A STUBY OF THE BUDDHIST NORM 



MRS. RHYS DAVIDS, M.A. 

 

CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGW 

I THE PALI TRADITION- . . . .9 

II DHAMMA AND ABHIBHAMMA . . . .32 

III THE NOBM AS THEOBY OF No-SoxiL , . 48 

IV THB NOBM AS THE LAW OF CAUSATIDK . . 78 

V THE NOBM AS MOBAL LAW . . . .107 

VI THB NOBM AS IDEAL 150 

VII THB NOBM AS IDEAL (continued) . . . 173 

VIII THH QUEST OF THE IDEAL .... 198 

IX THB IMPOBT OF DHAMMA .... 234 

CONCLUSION ...... 240 

CHBONOLOGICAL NOTE 249 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 251 

INDBX . 255 



BUDDHISM 

CHAPTER I 

THE PALI TRADITION 

THE general growth of interest in Buddhism 
is due to more than one assignable cause. 
But we may class the various causes fairly 
enough under the growth of general know- 
ledge. And under this fact of expanding 
knowledge we may distinguish between growth 
of intellectual curiosity and sympathy in the 
knower, and additional facilities in the means 
of knowing. 

We must resist the temptation, in the 
limited scope at our disposal, of lingering 
over the former group of causes, and glance 
forthwith at the latter. 

In the first place we are now beginning 
to reap the harvest sown by certain pioneers, 
who returned last century from countries 
where creed and culture are or have been 
Buddhist, in their hearts the wish, on their 
shoulders the task, to make known in the 
West a literature venerable in its tradition, 
and, where still followed, a living force in the 
present, but practically unknown outside 



10 BUDDHISM 

Asia. This was the religious literature of 
Ceylon, Siam, and Burma, written on palm- 
leaf manuscripts, and, for the most part, in 
a language not at any time native to any of 
those countries, but hailing from the ancient 
dialects of North-East India. Closely akin to 
this language, which, as a literary diction, is 
known in the mediaeval portion of the litera- 
ture as pdli (or The Text), is that of certain 
inscriptions carved on rock and pillar, found 
in different parts of India. These are known 
as the Edicts of the Emperor Asoka, the Indian 
over-lord who reigned about 272-35 B.C. They 
consist largely of injunctions to righteous 
and fraternal conduct, and refer to passages 
contained in the most ancient of these same 
Pali compositions. These oldest compila- 
tions are treasured, in the three countries 
above-named, as canonical scriptures. And 
the Pali language is judged to be a literary 
version of an Indo-European or Aryan dialect, 
later than the language of the Vedas and 
Brahmanas, or oldest known Brahmin texts, 
but earlier than what is called Sanskrit, that 
is, the literary language of India during nearly 
the whole of the Christian era. 

Now this Pali was the vehicle of what is, 
so far as we have yet been able to discover, 
the earliest formulated records of Buddhism. 
Dead as a vernacular, it still lives on as a 
literary instrument in the native colleges 
or monasteries of Ceylon, Siam, and Burma, 
just as Latin was the mediaeval, and is, to 



THE PALI TRADITIO^ 11 

some extent still, the modern vdtdtele 
ecclesiastical Christianity. In its veri 
or spoken form, it appears to have been the 
alanguage, according to Buddhist commen- 
rtarial tradition, of Mag'adha, according to 
Rhys Davids, of Kosala, about the fifth 
century B.C. (or earlier) and subsequent cen- 
turies. It was in the kingdom of Kosala 
that the Buddhist movement took firmest 
root, growing up in the great college at 
Savatthi, the site of which has during the 
last few years been excavated. So that 
although the first Buddhist Emperor, Asoka, 
was of Magadha, south of Kosala, and 
established his capital at Patna on the 
Ganges, the Buddhist canon had already been 
compiled (though not yet written) more or 
less in its present form in Kosalese, and not 
in Magadhi, and so it has since then remained 
in the countries of Further India, after the 
expulsion of Buddhism from its birthplace. 
Buddhism was a missionizing movement 
from the first, and Further India was won 
over to Buddhism by missions dispatched 
from its centres in North-East India. And 
it is in Further India, constantly loyal to its 
adopted religion, that the Pali books, hand- 
written on palm-leaves, have been preserved, 
freshly copied, commented upon, or other- 
wise elaborated in other palm-leaf manu- 
scripts, and have thence, in copies old or new, 
been sold or given to, or appropriated by 
Europeans. 



12 BUDDHISM 

Now while Prinsep on the one hand first 
deciphered the rock-cut inscriptions of the 
Emperor Asoka, containing historical evidence 
of inestimable value, Tumour, Childers anc 
Gogerly, Oldenberg and Rhys Davids, for ovei 
half a century, have been educating Euro- 
pean culture in the contents of the Pali 
palm-leaf MSS. Prior to this, our knowledge 
of early Buddhism was derived from certain 
books of an early mediaeval date, such as that 
from which the late Edwin Arnold derived 
his famous poem, " The Light of Asia." These 
books were written in the Sanskrit, which as 
a general literary vehicle of thought (and not 
as merely the language of a learned class) 
had gradually superseded the earlier literary 
vehicle of Pali. So far, no manuscripts 
from Northern India, or from Buddhist cen- 
tres North and North-East of India, have 
yielded us anything, in diction or in subject- 
matter,, so apparently near to the beginnings 
of Buddhism, as a religion and a body of 
culture, as some of these Pali books that 
Ceylon, Siam and Burma have preserved. 
These oldest books, together with several of 
a somewhat later date, claim, by their own 
testimony, and the ancient tradition of these 
southern Buddhist countries, to have been 
collected into a Canon or Bible of sacred docu- 
ments, entitled the Three Pit f dk$$, or Baskets 
of Tradition. They were, and arc, held 
" sacred " in this sense, that they are believed 
to contain the genuine sayings of Go'tHmfi,, 



THE PALI TRADITION 13 

the Budclha, the founder of Buddhism, as 
well as other books, which are elaborations 
of subjects stated by him in outline ; sacred 
also in this, that they may not be added to 
nor otherwise altered. * 

Besides these Three Pitakas, the Pali 
literature contains a great body of exegetical 
commentary on the Pitakas, mainly as*to the 
oldest group of it, the work of two scholars, 
both Indian Buddhaghosa and Dhamma- 
pala dating from the fifth century, A.B. 
a great number of sub-commentaries added 
gradually from that date till the present, and 
lastly a number of other treatises, some older 
and some more recent than the great com- 
mentaries. These are independent works, 
in that they are not systematic expositions 
of the sacred texts. But they are, again, 
dependent in that they express opinions in 
conformity with those texts, and frequently 
cite them as authoritative. 

Now it is the editing of this palm-leaf 
literature in printed books, and the trans- 
lating of them by the scholars I have named, 
aided by many others, that has been gradually, 
for bhe last half century, bringing a knowledge 
of early Buddhism to the educated public in 
Europe and America. The Pali Text Society 
alone, founded by Professor Rhys Davids in 
1881, has published seventy volumes of 
texts and translations. The Sacred Books 
oj the East, founded by the late Max Miiller, 
published several translations. The Sacred 



14 BUDDHISM 

Books of the Buddhists series, the Harvard 
Oriental Series, the German Pali-Society are 
publishing more. 

Recent political events in Asia have nlso 
aided in bringing Buddhism nearer to us. 
The annexation of Upper Burma by Great 
Britain in 1889 resulted in bringing a number 
of Government officials and European teachers 
to reside in, and become acquainted with, 
Burma and its religion and culture. French 
and English interference in Siam has had ft 
somewhat similar result. And the rise of 
Japan, as a great power among the Great 
Powers, has set Europe considering the part 
played in that rise by the Buddhist factor 
in Japanese religion. Lastly, the secrets of 
the cult of Tibet a curious adulterated 
Buddhism and of its ecclesiastical libraries, 
seem at length to be becoming a little less 
inaccessible to us. More than this one 
cannot say, but the additional factor in the 
general interest in Buddhism remains. 

Once mows, there is the awakening to new 
and international activity in Buddhist coun- 
tries, in connection with their own religion 
and culture, that must be taken into account. 
More than two thousand years after the period 
of its first missionary zeal, we hear, simul- 
taneously from all the live countries named 
above, of fresh movements, not only of self- 
defence against the invasion of other creeds, 
but also of attack, 

Of these movements the system of ultramon- 



THE PALI TRADITION 15 

tane, chiefly political propaganda, started by 
the Tibetan Church is well known to exist 
and may have important results at least in 
Asia, but at present of those results, or of its 
organization we can say nothing, and its 
effective influence for Europe is as yet nil. 
Elsewhere the new activity is purely religious, 
and consists chiefly in (1) the printing of the 
canonical and other Pali classical works in the 
national script ; (2) the inclusion of these 
and other printed books in the monastic 
manuscript libraries ; (3) the increase of 
Buddhist colleges ; (4) the establishment of 
foreign missions ; (5) the circulation of periodi- 
cal propagandist literature in East and West ; 
(6) the institution of societies, chiefly in the 
West, for the study of Buddhism. 

Whatever may be the final result of the 
opening up of so many avenues, political, 
geographical, literary and educational, the 
immediate consequences involve a wider 
acquaintance among ourselves with Buddhists 
and with all the varieties of their traditions 
and culture as Buddhists. 

But that wider acquaintance will profit 
us little, in so far as we honestly wish to get a 
just idea of those traditions and an intelligent 
appreciation of that culture, if we rigidly 
estimate the one or the other by the measure 
of our own traditional standpoints. These 
standpoints have been slowly built up in the 
past by a certain selection among notions 



16 BUDDHISM 

and beliefs. Some we threw away ; some we 
adopted ; and from time to time we made 
alterations or reforms. And where we altered, 
we found it not always possible to make our 
traditions of speech conform to our reforms. 
For instance, we have ceased to believe that 
the sun " rises " or " sets." We believe that 
when each of those events happens, our portion 
of earth rolls sunwards, and away from the 
sun, respectively, in its rotation around its own 
axis and the sun. But the old phrases hold 
firm, so that we should expect to hear even 
our astronomers use them. 

These facts, then : a specific tradition in 
knowledge, and a vehicle of expression that 
has not coincided in its growth with the 
growth of that knowledge should make us 
wary in estimating another tradition, another 
standpoint, other modes of expression. We 
may fancy that we are measuring other views 
by standpoints that are not only absolutely 
true, but the only standpoints possible or 
conceivable. But in fact we are measuring, 
by what is relatively true, by what has come 
to be accepted among ourselves as true, a 
different range of standpoints, which have 
come to hold good, analogously and equally, 
for other sections of humanity. 

And it is just the otherness in standpoint, 
in the midst of much that is like our own, that 
we need to discern before we judge, and from 
which, in contributing unit-wise to modify 
the thought of our day, we have most to learn. 



THE PALI TRADITION 17 

It is not the purpose of this little book to 
repeat the story of the origin and growth of 
Buddhism, as revealed in the life and teaching 
of him whom Buddhists and their books adore 
as its founder. This has been repeatedly 
told, in every language of Europe, and the 
telling of it adapted to all classes of readers. 
Most of us have read, in some form, the story 
of the wonderful noble of North-East India, 
known as Go'tama, the Buddha, or Siddhat- 
tha, or Sakyamuni, 1 and of the Church or 
community of religious brethren, and of lay- 
followers founded by him, and by him taught 
and guided for the last forty years of his entire- 
ly devoted life. A scholar here and there has 
sought to explain away the legend of the 
Buddha's renunciation and ministry as an 
Devolution and adaptation of that great group 
of fantasies entitled sun-myths. But since 
these explanations were attempted, the pile 
of historic evidence, archaeological and docu- 
mentary, has been ever growing, till at this 
time of day we may say that the life of 
Siddhattha Gotama of the Sakyas, as a 
historical fact, is at least as well demonstrated 
as that of the founder of any other religion 
of any antiquity. 

Draped and embroidered with myth and 
legend it is, no less than the story of every 

1 Siddhattha (Sanskrit, Siddhartha) Gotama = persona 
and family names; Sakyamuni, sage or saint of th& 
Sakyans, his clan ; Buddha = Awakened, Enlightened* 
Wise, a title equivalent to our Messiah or Christ, 



18 BUDDHISM 

such founder's life. But a personal mission 
extending over years, devolving on to and 
carried on by unbroken apostolic succession, 
till as an organized institution it was accepted 
for centuries as the paramount religious guide 
in the culture of India, is a stubborn thing 
to argue away. The acceptance of it as, 
in the main, historically true may show a less 
extravagant recourse to forced interpretations, 
and assumptions of improbable happenings, 
than the denial of it as such, 

Be that as it may, about the existence of a 
tradition of culture, religious, philosophical, 
ethical, handed down by that apostolic*, 
succession till this day in Southern Asia 
with remarkable purity and consistency, 
there can be no reasonable question whatever. 
Here too, it is true, a few sceptical minds have 
suggested that the documents attesting this 
unbroken tradition of events alleged to have 
happened in North-East India were not 
originally compiled noon a//rr, and /Aor, as 
they claim to have been, but were composed 
much later, in the earliest home of their 
creed's adoption, to wit, in Ceylon. They are 
therefore only the pious romancing of religious 
writers in the Buddhist monasteries of that 
island, working on a basis of stored-up runes 
and legends. 

It is true that the Pali Canon was not 
committed to writing till long after it had 
existed as an unwritten compilation, and till 
nearly two hundred years after Buddhism 



THE PALI TRADITION 19 

had been introduced into Ceylon. This last- 
named event took place in the year 241 B.C. ; 
the writing down of the Canon began about 
80 B.C. But it is well known that, in India, 
memory and oral tradition have ever been 
considered a safer method of protecting sacred 
doctrines from the introduction and perpetua- 
tion of errors than writing. We read, in the 
Pali Canon itself, of how the Brahmins in 
India met, in certain towns at stated intervals,, 
to con over their own unwritten hymns and 
prayers. And even the hearing of these was 
jealously guarded from certain castes. Even 
at the present day, it is we, and not the Hindus, 
who need the written letter oC their sacred 
literature. And it was an innovation when 
the Buddhists of Ceylon, fearing lest the 
brutal hand of war, in a small island, might 
at any moment crush out the existence of these 
splendidly trained memories, decided to make 
use of the secular art of writing, wherewith 
to register their mental stores. And so we 
read in the two classic chronicles of Ceylon : 

Tlio brethren wise of former days, they handed down by 

word of mouth 
The Tost of tho Throe Pit'akas, and all the Commentary 

too. 
frSwing how men wore perishing, the brethren then together 

camo, 
And that tho Faith might be maintained, made writing 

of tho 1-aw in Books. 

There is no evidence in any portion of this 
literature either in Pitaka or Commentary, 



20 BUDDHISM 

that this late recourse to writing was due to 
any mystery-mongering or esotericism. The 
Buddha, it is stated, said that his was not 
the hand of a teacher, closed now and again 
to withhold doctrines. The teaching was 
adapted to the listener: milk for babes, 
strong meat for those who were strong. But 
this was all. 

No one then who knew anything of these 
" memory-libraries," as a remarkable feature 
of past and present Indian culture, would 
judge the Pali books to be late, and quasi- 
spurious documents because, as written records, 
they came into being more than four centuries 
after their adherents claim that they were 
compiled. It is the fact that there is no 
surviving tradition of the Buddhist Churches 
in India taking similar steps, when their 
existence was threatened, that has helped to 
throw doubt on the authenticity of the Pali 
books as genuine North-East Indian compila- 
tions, put together some in the fourth, some 
in the third century, before Christ. 

The whole question of the history of Pali- 
classic literature is far from being settled. 
But that it is a question of deep interest for 
philology, for the history of writing, for the 
history of Indian culture, for the history of 
religion, is coming at last to be recognized. 
And it is they who most deeply study the 
literature who tend to be convinced that, in 
the Canon or Three Pitakas, we have no 
literary production composed far away, in 



THE PALI TRADITION 21 

space and time, from the centre of the move- 
ment of which it tells, but an accretion of 
works, compiled as the geologist would say, 
in situ, and at different dates, and at different 
centres, with variations, not in doctrines, but 
in degree of emphasis on this and that doctrine. 
The absence of symmetry and of system in its 
structure, its imperfectly coinciding repeti- 
tions, its variety of diction, all testify against 
its being wholly the work of a remote, late, 
provincial centre. The folk-lore with which 
it abounds is of that great stock which made 
its way out of North-West India into Europe. 
The similes with which it abounds are those 
of a sub-tropical continent and a great river- 
valley, rather than those of a tropical island. 
The scenes and places are North-East Indian, 
and may fairly be said to be described or 
alluded to as things seen. 

The history of Pali literature does not 
exhaust the question of Buddhist literature. 
But so far as we know, it does cover the 
history of the original Canon of Buddhist 
doctrine, considered as Canon. By Canon I 
mean any document or group of documents 
handed down, by persons acknowledged to be 
authoritative teachers, as containing the 
doctrine they teach, and, as to its contents, 
considered closed. In India itself have sur- 
vived a few early works by Buddhists, written 
in a transitional diction between the earlier 
Pali or Kosalan, and the ' encroaching later 
Sanskrit ; and a few works in purer Sanskrit. 



22 BUDDHISM 

But the great majority of Buddhist works, 
other than those that the Southern centres 
have preserved as Canonical, and have them- 
selves added, are to be found in China, trans- 
lated into Chinese. It is from re-translations 
of these into English, French or German 
and this is the great task before the newer 
generation of Buddhist scholars that we 
may expect to enrich our knowledge of classic 
Buddhist literature. From the Tibetan 
libraries too, when these become more access- 
ible, we may yet win materials. But we may 
not hope to discover there, or in China, a 
Buddhist literary tradition handed down in 
unbroken continuity from the third century 
B.C., like that of the Pali Canon in Ceylon. 
From the following century China began to 
incline to the teaching of Buddhism, and 
from then till the seventh century we read of 
scholars and pilgrims going or returning to 
China laden with Buddhist literature. But 
meanwhile from the parent trunk, represented 
by the teaching of the Pali Canon, there was 
growing out the great limb of divergent doc- 
trines and sects known as Maha-Yanist Bud- 
dhism. This the " Great Vehicle " first 
rivalled, then outgrew the mother Church, 
which became known among the daughters as 
Hina-Yana : Little (or Low) Vehicle. And it 
is these departures in Buddhism that appealed 
most effectively to the mission Churches in 
China, Korea, and Japan, and which became 
further differentiated how we do not yet 



THE PALI TRADITION 23 

know into the cult, so far removed from 
the canonical teaching, of the Lamaism of 
Tibet. 

It can hardly be reasonably doubted, in the 
absence of any historical testimony, that this 
great and growing division in Indian Buddhism 
as a religious institution must have greatly 
aided the hostile advance of Brahminism 
during the early centuries of the Christian era, 
Buddhism started from its birth as a religious 
movement among the laity, as distinct from 
that class called Brahmins, who possessed 
privileges from of old, to wit, a monopoly of 
erudition in sacred runes, hymns, doctrine, 
and spells, and of the right to celebrate priestly 
rites. Its first converts were drawn largely 
from the noble or warrior class (khatttycfs, 
Sanskrit : kshatriyds). But the majority 
among this class were unfit to appreciate the 
intellectual and ethical standpoints of the new 
doctrine. " Whence," the Buddha is said to 
ask a novice who had tried his 'prentice hand 
at teaching a young noble, " whence should 
Jayasena, born and bred in the pursuit of 
worldly and sensuous desires, know and see 
and realize that which can only be known 
and seen and realized by coming out of it all ? 
*Tis like two friends walking hand in hand 
into the country till, coming to a crag, one 
climbs up, the other stays below and calls : 
* What see you up there ? * And he hears : 
' I see up here a lovely garden, a lovely wood, 
a lovely landscape, a lovely lake.' He answers : 



24 BUDDHISM 

'That's impossible.' But the other drags 

him up. . . " l 

No creed needed so much as Buddhism to be 
left severely alone by political patronage, and to 
work out its slowly permeating and leavening 
effect undisturbed by ignorance in high places. 
But just as, in the Protestant ileforma- 
tion, with the assumption by civil rulers 
of states of the headship over the reformed 
Churches, there went along with it a great 
advance of organization, discipline, and pro- 
paganda in the Roman Church ; so in India> 
under Asoka, the development of the khat- 
tiyas into the new imperialism of civil and 
(virtually) religious headship over India, was 
met by a corresponding consolidation of 
Brahmin tradition and influence. Gods and 
heavens and beliefs as to the soul and its 
destiny had undergone no little modification, 
since first their Aryan ancestors brought the 
Vedic hymns into India* Nevertheless the 
religious ritual upheld by the Brahmins met 
a chronic popular demand relatively ignored 
by Buddhism, It gave ceremonial dignity 
and sacramental sanction to all the vital 
features of physical and social life. Hardly 
may any religion endure as solely sufficient, 
that does not recognize and enhance the 
ordinary life of man in all its aspects. 

If in the long run its political allies proved 
bad friends, Indian Buddhism, in the philoso- 
phical aberration of its degeneracy, went far 

* Majjhima-Nik&ya, *> ^ / 



THE PALI TRADITION 25 

to surrender itself into the hands of its foes. 
It abandoned its own original trend of 
philosophy, and went off to a side-track which 
has figured so greatly in such metaphysic as. 
this country has produced the question of 
the reality of the external world. And thus,, 
as Dr. Walleser has recently pointed out, 1 by 
over-emphasizing the negation of that reality, 
it played up to what we should now call the 
Absolutist position of its Vedntist opponents, 
namely, that the only reality behind the 
illusions which our senses bring us, is the 
soul in man and in the universe, Dr. Walleser 
holds that the consequent victory of Brah- 
minism over Buddhism was thus won by 
intellect and logic. And he is right by the 
extent to which the Buddhist schools in India 
were unfaithful to their earlier philosophical 
position. 

To this we may return later. We need not 
here dwell on the story, told elsewhere, in 
manuals on Buddhism, of the decline and 
expulsion of that which once, as cult and 
culture, was paramount in India, gathering 
under its wing the learning and the science, 
the philosophy and the literature, the ethics 
and the social melioration of its age. The 
evidence as to episodes of persecution at the 
hands of certain rajas and Brahmins in the 
days when Buddhism was going under, is so 
far not firmly based. Equally scanty as yet 
is our knowledge of the decline and fall of 
1 Der Wtere Ved&nta, Heidelberg, 1910. 



26 BUDDHISM 

the Asokan empire, of the extension of 
Buddhism to Kashmir under the patronage of 
the Scythian king, Kanishka, or of its shrink- 
age elsewhere in India back to its earlier 
centres in and around Magadha, the nucleus 
of Asoka's dominion. Were it not for the 
invaluable records left by the three famous 
Chinese Buddhist pilgrims who visited the 
chief seats of Buddhist, that is, Indian culture 
Fa-Hien in A.D. 400, Sung Yun in A.D. 518, 
and Yuan-Chwang in A.D. 629-648 the dark- 
ness would be yet greater than it is. When 
the Buddhist and Jain literature of this 
period i.e., of the centuries just before, and 
the first four after the beginning, of our era 
shall have emerged from their chrysalis-state 
of manuscript ; when archaeological research 
shall be carried on in a way befitting our rule 
in India, we may at length be able to construct 
something like a continuous history. 

If i have alluded, even in the barest outline, 
to the historical fact of the waning of Buddhist 
paramountcy in India, it was in order the better 
to limit and simplify the scope of our inquiries 
in the following pages. The reader should 
never forget that to treat of " Buddhism " is 
just as complex and many-sided as to treat 
of " Christism," or, as we have selected to say, 
of " Christianity." The latter subject admits 
of very different treatment according to the 
aspect selected, the period of time, the centre 
of development, and so on. To the best of 
my belief, no European writer has ever been 



THE PALI TRADITION 2 T 

called upon to deal, even in outline, with the 
whole subject of Christianity or Christendom 
in a book of this compass. It is equally 
impracticable to do so in the case of Buddhism, 
By the foregoing the readi-r will see that* 
under that title, a book might be written with 
equal pertinence either on the story of the incep- 
tion of the Buddhist movements and its 
legends, on the Buddhism of the Pali Canon, 
on the history of that Canon, on the Maha- 
Yanist evolution, on schools of Buddhist 
philosophy, on Buddhist India, on Trans- 
Indian Buddhism, and so forth. 

It is true that these subj ects are not mutually 
independent. As with Christianity so here, 
but one Founder is acknowledged, and but one 
and the same cradle land. And that which 
we have seen called the Lower Vehicle, but 
which should, with greater historical propriety, 
be called by its more ancient name of the 
Theravada, or School of the Elders or Apostles, 
is by all admitted to be the parent stem. No 
Maha-Yanist, however, and no Lamaist would 
concede that any treatment entitled " Bud- 
dhism " was adequate, that did not show the 
history of the doctrine as a progressive inspira- 
tion, and their own cult as the expanded and 
perfect flower of the parent gospel. 

