach of human inquiry.

It was because it thus provided a moral cause that it was retained in
Buddhism. But as the Buddha did not acknowledge a soul, the link of
connexion between one life and the next had to be found somewhere else. The
Buddha found it (as Plato also found it)[20] in the influence exercised
upon one life by a desire felt in the previous life. When two thinkers of
such eminence (probably the two greatest ethical thinkers of antiquity)
have arrived independently at this strange conclusion, have agreed in
ascribing to cravings, felt in this life, so great, and to us so
inconceivable, a power over the future life, we may well hesitate before we
condemn the idea as intrinsically absurd, and we may take note of the
important fact that, given similar conditions, similar stages in the
development of religious belief, men's thoughts, even in spite of the most
unquestioned individual originality, tend though they may never produce
exactly the same results, to work in similar ways.

In India, before Buddhism, conflicting and contradictory views prevailed as
to the precise mode of action of _Karma_; and we find this confusion
reflected in Buddhist theory. The prevailing views are tacked on, as it
were, to the essential doctrines of Buddhism, without being thoroughly
assimilated to them, or logically incorporated with them. Thus in the story
of the good layman Citta, it is an aspiration expressed on the
deathbed;[21] in the dialogue on the subject, it is a thought dwelt on
during life,[22] in the numerous stories in the _Peta_ and _Vimana Vatthus_
it is usually some isolated act, in the discussions in the _Dhamma Sangani_
it is some mental disposition, which is the _Karma_ (doing or action) in
the one life determining the position of the individual in the next. These
are really conflicting propositions. They are only alike in the fact that
in each case a moral cause is given for the position in which the
individual finds himself now; and the moral cause is his own act.

In the popular belief, followed also in the brahmin theology, the bridge
between the two lives was a minute and subtle entity called the soul, which
left the one body at death, through a hole at the top of the head, and
entered into the new body. The new body happened to be there, ready, with
no soul in it. The soul did not make the body. In the Buddhist adaptation
of this theory no soul, no consciousness, no memory, goes over from one
body to the other. It is the grasping, the craving, still existing at the
death of the one body that causes the new set of _Skandhas_, that is, the
new body with its mental tendencies and capacities, to arise. How this
takes place is nowhere explained.

The Indian theory of _Karma_ has been worked out with many points of great
beauty and ethical value. And the Buddhist adaptation of it, avoiding some
of the difficulties common to it and to the allied European theories of
fate and predestination, tries to explain the weight of the universe in its
action on the individual, the heavy hand of the immeasurable past we cannot
escape, the close connexion between all forms of life, and the mysteries of
inherited character. Incidentally it held out the hope, to those who
believed in it, of a mode of escape from the miseries of transmigration.
For as the Arahat had conquered the cravings that were supposed to produce
the new body, his actions were no longer _Karma_, but only _Kiriya_, that
led to no rebirth.[23]

Another point of Buddhist teaching adopted from previous belief was the
practice of ecstatic meditation. In the very earliest times of the most
remote animism we find the belief that a person, rapt from all sense of the
outside world, possessed by a spirit, acquired from that state a degree of
sanctity, was supposed to have a degree of insight, denied to ordinary
mortals. In India from the soma frenzy in the _Vedas_, through the mystic
reveries of the _Upanishads_, and the hypnotic trances of the ancient Yoga,
allied beliefs and practices had never lost their importance and their
charm. It is clear from the _Dialogues_, and other of the most ancient
Buddhist records,[24] that the belief was in full force when Buddhism
arose, and that the practice was followed by the Buddha's teachers. It was
quite impossible for him to ignore the question; and the practice was
admitted as a part of the training of the Buddhist Bhikshu. But it was not
the highest or the most important part, and might be omitted altogether.
The states of Rapture are called Conditions of Bliss, and they are regarded
as useful for the help they give towards the removal of the mental
obstacles to the attainment of Arahatship.[25] Of the thirty-seven
constituent parts of Arahatship they enter into one group of four. To seek
for Arahatship in the practice of the ecstasy alone is considered a deadly
heresy.[26] So these practices are both pleasant in themselves, and useful
as one of the means to the end proposed. But they are not the end, and the
end can be reached without them. The most ancient form these exercises took
is recorded in the often recurring paragraphs translated in Rhys Davids'
_Dialogues of the Buddha_ (i. 84-92). More modern, and much more elaborate,
forms are given in the _Yogavacaras Manual of Indian Mysticism as practised
by Buddhists_, edited by Rhys Davids from a unique MS. for the Pali Text
Society in 1896. In the Introduction to this last work the various phases
of the question are discussed at length.