And more: the range of the subject of 
Buddhism is not to be confined to the cult and 
its adherents. India could not for a time have 
so far adopted that cult that we may speak of 
Buddhist India, and of Buddhist thought and 



28 BUDDHISM 

culture, as temporarily Indian thought and 
culture, without being indelibly modified by it. 
The influence of Buddhist religion and philo- 
sophy on the post-Buddhistic Indian litera- 
ture is well marked. In the words of St. Paul 
(1 Cor. xiii., 11) when the Indian was a child, 
he understood as a child, he reasoned as. a 
child. But when, under the influence of 
Buddhism, he became for a while a man, he put 
away youthful things, at least to this extent, 
that the graver and more virile concepts of 
Theravada Buddhism may be heard rever- 
berating through the later devotional and 
philosophical literature of India, even of 
schools opposed to Buddhism. Very forcibly 
was it said by the late Edmund Hardy: 
" Buddhism wasted away after rival sects 
had appropriated everything from it that they 
could make any use of." (Indische Religions- 
geschichte, 101.) 

It will now be seen that some selection in 
this vast subject is necessary, if the slender 
bulk of this volume is to contain anything less 
superficial than a general outline of the whole. 
And in selecting, for this reason, and in choos- 
ing, as I have done, to present some considera- 
tions on the philosophical concepts contained 
in the Pali Canon and subsequently developed, 
it is chiefly for these reasons : Based on that 
Canon, a philosophical tradition has been, 
in the Buddhist countries of Southern Asia, 
evolved and has survived, as a living vehicle 
of culture, to the present day. Even then, if 



THE PALI TRADITION 29 

we find no complete and finished " system " 
of philosophy in those old books of the 
Theravada, we should find what is of greater 
interest than any such system. We should 
find either the more tentative output of 
original fetches of the mind, or, at least, the 
adopted concepts of still older strata of thought. 
It is not the pioneers of intellectual expansion 
who give us systems, but they whose fate it 
was to be, as the Greeks said, After-born 
(epigonoi). But in either case, in the history 
of human ideas, it cannot be anything but 
deeply interesting to consider those ideas which 
have served as the roots of a living philoso- 
phical tradition over 2,000 years old. Our 
own is of about the same age, for did we not 
inherit it and assimilate it from Greek sources ? 
In and through that tradition we have learnt 
to regard life and the world and our fellow- 
creatures and the human mind. But are there 
other fundamental standpoints from which we 
might have come to regard them ? 

We are apt to think there are not. We 
judge that, because the bed-rock of man's 
animal life is the same in every one : life, 
death, sex, the passions he will not vary in 
his fundamental beliefs and judgments. But 
these, in so far as they are reasoned, represent 
the accumulated heritage, bequeathed to the 
whole world, or a section of it, by its most 
gifted minds the minds of the creators of 
points of view, and of their " after-born " 
and accepted. Now it may happen that one 



30 BUDDHISM 

section of humanity may not have accepted 
some such fresh point of view. Some other 
new synthesis may have extruded it, or the 
section was not ripe for it. The new view 
of things may have been, in the judgment of 
another section of humanity, or of the same 
section, elsewhere in time, sounder, truer, 
than its then successful rivals. But the 
" conjuncture," as the Germans say, passed 
by. The point of view, if it had been accepted, 
or if it had been put forward elsewhere among 
mankind, might have modified the whole trend 
of any one tradition of thought to an indefinite 
degree. 

What actually has happened is that, in the 
first place, the general view of things under- 
lying this and that group of human beliefs 
has not developed along one and the same 
line. The differences may be not so much in 
the notions conceived, as in the emphasis or 
proportion of weight attached to them. This 
difference becomes a very telling factor in 
the religious or philosophical superstructure. 
Secondly, these underlying notions themselves 
are not the same everywhere and at all times. 

Now that the Pali Pitakas let alone the 
tradition directly inherited from them can 
claim to show any originality in philosophical 
departure, that they can, on any ground, 
claim to occupy a place in the general history 
of philosophy, save at best as a degenerate 
offshoot of earlier syntheses this is not yet 
allowed. " The more we advance in Central 



THE PALI TRADITION 81 

Asiatic research,'* wrote the late Professor IL 
Pischel, " the clearer it appears that, for a 
great portion of the Orient, Buddhism was 
not less a vehicle of culture than Christianity 
has boon for the Occident. While Buddhism, 
lie goes on to say, " as a religion gains (by that 
research) ever in value, as a philosophy it sinks 
ever deeper. With Gnrbe and Jacobi I am 
convinced thai Buddha as a philosopher is 
entirely dependent on Kapila and Patafijaii." 
"That is to say, such philosophical concepts as 
we may meet with in the Buddhist doctrines 
of the Pali Canonfor Pischel admits that 
those arc the oldest, if only " the canon of one 
Buddhist sect," and uses them as his authori- 
ties an* derived from works attributed to two 
philosophers so named The works in question 
are the Sankhya Aphorisms and the Yogusiilra 
also a collection of aphorisms. Of the two 
thinkers, Kapila and Patanjali, as historical 
characters, there is no sound surviving 
evidence, and the works in question appear 
enshrined in commentaries, the earliest of 
which are a good deal subsequent to the 
Christian era. But tradition ascribes to 
the original utterances considerably greater 
antiquity. (See note, p. 250.) 

Let this suffice by way of introduction. My 
aim here is not to controvert, but only to 
expound a few salient philosophical stand- 
points, which, whether they be derived or 
original, an; involved in the ethical views and 
methods advocated in the Pali Canon, 



CHAPTER II 

DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 

WHEN a Burmese, Singhalese or Siamese 
scholar, in matters religious and philosophical, 
discourses or writes, not in order to exhort 
or edify, but to analyze, define, classify and 
explain, he is said to be talking or writing not 
Dhamma, but Abhidhamma. 

Now Dhamma, more familiar perhaps to 
us in its Vedic and Sanskrit form, Dharma, 
is an ancient Indian word, with the very wide 
meaning of Right, Good, Justice, Moral 
Law. The notion even came to be personified 
as a god among the gods. Etymologically, 
the word is of identical origin with our 
" form," the common Aryan root, according to 
Dr. Skeat, being ' dhar. 5 And ' dhar/ to quote 
further, means to support, sustain, maintain, 
hold, keep. We might therefore identify 
Dhamma with " good form," did this expres- 
sion apply to higher matters than propriety 
or good taste. As signifying then "good 
form," raised, as mathematicians say, to a 
higher power, Dhamma implies that view or 
procedure which is, as we say, according 
to conscience, and constituting a more or less 



DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 3$ 

recognized standard, guiding rule, or norm* 
It is also translated by Paliyists as The Ideal, 
Truth, Law, Right, System or Doctrine, accord- 
ing to the context. Every religious or ethical 
teacher of ancient India had some " Dhamma" 
to propound. " What, sir," some teacher 
is now and again recorded as asking the 
Buddha " is your Dhamma by which you 
so train your disciples, that they, having 
found consolation, recognize it as their ulti- 
mate support and fundamental principle of 
religious life ? " 

" Fundamental " is, by the commentator 
on this particular passage, paraphrased by 
ancient or pristine. And indeed this is 
never lost sight of in the Pali books : that the 
Buddha is expressing not only his own con- 
victions, the fruit of intense effort and 
self-communing, but also something that was, 
and had in the infinite past been, and would 
ever be, objectively and constantly valid 
and true for any and every human society, 
nay, something that was cosmic law, eternal, 
necessary, omnipresent, whether discerned 
or not. And the function and hall-mark of a 
Buddha was not to devise, or create a new 
Dhamma, but to rediscover, recreate and re- 
vive that ancient norm. His it was to bring 
about its renascence as a cult in the lives, 
and apply it to the special needs, of his own age 
and its posterity. This, in words ascribed to 
him, is how the Buddha viewed his mission: 
" As a man, brethren, wandering in the 



34 BUDDHISM 

forest, in the mountain jungle, might see an 
ancient path, an ancient road, trodden by 
men of an earlier age; and following it, 
might discover an ancient township, an 
ancient palace, the habitation of men of an 
earlier age, surrounded by park and grove and 
lotus-pool and walls, a delightful spot ; and 
that man were to go back, and announce to 
the king or his minister : Behold, sir, and 
learn what I have seen ! And, having told 
him, he were to invite the king to rebuild 
that city, and that city were to become 
anon flourishing and populous and wealthy 
once more : Even so, brethren, have I seen 
an ancient Path, an ancient Road, trodden by 
Buddhas of a bygone age . . . the which 
having followed, I understand life, and its 
coming to be and its passing away. And 
thus understanding, I have declared the 
same to the fraternity and to the laity, so that 
the holy life flourishes and is spread abroad 
once more, well propagated among men J>1 

And thus of course says every great reform- 
er: "In the beginning was the Word" 
..." The words that I speak are not 
mine." Confucius too follows the Christ and 
the Buddha : " My work is to indicate rather 
than to originate. 5 ' 

Dhamma, then, is of the common ancient 

Indian stock of ideas, peculiar as a term to no 

creed, and only immensely heightened and 

deepened by the Buddhists. For to them, as 

1 Sutta-Pit'bka,, Samyvtta-Nilcaya, " The City,* 1 



DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 35 

meaning the normal, necessary and eternal 
order and law of all moral or spiritual things, 
it stood in place of a theodicy, or cosmos 
created and carried on by a first and a final 
cause. Never for them a deity, it was the 
Necessity behind the god, to which ^Eschylus, 
at more or less the same epoch, was pointing 
in his " Prometheus." As gravitation exists, 
whether Newtons arise to discern its action 
or not, so for Buddhists does Dhamma exist 
and act, whether the current age bring forth 
a Buddha or not. 

Let us leave the matter for the moment at 
that. I may seem to be loading the word 
with a heavier import than is given to it by 
Pali scholars, for instance, than that given by 
Rhys Davids in Buddhist India (p. 292), 
where he likens it to that " good form," 
which a man of right feeling will judge he 
should at any moment conform to. But I 
am not proposing to supersede this purely 
ethical aspect of Dhamma at all. In the 
passage referred to, the writer is discussing 
the use of Dhamma in the Asokan Edicts, 
and " the way in which it came to be used 
as it was in India, in Asoka's time," This, 
he writes, is not " Law," which is frequently 
used for Dhamma, Here I am not concerned 
so much with the ethical aspect, as with that 
background of philosophical postulates which, 
uttered or unexpressed, lies at the back of our 
most solemn judgments about life and the 
whole of things. And just as our use of 



36 BUDDHISM 

u law " may vary, from mere by-law to a 
natural sequence of the universe, so did the 
Buddhist Indian " in the street," for whom the 
Edicts were intended, and Buddhaghosa the 
scholar, differ in the significance which 
Dhamma could bear for them. 

Dhamma, Tao, Anangke (necessity), Aga- 
thon (Plato's " Good ") :~these all, with 
various shades of meaning and emphasis, 
represent as many utmost fetches of the early 
human intellect to conceive an impersonal 
principle, or order of things prior to, and 
more constant than, the administrative deity 
representing it. To ask of the systems 
developing severally those four notions : 
If there, who put it there ? "is to invert 
their point of view. It is contrary to Budd- 
hism to see in Dhamma the expression of a 
prior Consciousness. Buddhism is content to 
trace in human consciousness the evolution 
of cosmic norm or Dhamma. Herein we 
have come on to a fundamental concept 
in Buddhist philosophy. 

But if Dhamma is a term common to 
Indian thought, Abhidhamma seems to be a 
term exclusively used by Buddhists. And 
for them, Abhidhamma, meaning literally 
beyond, or ultra-Dhamma, covers all study 
of theory as such, and of logical method. Just 
as Aristotle found the term physics ready to 
hand, but was himself the involuntary cause, 
if not the actual circulator of the term meta- 
physics, so does the term Abhidhamma start 



DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 37 

with Buddhism. That is to say, with Indian 
culture when this was Buddhist. The earliest 
expression of this side of that culture as yet 
known to be extant, is contained in the seven 
books of the Pali Pitaka called the Abhi- 
dhamma-Pitaka. (Other seven books on 
Abhidhamma are those of the Sarvastivadins 
a school that split off early from the original 
stem of Buddhism. These are preserved in 
Chinese translations. Their titles and matter 
are different, but in method and scope they 
appear, from the slender outline of them as 
yet published, 1 to be akin to the Pali books. 
In the near future they will become more 
accessible to us.) These seven books show 
that their authors were conversant with a 
logic of terms and propositions, of definition 
and division, that is like and also unlike the 
methods we have inherited from the Greeks. 
And these books of applied logic and method, 
formed together probably with the oldest 
and cognate works of the Jain school, the 
basis of the elaborate logic of mediaeval India. 
" The real founders of the mediaeval logic, " 
writes Professor Vidyabhusana, of Calcutta, 
"were the Buddhists." That logic "was 
almost entirely in the hands of the Jainas 
and Buddhists " (Mediceval School of Indian 
Logic), although in the more ancient Abhi- 
dhamma Pitaka we have the logic applied 
only, and not yet systematized in text-books. 

1 By Professor Takakuau, Journal PSli Text Society, 
1905. 



38 BUDDHISM 

In fact the somewhat superficial acquaint- 
ance with these curious old books, which is all 
that any of us in Europe can yet claim to 
have, would almost lead us to suppose that 
they themselves served to some extent as 
manuals of logical method. 

To a certain extent they select from, and 
restate, doctrines contained in the doctrinal, 
or Sutta, Pitaka. Besides this "they define 
terms, and formulate propositions to a greater 
degree of precision. They also investigate 
a vast number of cases where they apply their 
formulas. I may not in these brief limits 
stay to illustrate, and will add only this : 

In the Abhidhamma-Pitaka we see the 
Pegasus of Indian imagination working for 
the first time in harness. Nowhere as in India 
do we see human phantasy so elastic and 
exuberant, sporting in time, space, and the 
infinite ; and nowhere else as in this Theravada 
literature appears such determined effort, not 
wholly to crush all its airy notions, but to 
curb, regulate and systematize them. Pega- 
sus is yoked, but he retains his iridescent 
wings. The gods are as such become of no 
account. But they persist as happy, reborn 
human beings, longer lived, but no less imper- 
manent. Any one who had the grit to practise 
the system of intense rapt self -hypnotic con- 
templation called Jhana, and was sufficiently 
pure in heart thereby to attain abhinna, 
or supernormal insight, could for himself see 
beyond this one plane of life. Were there 



DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 39 

not many saintly men and women who had 
testified thereto ? And what they had told 
and taught had to be exploited and regu- 
lated in all this body of terms and formulae. 
Hence the Buddhist Indian, thinking in 
harness, is by no means so confined in 
range of positive materials as the modern 
European. 

None the less, Abhidhamma was an instru- 
ment for regulating the mind. According 
to the greatest of the scholastic commentators 
of the fifth century A.B., Buddhaghosa, it 
was calculated to check those excesses in 
thought away from the norm, which were 
shown, by the Buddha, to lead to loss of 
mental balance, craziness, insanity. And 
this it was sought to carry out, first, by a 
thorough-going definition and determination 
of all terms used in doctrinal tenets. Hereby a 
mutual consistency of denotation and conno- 
tation was secured. Secondly, by enunciating 
those tenets in a fixed form, and co-ordinating 
them mutually, where desirable. Thirdly, 
by reducing all possible heterodox positions 
to an absurdity. Fourthly, and herein lies 
the chief, not to say the only direction in 
which the Abhidhamma-Pitaka has positively 
contributed to early Buddhist philosophy 
by a study of the most general relations con- 
ceivable among phenomena. These are reck- 
oned as twenty-four in number, some of which 
we should subsume, or include under others, 
perhaps because in English dress their real 



40 BUDDHISM 

meaning is not always clear. Here are some 
of them : 

A phenomenon may be related to another 
by way of " condition, object, influence, co- 
existence, contiguity, reciprocity, succession," 
. . and so on. 

And all this body of mental discipline, be 
it remembered, was taught without books. 
The style of the books themselves never 
lets us forget it, and they make shockingly 
bad reading in consequence. Often, the only 
way used to aid the burdened memory is an 
orderly but endless repetition of a verbal 
framework, wherein only one term of a series 
Is varied at a time. We may smile and 
yawn over the results, and we may talk 
pityingly of epigonoi and scholastic pedantry. 
Yet the aims were lofty, and the execution, 
in the absence of visible registering apparatus, 
extraordinary. I am even tempted to wonder 
tow far the exaggeration of the Indian tem- 
perament and the temperance of the Greek 
temperament were due to the absence and 
presence respectively, during the florescence 
of each, of the fully written thought 

Let us agree to see in Abhidhamma, both 
in the Pitaka so-called and out of it, Buddhist 
mental and moral science, based on the 
Dhamma of the Pali Pitakas, and go on to 
consider it as tradition. Discounting the 
changed skies above it, for as we saw, the 
tradition of Dhamma and Abhidhamma is an 
<exile, it may rank among the most venerable 



DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 41 

survivals of early culture. Assuming that 
Gotama Buddha died in the fifth century, 
B.C., and that the Canon started, grew, and 
finally took its present shape during the course 
of the two following centuries, we see, in 
that Canon and the South Asian literature 
that has accumulated round it, a continuous 
doctrinal succession, first oral, then both oral 
and literary, of approximately 2,200 years, 
if not more. More perhaps in the case of 
parts of the first two Pitakas ; parts of the 
Sutta-Pitaka and the Abhidhamma-Pitaka 
being certainly not so old. We shall not, 
therefore, be very wide of the mark if we 
consider the unification of Indian learning 
under Buddhism to be not many decades 
removed from the unification of Greek learn- 
- ing under Aristotle. 

Now there is this salient difference in the 
continuity of Buddhist Abhidhamma as com- 
pared with that of Graeco-Christian philo- 
sophy ; namely, that for us the thoughts of 
Plato, Aristotle, and their forerunners run 
alongside the current of our Christian doctrine 
like two streams that will not wholly mingle. 
They have been handed down partly by the 
Christian Church, partly in spite of its earlier 
efforts. The contentions in the early Chris- 
tian Church as to how far Greek philosophy 
might wisely be annexed and taught, form 
interesting matter for the historian. 

But for Buddhists, the method called Abhi- 
dhamma has sprang from the very tree itself 



42 BUDDHISM 

of the Dhamma. It is for them of no pagan 
stock, admitted at first on sufferance by the - 
doctors of a faith come otherwhence to birth 
and power. To realize the unity in the 
tradition of the Theras, we must try to con- 
ceive the vista that Christian philosophy 
would present, could we transpose the first 
centuries Anno Domini and the last centuries 
preceding them, could we make Socrates 
and Plato to have been trained at the feet of 
St. Peter or St. Paul, or could we make a 
Christian Abhidhammika of Aristotle. Not 
then would the Christian poet, who called him 
" Master of them that know," have consigned 
his spirit to a neutral after-world in Limbo's 
tremulous air for having, all unknowing, 
" not rightly worshipped God." (Dante's 
Inferno, c. iv.) 

Abhidhamma has, as we know, long ceased 
to be taught in the Palestine or Holy Land of 
Buddhism. Of the chief centres where it was 
successively taught, Jetavana's site lies re- 
vealed in utter ruin, and over Nalanda's 
university, swept away by fire and sword, the 
little ploughs scratch the obliterating soil. 
But the torch of the Theras, handed on by 
missionary ardour to centres of civilization 
in Ceylon and Further India, has furnished 
a fire from those Indian mother-altars that 
has never become extinct. In the viharas 
of Ceylon, Siam and Burma, the Pali Canon is 
and has been taught as authoritative from 
its introduction till now. And it is remark- 



DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 43 

able, when we compare palm-leaf Pali MSS., 
written in the different characters of each of 
these countries, to see how relatively few, and 
especially how doctrinally negligeable are the 
mutual discrepancies in the text. To the 
doctrines as set forth in the Canon, the mediae- 
val and modern works on Abhidhamma lines 
loyally and piously adhere. 

This was perhaps only to be expected, 
since all greatly divergent thought had severed 
itself early from the parent stock. On the 
other hand, it must be remembered that this 
residual unity of tradition has been maintained 
without any restriction affecting liberty or life 
imposed by a presiding authority. Could any 
other surviving tradition of so long standing 
say as much ? 

But this continuous orthodoxy has by no 
means excluded a quietly evolving vitality. 
It has resembled, not the dead waters of a 
canal, but the slow and gentle meandering of 
a river of the plains. Our knowledge of 
Abhidhamma literature is as yet deplorably 
deficient. But we know enough at least of 
the older portion of it to see a considerable 
advance in analytic power. Of the three 
works extant known to be prio to, because 
quoted by, Buddhaghosa prior, that is, to 
the fifth century A.D., the one accessible to 
English readers is " The Questions of King 
Milinda." In the learned Nagasena's replies, 
even though these are adapted to the relatively 
untrained intelligence of the King, we note a 



44 BUDDHISM 

marked psychological progress, and a fine 
deftness of philosophical exposition. To this 
we may return. The psychology in the works 
of Buddhaghosa himself shows a still more 
noteworthy evolution, 

By his time the philosophical culture of 
Buddhist India was expressing itself in Sans- 
krit. In the literature of that culture there is 
ample testimony, in such works as survive, to 
reveal developments in logic and in meta- 
physic. But Buddhaghosa belonged to the 
Pali tradition of the Theravadins, and wrote 
in Ceylon. And in making accessible the 
works of him and his successors, much work 
yet remains to be done. The brief summary 
of philosophy called A Compen^um of 
Abhidhamma, which has for many centuries, 
together with a great accretion of comment- 
arial works, formed the nucleus of instruction 
in southern Buddhist centres till the present 
day, shows that attempts at philosophical 
synthesis were ever in progress, even though 
no great constructive intellect made any strik- 
ing departure. In the present decade the 
philosophic world of the Burmese monasteries 
is much engaged by the innovations in 
traditional lines of thought put forward by the 
Thera, Ledi Sadaw (i.e., Professor Ledi). 

Better knowledge of mediaeval and modern 
Buddhist literature may show that the 
different countries cultivating it Ceylon, 
Burma, Siam, to go no further may, by 
national differences in culture, diction and 



DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 45 

environment, have each acquired specific 
characteristics of doctrine. Such divergence 
will, however, have been held in check, first, 
by the carefully preserved unity in the canoni- 
cal literature, secondly, by the great work of 
Buddhaghosa, whose " Way of Purity " (soon 
to become accessible to English readers) and 
commentaries, have served as a causeway 
of orthodoxy; thirdly, by the practice, 
similar to that which obtained among our- 
selves in the Middle Ages even more than now, 
of Buddhist students internationalizing their 
resorts of learning. As Latin was our lingua 
franca among travelling scholars, so has Pali 
ever been theirs. Pali is still the language in 
which most Abhidhamma books are written. 
And a better acquaintance, I repeat, with 
those books, old and new, will reveal such 
variation, due to race and environment, 
as these checks have not sufficed to prevent. 
No doubt, on the other hand, a tradition 
which has lived so long immune from shocks 
and strains from without, let alone from 
serious schisms from within, is scarcely one 
that can be expected to evolve and expand 
in adequate response to the progressive birth- 
throes of the human mind. Its long slumber 
as to any further missionizing efforts of its 
own, its long immunity from contact with aliei* 
thought, must involve it in some experiences 
of Rip van Winkle's, when the sleeper comes 
forth. We shall expect to find, side by side 
with those great traits that made early 



46 BUDDHISM 

Buddhism immortal, the clinging nimbus of 
child-like and uncritical fancies and beliefs. 
We do find them both in the literature of the 
past and in the current tradition. But the 
fact that the long life-span of Buddhism 
presents this composite figure of features and 
nimbus, detracts not an iota from its interest 
for us its interest for the history of philosophy 
and its interest for the thinkers who are 
making the philosophy of to-morrow. 

For consider a moment the exceeding great 
historical interest that lies in the fact and 
nature of an ancient unbroken tradition. We 
of Europe move along the orbit of a philoso- 
phical tradition that we like to trace back some 
twenty-five centuries to Thales, mid-way 
between east and west. This we call " the " 
Greek philosophical tradition. But it has not 
only assimilated streams from non-Hellenistic 
sources ; it is the fittest survivor among many 
wrecks, as are no doubt all other traditions. 
" Fittest " perhaps because it throve more 
easily than others, amid the varying myths 
and conventions of the social soil it grew upon. 

Among those wrecks of thought, we may 
count the philosophic syntheses of Herakleitus, 
and of Leukippus and Demokritus. Their 
works have perished. Their thoughts were 
not all drowned, but they were, so to speak, 
hauled out of the sea on to the decks of the 
Academic and Stoan Armadas. In plain 
words, they live for us chiefly because Plato 
and Aristotle quoted them, as good stimulators 



DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 47 

for argument and refutation. Even if the 
sand-buried ruins of Egyptian villas had re- 
vealed to us anything so precious as the great 
Diakosmos by Demokritus, or the untitled 
discourses of Herakleitus, we should have but 
the beginnings of that whereof some crumbs 
only have survived. We should have no 
consecutive tradition. 

But in the Dhamma we have implicit from 
the first, and, in Abhidhamma teaching we 
have, made gradually explicit, a synthesis 
on all fours with the universal flux of Hera- 
kleitus and with Demokritus's theory of 
natural causation. Hence the enhanced 
degree of interest for us in the Buddhist 
philosophical tradition as maintained by the 
Iheravfida. It is not only of a relatively 
pure and independent pedigree ; it is also the 
Eastern counterpart of certain notable syn- 
theses which, originating between East and 
West, were never, in the West, made the 
headstone of the corner in philosophy's 
temple. Modern science, which now sways 
philosophy to and fro, is no doubt in line with 
the thought of both Herakleitus and Demo- 
kritus, and is their ultimate vindicator. But 
science, bent on present and future vision, 
leaves her tradition to the care of the historical 
philosopher. He has to explain how she 
arose from a soil which had suffered Demo- 
kritus's works to perish, while in Buddhist 
soil, with the exception of a notable medical 
and psychological culture, she failed to grow* 



CHAPTER III 

TEE NOEM AS THEORY OF NO SOUL 

WE have so far gained some idea of the history 
and scope of that Pali Buddhism to a limited 
study of which these pages are confined. We 
must now come to closer grips with those 
inductions and ideals in this Pali Buddhism, 
which will one day, despite the slenderly 
based criticism that would rob them of all 
originality, be considered as a positive con- 
tribution to the history of philosophy. 

It was asserted in the preceding chapter, that 
Dhamma (or Norm) implied, for the philoso- 
phical Buddhist, an impersonal eternal order 
of things, according to which all things, 
animate and inanimate, gods included, lived, 
moved and had their being. This is not the 
Buddhist' s usual way of describing it. Never- 
theless in the oldest books the conviction is 
there as a latent, undefined but most vital 
postulate, and is borne in upon us as we read* 
We find, namely, (1) a universe of many worlds, 
without first cause, going on from everlasting 
to everlasting, by alternating integration and 
disintegration ; (2) this cosmic procedure as 
orderly, both as to physical, psychical and 
48 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 49 

moral nature ; (3) no caprice, chance or chaos 
existing anywhere in this cosmos. 

When Buddhist-Indian thought had become 
sufficiently analytic and self-conscious to 
distinguish and formulate its philosophical 
postulates, it analyzed the implications of 
the term Dhamma. We know this analysis 
through the pen of Buddhaghosa, who does 
not claim originality in the matter. Dhamma, 
he wrote, 1 signifies (1) The Doctrine, as a 
verbal, or literary composition to be learnt 
and mastered (pariyatti)* (2) Condition or 
cause (hetu). This is illustrated by the 
quotation : " Dhamma-analysis is knowledge 
concerning conditions." 2 (3) Right, or right- 
eousness. This is illustrated by the verse : 

Not of the like result are right and wrong (dhamma, 

a-dhamma), 
Wrong leads to baleful, right, to happy doom. 8 

(4) phenomenon. The Pali word here used is 
nissatta-nijjwatd, i.e., non-entity or non- 
substrate, and non-soul-ness. This is illus- 
trated elsewhere by the quotations : " When 
mental phenomena arise in consciousness." 
c He contemplating the nature of pheno- 
mena." 4 
In this fourfold explication of the term 

1 Commentary on the Dhamma-Sangani ; also that on 
the Dhamtnapada. The identity of the author of the 
latter work with Buddhaghosa is doubtful. 

2 Vvblianga (Abhidhamma-Pitaka). 

3 Pw&ns of the Brethren (Sutta-Pitaka). 

* Psychological Ethics, 33 [121] ; Majjhima-NiMya, i. 61. 



50 BUDDHISM 

Dhamma we may see the whole of Theravada 
Buddhist philosophy in a nutshell. In the 
beloved person of the Buddha were enshrined 
all that Divine Presences, wisdom stooping 
from on high, transcendent love and powei 
mighty and willing to save, the secret ol 
genius knowing and drawing the hearts oi 
men, the ideal Superman, have availed and 
wrought for humanity in other creeds. In 
the institution of an organized Fraternity 
and a loyal Laity the Order giving, the 
Laity giving also, but believing it received yet 
more than it gave the slow evolution oJ 
solidarity took the best shape practicable at 
the time. Thirdly and lastly, the notion oJ 
Dhamma included, and stood for, the fact and 
growth of ideas, fruit of the mind and yet 
condition and fashioner of minds ; inter- 
preted and transmitted by men, and yet thai 
wherein and whereby they " lived and movec 
and had their being." And insight intc 
Dhamma, we read in the Sutta-Pitaka. 
meant the discernment of an eternal, orderly, 
conditioned sequence of things, the which, 
when thoroughly grasped, swept out of a man's 
thoughts all speculation on the beginning oi 
life or its ultimate end, or on its present nature 
as entity or soul l 

Let us now beat out a little more fully eadt 
of these four aspects of the word Dhamma 
and thereby test the statement that they giv< 
us together the kernel of Buddhism. 
1 Samyutta-NiMya, il 25-27, 60. 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 51 

And let us take the last aspect first, namely 
that Dhamma might stand for phenomenon 
especially anything that we say is mental 
object, or state of mind. How does it 
belong to the essence of Buddhist thought 
to emphasize the fact that in mental states 
we have phenomena, and not anythincr 
behind phenomena, such as soul or ego, or 
substance? For Buddhist thought is very 
emphatic indeed about it, and makes this 
rejection of a something which, as the subject 
of mental states, does not come and go with 
them, but persists unchanging and unending, 
its first and last philosophic denial. So 
much so, that it has been accused of being 
simply a system of negation, without any 
positive structure whatever. 

Quotations might be multiplied by the 
dozen, but I give one or two that best re- 
present the mass of such rejections of the 
substantialist position. To Vaj'ira, a Sister 
of the Order, these verses are ascribed : 

MAKA. 

Who hath this being (satta) fashioned ? Where ia 
The maker of this being ? Whence hath it sprung ? 
Where doth this being cease and pass away ? 

VAJIBA, 

" Being ? n Why dost thou harp upon that word I 
'Mong false opinions, Mara, art thou strayed. 
This a mere bundle of formations is. 
Therefrom no " being " mayest thou obtain, 
For e'en as, when the factors are arranged, 
By the word " chariot " is the product known, 



52 BUDDHISM 

So doth our usage covenant to say 

" A being " when the Aggregates are there, 1 

Again Ananda, the companion of the Bud- 
dha, asks him : " What is meant, lord, by the 
phrase, c _the world is empty ? ' " " That it is 
empty, Ananda, of a self, or of anything of 
the nature of a self. And what is it that is 
thus empty ? The five seats of the five senses, 
and the mind, and the feeling that is related 
to mind : all these are void of a self or of 
anything that is self-like." 2 

Again to the listening brethren or bhikkhus : 
" Since neither self nor aught belonging 
to self 5 brethren, can really and truly exist, the 
view which holds that this [I] who am * world/ 
who am c self,' shall hereafter live permanent, 
persisting, eternal, unchanging, yea, abide 
eternally : is not this utterly and entirely a 
foolish doctrine ? " 3 

This denial of a permanent self or soul (attd) 
in any living being whatever was extended, 
logically enough, to the whole hierarchy of 
gods or superhuman beings, wherewith the 
Indian heavens, not to say earth and all regions, 
are so liberally populated. All were " living 
creatures," and life in all its manifestations, 
in the very nature of it, was impermanent and 
subject to change and to suffering. Thus we 

1 Psalms of the Sisters, p. 190. 
8 Sawyutta-NiMya, iv. 54. [Aggregates or groups : 
constituents, mental and bodily, of a person.] 
8 Majjhima-NiMya (Sutta-Pitaka), i. 138. 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 5B 

read in the " Lion " Sutta 1 how, in their long, 
long span of pleasant being, the gods forget 
this, till at length a Buddha arises in the world. 
" And just as the king of beasts at eventide 
comes forth from his lair and roars, so that 
all the beasts tremble and hide, so does he 
proclaim the Norm to gods and to men, how 
all matter and all mind recombines and 
dissolves again. Thereat the gods hear and 
in anguish exclaim : Alas ! we who fancied 
ourselves permanent, stable, eternal, we are 
confined by an individuality that is imper- 
manent, unstable, temporary ! " 

Again, a special case of this illusion being 
dispelled is given in the legend-sutta of the 
Brahma-god Baka, who appears to the Buddha 
and declares the Brahma-heaven to be per- 
manent, etc., without birth, decay, or decease, 
and that beyond it is no salvation. The 
Buddha replies, that only because of his 
ignorance can Baka affirm his heaven to be 
eternal, absolute, free from the law of imper- 
manence, or affording ultimate salvation. 2 

It will be seen that there is no attempt 
here, in denying the absolute in all deity, to 
deny also that gods exist. That they existed 
was taken- for granted. They lived longer and 
more pleasantly, they had superior, less 
limited organisms, and better powers of 
locomotion. But they existed, law-governed, 
like mankind, that is to say, the world-order 
fulfilled itself in them ; they did not create it* 
1 Sam/utta~Nikaya, Hi. 85, 2 Op. A i. 142, 



54 BUDDHISM 

nor could they destroy it, or interfere with it. 
It is true that we read of misdeeds of men 
affecting nature locally, e.g., in the supply of 
rain, withheld by nature spirits. But they 
are not in any way lords and governors to be 
prayed to and propitiated. The good Bud- 
dhist knew that he as such had nothing to fear 
from them. And to-day, though they may 
no longer be held to flit from heaven to earth, 
44 as it were a strong man darting out his arm/ 5 
or throng around as when a Buddha preaches 
the Norm, still do they exist for any 
orthodox Buddhist. Why limit an infinite 
universe to humanity? he would say. So 
much then, and so little is there of atheism 
in his creed. 

Neither had it any quarrel with the con- 
venient, not to say necessary notion whereby 
we each of us speak of, and picture ourselves 
as " I," or a self (attd). " The self reproaches 
the self" is the Pali idiom for a troubled 
conscience. And " the taming of self," " the 
right poising of the self," and " self -advantage " 
are all terms of Buddhist ethics. All such, 
as the Commentator remarks, are mere 
conventions of language. True, the testimony 
of normal consciousness is to a unity. Mental 
science tends, however, as we know, to 
support the Buddhist position. Experience, 
it says, shows that the unity often by no 
means works as such. Pathology tells us a 
good deal more to the same effect. The unity 
is not only of factors that are perpetually 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 55 

changing, and often fail to co-operate har- 
moniously, but is liable to be split up into 
two, or even three unities of consciousness. 
Still, normally each of us is a unified " bundle 
of formations," as Sister Vajira said. And the 
" bundle' 5 must have its verbal sign. Buddhist 
Abhidhamma fell in with this popular usage, 
but guarded itself in so doing. So Buddha- 
ghosa, commenting on the Htaka phrase : 

included in the concrete personality" 
(literally self-state), says : " from the foolish 
public's notion that * this is my self, 9 body 
and mind are called self-state." 

But the moment that language serves, not 
merely, as here, to signify the temporary 
bundle in man or god, but to uphold animistic 
and absolutist beliefs, emphatic repudiation of 
the word " self " or " soul " appears. In other 
words, whenever the word atta implies that 
in the temporary bundle is a mysterious little 
being, which uses the changing body as a 
shell, coming at or before birth, and flitting 
away at death, itself unchanged, eternal, 
above the laws of nature, then does the word 
become the sign of the worst of errors. The 
conception of the inner sprite or double is 
universal in folk-beliefs, and in this respect we 
speak of such conceptions as animistic. When 
this inner maunikin is still further sublimated, 
and all that remains is the concept of it as the 
real being, or underlying substance or sub- 
strate, to which all the qualities or attributes 
of an. individual arc said to belong, and so to 



56 BUDDHISM 

become a unity, we speak of such conceptions 
as absolutistic. The English term in this 
case is usually changed from soul to self, or 
ego. But, in the latter case, the super- 
phenomenal self or ego must of course be 
understood, and not the mere mark for the 
" bundle." 

Now Buddhist philosophy, in repudiating 
both animistic soul and absolutistic self, was 
aimed at a special shape assumed by such 
theories in India. This was an aspect of both 
which sought to satisfy at once, (1) the child- 
like questioning answered by animism, (2) 
the logic which sees in all objects first the 
completed whole and then the factors, and 
(3) man's veneration for the creative genius 
and synthetic ideas of man. All this was 
comprised in the Indian cult of the universal 
self, or soul, conceived, not only, or so much, 
as external to man while immanent in the 
universe, but as immanent in man, and as 
man's own and very self. This was the cult 
of the Atman (Sanskrit for attd), and we may 
speak of it as Atmanism. 

In the oldest Indian hymns, the Big- Veda, 
the wind is called the dtman or breath of 
Varuna, who is the nearest approach we there 
find to a personification of the idea of cosmic 
order. But breath came to be identified with 
deity, and was also considered as a symptom 
of soul within. So, analogously to the Christian 
idea of pneuma, which came to mean both 
breath and spirit, the concept of dtman grew, 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 57 

till it was used interchangeably with Brahman, 
the cosmic principle pervading the universe, 
and also with the human, prdna (breath) or 
soul On its more esoteric, mystical, devo- 
tional side, as revealed in the works now 
committed to writing, and called Upanishads, 1 
this cult of the Atman may, nay, must be taken 
into account, if we are to understand the 
strength of the Buddhist protest, and the pecu- 
liar logic of its attack. Judging by the descrip- 
tions given in the Pitakas, the age teemed 
with animistic superstition, metaphysical 
dogmas ^on the soul and mysticism, But it 
is the Atmanist position against which the 
Buddhist argument is drawn up, as we shall 
presently sec. 

There is no attack worth mentioning made 
by Buddhism on the notion of Brahman, 
the impersonal principle of cosmic life and 
order. As a personal deity, Brahma is 
treated as a leading deva among devas, but 
one whose approval or displeasure matters 
nothing to man's salvation. His eminence is 
handled with irony, when the monopoly of 
omniscience is claimed for him. 2 And the 
devotional exercises, which were currently 
believed to aid in bringing about after-life 
in his heaven, were adopted in Buddhism, 
less for this purpose, which the Buddha called 
u low," than to forward emancipation of 
heart. (Sec p 218 f.) 

of tiu> East, vols. I, XV. 
e Itiidtlha, i. 280 if. 



58 BUDDHISM 

But when that cosmic principle is considered 
not only as world-soul, but as the very soul of 
Me, the realization of which was held as the 
supreme and saving truth, then Buddhism 
joins issue and fights without compromise. 

" In the beginning," runs an old Upanishad, 1 
" the world was only soul, in the shape of a 
man. . , He sent forth worlds, . , , 
If a man understands the Self saying, ' I am 
He ' . .he indeed is the creator, 
his is the world, and he is the world itself . . 
if a man clearly beholds this Self as God, 
and as the lord of all that is and that will 
be, then he is no more afraid." 

" Void is the world," rejoins the Buddhist, 
"of self, or of aught of that nature." If it 
is contended that, by the context to this 
passage, quoted above (p. 52), only the 
phenomenal world of sense-perception is stated 
to be meant, we should inevitably come 
elsewhere on passages conceding (or indeed 
insisting on) the existence of a soul not im- 
manent in, but transcending that phenomenal 
world. What we find is (a) the affirmation 
that " all the religious world who consider 
the soul as variously bestowed, consider it to be 
the five constituents of personality (kliandha's) 
or some one of them," 2 (b) consistent and 
constant negation that the soul is " in," or 
associated with any of the five. 

It is this beholding self as god, this seeing in 
the phenomenal " bundle " the superphcno- 

1 Brihadaranyaka~Up, * Samyulta-Nikaya, ill 40, 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 59 

menal or absolute, to^ which the Buddhist 
takes exception. The Atman was " eternal," 
" immortal," " free from decay, death and 
sorrow," " real." Well then, said the Budd- 
hist, every object, and every means of knowing 
objects all, in fact, is impermanent, you will 
mlmit. Now that which is impermanent is 
liable to change and suffering, and is not free, 
i.e., it is bound by its law-governed phenomenal 
nature Is it then iit to say of any such object 
or subject ; it is for me Atman ; it is Ego or 
the soul of me ? This is the standard staple 
form of argument used in a great number of 
Pitaka Suttas. And if we read into the 
words, soul, self, ego the tremendous import 
attached to them in the preceding Upanishad 
citations. . . " I (Ego) arn (world-) At- 
man " . . " beholds this Self as God " 
. , . we realize that a dogmatic mysticism 
so abnormal was bound to evoke a religious 
and philosophical recoil The protest of 
Buddhism, viewed thus in its local context, 
appears natural and inevitable, rather than 
captious or unreasonable. 

jBut the mystical climax of soul-cult in 
Atmanism was by no means the only form of 
it with which Buddhism contended. As an 
extreme form of soul-dogma it was well 
known (many of the Theras were lapsed 
Brahmins). But the general contention was 
wider. The forms of soul-dogma stated in 
the I'itakas consist in a number of mutually 
controversial speculations as to the nature 



60 BUDDHISM 

and destiny of the self or soul, considered 
under aspects that are not absolute or divine, 
and which are therefore nearer to similar 
speculations in European metaphysic, e.g^ 
that the self or soul is finite, or infinite, is 
material or immaterial, happy or miserable 
after death, self-made or made by another, 
eternal or not eternal. These various hypo- 
theses are catalogued several times in the 
Sutta-Pitaka, 1 or are singly dealt with, 2 as so 
many futile, unprofitable forms of intellectual 
dalliance. One feature in which they differ 
from Western theories, is that we never meet 
with hypotheses respecting " souls " or 
" selves," and their inter-relations, as is the 
case, for instance, in Leibnitz's theory of 
monads. They are concerned with " soul." 
Speculation of this sort is met with chiefly 
in the mouths of members of itinerant religious 
fraternities, of whom there were many when 
Buddhism arose. They foregathered in park 
and meeting-hall, discussing such themes with 
much free speech, seeking truth and salvation 
in their own way. But it was a strained, 
unhealthy condition of thought, and the 
inevitable reaction against all this sort of 
animistic speculation, whether pantheistic 
or individualistic, was constituted by the 
standpoint taken up by one such itinerant 
fraternity, to wit that of the Sakya-sons, as 
they were called, or as we say, the Buddhists, 

1 Kg. Dialogues of the Buddlia, i. 41-53, 
1 E.g. Majjhima-Nikaya, ii, 32-7, 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 61 

Not less, and to a very conscious degree, 
was Buddhism a protest against a certain 
variety of scepticism current at the time. 
But with this we shall better be able to deal 
when engaged on its philosophy of causation. 
Here I wish to dwell on the very definite and 
remarkable impress given to their religion 
and philosophy precisely in consequence of, 
and as a weapon against, this state of over- 
wrought metaphysical speculation. I refer 
to the science of mind, or psychology, which 
the Buddhist movement initiated, and 
which Buddhist culture subsequently devel- 
oped In this respect, the Buddhists are the 
true Eastern compeers of Aristotle and 
Western psychology, and the day will come 
when their analysis of mind will rank, in the 
history of psychology, and from a universal 
standpoint, equal in achievement with that 
of the Greeks, and indeed of Europe generally, 
up to the time when psycho-physiology was 
introduced. 

This mental analysis is quite unmythological 
and scientific. The older, pre-Buddhistic 
Upanishads contain fine germs of psychologi- 
cal insight, shadowy outlines of a theory 
of sense-perception in particular. But the 
tone is child-like and poetical ; the utter- 
ances are sporadic aphorisms. Moon and 
gods and demons a,re ever at hand as an 
explanation of functions not investigated. 
There is a lack of sobriety. The Pitakas, 
on the other hand, not only in Abhidhamma 



62 BUDDHISM 

catechism, but even in the doctrinal discourses 
and poems of the Suttas, give us sober and 
prosaic description of what they find obtaining 
in mental processes. Of figures, similes and 
analogies there is no lack, but these are 
consciously and discreetly used in order to 
illustrate. Fancies are not treated as per- 
ceptions. The five modes of sense, for 
instance, are compared to doors, to the sea, 
to a field, to an empty village (without head- 
man or soul), when ethical teaching is thereby 
rendered more graphic. But when knowing 
by way of sense has to be analyzed, we then 
get simply the results of observation and 
inference- " Given eye and visible object, 
visual consciousness arises ; the conjutmtion 
of the three is ft contact/ whereby condition^ 
arises feeling, whereby conditioned, arises 
perception, etc." 1 Again : " What is the 
sense of hearing ? The car, that is, the sen- 
tient organ, derived from the four elements, 
forming part of the person (self-state), invisible 
and reacting, whereby one has heard, hears, 
will, or may hear sounds invisible and imping- 
ing . , . which itself impinges on sounds, 
and depending on which car and sound, 
audible contact arises . . . this is the 
sense, the constituent element, the faculty of 
hearing." 2 In the later book, Milinda, the 
teacher illustrates the collision of sense and 
object by two butting rams, and by clashing 

1 Majjhima-Nik&yat, i. 111. 
4 PsycJiokgicol Etliiw, 178. 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 68 

cymbals. But he taught his royal pupil alter 
a popular fashion. 

It may be objected that this is no explana- 
tion, only description. But science is mainly 
description, in so far as it is not experimental, 
a description of the particular case in terms 
of a general case, either of object or process. 
And to start with description is a better 
basis for the advance of knowledge, than to 
block the path of inference and synthesis 
by invoking transcendental agencies. 

Such a basis, these early and archaic, but 
sincere and earnest attempts at analysis is 
proved to he for the expanding culture of the 
succeeding centuries. The Milinda contains 
many developments in mental science, notably 
in a theory of association, and an analysis of 
memory, 1 Similes are again used, for the 
king's intelligence has to be reckoned with, 
that is, one without technical training in 
such matters. But they are used strictly 
to illustrate, and, by illustrating, to extend 
the conception of natural law to the working 
of the mind, and to dispel the idea of any 
animistic agencies. 2 

Yet more marked is the psychological 
advance met with in the works of Buddha- 
ghosu. From these we can sec that the 
introspective analysis of mental processes 
had been carried far. As among ourselves, 
it is the process of coming to know by way of 

* Quwtiww of King Jtfflm<fo, I 37, 89, 122, 
1 C f /, bolow, JK 



64 BUDDHISM 

sense that has proved most amenable to 
investigation. The result is a more detailed 
resolution into factors than European psy- 
chology can show. Very briefly stated, every 
conscious act of sense-perception (e.g. the 
hearing of a bell, the sight of a person entering 
the room), was resolved into these successive 
moments : (1) vibrations in sub-conscious- 
ness ; (2) adverting of the " doors " of sense ; 
(3) the sense-impression; (4) the door of 
mind receiving; (5) examining; (6) deter- 
mining (the nature of 3} ; (7) full cognition ; 
(8) retention. All of which might occupy a 
quite infinitesimal fraction of time. 

But detailed inquiry of this kind belongs 
to the history of psychology. The salient 
feature in it for our present purpose is the 
fact that, for Buddhist thought, from the 
start, psychological insight is an integral 
part of philosophical, nay, of religious insight. 
It started not with the external universe, 
and its first or final cause, but with the heart 
of man, sentient and desiring. " In this 
fathom-long conscious be-minded body, I 
declare the world to be, and the uprising of 
the world, and the ceasing of the world, and 
the course leading to that cessation." 1 Train- 
ing in mental analysis was considered essential 
both as ethical discipline, and as clearing the 
way for sound philosophy. 

This emphasis on introspective alertness 
has been deprecated both by (modern) Maha- 
i L 62 ; Anguttara-Nikaya, ii. 48. 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 65 

Yanists and by non-Buddhists, hence it is 
worth while to pause over it, not in an apolo- 
getic or contrary spirit, but to understand it. 
The cities and villages of North-East India 
no doubt comprised not only considerable 
ethnical variety Aryan, Dravidian, Kolarian 
but as many varieties of temperament as 
other populous centres. But, judging by 
early Buddhist literature, the prevalent type 
seems to have been of a nervous, eager, high- 
strung, emotional nature, passionate and 
pleasure-seeking in disposition, swiftly elated 
or depressed, open and amenable to argument, 
capable of whole-hearted devotion and of 
strenuous effort. To these impulsive, quick- 
hearted children of the sun, impressions on 
their swift and delicate sense were interesting 
and absorbing chiefly as feeling, pleasant, 
painful or neutral. The Suttas emphasize 
this aspect of experience as likely to appeal 
to listeners " There are sights, sounds, 
touches . . , apprehensible by this or 
that sense, which are wished-for, agreeable, 
delightful, fascinating, involving sensuous sat- 
isfaction, and exciting passionate longing." 
We hear in fact no less often about how 
sense affected, than about what is told. 