_Buddhist Texts. The Canonical Books._--It is necessary to remember that
the Buddha, like other Indian teachers of his period, taught by
conversation only. A highly-educated man (according to the education
current at the time), speaking constantly to men of similar education, he
followed the literary habit of his day by embodying his doctrines in set
phrases (_sutras_), on which he enlarged, on different occasions, in
different ways. Writing was then widely known. But the lack of suitable
writing materials made any lengthy books impossible. Such sutras were
therefore the recognized form of preserving and communicating opinion. They
were catchwords, as it were, _memoria technica_, which could easily be
remembered, and would recall the fuller expositions that had been based
upon them. Shortly after the Buddha's time the Brahmins had their sutras in
Sanskrit, already a dead language. He purposely put his into the ordinary
conversational idiom of the day, that is to say, into Pali. When the Buddha
died these sayings were collected together by his disciples into what they
call the Four Nikayas, or "collections." These cannot have reached their
final form till about fifty or sixty years afterwards. Other sayings and
verses, most of them ascribed, not to the Buddha, but to the disciples
themselves, were put into a supplementary Nikaya. We know [v.04 p.0691] of
slight additions made to this Nikaya as late as the time of Asoka, 3rd
century B.C. And the developed doctrine, found in certain portions of it,
shows that these are later than the four old Nikayas. For a generation or
two the books so put together were handed down by memory, though probably
written memoranda were also used. And they were doubtless accompanied from
the first, as they were being taught, by a running commentary. About one
hundred years after the Buddha's death there was a schism in the community.
Each of the two schools kept an arrangement of the canon--still in Pali, or
some allied dialect. Sanskrit was not used for any Buddhist works till long
afterwards, and never used at all, so far as is known, for the canonical
books. Each of these two schools broke up in the following centuries, into
others. Several of them had their different arrangements of the canonical
books, differing also in minor details. These books remained the only
authorities for about five centuries, but they all, except only our extant
Pali Nikayas, have been lost in India. These then are our authorities for
the earliest period of Buddhism. Now what are these books?

We talk necessarily of Pali _books_. They are not books in the modern
sense. They are memorial sentences or verses intended to be learnt by
heart. And the whole style and method of arrangement is entirely
subordinated to this primary necessity. Each sutra (Pali, _sutta_) is very
short; usually occupying only a page, or perhaps two, and containing a
single proposition. When several of these, almost always those that contain
propositions of a similar kind, are collected together in the framework of
one dialogue, it is called a _sullanta_. The usual length of such a
suttanta is about a dozen pages; only a few of them are longer, and a
collection of such suttantas might be called a book. But it is as yet
neither narrative nor essay. It is at most a string of passages, drawn up
in similar form to assist the memory, and intended, not to be read, but to
be learnt by heart. The first of the four Nikayas is a collection of the
longest of these suttantas, and it is called accordingly the _Digha
Nikaya_, that is "the Collection of Long Ones" (_sci._ Suttantas). The next
is the _Majjhima Nikaya_, the "Collection of the suttantas of Medium
Length"--medium, that is, as being shorter than the suttantas in the Digha,
and longer than the ordinary suttas preserved in the two following
collections. Between them these first two collections contain 186
dialogues, in which the Buddha, or in a few cases one of his leading
disciples, is represented as engaged in conversation on some one of the
religious, or philosophic, or ethical points in that system which we now
call Buddhism. In depth of philosophic insight, in the method of Socratic
questioning often adopted, in the earnest and elevated tone of the whole,
in the evidence they afford of the most cultured thought of the day, these
dialogues constantly remind the reader of the dialogues of Plato. But not
in style. They have indeed a style of their own; always dignified, and
occasionally rising into eloquence. But for the reasons already given, it
is entirely different from the style of Western writings which are always
intended to be read. Historical scholars will, however, revere this
collection of dialogues as one of the most priceless of the treasures of
antiquity still preserved to us. It is to it, above all, that we shall
always have to go for our knowledge of the most ancient Buddhism. Of the
186, 175 had by 1907 been edited for the Pali Text Society, and the
remainder were either in the press or in preparation.

A disadvantage of the arrangement in dialogues, more especially as they
follow one another according to length and not according to subject, is
that it is not easy to find the statement of doctrine on any particular
point which is interesting one at the moment. It is very likely just this
consideration which led to the compilation of the two following Nikayas. In
the first of these, called the _Anguttara Nikaya_, all those points of
Buddhist doctrine capable of expression in classes are set out in order.
This practically includes most of the psychology and ethics of Buddhism.
For it is a distinguishing mark of the dialogues themselves that the
results arrived at are arranged in carefully systematized groups. We are
familiar enough in the West with similar classifications, summed up in such
expressions as the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments, the Thirty-nine
Articles, the Four Cardinal Virtues, the Seven Sacraments and a host of
others. These numbered lists (it is true) are going out of fashion. The aid
which they afford to memory is no longer required in an age in which books
of reference abound. It was precisely as a help to memory that they were
found so useful in the early Buddhist times, when the books were all learnt
by heart, and had never as yet been written. And in the Anguttara we find
set out in order first of all the units, then all the pairs, then all the
trios, and so on. It is the longest book in the Buddhist Bible, and fills
1840 pages 8vo. The whole of the Pali text has been published by the Pali
Text Society, but only portions have been translated into English. The
next, and last, of these four collections contains again the whole, or
nearly the whole, of the Buddhist doctrine; but arranged this time in order
of subjects. It consists of 55 _Samyuttas_ or groups. In each of these the
suttas on the same subject, or in one or two cases the suttas addressed to
the same sort of people, are grouped together. The whole of it has been
published in five volumes by the Pali Text Society. Only a few fragments
have been translated.

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