Together with such testimony to much 
exuberance in response to sensuous impres- 
sions, we learn also that the means for grati- 
fying sensuous and aesthetic impulse and taste 
were very numerous. Arts ministering to 
eye and ear were cultivated ; the ravishing 



66 BUDDHISM 

effect of music is especially mentioned. 
Odours exercised a powerful effect. Skin- 
sensibility was flattered by bath, massage and 
shampoo. Food and drinks were refined to 
suit the epicure. Dancing and sports were 
staple amusements. 

And where conscious reaction is largely 
sensuous and emotional, the experience is 
referred intensively to the subject or self, 
more than it is referred extensively or exter- 
nally to the object, 

All serious departures in religion and ethics 

have of course striven to cope with the 

tendency to let life be swallowed up in the 

quest of sensuous gratification. And among 

the remedies sought have been pure askesis, 

or the suppression to the utmost limit con- 

-> sistent with life of the channels of sense- 

sSmpression, and again the cultivation of the 

pobject-world apart from sense-pleasure, name- 

r ly, in relation to ethical and intellectual 

interests. A third course is so to study and 

regulate the subject- world, or mind, that 

we can regard it as one object among other 

objects. Now the extent to which the 

Buddhists initiated and developed this third 

course is a notable and practically unique 

feature in their religious culture. 

From the outset they deliberately and 
explicitly rejected asceticism. In the first 
sermon ascribed to the Buddha, he declared 
his method to be a middle way between asceti- 
cism and self-indulgence. Again, he is said. 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 67 

in another Sutta, to have asked the pupil of 
a Brahmin teacher, whether and how Para- 
sariya taught a method of disciplining sense ? 
"Yes, 35 was the reply, "one does not see 
sights with the eyes, nor hear sounds with the 
ear. This is his method." "On that sys- 
tem," rejoins the Buddha, " the blind and 
the deaf have their senses the best under 
control." He proceeded to show how his 
method differs. Namely, sense-impressions 
are to be consciously discriminated psvcho- 
logically, and then ethically appraised as 
inferior to disinterestedness or indifference. 
Thus cognitive and analytic, man is to be 
able to dictate to his own feelings. And 
thus, by learning habitually to break up the 
complex web of conscious experience, the 
Buddhist sought to gain a dual vantage-point : 
control over sense and impulse on the one 
hand, and, on the other, insight into the 
compound and conditioned nature of that 
which seemed to be a unitary Ego, or subject 
of conscious experience. 

So much was this method felt and realized 
by its followers to be really of the essence of 
the doctrine, that it served both to define 
that doctrine and to betray its teacher. 
Thus, in the Sutta called Analysis of Ele- 
ments " (Majjhima-Nikdya 9 No. 140), we read 
of the Buddha lodging for a night at the Pot- 
ter's House in Rajagaha (Rajgir in Behar), 
who explains that he has already a lodger, 
a friar of noble rank. This was Pukkusati, 



68 BUDDHISM 

ex-King of Taxila in Kashmir, who, according 
to the commentarial tradition, had abdicated 
and left the world, in consequence of having 
learnt the Buddhist doctrines. These had 
been sent him, inscribed on a golden tablet, 
by his friend, King Bimbisara, whose residence 
was at Rajagaha. The Buddha apologized : 
" If it be not disagreeable to you, brother, let 
us lodge one night together." The other 
consented, addressing the strange friar by 
the appellation, used between religious breth- 
ren, of dvuso. After each, sitting cross-legged, 
had meditated part of the night, the Buddha, 
noting the other's serene demeanour, asked 
him concerning his motive for leaving the 
lay-world, his teacher and his " Dhainma " ? 
Pukkusati confesses that it was the Exalted 
One, Gotama of the Sakyas, whose Dhamma 
had so moved him." " Where, bhikkhu, 
is now that Gotama ? " "In the north 
country, friend, at SavatthL" "Have you 
seen him ? If you saw him, would you know 
him ? " " Nay, friend, if I saw him, I should 
not know him." " Listen, bhikkhu, I will 
teach you Dhamma." "So be it, friend." 
And the Buddha began with a summary. 
Man consisted of six constituent elements 
(earth, i.e., extended element, water, heat, 
air, space and consciousness) ; he had six 
fields of contact with the external world (mind 
being the sixth) ; in eighteen ways he was 
affected by that world ; and there is a fourfold 
platform, whereon if he stand, the surgings 



THEORY OP NO-SOUL 69 

of fancy make no headway, and he is fit to be 
called sage and saint. That platform is 
(1) Ariyan l insight, i.e., knowledge how 
to destroy all sorrow; (2) Ariyan truth or 
Nibbana (i.e., Nirvana) ; (3) Ariyan resigna- 
tion, namely, of all conditions leading to 
rebirth ; (4) Ariyan peace, i.e., the tran- 
quillization of lust, hate and illusion. These 
heads are then briefly developed, the " surgings 
of fancy" being credulous theorizing about 
one's present and future self or identity. 

As he ceased, Pukkusati, overcome with 
emotion, as he realized : " I have found the 
Master ! I have found the Perfectly Enlight- 
ened One ! " fell at the teacher's feet, beseech- 
ing forgiveness for having spoken as to an 
equal, 

This simple episode, with the touching 
suggestion of the disciple's growing wonder, 
his "heart burning within him while he 
spake," ought to serve as a test case of utter- 
ances that were definitely and unmistakably 
what we now call Buddhist. And those 
utterances start with analysis of concrete 
personality and sense-cognition. 

Again, the doctrine is sometimes defined 
as a body of analyses, in the phrase " taught 
me the Dhamma: khandhdyatana-dhdtuyo " ; 

1 " Ariyan " conveyed to Buddhists much what our 
" Christian " does to us. Originally a racial term, it had 
come to mean " noble, gentle," and specifically, " elect 
in the Dhamma." To distinguish this derived meaning, 
I retain the Indian spelling [with ). 



70 BUDDHISM 

i.e. 9 factors, bodily and mental (khandhd), 
sense-organs and objects (ayatana), and ele- 
ments (dhdtuyo). We should not imagine 
that a doctrine so described could arouse much 
emotion. Yet the Buddha's disciples are 
recorded as weaving this phrase, when describ- 
ing how they had found light, into grateful 
verse. Thus Vangisa, a distinguished Thera 
and poet, on his conversion : 

Mere strolling poets we of old ; we roamed 
From town and village on to town again. 
Then saw we Him, the Buddha, and in us 
Rose up full trust. The Norm He taught to me : 
The factors, organs, bases of this self. 1 

So, too, the Sisters or nuns in their verses : 

Then She to this poor Bhikkhuni drew near, 
Who was my foster-mother in the faith. 
She taught to me the Norm, wherein I learnt 
The factors, organs, bases of this self, 
Impermanent compound. Hearing her words, 
Beside her I sat down to meditate. 8 

Finally a very early appellation by which 
the Buddhists were known was that of 
Vibhajja-vadins, or Analytic School, And a 
testimony to the deep-seated and long-lived 
bent, imparted to the doctrine by the promin- 
ence given to analysis, may be seen in the 
journal of Yuan Chwang, the Chinese pilgrim 
mentioned above (p. 26). He found public 
debates being held near Peshawer, in Kashmir, 
on what the translator renders as " the nature 

1 8amyutta-Nikdya, I 196. 

1 Psalm of the Sisters, xxx., xxxviil 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 71 

of the sense-perceptions." Even to the present 
day, the Theravadin school has ever remained 
predominantly analytical, and, in its analysis, 
predominantly psychological. 

The product of this scientific habit of mind 
with which we are now most familiar, is the 
doctrine of the Five Khandhas or Aggregates 
or Groups. Into these five the concrete 
person or living organism was divided. 
Where we say soul and body, body, mind and 
spirit, mind and body, matter and mind, the 
Buddhists, from the inception of the move- 
ment, said the five khandhcfs (Sanskrit, 
skandha's). The division, whether originally 
Buddhist or not, is fairly unwieldy, and is, 
in scheme and in name, not a very happy essay 
in analysis. For the Buddhist standpoint, 
from which every " thing " is no static quan- 
tity, but a happening, or continual becoming, 
aggregate is not very helpful The commen- 
tator, however, insists on " heap " (ran) as 
the meaning. Again, as a mental classifica- 
tion, the division is redundant. Thus of the 
five aggregates, one is the material factor, or 
body; the other four are feeling (pleasure, 
pain, neutral feeling), perception (recognizing 
and naming), sankhdra's or the fifty other 
mental accompaniments, especially will, that 
arc apt to arise when consciousness is stimu- 
lated, and lastly, consciousness itself. 

But in thus passing criticism on this 
notable and interesting scheme of Groups 
(kJiandhas), this fact should be borne in mind. 



72 BUDDHISM 

It was one current division out of many 
others mentioned incidentally in the Pitakas, 
not to mention other Indian literature ; 
it was also the most detailed, and was selected 
for a special purpose. This purpose was philo- 
sophical, rather than scientific. 

Of other such divisions there was the 
ancient and convenient ndma-rupa, literally, 
name and form, but actually meaning, for 
Buddhists, mind and body. Buddhists, in 
adopting ndma-rupa, always explain it as 
meaning the contents of mind plus the material 
group. Then there was body and mind, or 
consciousness (kdya and mono, or chitta, or 
vinnana) ; again body and feeling ; body, 
feeling, consciousness, ideas; body, life, 
heat, consciousness ; body as conscious, and 
" co-mental." 

And, for the developing mental science of 
Buddhist culture, the cumbrous group scheme 
was dropped. Only the fourth and fifth 
groups were retained In them the fact and 
procedure of consciousness (and sub-con- 
sciousness) were investigated, and the contents 
of each phase or unit of consciousness were 
analyzed, including emotional and volitional 
factors. This evolution may be clearly seen in 
the mediaeval standard handbook, translated 
as Compendium of Philosophy. But the 
transition is already begun in the Abhi- 
dhamma-Pitaka. In the first book, 1 con- 
sciousness is analyzed quite independently of 
1 See Psychological Ethic*, pp. 1 ff., 26-29, 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 73 

the group-scheme, and is then synthetized or 
summarized in terms of various categories, 
that of the Khandha's included, as one 
among others. The categories are then 
analyzed in turn, and under the fourth group 
(sankhara's) we get a list of those concomitants 
which, in later method, were known chiefly 
as " mentals " or chetas'ika's. 

For the exposition of Buddhist doctrine, 
religious and philosophical, the Five Groups 
lent themselves better than any current 
twofold division into body and mind. Ndma- 
rupa was used in animistic and atmanistic 
compositions. The soul-myths attaching all 
over the world to the significance of " a name " 
would not predispose Buddhism in its favour. 
But the opposing to the body, not one mental 
factor or two, but four, was apparently the 
result of a solicitude to omit no current 
term for mind that might serve as a rest and 
refuge for the insidious belief in Atmau or 
the eternal unchanging self. The way in 
which the Group-scheme is used in this 
connection is to set forth a fivefold delusion 
of supposing that any one of these five Aggre- 
gates, either (1) is the soul, or (2) is an 
attribute of soul, or (8) is in the soul, or (4) 
contains the soul ; just, for instance, (1) as 
flame and its colour may be considered one ; 
or (2) as its shadow is an attribute of the tree ; 
or (8) as the perfume is in the flower; or 
(4) as a casket contains a jewel 1 Another 
a, Patitambkid&magga, L 143-5. Plotiaoa. 



74 BUDDHISM 

method is to show that if* any one Group, 
taking these in turn, were the Self, it could 
(as God) dictate what and how it chose to be, 
body or mind. But since it is not free to 
choose, it cannot be that group. 

This was at any rate the reason for the 
adoption of the fivefold division that com- 
mended itself to Buddhaghosa. Why, he 
asks, in his Way of Purity, did the Exalted 
One say there were five Khandha's, no less and 
no more? Because these not only sum up 
all classes of conditioned things, but they 
afford no foothold for soul and the 
animistic. 

Finally, how did Buddhism conceive mind 
or mental aggregates, viewed as a phenomenal 
happening, and not as an underlying static 
substance ? 

Two impressive phenomena have aided 
Buddhism to state in general terms that 
which seemed fundamentally true about 
mind. These were sleep and Hewing water. 
By the former, including the phenomenon of 
dreams, it pictured the intermittent nature of 
conscious mental life. By the latter, it 
placed in front the fact of the continuity 
of an ever-changing identity. Neither of these 
notions is explicitly developed by way of 
these similes in the Pali Pitakas* Both 
notions are involved in the doctrines therein 
taught; and both underwent interesting 

possibly from his Eastern travels, held with (3), vk,, the 
body in the soul, as air is permeated by fire. tttmead iv. 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 75 

development. Let us first consider the older 
testimony. 

In the following passage " mind," or 
conscious intelligent activity, is clearly taught 
as an intermittent phenomenon coming to 
pass only when suitable stimulation occurred. 
In the telling of it too, the style is vivid and 
pointed and emphatic, as though the teaching 
were more than usually urgent. Too long 
to give in full, the substance of the Sutta may 
be told in outline. 

A bhikkhu or member of the Order, Sati 
Fisher-son, gives out as the Master's teaching 
this heresy: 1 "It is mind (or consciousness 
or co-gnition, vi-nndna) which persists and is 
reborn after death unchanged." The brethren 
protest, but he is firm. They report him, and 
the Master sends for him. " Is this true, 
Sati ? " " Yea, Lord, so do I understand you 
to teach." " What, Sati, is that conscious- 
ness ? " " That speaker and feeler, sir, who ex- 
periences the result of good and evil deeds done 
here or there." " Now, then, foolish man, 
from whom have you got such a doctrine as 
one of mine ? Have I not taught you by 
many methods that consciousness arises from 
a cause : except from a cause there is no 
coming into being of consciousness ? " 

He then turns to the Bhikkhus, who testify 
to the truth ol this. " And consciousness," 
he goes 011, " is reckoned only in accordance 

1 Majjhimu-Nikdya. ** Tlxo Destruction of Craving " 
Sutta (IW). 



76 BUDDHISM 

with the condition causing it ; visual cognition 
from sight and seen object, idea from mind 
and mental object. Just as a fire is different 
according to its fuel." 

" Do ye see that this has become, bhikkhus ? 

" Do ye see that the becoming is according to 
the stimulus (literally, the food) ? 

" Do ye see that if the stimulus cease, then 
that which has become ceases, bhikkhus ? " 

And so the catechism continues, enforcing 
the doctrine, the brethren responding duly. 

This may suffice, as an example among 
others, to show that mind or consciousness 
was not only not to be regarded as the soul 
or attd under another name, but was not to be 
conceived as even a life-long immaterial 
substance. It was more after the nature of 
electrical energy, potential only till aroused 
by suitable stimuli. 

"There was a lifelong serial continuity, but it 
was not mind ; it was the organic life. Con- 
sidered subjectively this is subconsciousness. 
The Pali word bhavanga expresses both (a) the 
objective aspect of vital functioning and (b) the 
subjective aspect of our sub-consciousness, 
or mental state, when we are not attending 
to anything, or that part of consciousness 
when we are attending to something not of 
that part. The term occurs in one book of 
the Abhidhamma-Pitaka, but it is only 
in the Milinda that we see the theory which 
was current. In that work (ii. 163), the func- 
tioning of the organism without consciousness, 



THEORY OF NO-SOUL 77 

called bhavanga-gati (gati is " course," " going 
on"), is compared to dreamless sleep. A 
stimulus evoking consciousness had come, in 
Buddhaghosa's time, to be conceived as 
causing a vibration in the flow of the bhavanga. 
The reacting consciousness then arising was 
pictured as " cutting off " or damming the 
flow, which was resumed when attention (to 
some external or internal object) subsided. 
And in the Compendium of Philosophy and 
probably centuries earlier the river-simile 
appears : " So to those who have thus got 
rebirth, the same kind of consciousness 
(chitta), occupied with the same field of objects, 
starting straight away after the moment of 
rebirth, goes on, in the absence of any process 
of cognition, in unbroken flux, like the stream 
of a river, till the uprising of death-conscious- 
ness, And this flux, because it is a condition 
of being, is called continuance of the condi- 
tions of being." (Compendium, 152 f .) 

"Like a river,' 5 comments a Burmese 
Buddhist of to-day, "which still maintains 
one constant form, one seeming identity, 
though not a single drop remains to-day of all 
the volume that composed that river yester- 
day." (Op. dt. Introd. Essay by S. Z. 
Aung, 9.) 

So Herakleitus's fragment : " You cannot 
step twice into the same rivers, for fresh waters 
are ever flowing in upon you." 



CHAPTEE IV 

THE NORM AS THE LAW^OF CAUSATION 

IT was only possible in so short a compass 
to scratch the surface of the bold and remark- 
able position taken by Buddhism over against 
the theories of its day. We must perforce 
get on, nor try to deal with the subject in the 
light of the criticism it evoked in its native 
land. As we go, we may learn more of the 
ground so far traversed. For the central 
tenets are so closely interrelated, that to 
consider any one throws light on the rest. 

Let us then turn to the second implication of 
the term Dhamma. " Dhammo ti hetu" wrote 
Buddhaghosa: " dhamma means condition" 
or cause. And, to go centuries back and 
repeat the Pitaka phrase : tc Investigation of 
Dhamma =insight into cause." Now in this 
connection I find a salient feature in Buddhist 
philosophy, namely : In place of theories on 
this or that agency as constituting the Source, 
the informing, sustaining Principle, and the 
End of this present order called world or 
universe, Buddhists concentrated their atten- 
tion on the order of things itself. This order 
they conceived as a multitudinous and con- 
78 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 79 

tinual coming-to-be and passing-away in 
everything. And this constant transition, 
change, or becoming was not capricious, nor 
ordained for the occasion, nor pre-ordained, 
but went on by way of natural causation. 
This conclusion I have now to justify. 

We have seen that with regard to the 
general belief in an in-dwelling, or circumam- 
bient, or pervading soul or spirit or ego, 
permanent unchanging, unsuffermg, Bud- 
dhism took the standpoint, two thousand 
four hundred years ago, of our own 
Hume of two centuries ago. It would have 
welcomed his saying modern Buddhists who 
have studied our philosophy do welcome it-- 
that in seeking fen* the self he always u tumbled 
on some particular perception." They have 
ever judged that when we so seek, >vc find, 
not agent, but just process ; a changing bundle 
of functions, but no unchanging functioncr 
nor spectator behind it all The Vcd&ntist 
doctrine of the Upunishads said : u Let none 
try to find out what speech is, let him know 
the speaker ; let none try to find out what, 
visible object, action, mind is, let him know 
the seer, the agent, the thinker." * In 
Buddhaghosn we read the categorical opposite 
u Anything whatever within called soul (atta) 
who sees, who moves the limbs, etc,, there is 
not." * 
Now note the way in which, centuries 

(/|), iii, 8 
)'&), L Hto. 



80 BUDDHISM 

earlier than Buddhaghosa, the absolutist 
position had been corrected in the Pitakas : 
" It is no fit question to ask : Who experiences 
contact? Who is it that feels? This is the 
right way to question : Conditioned by what, 
is there contact? Conditioned by what, is 
there feeling ? " 1 Here is the statement 
which Buddhists might choose to place beside 
Hume's " tumbling on his particular per- 
ceptions " instead of on to a general essence. 
When we seek, they might say, we find only 
a conditioned happening; not a perduring 
entity, nor a mere fortuitous succession, but 
something happening in consequence of some- 
thing that had gone before. 

In their mental science of Abhidhamma, 
they call this order of conditioned happening 
or process, by the term vttki, road, course or ' 
process. In more popular exposition, as in 
the Milinda, they figure the idea under various 
similes, as thus : 

" King Milinda : c Does perception arise 
wherever sensation of sight arises?' 'Yes, 
sire,' 'Which arises first?' 'First sight, 
then perception. 1 ' Then does sight issue as 
it were a command to perception : spring up 
there after me ? or does thought command 
sight : I will spring up where you do ? ' 4 No, 
sire, there is no such intercourse,' * Then how 
is it, that perception arises when sight arises ? ' 
'Because of there being a sloping down, a 
door, a habit, an association/ *How is 
1 Samyutta-Nilc&ya, u* 13, 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 81 

that ? ' ' Well, sire, when it rains, where will 
the water go ? J ' It will follow the slope of the 
ground.' ' And if it were to rain again ? ' 
' The water would go the same way as the 
former water,' c What then ? Does the 
former water issue a command to the latter 
water. . . . ? ' 'No, there is no inter- 
course between the two. Each goes its way 
because of the slope of the ground.' c Just 
so, sire, is it in sensation and perception. 
. . . All that happens, happens through 
natural slope.' " 

The door-metaphor (dvdra, like John Bun- 
yan's Eye-gate, Ear-gate, etc.), as the habitual 
means of exit by a certain road in a city, is 
together with road or street (vlthi) the 
standard psychological metaphor for avenue 
of sense. Again, the carts of the merchandise 
caravans would go out by a habitual order 
of going. And the arts of arithmetic and 
writing, difficult at first, become easy through 
association set up by practice. 1 That every- 
thing we can know by way of the avenues of 
sense, including the Dhamma itself, was some- 
thing that had become (bhuta], was con- 
ditioned (sankhata), had arisen-because-of 
(paiiccha-samuppanna), lay at the heart of 
that Dhamma. " He who discerns origin by 
way of cause, he discerns the Dhamma ; he 
who discerns the Dhamma he discerns origin 
by way of cause." 2 

1 Questions of King Milinda, i. 89 ff. 

* Majjhim-Nibatya, i. 191 ; D\gJ^ t iii. 275. 



82 BUDDHISM 

It may be objected here that the three terms 
are redundant, conditioned being synonymous 
with caused. It is true that, at least in Bur- 
mese Abhidhamma, they now mean the same 
idea. Sankhata is literally made, put together, 
compound. But Mr. S. Z. Aung writes : " Of 
course what is compound is always caused. 
But it is the idea of causation that is chiefly 
implied." (Compendium, 278.) If, however, 
we consult a passage in the Sutta Pitaka, we 
find three essential or necessary " marks " 
our logic would say " properties '*- of any- 
thing that is sankhata ; u genesis is revealed, 
passing away is revealed, and the dividing- 
line of the static (moment) is revealed ; these 
three are the marks of the sankhata" l 
Hence, in the notion originally expressed by 
this term, we get, not exactly what we now 
understand, in philosophy, by " conditioned/* 
" that which is pre-rcquisite in order that 
something may be/' but rather that which 
is supplied by our word " organic." 

Hereby we see how interwoven are those 
three concepts ; become, wmkhala, and caused* 
And they were held in such a way as to elude 
the metaphysical problems of (a) realism and 
idealism, and of (b) mechanism and atomism. 

(a) Theories akin to the " Only being is ; 
non-being is not; there is no becoming" 
of Parmenides (b. about 515 B.C*), and its 
opposite seem to have been prevalent in North 
India perhaps half a century before the Greek 
1 Anguttara-Nilc&yot, L 151 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 88 

philosopher wrote his poem on "the way of 
truth and the way of opinion/' in which he 
declared his Ahsolutist philosophy. This is 
anyway the comment which, in the SuUu-Pil,- 
aka, is said to have been made on two occa- 
sions by the Buddha: * u The world for the 
most part, Kaeehana, holds either to a, belief 
in being, or to a belief in non-being. Hut for 
one who by right insight sees as if really is 
how the world comes to pass, there is no non- 
being in the world. And for one who by right 
insight sees as it really is how the world passes 
away, there is no being (literally : beingness : 
atthitd) in the world. Kverything ?,v: this, 
Kacchana, is one extreme view. Kvery thing 
is not : this is the second extreme view. 
Avoiding both these extremes, the Buddha 
teaches the Norm by the Mean" (middle). 
And the gist of this Doctrine of the Mean is 
that life, as we know il\ is a becoming, or 
coming to be, through one stale of the organ- 
ism, mental and bodily, inducing a %fc related " 
state, as consequent to antecedent. 

Whether Pannenitles derived his opinions 
perhaps through his Pythagorean teachers, 
from Indian ideas or not, \\c do not know. 
Nor, in tin* absence of any fuller statement 
of the former extreme, alluded to by the 
Buddha, can we say, whether that view 
coincided with I he position taken by Par- 
includes. But some coincidence seems pnh- 
able. That which really is, said Pnunenides, 
1 (SVnin/w/fa ,YiA i n/*f, u. IV ; ui. Kit*. 



84 BUDDHISM 

behind all the fleeting shows of sense, is ever 
and eternally present. If it were past and 
gone, or not yet, you could not think of it, for 
you cannot think of what does not exist. It 
cannot have become ; " what need could have 
made it arise later rather than sooner ? There- 
fore must it either be altogether, or be not at 
all. 5 ' 

That which we remember therefore, or anti- 
cipate is, according to him, not the phenomena 
that are passed away, or yet to come, but the 
ever-present really existent. 

The parallels between the thought of 
Parmenides and of Plato, who thought on his 
lines, on the one hand, and Indian Absolutist 
or Atrnanistic philosophy on the other, are 
frequently pointed out in Professor Deussen's 
History of Philosophy. There is for instance 
a good parallel to the sentence quoted above, 
where it is denied that the Real can come to 
be. But it occurs in a work that is centuries 
later than either Parmenides, or the views 
referred to by the Buddha, although it was 
probably directed against the doctrine of the 
then declining Buddhism of North India. 
Thus in one verse of this work we read : 
"Being cannot become, for then it were only 
illusion. Who lets anything come to be, lets 
that come to be that was already there/' l 

We see here (1) that the Buddhist stand- 
point ; that instead of considering things or 
souls as eternal, fixed entities, beings, or forms 

1 Mdndukya-KdriM, 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 85 

we should think of them as coming to be from 
other things that had become, offered a way 
out of the older deadlock, and was probably 
fresh at the time, and place ; (2) that later 
hostile philosophy met this standpoint and 
rejected it, just as, in Greece, Parmenides 
met and rejected the " All things are in 
flux " of Herakleitus. 

(b) There appears to have been, parallel 
with these Absolutist beliefs, a good deal of 
scepticism current when Buddhism arose. 
Such theories were probably a more extreme 
recoil from the former than anything put for- 
ward by Buddhism. They amounted to this ; 
that once we surrender, from the heaven our 
forefathers believed in, and the earth we see, 
all transcendental realities, all first cause, all 
personal intelligent driving principle, nothing 
remains but " a fortuitous concourse of 
atoms," or at best the blind unintelligent work- 
ing of a machine come no one knows how into 
operation, drifting no man knows whither. 
The most important^ of these sceptic schools 
was that of the Aji'vakas, whose leader, 
Makkhali Gosala, is thus said to have formu- 
lated his position : " Beings become depraved 
without cause or conditions ; they become 
morally pure also without cause. Our attain- 
ments do not depend on effort or action, either 
of our own or of others. There is no human 
energy or power that is effective. All things 
that have life, creatures, and souls, are without 
inherent force. They are bent this way and 



86 BUDDHISM 

that by the necessity of their specific 
nature," 

Another sophistical school headed by 
Aj'ita of the Hair-garment, taught that 
there was no fruit nor result of good or evil 
deeds ; no other world, nor was this one real ; 
nor had parents nor any former lives any efficacy 
with respect to this life. Saintly thinkers 
could see no farther into the truth of things 
than others. And nothing that we can do 
prevents all of us alike being wholly brought 
to an end at death. 

These pessimistic and nihilistic views the 
Buddhists classed together as typically 
" wrong (miccka) opinions," and they opposed 
to them a categorical contradiction in a positive 
formula, constituting "right (samma) opinion." 
The Buddha, moreover, expressly took the 
stand of a teacher of effective action, or 
kammavddin, and that repeatedly, in open 
opposition, and in forcible terms ; - 

u Just as, bhikkhus, of all kinds of wovctn 
robes, a hair-garment is known to be the least 
desirable" (is there here a side-allusion to 
Aj'ItJL? Buddhaghosa passes it over); **eold 
in cold weather, hot in the heat, unpleasant io 
the touch, so of all the. many assertions by 
recluses, the Makkhali theory is the mast 
undesirable. He, foolish man, believes and 
declares there is no effective action (going 
on), no effected action (the result of effective 
action), no indwelling energy. Herein he re- 
jects that which all past Buddhas have 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 87 

declared, all future Buddhas will declare, and 
which I now, the Buddha, declare. I, even I, 
declare that there is effective action, resultant 
action, indwelling energy," * 

Now in accepting what, on the surface, is 
the common-sense view, that actions have 
results, and that what happens, happens 
because of something, the Buddhists know well 
enough that just to acquiesce in that view 
was not enough for reasoned knowledge, or 
philosophy. They knew also very well, that 
the sceptics were not flouting merely the man 
in the street. Neither Makkhali nor Aj'ita 
would have denied that if you pushed him, 
he might fall down. But they might be pre- 
pared to deny, first, that any original creative 
energy arose in you, next that anything called 
energy or force passed from you as cause on to 
them, effecting the fall. Some demon, or 
chance agency perhaps worked, then you had 
an impulse, then somehow your arm went out 
(not your mind), then Makkhali went over. 
And all this you put together and said : " See 
the efficient cause and its effect ! " All pure 
hypothesis on your part, to explain a little 
that you saw, and much that you did not see, 
by a pretty but fanciful theory. What is 
cause ? 

The Buddhists' reply, in its older form and 

on the surface, is more logical and scientific 

than metaphysical. It runs very well on all 

fours with our own modern logic and our 

1 A-ngultara-Nik&ya, i 286. 



88 BUDDHISM 

physical science. And we ourselves practically 
admit that we can get no working metaphysical 
definition of cause and effect. To say that 
when A causes B, an influence, force, action, 
or what not, X, passes from A to B is not 
reckoned very convincing meta physic. We 
long staved off the difficulty with the conveni- 
ent Aristotelian phrase " efficient cause/' or 
that which makes the effect to be what it 
is, But since Thomas Brown and J. Stuart 
Mill, we in this country at least have let it 
suffice to say, that " we have no idea of any- 
thing in the way of efficiency beyond regu- 
larity of sequence" and to leave the matter 
with the text-books on logic : " The cause 
of an event means the circumstances which 
must have preceded in order that the event 
should happen," or again : u That every 
event is the result or sequel of some previous 
event, or events, without which it could not 
have happened, and which, being present, it 
must take place." l 

So far for ourselves. The ancient Buddhist 
formula presents a parallel view. Leaving 
speculations as to beginning and end, it says, 
all dhamma's, all things-as-known, happen 
from causes. And' a cause was that or those 
things, the presence of which was necessary for 
a certain succeeding thing or things known as 
result. And so centrally important was this 
uniformity in sequence reckoned that it is 

1 Jevons'e Lessons in Logic, and Dictionary of Pkikmpky 
and Psychology, 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 89 

called "the Dhamma," "Put aside," the 
Buddha is represented as saying to a specula- 
tive Jain, " put aside these questions of the 
beginning and the hereafter. I will teaeh you 
the Dhamma : ' that, being present, this 
becomes ; from the arising of that, this 
arises. That being absent, this does not 
become ; from the cessation of that, this 
ceases 1 " (Mnjjhwia-N., Sutla 79). 

Surely a notable milestone in the history of 
human ideas that a man reckoned for ages by 
thousands as the Light not of Asia only but 
of the World, and the saviour from sin and 
misery, should call this little formula his 
Norm or Gospel, or at least one aspect of that 
Gospel ! There can be no question as to its 
being mi interesting link between ancient 
Buddhism and our own thought, whatever else 
we may conclude about it. So interesting 
indeed is it, so supreme did this universal 
causality rank in the Buddhist doctrine as a 

Eoint of view, and a sound method ; so much 
ave we tended to overlook method and point 
of view, and lay emphasis only on the matters 
to which the method was applied, that it 
will be well to consider the subject more at 
length. 

In calling the Buddhist emphasis on the 
causal order of the world a point of view and a 
method, we use their own terms. Sometimes 
they call the quest of an earnest inquirer into 
the truth of tilings as a seeking after Good, 
Method or System (fiydya), and Dhamma. 



90 BUDDHISM 

Thus the Buddha, among the last Words 
ascribed to him, said : 

But twenty-nine was I when J renounced 

The world, Subhadda, seeking after Good, 

For fifty years and yet another year 

Since I went out, a pilgrim have I been, 

Through the wide realm of System and of Law 

Outside thereof no victory can be von. 1 

And elsewhere, in sweeping away, for 
religion and ethics, all barriers of class or 
caste, ethical progress is summed up as a 
striving on a basis of morality after Good, 
System, and Dhamma. Now system, method 
(nydya), is defined as follows : " And what, 
house-father, is this Ariyan method which 
one who is fit to attain the highest 
has by insight well seen and well pene- 
trated ? " 

" This : that the Ariyan disciple well and 
thoroughly attends to the arising-by-way-of- 
cause, namely : That being present, this 
becomes ; because that arises, this arises, 
etc." 2 

Hereupon follows the standard and staple 
illustration and application of the logical, or 
philosophical formula : Namely, 

4j w [" because of ignorance, actions, 

8 j; -i 5J actions, (fresh) conscious- 

^13 I ness (causing rebirth), 

1 Dialogues, ii, 167. 

2 Samyutta-Nikaya, v. 388. 



3 

a 

CO 



0) 

I 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 91 

because of that consciousness, (new) 

mind and body, 
mind and body, sense 

organs, 

sense-organs, contact, 
contact, feeling, 
feeling, craving, 

craving, grasping, ^ 
grasping (the disposition 
for) becoming (or rebirth) 
becoming, rebirth, 
rebirth, decay, death, grief, 
mourning, pain, sorrow 
t and despair. 

" Such is the coming to pass of this entire 
mass of ill." 

I have given this famous " Chain or Wheel 
of the Twelve Bases " with the explanatory 
terms supplied by the Commentators. 
Buddhists from the first have recognized 
it as " deep " : " deep is this doctrine of 
events as arising from causes, and it looks 
deep too 1 "but they have not admitted 
it to be incomprehensible, as have some 
European critics. The chief difficulty has 
never existed for them, namely, that of 
regarding the twelve as all applying to one 
individual life. For Buddhists " life " is an 
infinite matter, at least, a matter without 
finite beginning. Hence it contains within 
itself an infinite number of what we call 
individual lives, or spans of life. And it is 



92 BUDDHISM 

as simple a matter for them to divide up the 
formula into past, present and future spans 
of life, or rebirths, as for us to sketch parents, 
self, and descendants in a genealogical scheme. 
Buddhaghosa accordingly explains the scheme 
without hesitation as involving more than one 
such span. 

The fact that life as we know it is largely 
made up of painful and sorrowful experiences 
is the foundation from which Buddhism as 
religion, ethics, philosophy, takes its start 
It claims as the supreme merit in the Dhamma, 
that it has recognized this fact, understood it 
causally, and surmounted its effects. 

But the prominence given in the doctrine 
to this fact of 111, or the ills of life, and the 
accounting for those ills, in the foregoing { 
formula, by a string of natural causes, have 
proved for students of the doctrine the 
supreme, nay, the only interesting features 
in it. The emphasis on the general method 
or point of view, as illustrated by this stock 
genealogy of 111, is relatively passed over. 

Now a comparative study of the many 
contexts of the formula, in the Pitakas, 
may show that the general principle in- 
volved, namely, natural causation, was at 
least as important as the classic illustration 
and application of the principle. 

For instance, it will be admitted that, if 
the Wheel, when quoted, is adduced solely 
in order to teach " the uprising of this entire 
mass of 111," or of any link therein, the dis- 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 93 

course, in which it occurs, would have the 
same object, solely or in part. But in ninety- 
six Suttas, in which the Wheel occurs, only 
one-sixth are directly concerned with the fact 
and causes of pain and sorrow. The " great 
discourse " on bases, 1 in which the Wheel is 
discussed at length, is not directly so con- 
cerned. Of the remaining Suttas, sixteen are 
so many statements upholding the truth of 
the evolution of phenomena by way of natural 
causation. Then there are seven which discuss 
rebirth, and eight, the destruction of craving. 
Here, it is true, we get discussion on Segments 
in the Wheel, but not on III as such. Another 
is the discourse rebuking Sati's heresy, dealt 
with in the last chapter. The lessons there 
inculcated are not on hedonistic, i.e., concerned 
with feeling, nor moral. They have nothing 
to emphasize as to Pain. They are concerned 
to repudiate the substitution of mind for 
soul, and they affirm that mind is a contingent 
phenomenon, happening by way of cause and 
effect. Four Suttas are interesting to our 
inquiry herein, that loka, or the world of 
sense-perception, is substituted in the Wheel 
for 111, serving, it was felt, also as an applica- 
tion of the method. Lastly, thirty-six Suttas 
emphasize the importance of mastering the 
principle of " Causal genesis." 

Thus we get over one-third pointing to the 
principle, and only about one-sixth pointing 
to the subject illustrated. 

Dialogues ii. 50 ff, " Wheel " is a later term. 



94 BUDDHISM 

Again, the order of sequence in the Segments 
of the Wheel is not the main tenet. Had this 
been so, that order would always be the same. 
But now and then it is varied. So also is the 
number of the Segments. The first two are 
sometimes omitted; so are the first five. 
One presentation gives nos. 3, 4, 2, 11, 12 
only, and in this order And in one Sutta the 
antecedents of 111 are given as " desire, 
attachment, indulgence, lusting-after," Now 
in this discourse, the subject is expressly 
" suffering " : the difficulty of enduring persecu- 
tions with energy, mindfulness and serenity. 
And the brethren are encouraged to consider 
that they are well advanced " have wrought 
much " if they, remembering the conditioned 
nature of the five factors of the organism, 
note that such and such is the way in which 
they are grouped and combined and co- 
ordinated, all coming to pass by way of cause 
had not the Exalted One said that caused- 
origin was Dhamma, and conversely ? and 
that just as they knew the causes of 111, so by 
removing the causes, could they make the 
effect to cease. 1 Here, had the chief import 
of the Wheel been instruction in the genesis of 

Eain and sorrow, we should certainly have 
ad it given in full, But it is entirely absent. 
Only the standpoint as to causation is asso- 
ciated with it. 

For all that, the fact of 111 and its causes 

holds in nearly every case the last word in 

1 The apostle SariputU is speaking. MajjL NiL 1 19 L 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 95 

this curious old rune. And the records tell 
how the fact and the sequence of those causes 
dawned ever on the mind of a Buddha, as he 
wrestled for light on the problems of the men- 
ace and mystery of life. We need then, in 
considering the importance of the Wheel in 
the Dhamma, always to keep in view this 
dual aspect of it. Namely, that it is a way of 
explaining phenomena, and again, that the 
most impressive world-phenomenon to be 
explained is that of suffering. The latter 
standpoint is that of man as receptive or 
perceptive he feels ; the former is that of 
man intellective or interpreting he thinks. 

How far the rune was entirely a Buddhist 
creation we shall never know. It is by no 
means the only teaching so expressed, i.e., 
by way ol cause effect) effect, in Indian 

cause) 

lore. In the old aphorisms of the philosophic 
school called Sankhya, there is a similar but 
fragmentary formula, giving the genesis of 
mental factors : " From nature, intellect, 
thence self-apperception, thence the sixteen- 
fold set; from five thereof the five elements." 
And it has been claimed that Buddhism, 
drawing from this school, expanded its 
formula from the above. This is not a 
highly plausible theory. The Sankhya was 
not Alnumistic ; nevertheless, as an Absolu- 
tist metaphysic it would have been repugnant 
to Buddhism, had the latter found it current. 

There may, however, have been some older 



96 BUDDHISM 

rune bearing on the facts of life and mind, from 
which both schools borrowed. The naive 
mould in which the belief is cast is no doubt 
primitive enough. We think of our nursery 
rhyme : " The cat began to kill the rat, the 
rat began to gnaw the rope," and so on . . 
till, corresponding to the conclusion as to 
III, we end : " And so the old woman got 
home that night." This, we learn from folk- 
lorists, is one of the most wide-spread of 
prehistoric folk-runes of the class called 
"accumulative jingles/' It is more to be 
wondered at, that so few ancient doctrines 
adopted as mnemonics its simple, impressive 
sequences, than that two systems made use of 
it. Neither body of doctrine was at all likely 
to cultivate the form of the rune as effective 
in and through its jingling cadence. There 
is a good deal of such abracadabra in the 
Indian literature that has grown up around 
altar and priestly chant, but Buddhism and 
Sankhya have no such traditions. 

Hence, neither its antiquity, nor the accident 
of its form, nor even its separate links, all of 
which are taught severally, more or less, in 
the Pitakas, can account for the high value 
attached to the formula of causal genesis. 
But in its affirmation of a natural order, put 
forward for the first time as a gospel for all, in 
antithesis to the animism about them : here 
truly is an impressive iconoclasm and a bold 
stand, costing an effort we can scarce realize. 
Too great a forward stride to take and main- 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 97 

tain in India. Not too great for the mainten- 
ance of Dhamma in the South Asian centres, 
remote from skilled Absolutist dialectic. Still 
in Burma and Ceylon is taught the Law of 
Happening by way of cause, thus formulated 
some eight hundred years ago : " This law is 
a mode marked by the simple condition of 
a phenomenon happening, when its sole in- 
variable antecedent phenomenon happens." 
Then follows the Wheel, and an analysis of 
it 1 

But it is one thing to teach this as text- 
book logic to blithe, acquiescent youths in 
the monastery schools, another to have first 
discerned all that it involved, when brought 
in to solve the riddles of birth, decay and 
death. The fad of suffering does not come as 
a revelation to the Buddha, thinking hard 
beneath his Bodbi-tree, nor the fairly obvious 
causes of it, That fact drove him rest- 
less from home, station and ease. It was 
the process of the natural, necessary, uni- 
versal law, by which all things, bodily and 
mental, happened, or became nascent, static, 
and expiring. Pain and suffering are not the 
thought that seizes him, but : 

" Coming to pass ! Coming to pass ! At 
that thought there arose in me a Vision into 
things not called before to mind. And know- 
ledge arose, insight arose, wisdom arose, 
light arose, . . . Passing away! Pas- 
sing away 1 At that thought there arose in 
of Phttowphy, p. 187, 



98 BUDDHISM 

me a vision into things not called before to 
mind. . . ." Not uncaused and casually, 
nor by the fiat of tsh'vara Lord whether 
Indra,' Soma, Vani^a, Brahma did events 
happen, painful or otherwise ; not, it seemed 
to him, was it true, literally or poetically 
conceived, to hold that ruling deities, angry 
every day at man's shortcomings, distributed 
sorrows in their anger. 3 Events came impelled 
by preceding conditions, causes that man 
could by intelligence and goodwill study and 
govern, suspend or intensify. 

Do I seem to be reading contents that are 
not Indian, not early Indian, into these old 
records ? At all events, the very early 
commentarial tradition from which Buddha- 
ghosa drew his materials saw and realized 
such implications in the doctrine of the Wheel. 
In explaining the name for it : " Happening-by- 
way-of -cause," he points out 2 that it excludes 
all theories of absolutism, nihilism, chance, 
irregular causation and indeterminism, . . 
The wheel of Becoming is without known 
beginning, lacking both maker . . . such 
as Brahma , . and percipient "I." 
" For each consequent proceeds by reason of 
its antecedent." As usual it is the first two 
theories that, as the most prevalent, call for 
his special attention. Namely, that there 

1 Job xxi. 17. 

8 Way of Purity, ch, rvii. This is now in process of 
being edited and translated by Professor Lanman and 
Pundit Kosambl 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 99 

is no persistent ego reaping results in one life, 
which It has sown in a previous life, although, 
again, it is no alien ego who reaps, but one 
who is the resultant, the creature, the evolved 
successor and representative of the former. 

Into this, which we may call the Buddhist 
theory of efficient, or passed-on cause, we 
can better enter presently. But in so far 
as the very definite comment cited above 
expands faithfully the earlier text, the doctrine 
compressed into the Wheel implied as decided 
a negation of any absolute cause as did the 
doctrine of Demokritus and Leukippus : 
namely that nothing happens save through 
a cause and of necessity a doctrine which 
the latter published perhaps half a century 
after the Buddha's death. 

Willingly or unwillingly, humanity has 
let die the writings of both the Greek fathers 
of modem science. Had not the current of 
philosophical thought been resumed in, and 
steered by two thinkers of such genius as 
Plato and Aristotle the one pure Absolutist, 
the other modified Absolutist the whole 
philosophy of the West might conceivably 
have flowed along a channel in which it 
would earlier have approached the informing 
principle of the Buddhist doctrine of cause. 
As it came to pass, Europe learned from those 
two latter thinkers compromise and compre- 
hensiveness, learned, in other words, to believe 
in a universe governed partly by necessity 
and partly by chance, learned to combine 



100 BUDDHISM 

belief in unchanging natural law with belief 
in first and final causes. 

So gradually lias the realm of regular, 
causal sequence encroached upon that of the 
casual and the arbitrary, that we can trace, 
in the early history of European thought, 
no such milestone marking where the notion 
of a universe, governed as to its every move- 
ment and happening, was brought home to 
the minds of men to the mind of one man* 
With us philosophy and religion have never 
blended, and science has expanded independ- 
ently of both. Hence we see no such intel- 
lectual earthquake in the history of our ideas 
as was caused half a century ago by that 
extension of the law of causation : the theory 
of evolution. Most of my readers will have 
no personal memory of the time. But we 
have only to read the letters and biographies 
of contemporaries to see what searching 
of heart, yea, what a sword that theory brought 
among us. 

It soon appeared, however, that even evolu- 
tion fitted, as well as natural causation gener- 
ally, into the traditional compromise and 
comprehensiveness of our standpoints. So 
that, with our science and our philosophy 
and our religion marching along side by side 
in an armed truce, and a judicious amount 
of liberty of speech conceded to each, intel- 
lectual earthquakes throughout educated 
circles are improbable events. The full 
significance of natural causation still comes 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 101 

to birth, but it is in the mind of this or that 
thoughtful youth and maiden. I can remem- 
ber some such u vision " borne in on my own 
experience when, in a text-book on brain 
and mind, I realized that the procedure 
of mental and of cerebral phenomena also 
went on by the Dhamina of cause and 
effect. 

But how had it been with us, if in olden 
time some prophet had arisen, who had seen, 
in a vision of universal natural law, not a 
philosophic theory only, nor a scientific 
induction, but a saving Truth, a Religion, 
whereby he might purify both his own beliefs 
and redeem mankind from error and delu- 
sion ? We could not then say the history 
of our thought presented no milestone record- 
ing the outcrop of such a notion. Possibly 
there was some such epoch-marking day, 
when Demokritus produced his Diakosmos, 
now lust, but on account of which he was hailed 
in the Levant as a great prophet and teacher 
of mankind. 

In the history of Indian thought, on the 
other hand, we can point to such a day, and 
such a milestone ; we can discern the signifi- 
cance of the law of universal natural causation 
breaking in on a great mind, racked by doubts 
and diilimlties, with a flash of intuition. The 
law ivvouls itself as an actual, present and 
eternal tinier, And he, the Tatnfi'gata, the 
Mun-who-hail-thus-ooiw*, was there to penc- 
trutc and master it> and to deliver it as a 



102 BUDDHISM 

Norm, as a true standard of views and values, 
to the world. 1 

No such crisis of thought is patent in the 
sacerdotal, or mystical, or philosophical litera- 
ture of the Brahmin culture, even though that 
literature is practically co-extensive with 
Indian religion and philosophy. The Upanis- 
hads are widest and most original in their 
scope; but those ranked as oldest show a 
naive animism, those held to be later reveal 
a much more advanced maturity of thought. 
We may, for instance, contrast such a passage 
as : The Atman deliberated : I will send forth 
worlds ; he then formed the person . . . 
he brooded over him, and ... a mouth 
burst forth like an egg , . . with this : 
" Should time, or nature, or necessity, or 
chance, or the elements, or the person (soul) 
be considered as the cause ? " 2 And there 
is nothing between these two stages of mental 
output to show any transitional expansion, 
accompanied by an intellectual crisis. In 
fact, as in other matters, the idea is at the 
back of our minds, as we read and compare, 
that Buddhism itself had been the intrusive 
influence, fermenting in circles outside its 
own radius. 

In the seventy-two stanzas of the Sankhya- 
Karika again, 25 per cent, contain some 

1 Sax&yutfa N. ii. 25. 

1 Aitareyya and Shvet&svatara Upanwhads, reckoned as 
one of the four oldest, and as eleventh among the twelve 
oldest, respectively, by liegnaud. 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 108 

consciously generalized affirmation about 
cause and effect. We ^see that the notion 
of cause in the abstract is quite a mature and 
polished instrument of thought. No less in 
the Yoga-Sutra too, the origin of which is 
also lost in the obscurity of the past, do we 
find allusions to causality wielded as an 
abstract idea. The earliest literature of the 
Jains is nearly totally inaccessible to us, and 
awaits its editor, let alone translator. We 
only know that in its mediaeval books is an 
atomistic theory not without interest. 

So far then it is only in the Pali-Pitakas 
that we come up against the actual effort 
of the mind to get at a more scientific view 
of world-order. And that effort is marked 
with the freshness and vigour of a new 
advance in intellectual expansion. The im- 
portance and the gravity of the conviction is 
affirmed with the utmost emphasis, both in 
the Pitakas and in the orthodox literature of 
the fifth century. 

But, it is said, Buddhism was a gospel 
promulgated by laymen, chiefly by sons of 
nobles and burgesses, and preached to all 
sorts and conditions of men. Such teachers 
would naturally regard as new and wonderful 
truths, notions and axioms which had long 
been familiar to the more esoteric, philosophi- 
cal schools of the day, and which were tru- 
isms in dialectical metaphysic. 

This may very likely be true for the first 
decades of the Buddhist movement. It 



104 BUDDHISM 

expressly professed to be a missionary and 
democratic movement. Its founder was driven 
to leave the world to gain his own soul to 
use an un-Buddhistic quotation. But he 
decided, with sore misgiving, to quit the 
mental peace and repose he had won in soli- 
tude, to go back among men, and to seek after 
those who had ears to hear, or as the Buddhist 
record says, had eyes to see. He left the 
shady tree for the crossways, or, as we say, 
the study-armchair for the market-place. 
When the doctrine so grew as to cover the 
land with colleges and settlements, and to be 
the most highly favoured cult of the country, 
it would naturally and inevitably annex the 
best thought and learning in the country, as 
was the case for a thousand years wife the 
Christian Church. 

But the human mind may acquire a general 
notion, and yet so confine the range thereof 
by definition and axiom, that it remains 
sterile, and all the great world-moving induc- 
tion latent in it may lie unheeded. It is the 
mind or minds who expand a concept for us 
under some Bo-tree make wide the implica- 
tions of thought, and tell us what they see 
these it is who create the wisdom that is 
fruitful among men, theirs is the utterance 
that is the true evolutionary cry of travail and 
new birth. 

Such a birth-cry comes to us from these 
old Pitakas, the cry of humanity, as it were, 
beholding "a vision into things not called 



THE LAW OF CAUSATION 105 

before to mind." And these are the supreme 
movements of life. "The day of days/ the 
great day of the feast of life, is that in which 
the inward eye opens to the unity in things, 
to the omnipresence of law. If truth come 
to our minds, we suddenly expand to its 
dimensions, as if we grew to worlds. We are 
as law-givers ; we speak for nature ; we 
prophesy and divine." 1 And in the history 
of philosophy, whether we are listening to 
the truly originating seer, or to minds reacting 
to his influence, nothing is more illuminating 
for our efforts to interpret that history, 
than to catch the intelligence in the act of 
ascending to a fresh vantage-point in its 
interpretation of the world. We note and 
hail it, as the Buddhist legend hailed its 
founder's advent as teacher: 

As on a crag, on crest of mountain standing, 
A man might watch tho people far below, 
E'en so do thou, Wisdom fair, ascending, 
Seer of all, the terraced heights of Truth, 
Look down, from grief released, upon the nations 
Sunken in grief, oppressed with birth and age ; 
Arise, thou Hero ! Conqueror in the battle ! 
Thou freed from debt ! Lord of tho pilgrim band ! 
Walk the world o'er, sublime and blessed Teacher, 
Teach us the Truth ; there are who'll understand, 

And until research among documents that 

survive, or delving in sands for such as have 

been lost, brings to us other testimony to some 

such vision of universal law revealed as a 

1 Emerson, 



106 BUDDHISM 

message of vital import to the world, a unique 
interest must attach to the Pali Pitakas, 
for presenting to us this evolutionary moment 
an interest not only for the history of Indian 
thought, but for the history of human ideas 
in general. 



CHAPTER V 

THE NOKM AS MORAL LAW 

WE may now proceed to the third stated 
implication in that pregnant term Dhamma, 
and connect it with the foregoing considera- 
tions, This is what we should call a moral 
or ethical import : 

" Not of a like result are right and wrong " 
(dhamm, 



We are not concerned just here to consider 
in detail the moral or ethical code of Budd- 
hism. It has now and again been put forward 
that Buddhism is neither religion nor philo- 
sophy, but only a system of morals or ethics, 
in so far as it contains anything beyond mere 
negations. It would not be well to meet this 
assertion with the hasty generalization, that 
such a system could never have, at any time, 
commanded attention, respect and adherence 
among all classes in India, as was the case 
with Buddhism. We are scarcely in a position 
as yet to dogmatize about the essentials in 
successful gospels, India is wide enough 
and old enough to have found place and 
time for systems acceptable to all classes of 
107 



108 BUDDHISM 

mind and temperament, and for conjunctures 
favourable to possibly more propaganda 
than we deem likely to succeed. Asoka's 
edicts carved on rock and pillar are, for the 
most part, injunctions to his subjects to act 
" according to Dhamina." And that seems, 
in these imperial messages to the man in the 
street, to be tantamount to acting wisely, 
honourably, kindly. " The Dhamma is good," 
says one edict, " but what is the Dhamma ? 
The having but little, in one's mind, of the 
intoxicants (sensuality, lust for life, mere 
opinion, ignorance) ; doing many benefits 
to others ; compassion, liberality, truth, 
purity." There are 34 of these edicts surviving, 
distributed over practically the whole of 
India, and it is noteworthy that only in one 
of them is allusion made to the word of the 
Buddha as such. The only sanction, defin- 
itely invoked as a motive force, is the welfare 
of the individual, now and hereafter, resulting 
from his acting according to Dhamma, 
together with the welfare of beings in general. 
The edicts quote some of the Suttas in the 
Pali Pitakas by name : what then is the 
position taken in those scriptures with respect 
to this sanction of well-doing ? Do they teach 
any fundamental principle why M or N should 
be habitually and systematically good ? For 
it is not likely that a doctrine, so virile in its 
appeal to the intellect, in its confidence 
in the power of intelligence, as is Buddhism, 
should be content to say, as if to children, 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 109 

or to persons in subjection : " Do this ! Be 
jthat 1 Never mind why ! " Even if we do 
not find a ground of morals explicitly stated, 
shall we not read one between the lines? 
Does not every code of morals for free men 
and women imply a ground, or reason of 
action ? " There is always," wrote Robert 
Louis Stevenson, " a ruling spirit behind the 
code of rules, an attitude, a relation, a point 
of the compass, in virtue of which we conform, 
or dissent." " And thus," that gracious voice 
goes on, " to learn aright from any teacher, 
we must first of all, like a historical artist, 
think ourselves into sympathy with his 
position. . . Briefly, if a saying is hard 
to understand, it is because we are thinking 
of something else" 1 

What then is the Buddhist position as to 
why people should be good ? We are not 
here discussing that higher ethical level of 
what India called the freed mind : the char- 
acter that had got past troubling itself about 
results. We are just now on the level of 
character which asks : What shall I gain, 
what will happen to me, if I am good, if I am 
wicked ? Buddhism as a national creed 
must have met, must yet meet this sort 
of inquiry, as well as that of less practical 
aspiration. 

* Lay Morals. The opening pages of Mr. Fielding's 
Soul of a People contain a pathetic confession of an 
inquirer baffled by thinking all the while of "something 



HO BUDDHISM 

It has not been easy for Western thought 
to get at it, just because that thought is so often 
thinking of something else. It tends to 
judge, at its first contact with Buddhist 
doctrine, that there is no gain or retribution 
worth speaking of. We have in mind what 
certain words mean for us according to our 
notions fitted into them notions derived from 
our traditional way of looking at things. 
I have experienced this sort of difficulty to 
no small extent in inquiring into the funda- 
mental principles of Buddhism. And I seldom 
meet with a European work on Buddhism in 
ivhich I do not see the same sort of inquiry 
hampered by the same sort of hindrance. It 
may help us to look out for these " something 
elses " of our traditional standpoints as we 
go on, and to endeavour, by Stevenson's.' 
suggestion, to become historical artists, think- 
ing ourselves into intellectual sympathy with 
the Buddhist position. 

When we say " nature," " natural law," 
we do not usually include in it any " moral 
law." We include under it the certain se- 
quence of a green shoot grown from seed sown 
in a suitable soil and climate. But we do not, 
with equal certainty, affirm a sequent measure 
of happiness to the doer of a good deed, or of 
unhappiness to the doer of a bad deed. We 
do affirm this with respect to good and bad 
actions taken in the lump, and in the long 
run. But we admit that many good deeds are 
in this life unrewarded, that much wrong-doing 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 111 

and crime goes undetected, many a wicked 
person dying in comfort and prosperity. 
Those who look for compensation and retri- 
bution hereafter rely on the fiat of a divine 
judge. Those who hold that no good act is 
lost rely on the omniscient care of a divine 
providence. Why we should do good, is for 
some a divinely implanted intuition, guided 
by a divinely implanted conscience; for some 
a conclusion based on human experience of the 
benign results of good action in general. 

Let us now look at the Buddiist point of 
view. Buddhists concentrated their attention 
not on a cause or mover of the order of things 
physical and moral, but on the order itself. 
They held that this order was one of constant 
universal change, organically conceived, i.e., 
as growth and decay, and conceived as pro- 
ceeding by cause and effect. Things become, 
as the sequels of certain assignable other 
things having become. 

That may all be true, we say, and intellec- 
tually noteworthy, but it leaves us cold and 
morally indifferent. The Buddhists may have 
seen, in what has seemed to many the mere 
mechanism of a soulless universe, an eternal 
orderly procedure, but we do not see how they 
could draw thence any motive making for 
righteousness, let alone piety and devotion. 
Atmanism, from one point of view, may 
have been a kind of elephantiasis of the 
Ego. From another, it suffused the human 
being with a splendour of divinity, beside 



112 BUDDHISM 

and in which all that was mean and vile 
shrivelled and died. What is theie then, or 
was there originally in Buddhism, to move 
people to seek good and avoid evil ? Was it 
not to a conjuncture of circumstances that it 
owed its first moral enthusiasm ? And does 
it owe now no moral force to its mixture with 
animistic systems ? 

Such considerations could not be shelved 
in any complete account of the growth of 
Buddhism. For such an account would 
have to render intelligible why it was that a 
movement which started as the backward 
swing of the religious and philosophical 
pendulum away from Atmanism, ritualism and 
formalism, should not have remained as the 
Protestant and negating attitude of a few 
reformers. It would have to account for 
its expansion into a manifold and remarkable 
body of culture in India, and for its survival 
as a venerable and remarkably loyal tradition 
of religious philosophy in the Theravadin 
centres of the present day, not to mention the 
many Mahayanist schools in the far East. 
It would have to enable us to realize the 
positive and drawing power of early Buddhism 
attracting thousands to itself, in India and 
in its mission fields, in the centuries of its 
expansion. It would have to show some 
plausible reason why that which so many 
critics among us call gloomy, pessimistic, 
arid, wooden, irrational, still sits enthroned 
in lands where pessimism, asceticism, de- 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 113 

cadence and vice are not more present, are 
even less in evidence, than in lands not 
professedly Buddhist, and where the national 
temperament that abides loyal to the ancient 
Dhamma is, for the most part, sunny and 
cheerfully, if not deeply, pious. Any ex- 
planation of its wide diffusion and long-lived 
tenacity must demonstrate wherein it could 
commend itself, at first and subsequently, to 
the intelligence of the thoughtful, as well as 
to the hearts of the million. 

Such an inquiry, however, is outside the 
scope of this little work, and we can go no 
further into the matter than briefly to state 
and discount all contingent and complicating 
factors, in order the more quickly to get at 
fundamental principles. 

There were, no doubt, many contingent 
factors aiding Buddhism at its start ; such as 
the personality and genius of its founder, the 
devotion, zeal and organizing ability of his 
chief disciples or Theras, and the fresh, un- 
tainted vigour and moral example of the 
majority of the young fraternity. To preach 
and to live a life, in the eye of the public, 
of uncompromising and consistent righteous- 
ness and active benevolence, can never fail 
to carry weight, whatever be the philosophy 
and the logic of the underlying principles. 
Greater still is the effect, if the ethical vitality 
of the age is being sapped by a decadent 
ritual involving sacrificial butchery, caste- 
privilege and vain repetitions. "If this 



114 BUDDHISM 

river Achiravati," said the Buddha to two 
young Brahmin disciples, " were full of water 
even to the brim and overflowing, and a 
man with business to be done on the further 
bank should come up, and want to cross 
over ; and standing on this bank, he should 
invoke the further bank, and say : ' Come 
hither, further bank ! come over to this 
side ! ' Now what think you, Vaseftfea ? 
Would the further bank of the river Achira- 
vati, by reason of that man's invoking and 
praying, and hoping, and praising, come over 
to this side ? 

" In just the same way, Vasettfta, do the 
Brahmins, versed in the Three Vedas, omitting 
the practice of those qualities which really 
make a man a Brahmin, 1 and adopting the 
practice of those qualities which really make 
men non-Brahmins, say thus : fc Indra, we 
call upon, Soma we call upon, Isana we call 
upon, Pajapati we call upon, Brahma we 
call upon, we call, we call ! ' Verily, VaseftAa, 
that these Brahmins, by reason of their 
invoking and praying and hoping and praising, 
should after death become united witn 
Brahma verily such a condition of things 
can in no wise be." 2 

The immolation of beasts in religious rites 
was first straitly condemned by Buddhists 
and Jains, but their denunciation gave voice 
to a feeling among the more spiritually- 

1 Brahma means excellent, holy. 
1 Dialogues, I 309 fi. 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 115 

minded in India, which, till they spoke, had 
but deprecated the institution in terms 
parallel to the " I will have mercy and not 
sacrifice " of the Hebrew prophets. 1 

And the frequency with which we find the 
Buddha consulted on the growing social 
claims of the Brahmins, shows that these 
claims were a burning question of the day. 
His own position, tracing the origin of social 
divisions or " castes " to some primitive 
norm or standard (dhamma) arising through 
division of labour, and recognizing only an 
aristocracy of intellect and virtue, must 
have appealed strongly to those who were 
dissatisfied with the Brahmins' assumptions. 2 

Let us now imagine the more intellectual 
hearers discounting these aspects of the new 
movement : (a) devotion to a great and good 
personality and to his elect helpers ; (b) belief 
that, either in joining the religious fraternity, 
or in ministering to it as laymen, future ills 
might be averted, and (c) acceptance of a 
teaching as saving truth because the wise and 
good taught it. We may further imagine 
(d) the social and political reforming protest 
discounted : the protest against sacerdotal 
and caste privilege and pretension, and the 
growing sense, during the temporary respite 
from war and invasion, of kinship and sym- 
pathy, together with the growth of traffic 
and intercourse ; all of which are prominently 
represented in early Buddhist literature. 
1 Dialogues i 164 fit. 8 Ibid. i. 96 fl. 



116 BUDDHISM 

Yet again, we may discount, for such minds, 
(e) the more religious aspect of the move- 
ment : the ethical revival demanding right- 
eousness of life and inward piety in place of 
a relatively immoral and half-outgrown 
ritualism, and the sanction, to such piety and 
conduct, of a real present salvation open to 
all, irrespective of birth or sex. 

Finally, in considering the survival of 
Buddhism down to the present day, we have 
to remember that, in common with other 
cults which have been propagated far and 
wide, Buddhism, where it prevailed, annexed 
as much as it was annexed. Where it was 
adopted, it also adapted itself. Thus, more 
thinly spread in some countries, both in the 
past and at the present day, and co-existing 
in a more or less illogical fusion with other 
cults, the moral sanctions of the latter may 
weaken and obscure the force of the moral 
sanctions in Buddhism. Hence we have to 
make allowance for (/) this adulteration in 
motives due to a mixture of creeds. 

What then was the residual, distinctively 
Buddhist moral principle, which could appeal 
to disinterested and thoughtful adherents 
at the outset of the movement, and can appeal 
now to all ? Here is a creed, depending on 
no revelation of the will or design of divine 
law-givers, nor on any human fiat whatever 
as the source of authority, and yet strenuously 
maintaining the truth and necessity of moral 
obligation, both during and after this life. 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 117 

What is the basis of the sincere and genuine 
Buddhist's morality ? What place does he 
find for " I ought," " I ought not ? " What 
is his criterion of good and of bad conduct ? 
And can he find in the cosmos the working of 
a justice, so far transcending man's puny 
efforts in that direction, as to make it worth 
any man's while to pursue good, and avoid 
bad? 

Let us take the last inquiry first, The 
injustice and cruelty so often apparent in 
the natural course of things, the condemna- 
tion of nature at the tribunal of ethics : this, 
as Huxley wrote, is a commonplace of all 
literatures. Is the Buddhist to follow good 
and flee from wickedness with only the 
order of nature to supplant Providence ? 
" Why," might he not say, " was this child 
bom a hunchback ? " Does he hold that 
moral judgments" This is just. That is 
unkind " are merely the ethical creations 
of the human mind, reflecting on the general 
cosmic order of which it is a factor ? And 
does he therefore say : " There's nothing 
good or bad but thinking makes it so " f 
Or does he find, in Huxley's words, a sanction 
for morality in the ways of the cosmos ? l 

Now it is only in systems where all things are 
derived from a creative One, that the creation 
of a moral order is ascribed to a pristine 

1 Evolution and Ethics (Romanes Lecture), the most 
remarkable contribution of any lay-student to the philoso- 
phy of Buddhism, 



118 BUDDHISM 

agency so conceived. We see it in the 
Semitic utterance : " I am the Lord and there 
is none else. I form light and create dark- 
ness ; I make peace and create evil. . . . 
Let the skies pour down righteousness ; 
let it spring up. I the Lord have created 
it." By implication, if not by utterances so 
sharply etched as this, the all-soul of Vedan- 
tism stands in a similar position. But in the 
Bhagavad-Gita, the poem of a somewhat 
later age, we find a lesser claim put forward for 
divine providence in the person of the exalted 
one or Bhagava. " When right is declining, 
and wrong increasing, . . . then, to pro- 
tect the good and destroy evil-doers, and 
to confirm the right am I in every age of 
mankind reborn.' 5 * But to produce actions 
and to connect acts and their consequences, 
" here (only) nature (prakriti) works." * 

Now the Pitakas do not assert, but they 
leave it clear enough, that, in the organic 
universe, right and wrong, and those conse- 
quences of actions which we call justice, 
retribution, compensation, are as truly and 
inevitably a part of the eternal natural or 
cosmic order as the flow of a river, the process 
of the seasons, the plant from the fertile 
seed. Going farther than the modern scien- 
tific standpoint, they substituted a cosmodicy 
for a theodicy, a natural moral order for 
the moral design of a creative deity. 

This order which Buddhism saw in the 

1 Bhag. Gita, iv. 8 ; v. 14 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 119 

universe was called in Pali niyam'a, that is, 
going-on, process. In it five branches, strands, 
phases were discerned : kamma-niyama, order 
of act-and-result ; utu~niyama, physical 
(inorganic) order; blja-niyama, order ol 
germs, or seeds (physical organic order) ; 
chitta-niyama, order of mind, or conscious 
life ; dhamma-niyama, order of the norm, or 
the effort of nature to produce a perfect type. 
This fivefold synthesis does not occur in the 
Pitakas. 1 In them we have the expressions 
niyamata, dhammatd, abstract terms for normal 
orderly procedure. And each of the five 
kinds of process is taught severally. But 
the synthesis itself was made in or before 
Buddhaghosa's time (fifth century A.D.), 
or by himself. 2 He brings it forward when he 
is commenting on a refrain in the Buddha- 
legend, the telling of it being put in the mouth 
of the Buddha himself. The refrain is : 
" This, in such a case, is the norm " (or 
order of events, dhammatd,). And he illus- 
trates each of the five phases thus : (1) by 
the desirable and undesirable results following 
good and bad action, respectively ; (2) by the 
phenomena of winds and rains ; (3) by rice 
produced from rice-seed, or again, by sugary 
taste resulting from sugar-cane or honey ; 
(4) by conscious processes, quoting from the 
Abhidhamma-Pitaka (Patthdna) : " Ante- 
cedent states of consciousness with their 

1 Unless the two yet unedited Niddosa books reveal it. 
1 See Dialogues, ii. 8 n. 



120 BUDDHISM 

properties stand to posterior states with their 
properties in the relation of efficient cause." 
For instance, u in sense-cognition, the re- 
ceptive and other phases of consciousness 
come to pass after, and because of, the sensa- 
tion of sight." ; (5) by the natural phenomena 
occurring at the advent of a Bodhisat in his 
last rebirth, i.e., of one who, when adult, will 
become a saviour of the world, or Buddha. 
Hence we may define the dhamma-niyama as 
the order of things concerned with the 
production by the cosmos of its perfect or 
norm type. And we may say that our 
notion of moral law is covered by the 
first and last branches of the fivefold order, 
namely, the why we should be good, by 
the kamma-niyama, and the why we try 
to better our good, by the dhamma- 
niyama. 

The first, or Kamma-order, expresses the 
universal fact that certain kinds of acts 
bodily, vocal, mental inevitably bring pain, 
both to the doer and to his fellows, while 
certain other kinds of acts bring pleasure or 
happiness to both. The ancient books did 
not trouble themselves very much to divide 
self sharply from others, and discuss egoism 
and altruism as has been done in modern 
ethics. Our present ideal of a conscious 
solidarity needed this preceding wave of 
conscious individualistic discrimination. Old- 
world wisdom felt rather than thought how 
solidaires all were one of another. The 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 121 

good man, in the Suttas, pursues the interests 
of both himself and others : 

Ubhinnam atthaw* oarati ; attano ca parassa ca. 1 
(He seeks the good of bothof others and of self.) 

And to be and to do good consisted in 
refraining from injury, and bestowing happi- 
ness to the doer, in some form, at some time. 

Buddhism claimed to reveal no original 
morality, nor any new rewards or punishments. 
Be good, it declared, and you will be reborn 
happily, as god, that is, as celestial being or 
angel, or, it may be, again as human. Be 
bad, and you will be reborn to misery, as an 
animal, as ill-plighted shade, or in the woes of 
purgatory. But think not that profession 
or ritual, sacrifice or prayer is part of goodness. 
.There is no goodness save being harmless to, 
actively good to, your fellow-beings human, 
and non-human. And there is no other 
certain sanction of goodness beyond the 
driving force of pain waiting on immoral 
living, and the pleasures rewarding moral 
living, now or in the long run. No sanction 
of an external will, divine or corporate, is 
quoted. Sayings of the Buddha are abundant- 
ly quoted to clench arguments on doctrine. 
But when the saints, in their poems, end the 
story of salvation won with the refrain : 
"Done is the Buddha's bidding!" the 
term used is not that for a despot's order : 
ana, but that for the instructions of a teacher : 
sdsana. 

1 Samyutla-Nik&ya, i. 162, 222, 



122 BUDDHISM 

Now there was no need of inspired communi- 
cations to teach mankind that they should 
avoid pain and pursue happiness, The 
teacher could aid mankind in connecting the 
bad and the painful, the good and the pleasant. 
They could claim, through higher insight, or 
through knowledge of orthodox tradition, to 
reveal ulterior connections beyond this life. 
But these connections and that insight were 
both of them integral parts of the cosmic order 
or norm of things. And when once the belief, 
that the kamma-niyama was as certain as 
the bija-niyama, the deed done no less sure 
as a cause than the fertile seed sown, was 
become part of tradition's very marrow, then 
was there no need of a moral law or doctrine 
to be super-imposed from without upon the 
natural law of the universe. Sequence of 
deed and effect was as natural, as necessary, 
as inexorably, inevitably sure, as the way of 
sun and moon, the dying of all that is born, 
the reaction of sentience to stimulus. 

Here then is where we need to think of what 
Buddhists think, and not of something else, 
if we would understand. You others, the 
Buddhist might say, invert the order of truth 
as we understand it ; you assign rewards and 
punishments for certain acts and abstinences, 
calling this justice. But it is from the natural 
law or norm of things, wherein you say that 
you often see injustice, that you first learn 
what retribution is, and what is reward, such 
as we conceive in our kamma order. If you 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 123 

will study this order, you will see that there is 
ao scheme of man-made justice which can 
stand comparison with the norm inherent in 
the universe with the dhammatd of things. 
As surely as water, drawn up from earth and 
ocean by the sun re-descends as rain, so surely 
will a good, that is, a felicific act yield, some- 
where and some-when, its happy results to 
the doer : 

According to the seed that's sown, 
So is the fruit ye reap therefrom. 
Door of good will gather good, 
Boer of evil evil reaps. 
Sown is the seed, and thou shalt taste 
The fruit thereof. 1 

The verse is the summary of a fable in a 
group of legends incorporated in a Pitaka 
%ook, and fathered as discourses on the 
Buddha. Yet, though popular in form, it 
presents accurately enough the substance 
of numerous passages inculcating the same 
doctrine in other words. And the acceptance 
of a Buddha's mission to teach a positive 
doctrine of act and consequence ; in a word, 
of Karma, is, as we saw in the preceding 
chapter, one of the most emphatic statements 
imputed to Gotaina. 

This acquiescence of the Indian mind in 
the certainty of the natural law of Karma 
and also in the austere equity of it, is a notable 
feature for the Western religious mind to 
contemplate. For the idea of natural justice 
Sww/utta-Nik&ya, i. 227. 



124 BUDDHISM 

in life and destiny has not commanded the 
general confidence of mankind. The loyal- 
and pious interpretation even of a theodicy 
or divine justice often tries the faithful. 
" Lord, who did sin, this man or his parents, 
that he was born blind ? " 

We might say : the parents, thinking of the 
working, we so little as yet understand, 
though we accept it, of heredity. So did the 
Jews, " thinking of something else," namely, 
of divine retribution stretched forth " even 
to the third and fourth generation of them 
that hate thee." 

Buddhism would say : " The man had 
sinned." Afflictions, whatever disciplinary 
purge and preparation they afford by the 
way, are for Buddhists so many forms, not 
of pre-payment, by which future compensation 
may be claimed, but of settlement of out- 
standing debts, debts accruing from bad, that 
is to say, from evil-bringing, unhappiness- 
promoting acts acts done either in this 
life, or, as in this born-blind's case, in previous 
lives. 

Now this opens up other cases where we are 
always " thinking of something else." But a 
word more on this natural justice theory. 
Our ethical books, as we know, divide ethical 
systems into such as are Utilitarian or 
Dependent (systems which make the good- 
ness of an act depend on its results), and 
Intuitionist or Independent ethics systems 
which say we know instinctively or intuitively 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 125 

quite apart from results, whether acts of 
thought or deed are good or bad. Buddhism 
is at first sight Utilitarian. There is nothing 
either good or bad but result shows it to be 
so ; results, that is to say, as felt ; felt as 
giving pleasure or pain. Listen to the Buddha 
admonishing his only son, who was a bhikkhu: 
" Is there a deed, Rahula, thou dost wish to 
do, then bethink thee thus : Is this deed 
conducive to my own harm, or to others' 
harm, or to that of both, then is this a bad 
deed entailing suffering. Such a deed must 
thou surely not do. 5 ' And so on for the 
opposite case. 1 Again, when inquirers ask 
the Buddha for a criterion of truth to judge 
between different gospels preached to them, he 
refers them to their own judgment as to the 
moral consequences likely to ensue if a certain 
gospel is followed : " Is it good, blameless, 
commended by the wise, conducive to happi- 
ness and welfare, or the reverse ? " 2 This is 
utilitarian morality, 

But in that Buddhism believes in natural 
law or justice, whereby acts bring their own 
reward or punishment, not only to mankind 
but to the doer whether human justice find 
him out or not a natural justice which 
goes on inevitably and invariably constant, 
fulfilling itself it may be through human 
justice, but always fulfilling itself a law not 
to be suspended by God, Buddhas, or man 
in this belief Buddhists are Intuitionists. Or 

1 Majjhima~N.) i. 415, a Anguttara-N,, i. 190. 



126 BUDDHISM 

rather, they have made a vast induction 
similar to the great induction in their and 
our law of causation ; and this induction is 
of course founded on a belief. This belief is, 
that what they see happening around them 
happens everywhere and always the belief, 
namely, that the righteous act brings to the 
doer happiness, the wicked act, unhappiness. 

We think of something else as the source of 
justice, and not the natural order of things. 
We think of justice as superimposed from 
without, analogous to our man-made laws, 
rules and conventions, coupled with an innate 
or acquired sentiment in our hearts or con- 
sciences. 

But we can see that, for the thoughtful 
Buddhist, the kamma-niyama will have furn- 
ished as pressing a motive for moral conduct 
as if he held that an omniscient lawgiver 
watched and rewarded his acts. We see 
also that, when we say " injustice of nature," 
and speak of compensation hereafter as divine 
justice, we are thinking of explaining every- 
thing by (1) this life, and (2) future life, 
only. The Buddhist is thinking of the third 
great factor or tertium quid he is thinking 
of the immense past, and how natural justice 
as to that past is working itself out here and 
now. 

But before we consider the law of Karma 
in this wider Indian perspective, ifc will be 
well to pause, briefly to consider the word 
itself. For great is the Myth of the Word. 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 127 

But haziness of meaning is not favoured by 
Buddhism, 

Kamma, or Karma if we take the San- 
skrit form more familiar to us is literally 
doing, making, work, action. 

To take dictionary instances :ayo-kamma 
is iron-work; it is his " work " (kamma) that 
makes the peasant a peasant, the king, a 
king ; minding one's own " business " (kam- 
ma) ; this is the " doing " (kamma) of those 
blind old folk, and so on. It is as well to 
note these instances. The Western mind, 
in retaining the use of the alien word " karma, 1 ' 
has tended to see the meaning in a glamour, 
and to attach to it a mystic import which it 
would not convey to a Buddhist. Karma 
has even been made to cover an identical, 
permanent " somewhat," used to do duty 
for the soul, repudiated in Buddhism, as 
that which transmigrates from one life to 
another. 

This " heresy " is of course only perpetrated 
when the work, act, or doing is considered 
with respect to such results as it may have ; 
and when these results are expressed in terms 
of feeling and of ethical regard. Action so 
considered we ustfally term conduct, and the 
disposition to such action we call character. 
Morals or moral action, or ethical action 
covers both conduct and character. In Pali 
the one word kamma does duty for all 
aspects of doing, making or action. Hence it 
covers all that we include in the phrase 



128 BUDDHISM 

"thought, word and deed" a threefold 
summary that we also meet with in the. 
Zendavesta, and into which the Pitakas 
often divide the moral implication of the word 
" kamma." 

The historical interest in the Buddhist 
attitude regarding acts and their results lies 
in the fact that this attitude constitutes 
an evolution of a theory contained in the 
germ in one of the older Upanishads. In the 
other older Upanishads, references to any 
theory of karman and its consequences in the 
doer's destiny are scarce and reveal no 
emphasized doctrine. 1 But in the Brihada- 
ranyaka Upanishad, the references to moral 
action, though still very scarce, are very 
significant in their bearing on Buddhist 
doctrine. A man, we read, is as he behaves, 
and will become according as he behaves. 3 
In other words the reality of a human being 
is not a static body or soul, but his character. 
Again, in another section, we read a man 
becomes good by good work, bad by bad 
work; i.e., action or conduct. 3 This is the 
reply to the question put to a teacher of the 
Veda : " Where is a deceased person, when at 
death his body is dissolved into the elements, 
his mind gone to the moon ? " What he is, 
is said to be " name," which " is endless, and 

1 E.g. Kaushitaki Up.+ S.B.E., i. 277, Chandogya, Up., 
ft. 130. 

3 Ibid., xv. 176 
' Ibid., p. 127, 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 129 

by which he gains the endless world." (It is 
noteworthy that " name " is not superseded 
here by dtman. This, rendered as breath by 
Max Muller, goes into space. The Vedantist 
commentator renders it here as the cavity of 
the heart, the "seat" of the soul.) This 
reply is given secretly by the teacher, who 
takes his questioner apart : " let this question 
not be a public matter," Hence this doctrine 
of karma was either considered advanced and 
esoteric, or a trifle heretical. It does not 
anyway prove this portion of the Upanishad 
to be pre-Buddhistic. The doctrine openly 
and emphatically taught in the Pitakas is 
here tentatively touched upon. More cannot, 
in these limits, be said, save this : that in 
this and the Kaushitaki Upanishad, it is 
also stated that a man's knowledge as well as 
his deeds determine his future destiny. This 
twofold category is not Buddhist. We find 
mainly the threefold category of action by 
overt deed, by speech, and by volition (that 
is, action of purpose, intention, motive, will), 
as the determinants of man's destiny. 

Let us now revert to the Buddhist per- 
spective of the operation of karma, taking 
unceasing heed that we are not " thinking of 
something else." Consider the Buddhist idea 
of the relation of individuals to their acts 
or karma. " Beings," the Buddha is said 
to have taught, " are owners of their 
works (kamna), heirs of their works; their 
works are their matrix; their works are 



ISO BUDDHISM 

their lineage, and by their works are they 
established." l 

Beside this place our traditional idea of the 
relationship: "Blessed are the dead that 
die in the Lord from henceforth, Yea, saith 
the Spirit, that they may rest from their 
labours, and their works do follow them." In 
this verse the idea of works is that of a train 
of attendant witnesses, gone before or after 
the transmigrating soul to testify to its deserts, 
In the former passage, the Buddha is replying 
to the question : " How do you account for 
the inequalities in the lot and circumstances 
of the sons of men ? " Now the metaphors 
in the reply are very strong, establishing the 
most intimate connection between me and 
what I do, " and what," the Buddhist adds, 
" I have done in a former birth." We must 
never forget this, when reading them by the 
light of our own tradition. The nearest verse 
to the Buddhist belief is that modem line, 
quoted first years ago by Rhys Davids: 
"And what we have been makes us what we 
are" My past works, says the Buddhist, were 
the matrix, the origin, the womb and the 
determinant of me, as are my present works 
of what I shall be. I have acted, and the 
effect, a transmitted composite resultant force, 
no less than is the electric current, is this 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW ISi 

Here again we think of identity not wholly 
as Buddhists think. Buddhists, let it be 
remembered, were the co-founders (with the 
Jains) of Indian logic, a logic which can hold 
its own with ours. Let us therefore pause 
and consent not, if we hear them lightly 
accused of being illogical. We have certain 
so-called Laws of Thought, of which Aristotle 
said : Deny them, and you are a vegetable ! 
an unintelligent organism. One is the Law 
of Identity, formulated as A = A, or everything 
must be identical with, or the same as, itself. 
This is a useful convention in artificial transac- 
tions with specific, selected data, such as 
mathematics, legal or commercial contracts, 
e. Valietdity there depends upon the mean- 
ing attaching to specific words, remaining 
tmal tercel. Looking away from conventions to 
the nature of things, we see how inexact is our 
use of " same." We use it for " identical " 
and for " similar." But in our organisms 
including consciousness, and in nature we find 
no such thing as identity. We are daily 
different, and everything not ourselves is 
changing also, slowly or quickly. History 
cannot " repeat itself," since every event 
leaves us changed ; hence, if " it " recurs, 
altered characters and environment take 
part in it. " Same weather as yesterday " 
means a congeries of similars in the heavens 
and on earth. We cannot, therefore, formu- 
late natural identity as A=A. It works out 
as A-A/;=Ac=Ad = . . . A n . And at 



182 BUDDHISM 

some moment, AM, we shall write, not A 
anything, but B, because A# has become so~ 
different from A, that we have what seems a 
fresh datum. Thus one day in our child's 
life, she ceases to be " baby " ; she is now 
a girl ! In these ever-changing sequences 
the Absolutist refuses to see any ultimate 
reality, substance or being. But Buddhism 
sees no other reality in them but this fact of 
change, or of becoming. 

Another " something else " that hinders 
our understanding the Buddhist view is, that 
we do not take a sufficiently biological or 
organic view of their theory of change, 
becoming or causation (the three notions for 
them are inseparable). When we contem- 
plate a changing " I " or self, we are too apt 
to picture a substituted something, like th^T 
fresh picture thrown upon a " magic " lantern 
screen, say, of the king at four years old and 
the king at forty. But we know that if we 
could have turned a ceaseless cinematograph 
on the king during that interval, we should 
witness a very gradual biological change. 
On no particular day would it be a different 
person that was presented, nor would it be 
identical with, the presentation of a former or 
subsequent film. It would be that of some- 
thing evolving, of a past that was at a given 
present instant creating, or handing itself on 
to, a future. We say : " I cannot be said to 
live hereafter unless I am I remain I" 
The Buddhist says : " There is no ' same I,' 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 188 

t.f., identical I, even during one life, during 
even two consecutive days of one life, much 
less in two successive planes of being." 
Truer than either assertion: "Everything 
is," " nothing is," is the view : " One thing 
happens from and because of another." 
Again he will say, " our Buddha said that, 
* easier to the uneducated average man is 
self-conquest and self-emancipation with re- 
spect to the body, than with respect to con- 
sciousness, mind or cognition. For he can 
see how this four-elemental body has a 
beginning and a disintegration, is assumed 
and then surrendered. But with respect 
to mind, for ever is the uneducated ordinary 
man cleaving and devoted to, and affected 
by the notion that " this is mine, this I am, 
this is my self." Better were it if the unedu- 
cated ordinary man were to fix on the four- 
elemental body as the self than on mind. 
Why so ? Because it is evident that this 
body persists for either a year or two up to 
even a hundred years or more. But that 
which is called consciousness and mind 
and intelligence, in the course of each night 
and day arises as one thing, ceases as another. 
Just as a monkey roaming in the forest clutches 
a branch, lets it go and clutches another, 
even like those varied clutchings of boughs 
is the procedure of consciousness, mind or 
cognition. Hence the educated Ariyan disci- 
ple thoroughly and fundamentally considers 
Iho causal order of things, namely that 



134 BUDDHISM 

" That being present, this comes to be ; because 
that has arisen, this arises, etc." 5l 

We have to cast out from our imagination 
the view, untrue for Buddhism, that perpetual 
changing, or coming-to-be, going on in an 
individual, is a succession of different indi- 
viduals. We have to substitute the notion of 
one individual evolving as we see other forms 
of life evolving about us. Consider this 
saying ascribed to the Buddha, which became 
a staple citation in later discussions : " To 
say : one (person) acts, another reaps the 
fruit of those acts, is not true. And to say : 
one and the same both acts and is affected by 
the result is not true," 2 The Buddha's 
position, as he proceeds to state, is : " I teach 
a Midway between both extremes, to wit, the 
doctrine of Becoming by way of Cause." We 
should naturally say : one or the other of 
those former statements must be true. What 
then are we thinking of that differs from 
Buddhist thought? 

Not the evolving life of essential change 
and becoming, but our own notion of identity, 
our own notion of mechanical causation, and, 
once more, our way of picturing the past 
episodes of what " I " did and said, and 
felt as so many pictures way-off in space, and 
in time pictured as space. But what if all 
those past " I "-pictures which we remember, 
ay, and those that we have forgotten, are still 
with and of us as part of the present composite 
1 Samyutta-NiMya, ii, 94. * Ibid., ii. 20. 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 185 

notion we call, each of us, ourself ? What if 
each self-experience, as it arose and passed, 
was wrought up into and became or evolved 
into, the next moment or phase of life ? In 
this way, the present momentary self of each 
of us, is, if not the identical self of the past, 
the heir, outcome, product, resultant of the 
series, with all that series handed on and 
wrought up into it, no less than, to quote 
George Eliot's words, " the sunshine of past 
mornings is wrought up into the bloom of the 
apricot." 1 

This, any way, is more or less how the 
mediaeval and modern Theravada philosophy 
has unfolded that which it has judged to lie 
implicit or archaically expressed in the teach- 
ing of the Pitakas, such as I quoted from 
just now : Not " the same," nor " another." 
And thus it is, that both the memory of a past 
self and the obligation to the future self is 
explained without the contradiction or the 
paralogism that critics charge Buddhism 
withal, and even adherents make excuses for. 
For it, the whole of the past is worked up into 
the present, ever handing on a pacchaya- 
satti, that is, a causative influence, or force. 
Each successive phase of conscious life, 
therefore, " has all the potentialities of its 
predecessors and more." 2 

Thus Buddhism can greet a kindred spirit 
in Leibnitz's dictum : " The present is 
pregnant with the future," for with him, it 
1 Adam Bede, S, Z. Axing, op, cfc, 42, 



186 BUDDHISM 

holds that " every phase of existence is a 
necessary outcome or evolution of what 
preceded it, and bears in it the seed of the 
future/' 1 thus translating the mechanical 
view of nature, not according to his theodicy, 
but according to its cosmodicy. Buddhists, 
too, can say with Henri Bergson : " Memory 
is no faculty for registering souvenirs. , . 
There is no register, nor, strictly speaking, any 
faculty. . . , The heaping up of the past 
on the past goes on without intermission . . , 
following us at every moment. That which 
we have felt, thought, willed from infancy is 
here now, bending over the present moment 
which goes merging into it, pressing against 
the gate of consciousness which would leave 
it without," " Neither mechanical causality 
nor a final cause is an adequate translation of 
life," 2 Thus, the past self, as a memory, is 
wrought up into, and is part of, the present 
self, no less than the projected future self is 
a creation of the passing self that now is. 

It were premature to do more than indicate 
the evolution, carried out in medieval and 
modern Abhidhamma, of such theories. To 
make the records of this evolution accessible 
is a task of the near future. We may hope 
at no distant date to learn more of the fruitful 
working, in the collective Theravadin intelli- 
gence, of the original tenets of impermanence, 
non-self, and becoming or causation. But 

1 J. T. Merz, Leibnitz (1884), 177, 

2 Evolution creatrice, 5, 193, 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 187 

we know enough to see clearly that for them, 
no less than for M. Bergson, the reality, the 
interest, of evolving phenomena lay in the 
transition or becoming, rather than in things 
viewed, for convenience' sake, as statical 
They, too, before him, have been trying, " by 
an act of sympathy, to transport themselves 
to the inside of becoming." 1 

Let us now apply this Buddhist view of a 
self that never is 9 but is always becoming, 
evoking, to their forward view of natural 
justice in future lives. 

Mention has been made of the pregnant old 
term, transmigration, wherewith it pleases 
the West to speak of the world-wide belief 
in life after death, when India is in question, 
although our own " passing hence " would be 
sufficiently synonymous. Most of us know 
of the logical fallacy imputed to Buddhism 
because it taught re-birth, and denied a 
u soul " to flit from birth to birth. It is 
quite true that, when we read the Pitakas, 
we seem to see a belief in transmigration of a 
passing soul, just as much as we sec it in the 
books of animistic creeds. Some one dies, and 
" he " is re-born in such a new life. Or some 
saint gets supernormal memory and recollects, 
.lie will say, where " I " lived, and how, and as 
who. The Buddhists had new wine of their 
own, but there were only old bottles of 
phrases to hold the wine. So we still, as I 
nave said, speak of the -earth's movements in 
1 /Mel, 177, 138, 338, 370, etc, 



138 BUDDHISM 

superannuated terms ; and of electrical energy 
in terms of a flowing and a striking, both of 
which are scientifically wrong ; and of ultimate 
security and certainty in terms of statics, of 
base and rest and stability, when in reality the 
most basic thing there is for us is motion, 
revolution in space. And Buddhists still 
spoke of rebirth in terms of animistic belief. 
" It would be more correct" wrote Buddha- 
ghosa, " not to use popular modes of stating 
the case " ; as it is, " we must just guard 
ourselves " from supposing that these modes 
express fact. 1 

For let it not be supposed that the charge 
of being unintelligible and illogical is new to 
Buddhism. Since all the rest of India, pace 
the world, was animistically inclined, it was 
inevitable that the attack would start against 
the founder himself, and recur again and again. 
And ever we see that what the assailants 
needed in order to understand Buddhist 
doctrine, was insight into (1) impermanence 
of the self of any given moment ; (2) connec- 
tion between that self and any past or future 
self through transmitted energy, or evolution, 
Let us show this in the books. 

The Buddha is giving a lecture to his 
Order on Anatla, the absence of absolute or 
god-like soul in mind or body. And we 
read : " Then in the mind of a certain bhikkhu 
(he is unnamed) the idea arose : " If nothing 
in body or mind has, or is, soul (self, attd), 
1 See below, p f 145 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 139 

what soul is there to be affected by deeds 
which no soul has done ? " Now the Exalted 
One knew what was passing in that bhikkhu's 
mind. And he went on to address the 
brethren, saying : " Now it is possible, 
bhikkhus, that herein some futile person, who 
has not understood and is still ignorant, may, 
tinder the influence of craving, stray from the 
Teacher's doctrine and fancy : If nothing in 
body or mind has, or is, soul, what soul is 
there to be affected by deeds which no soul 
has done ? But ye, bhikkhus, have been 
trained by me in causation, respecting various 
states under various conditions. What think 
ye then ? Is body, is mind permanent or 
impermanent ? " " Impermanent, lord." " Is 
that which is impermanent liable to suffering 
or not ? " " It is liable, lord." " But is it 
proper to say, of that which is impermanent, 
liable to suffering and to change, This is mine ; 
I am this ; this is the soul of me " ? " No, 
lord." i 

The answer is to us as unexpected as the 
question is oddly framed. We should prob- 
ably have used our more magisterial diction, 
and asked : " Is it possible, let alone just, 
to reward or punish a doer A in another life, 
when A has become so different that he can 
no longer be said to be A ? " And anyway we 
should have hoped to find, in the reply, a sys- 
tematized statement of eschatology, put in 
the mouth of the fountain-head of doctrine. 
1 Majjhima-N. f iii. 19 f. 



140 BUDDHISM 

That which actually is recorded is the sort 
of rebuke which in our logic might be used 
to meet the " fallacy of many questions," or 
the legal trap of a leading question, e.g. " Have 
you left off beating your wife ? " The reply 
might be : "I am a bachelor." So here the 
reply is a catechism to show that there is no 
wife no soul as soul was currently con- 
ceived to speculate about. Were men, or 
had men such a soul or self as the Indian 
atman, the conditions of life, past, present and 
future, would necessarily be very different, 
" If the body, bhikkhus, or if the mind were 
the Self, it would not be subject to infirmities, 
and we should be able to say : " Let my 
body ... or let my mind be such and 
such." 1 A permanent subject of bodily and 
mental phenomena could not logically be 
predicted of man as we here and now know 



Thus the reply gives no fresh theory, but 
throws the questioner back on to first princi- 
ples. Given : the current conception of 
dtman or soul ; the current belief in the 
infinite renewal of sentient life ; the Norm 
doctrines of perpetual change, transitive 
becoming and natural moral order: then 
the questioner finds himself landed in the 
Buddhist conclusion. 

If it be objected that the perduring self or 
soul is not really an unchanging or divine 
entity, but is together with body and mind, 

1 Vinaga Texts, I 100 {Sacred Books of the East, XIIL). 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 141 

capable of growth, as of deterioration, " chang- 
ing according to the nature of its deeds for 
better or worse," as Plato said, then this is 
not the aspect of animism rejected by Budd- 
hism. This is clear from the usual form of 
argument, given above, by which the Atman- 
istic soul-belief is refuted. But such a view, 
in Buddhist eyes, surrenders the essential 
soulship of soul, and reduces it to a sort of 
sixth khandha, or factor of that individuality 
which dissolves at each death, but which, as a 
sort of force set free, results in the birth and 
growth of a new individual. The Buddhists 
demurred only to anything that enters into, 
and is integral with, life as we know it, and 
yet is excluded from the law of becoming. 
If, in the midst of this law or order, wherein 
transient phenomena were ever being called 
up by transient antecedents, and causing 
others in their turn, we interpolate something 
that is not so called into being, but has a 
special nature of its own, we upset the order 
of the phenomenal universe by bringing in a 
new mystery, which explains nothing in that 
order save from without. 

Let us now turn to the after-born syste- 
matizers, and watch their efforts to elucidate 
and keep intact the original mandate. First, 
the lucid, direct parables of Nagasena in the 
Milinda : 

" Sir," asks Milinda, " can there be rebirth 
where there is no transmigrating (passing 
on) ? " " Yes, sire, there is the former with- 



142 BUDDHISM 

out the latter." " How can that be ? Give 
me an illustration." " Suppose, sire, a man 
were to light a lamp from another lamp, can 
it be said that lamp transmigrates from 
lamp ? " " Nay, sir." " And do you admit, 
sire, that when you were a boy, you learnt 
some verse or other from your teacher ? " 
" Yes, sir, I do." " Well then, sire, did that 
verse transmigrate from your teacher ? " 
" Nay, sir." " Even so, sire, is there rebirth 
without transmigration." 1 

Again, as to moral responsibility : " Rev- 
erend Nagasena," said Milinda, " what is it 
that is reborn ? " " Mind and body, sire, 
are reborn." " What, is it this same mind and 
body that are reborn? " "Nay, sire, not so ; 
but by this mind and body there is doing of 
deeds lovely or evil, and by these deeds 
(kamma) another mind and body are reborn." 
" If this same mind and body, sir, be not 
reborn, will one not become free from evil 
deeds ? " The Thera replied : " If one were 
not reborn, one would become free from evil 
deeds, but inasmuch as one is reborn, one is 
not thus free." " Give me an illustration." 
" Suppose, sire, some man were to carry off 
another man's mango ; and the owner accused 
him before the chief. And the thief were to 
say : * Your honour ! I have not carried off 
mangoes from this man. The mangoes he 
planted are not those that I picked. 5 Would 
he be guilty ? " " He would." " On what 
1 Op, cit, 9 i. 71. 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 143 

ground ? " " Whatever he might say, he 
admits the former mango (as cause), becoming 
guilty by the latter mango (as effect). 5 ' 
u Even so, sire, one does deeds lovely or evil 
under this mind and body, and is thereby 
reborn, but not freed from the deeds that are 
evil" 1 

The king elicits six more illustrations from 
Nagasena a redundancy which points to the 
difficulty, or the importance of the doctrine, 
or to both. I give the last, because it is 
utilized by the later, more philosophic, less 
popular dissertation of Buddhaghosa. 

" Suppose, sire, a man were to buy of a 
herdsman a pail of milk, and leave it in his 
charge till the morrow, by which time it had 
turned sour. And when he came to claim it, 
'he were to say : ' It was not curds I bought 
of you ; give me my pail of milk.' Now if 
they, disputing, appealed to you, sire, how 
would you decide ? " " In favour of the 
herdsman." "But why?" " Because, in 
spite of whatever the buyer might say, the 
curds were derived from the milk." " Even 
so, sire, it is one mind-and-body that ends 
at death, another that is reborn, and yet, 
since this mind-and-body is derived from the 
former miud-and-body, it is not freed from 
the evil deeds (that went to produce it)." 2 

Now to Budclhaghosa's Way of Purity : 



1 Sacred Hooka of the jfcW, xxxv. ; and passages in 
Wan-oil's BrnMhum in Tmnslatiom. 
1 Op* e&, i. 70. 



144 BUDDHISM 

" He who has no clear idea of death or of 
rebirth, and does not master the fact that 
death is the dissolution of the five factors 
(mind and body), and that rebirth is the 
appearance of the five factors, he concludes 
that e A living entity deceases and transmi- 
grates into another body,' or 'A living 
entity is reborn, and has got a new body.' 
... No elements of being transmigrate 
from the last existence into the present, nor 
do they appear in the present existence with- 
out causes in the past existence. 1 For, at 
the hour of death, . . , the last conscious 
act is as a man who, to cross a ditch, swings 
himself over by a rope hung on a tree above 
him. Yet he does not really alight, 2 for while 
the last conscious act dies away (and this is 
called passing away), another conscious act 
arises in a new life, and this is called rebirth, 
or conception. But it is to be understood 
that the latter conscious act did not come 
into the present life from the previous life. 
We must also understand, that it is only to 
causes contained in the old existence that its 
present appearance is due. . . . Now, 
if taking any continuous series, an absolute 
sameness obtained, then e.g.> sour cream could 

1 " Existence " in Pali is literally " becoming " (bMva). 
They rejected the abstract word " being " (atthita). 

2 1 differ here slightly from Warren's reading of the 
Pali. His rendering does not seem to be sufficiently 
intelligible. But the whole passage needs sounder scholar- 
ship than his or mine. 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 145 

not arise from milk, And if there were 
absolute difference, the milk-owner could not 
get sour cream in the ordinary course of 
things. Hence if we me popular phrases, 
we must guard ourselves from supposing that 
we have here absolute identity or diversity. But 
some may say : if the husbandman ceases to 
be, he does not taste the fruit which he sowed ; 
if there be no transmigration of mind and 
body, then will the fruit of one's acts be borne 
by a different thing from that which produced 
it. But I say : If you take that fruit as 
arising in a series, you get no absolute identity 
or diversity, so that we cannot say, the fruit 
is got by the same, nor by something quite 
different. We train the young, but it is in 
the adult that we look for the effects." 

We see, then, that Buddhism, through its 
theory of becoming, claims to reconcile a 
position of scientific doubt regarding the 
origin and end of life with an emphatic 
repudiation of materialistic or nihilistic con- 
clusions as to the apparent physical beginning 
and end of life, and with an equally emphatic 
affirmation of moral responsibility as coeval 
with life. Let us glance once more at the 
perspective. 

Somehow and somewhen there arose 
between the religious philosophies with which 
we are more familiar, and those of India (not 
to speak of others), this dividing line of 
belief : on the one hand belief in individual 
life commencing here and now, but perduring, 



146 BUDDHISM 

as to one part of it, to infinity ; on the other 
hand, belief in individual living, begun from, 
and lasting into, eternity, or at least for a 
very long time, perduring either in a sequence 
of perishable forms, or perduring without 
material re-embodiment. Buddhism, as a 
characteristically Indian movement, accepted 
the view of life here as a moment between two 
eternities, and as but one span of living in an 
infinite series of such spans. This series it 
pictures as a round or cycle (vatta) of con- 
tinual movement (samsdra). 

It envisages all becoming, all reaction of 
one state of things upon another, after an 
organic type of change, namely, as growth, 
equilibrium and decay, succeeded again by 
growth. The person ended; the living of 
him went on. For living is conceived as 
force, subdivided to an indefinite extent in 
individual tendencies or channels, conserved 
from everlasting, and actual, at any given 
moment, as organized beings (human, celes- 
tial, animal, etc.). The last mental or con- 
scious act, just when the body is ceasing to 
act as the living nucleus pro tern., is an act 
of transitive causation, like its predecessors. 
And it transmits its pacchaya-satti, or causal 
energy so runs the hypothesis to some 
newly conceived embryonic germ, human or 
non-human. 

To answer the question : " In which new 
embryo does any given final flicker of mental 
kamma produce its effect ? " no materials 



THE NORM AS MORAL LAW 147 

containing any Buddhist theories on the 
subject are as yet available, either mediaeval 
or modern. And these pages are only con- 
cerned with such Buddhist theories as are a 
part of their philosophical tradition. Any 
scientific theorizing on the subject by Bud- 
dhists themselves can only claim attention 
in this part of the world as the outcome of 
genuine scientific inquiry. Meanwhile our 
own theories of heredity are still sufficiently 
inadequate to account for the facts of individ- 
ual character and faculty, not to warrant our 
sweeping aside other theories as unworkable. 1 
Whatever be our own or others' vague 
hypotheses as to its origin, our conscious self, 
immaterial factor, soul, is, for most of us, 
something that is new, fresh, a thing of yes- 
terday, a babe, of mushroom growth. Infin- 
ite, or at least indefinitely long-lived in one 
direction the future it starts with no defin- 
itely conceded background of past life. Our 
feeling with regard to its future has the 
pungent aggressiveness and intensity of youth. 
We feel we should like to tc have it all over 
again," and do better. The Buddhist, with 
the vista of believing vision down a long past 
of one individualization after another, looks 
with maturer eyes at the flux of things and 
at the fluidity of his personal identity. He 
believes indeed that, were he of saintly purity 

1 f the interesting article, " Transmigration/' by 
Ananda Metteyya, in the review, Buddhism (Rangoon), 
I., 1903, 



148 BUDDHISM 

and wisdom, like the elect Theras and Theris 
of old, he could remember many of his past 
phases of life ; nay, he holds that, now and 
again, the fresh and untenanted mind of a 
child can rememberand be proved as 
remembering persons and places in its own 
previous birth, 1 

And he might say to us : " Your balance- 
sheet seems to be somewhat one-sided. It is 
all debts here, future payment there ; debts 
owing to you through natural injustice, 
handicapping by heredity, ill luck, etc,, 
recompense for the same hereafter. But 
where is your entry of debts incurred by you 
in the past, which you by pain, trouble or 
failure, are now paying off ? You are only 
less illogical when you keep in view * original 
sin.' We think that, when now we suffer 
grief and pain, if only that life or living, which 
in the past created Me, had been less foolish, 
we should each of us be now much happier." 
Thus the Buddhist's view of his present 
activities has a wider basis, they being but 
one group of incidents in an indefinitely 
prolonged past, present and future series. 
They are, as has been said, no mere train of 
witnesses for or against him, but a stage in 
a cumulative force of tremendous power. 
He and his works stand in a mutual relation, 
somewhat like that of child to parent in the 
case of past works, of parent to child in the 
case of future works. Now no normal mother 

1 Cf. L. Hearn, Gleanings in BuddJia Fields, p. 267 f. 



THE NORM AS MORAIi LAW 149 

is indifferent as to whether or how she is 
carrying out her creative potency. Nor can 
any normal Buddhist not care whether his 
acts, wrought up hourly in their effect into 
his present and future character, are making 
a happy or a miserable successor. 

And so, without any definite belief as to 
how, or in what realm of the universe he will 
re-arise as that successor to his present self, 
the pious Buddhist, no less than his pious 
brethren of other creeds, goes on giving 
money and effort, time and thought to good 
works, cheerfully believing that nothing of it 
can possibly forego its effect, but that it is all 
a piling up of merit or creative potency, to 
result, somewhere, somewhen, somehow, in 
future happiness happiness which, though 
he be altruistic the while, is yet more a future 
asset of his, than of some one in whom he 
naturally is less interested than in his 
present self. He believes that, because of 
what he is now doing, some one now in process 
of mental creation by him, and to all intents 
and purposes his future " self," will one day 
taste less or more of life's trials. To that 
embryonic character he is inextricably bound, 
ever making or marring it, and for it he is 
therefore and thus far responsible. 1 

1 With the growth of the altruistic belief in transferring 
merit to another I have no space to deal 



CHAPTER VI 

THE NORM AS IDEAL 

IN proceeding from theories underlying ideals 
to consider the ideals themselves, the concep- 
tion of Dhamma as Norm affords an easy 
bridge. It was as natural and inevitable for 
Buddhist doctors to develop the import of 
such a notable term as Dhamma, as it was 
for Christian fathers to develop that of the 
equally notable term Logos* But while it is 
legitimate enough to group under Dhamma 
those central philosophical principles, on 
which the doctrine was based, the latter, under 
the aspect of a Norm, was an application of 
theories, held as true, to the will, and the 
expression of them in conduct, A norm 
resolves the contents of experience into a 
scale of values, and the things of topmost 
value into ideals. 

Judgment of values according to the Norm 
or Dhamma is, in Buddhism, called Right- 
view or Perfect-view (samma-ditthi, i.e. sum- 
ma-doxa, if, to give the European equivalents, 
such a hybrid compound be let pass). And 
such a view, views, or belief is placed, 
in a Buddha-discourse, in the forefront of 
150 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 151 

the scheme of righteous conduct called the 
" Noble Eightfold Path," as being the deter- 
minant of " right intention* 5 and of the remain- 
ing six right or perfect factors. 1 

In deciding what things this Right-view 
ranked as of supreme worth, the early litera- 
ture of the Canon reveals, as compared with 
the scriptures of more familiar cults, so great 
a dissimilarity amid much that is similar, that 
the effect is baffling. On those who hold that 
norms, ethics, or religions approximate nearest 
to truth in such features as they have in 
common, the effect is also repellent and dis- 
heartening. It is the reverse on those who 
can appreciate the significance, for achieve- 
ment and progress, in the differences of one 
tradition from another. The late, half para- 
lyzed and wholly crippled Henry Warren, 
to whose indomitable spirit and vast industry 
English readers of Buddhist authorities owe 
so much, could write as follows : " A large 
part of the pleasure that I have experienced 
in the study of Buddhism has arisen from the 
strangeness of what I may call the intellectual 
landscape. All the ideas, modes of argument, 
even the postulates assumed . . . have 
always seemed so ... different from 
anything to which I have been accustomed 
. . . they so seldom fit into Western cate- 
gories." 2 This strangeness arises not only 
from what we find, but from postulates and 

1 Majjh N< iii, 71 fl. 

8 Buddhism in Translations, p, 284 



152 BUDDHISM 

standpoints that we miss, Here for instance 
are two of the latter : 

Buddhism, in the Dhamma of the Pitakas, 
puts aside a theodicy, or, let us say at once, 
a theistic position, and accepts a cosmodicy. 
The great wheel of cosmic order goes on, but 
it is a-karaka, " without maker, without 
known beginning, continuing to exist by 
virtue of a concatenation of cause and effect." 1 
As a notable movement of religious and ethical 
reform, Buddhism was not unique in being 
nontheistic. Jainism was no less so ; so 
was the Sankhya, But, without complicat- 
ing our subject by dragging in these, we may 
search the Pitakas in vain for any expres- 
sion, that to have turned away from the 
support and consolation of theism was felt as a 
conscious loss. Buddhists took up virtually 
the position of orphans " in the world's vast 
orphanage " to borrow a phrase of W. D. 
Howells. But they do not labour under any 
manifested feeling of bereavement, such as 
lapsed Christians, inheriting a tradition of 
paternal theism, would inevitably feel. Sakka, 
ruler of the nearer heavens, Brahma, supreme 
in the remoter realms, " The Mighty One, 
The All-seeing One, Ruler, Lord of All, Con- 
troller, Creator, Ancient of Days, Father of 
all that are and to be," 2 are mentioned with 
a cheerful courtesy when brought in as 
appreciators of the Master's wisdom. But 

1 Buddhaghosa, Way of Purity, xvii, 

Dialogues, i. 281. 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 153 

irony replaces respect, when the question 
arises of their wisdom and knowledge being 
comparable to his. Nor is any note of lone- 
liness and desolation heard when the more 
mystic, less anthropomorphic aspect of deity 
as Atman is confronted. We may possibly 
think fit to read between the lines : to include 
in the mode of suffering described as " separa- 
tion from that which is dear," the rejection of 
a pantheistic rapture described in the Upanis- 
hads as " in Whom to dwell is happiness 
imperishable." But there is no positive 
evidence to warrant our doing so. Judged 
by such evidence, the Buddhist tone seems 
not that of mourning orphans, but that of 
legatees investing capital hitherto lying idle, 
There is another position absent from the 
Pitakas. No fear is expressed lest the 
stability of morals be upset through the gods 
being denied all creative and providential 
omnipotence. Are we going to keep the 
Commandments, if we see in the glory of those 
forty days and nights on Sinai a myth ? is 
a present and pressing anxiety in Western dis- 
cussion of animism, To quote one of the 
most recent: "I gravely doubt," writes 
Mr, McDougall, 1 " whether whole nations could 
rise to the level of an austere morality, or 
even maintain a decent working standard of 
conduct, after losing a belief in a future life 
and other positive religious beliefs." Now 

1 Body and Hind ! a History and a Defence of Animism, 
xiv. 



154 BUDDHISM 

in the discourses of the Sutta-Pitaka, the 
rudiments of morality are put forward, 
with much repetition and emphasis, as the 
indispensable foundations of all good or desir- 
able conduct, for both laity and fraternity. 
To abstain from taking life, not to take what 
is not given, sexual purity, to abstain from 
lying, abusive, slanderous or idle speech, to 
abstain from intoxicating drink this fivefold 
code was termed slla, that is to say, " habit," 
or su-char'tta, good conduct. Habitual moral- 
ity is compared to the broad earth, on which, 
as their fulcrum or basis, all creatures move, 
stand or rest ; and again, slla is compared to 
the sources of the great rivers and the ocean, 
starting as rill and burn way up in the moun- 
tains, and ministering to an increasing scale 
of animal growth as they descend and 
wax deep and wide, till merged in the 
ocean. 1 

Emphatic and uncompromising as is the 
position, in the Dhamma, of stta, it is still 
only fundamental to right view and right 
living ; it is not supreme. Here it is worth 
while to note a sequence in one of the more 
composite discourses, or grouped fragments 
of discourse, in the Suttas. Just after the 
Buddha has rebuked a bhikkhu for propagat- 
ing, as sound doctrine, that there was no 
inherent retribution in the committing acts 
considered wrong, he is represented as calling 
morality (dhamma in conjunction with a- 
1 Samyutta-NMya, v. 46, 03, etc. 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 155 

dhamma), merely a raft, serving a vital, but 
temporary, need: 

" Bhikkhus, I will teach you the Norm as 
symbolized by a raft, as something to escape 
by, but not to be clung fast to. Suppose a 
man come midway on his journey to a great 
sheet of water, beset as to its hither bank with 
many perils, but safe and secure as to its 
further shore, and to cross which nor ship nor 
bridge is there. But suppose that he takes 
grasses, brushwood and branches, and so 
binds together a raft, that thereon, toiling 
with hands and feet, he gains the further shore 
in safety. Now do you judge that he should, 
considering how greatly the raft had helped 
him, bear it along with him on his head and 
. shoulders, or should be leave it stranded or 
floating, and go thence whither he wished ? 
. , . Even thus, Bhikkhus, understand 
that ye must put away moral rules, let alone 
immoral rules," 1 

But as to any ulterior basis or motive being 
required for morality, the traveller's own 
great need is obviously considered as a suffi- 
cient reason, namely, the natural instinct of 
avoiding pain and pursuing happiness, in one 
word, of self-preservation. Whether under 
self, we mean himself, or include the social 
self or common human need, is really imma- 
terial for the present argument. Moral con- 
duct had borne mankind safely through the 
chaos of the unmoral and the immoral in 
1 Majjhima-Nik&ya, I 134, 



156 BUDDHISM 

social life. Human experience had tested 
the value of such vehicles. " The wise," who 
are so frequently referred to in the dialogues, 
approve of them. And therewith, as the 
German idiom says, all is said. 

As believing in a cosmodicy, Buddhism, 
like the scientific position which believes in 
such no less, recognizes fully and promptly 
the facts of natural law, and of evolution. ^ It 
exceeds the (more sceptical) scientific position 
by its inclusion of moral law in its cosmodicy. 
Herein it is more on the side of the Psalmist, 
in its view of the fate that, not merely prob- 
ably, but inevitably befalls the wicked man, 
temporarily rivalling the green bay tree, 
and the righteous man temporarily reduced 
to beggary. Here, it says, are the facts. 
Goodness is necessarily profitable and advan- 
tageous. Badness is no less necessarily unpro- 
fitable and disadvantageous. You cannot 
kick against the pricks, or, as the Buddhist 
proverb says, crush in a mountain with a 
lotus, or chew iron with your teeth. 

A certain degree of anxiety, nevertheless, 
as to the majority realizing the binding nature 
of moral responsibility, is no doubt present 
in Buddhist literature, and has been dealt 
with in the preceding chapter. It arose, not 
from the rejection of creative and over-ruling 
moral agency, but from the rejection of per- 
sistent, unchanging identity in the individual 
who was subject to moral law. Thus far, 
then, in the field of ideals and aspirations, the 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 157 

Buddhist landscape is unfamiliar : the reject- 
ed Over-soul is not consciously missed or 
regretted; and anxiety as to the source of 
instability in moral obligation is transferred 
from this rejected belief to the rejection of a 
popular belief concerning the soul of man. 

When we consider the said landscape further, 
we cannot but be struck by the way in which 
the following after the ideal is very largely 
expressed in terms of getting rid of the 
unideal. The widest possible concept for 
the unideal, expressed by Christians in the 
word sin, is for Buddhists comprised in the 
word dukkha: suffering, pain, ill, unhappi- 
ness as the more truly ultimate term. Evil 
conduct was a cause of ill, but it was only 
evil conduct in virtue of its ill effects, now or 
in the long run. A utilitarian or experiential 
trend of thought cannot but throw emphasis 
on the consequences of conduct. And if 
consequences be brought forward, we co^n^ 
inevitably to consequences as felt, nam-e the 
happiness or as pain. >t most 

Now the emphasis laid in the D'.t it is 
on the fact of Dukkha is very great, atemat- 
won for Buddhism such epithets as " pessirtical 
pure and simple," with variations ; a"?d 
" the creed of a decadent epoch " ; of an age, 
that is to say, undergoing a phase of social 
senility. It might perhaps, with equal truth, 
be said, that the very term " world-sorrow " 
(Weltschmerz) was coined by modern romantic 
literature to fit the violent obsessing misery, 



158 BUDDHISM 

held to be a passing phase of the prime of 
youth. Such facile generalizing, however, is 
bound to become discredited, even in the case 
of Buddhism, as our knowledge grows. The 
former view, for instance, was put forward, 
in days preceding Pali research, emphatically 
and dogmatically by Orientalists, who held 
themselves bound, for some reason or other, 
to vindicate, at the expense of Buddhism, the 
established faith of the majority of their 
readers. Barth^lemy St. Hilaire, after in- 
veighing against the " incurable d&espoir " 
of Buddhism, concludes thus : " The sole 
but immense service which Buddhism may 
render us, is, by its sad contrast, to make us 
appreciate still more the inestimable value of 
our beliefs, by showing us what it has cost 
humanity not to share in them. 3 ' 1 Of this 
attitude, so dear to the popular exponent, so 
unworthy of the scholar, Max Miiller, in 
-^exiewing the book, could say : " in the body 
of the work he never perverts the chair of the 
historian into the pulpit of the preacher ! " 2 
A similar standpoint was taken a quarter of 
a century later, by Monier Williams in his 
popular lectures, in which those aspects of 
Cljaistianity which he judged most congenial 
*X> his readers, are contrasted with the " ultra- 
pessimistic view," " the extinction of desires," 
the " inaction and apathy," typical, according 
to him, of Buddhism. 

1 Le Bouddha et sa religion, 1862, p. 182. 
1 Edinburgh Review, 1862, Essays II, p. 187 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 159 

When we turn from works by specialists 
written from this peculiar standpoint, to those 
of a more general character on the history 
of thought, it is not surprising to find such 
hardy perennials transplanted. Max Miiller's 
review of St. Hilaire is quoted by Dr. Sully 
in his scholarly Pessimism, a History and a 
Criticism (1877, 1892), as a warrant for 
calling Buddhism " pessimism, pure and 
simple." 

To this work we will presently return. The 
undoubted emphasis on ill as a ground wave 
in the rhythm of life is shared by Buddhism 
to some extent with Jainism and the Sankhya 
system. That all three systems rejected 
the theistic standpoint may be causally 
connected with this emphasis. And it may, 
again, be here that we find, deeply pervading, 
if not consciously accounted for, that sense 
of loneliness and orphanhood which seemed 
to be missing. 

That such systems as these should face the 
grim realities of life, and find 111 the first most 
prominent fact, is only natural. But it is 
Buddhism alone that made 111 the systemat- 
ized point of departure for its practical 
philosophy. " Just this have I taught and 
do I teach," the Buddha is recorded as say- 
ing : " ill, and the ending of ill (dukkhan 
c'eva dukkhassa nirodhanca)," 1 In the legend 
of the Buddha 2 the cardinal dwfcMa-facts of 

1 Majjhima-NMya, I UO. 
* Dialogues, ii, 18. 



160 BUDDHISM 

life arrest like the crash of opening chords in a 
tragic symphony: Sickness, Age, Death, 
each seen in succession for the first time as by 
every young creature they are seen, when the 
significance of them first grips his heart. 
And with the problem of ending them the 
chief theme opens : " Verily this world has 
fallen upon trouble, with its births and ageing 
and dying, and rebirths," ponders the Buddha- 
about-to-be ; " and from this suffering no 
man knoweth any way of escape. 0, when 
shall a way out from this suffering, from 
decay and from death, be made known ! " 
And the second theme makes response : 
Through natural causes arises suffering; 
wholly to end it suppress the causes. In 
your own human hands lies the remedy. 

It is sometimes maintained by Vedantists, 
that every ethical doctrine in Buddhism is 
anticipated in Vedantist literature, literature, 
that is to say, belonging to the Vedic tradi- 
tion. This is in a sense perhaps true, but 
true only on a level with similar sayings, that 
one may find everything that affects all 
mankind mentioned in the Bible, in Dante, 
in Shakespeare. It is only what may be 
called structural treatment, and structural 
emphasis, that counts. Incidental allusions 
may contain mention, but cannot be said to 
emphasize. Relatively speaking, the fact 
and significance of suffering, like the fact 
and significance of the law of causation and 
karma, are, in those Upanishads, which are 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 161 

generally considered pre-Buddhistic, inciden- 
tal allusions only, 

The words duhkha, artta (suffering and 
sorrow) occur about fifty times in Jacob's 
Concordance of the Principal Upanishads 
and Bhagavad Glta. As compared with the 
occurrence of such terms in the Pitakas, 
this sum is a mere trifle. An incidental 
testimony to the absence of emphasis, in such 
occurrences of the tragic terms as there are, 
is afforded by the significant absence of them 
from the indexes to works on the Upani- 
shads ! Nor are the terms leading features 
in a principal theme. Moreover, barely one- 
fourth of the references occur in the older 
Upanishads. That they occur for the most 
part, together with the references to karma 
and causation, only in the obviously later 
Upanishads, forms a strong presumption that 
these were compiled under the influence, not 
only of Sankhyan thought (this is textually 
admitted) but also of Buddhist (and possibly 
also of Jainist) thought. 

The Upanishads are mystical. And the 
mystic tends to be optimistic. It must be 
no small bliss to realize that the highest 
spirit, who is all bliss, absolutely free, is none 
other, really, than your own self or soul. 

Now, with respect to the getting rid of the 
Un-ideal, or of Dukkha, there is, in the 
original Buddhist attitude towards the per- 
ponderance and predominance of pain, a 
sensitive irritability and revolt that cannot 



162 BUDDHISM 

be reconciled with pessimism pure and simple. 
There is no resignation to a common inevitable 
doom. The natural instinct to avoid pain 
and to make for its opposite is encouraged. 
I do not mean that particular painful ex- 
periences were not to be patiently endured. 
" Suffer it to be so, Arahant, suffer to it 
be so," the Buddha is represented calling to a 
persecuted disciple who comes to him with 
broken head and streaming wounds, " you 
are now feeling results of your karma that 
might have cost you centuries of suffering 
in purgatory." The disciple had been a 
notorious brigand, converted by the Buddha, 
and former victims were taking their revenge 
on him. Again a general admonition by the 
Buddha runs as follows : " Thus, bhikkhus, 
must ye train yourselves to meet no matter 
what treatment at men's hands : Our mind 
shall not be perverted, nor shall we utter evil 
words, but we shall abide friendly and com- 
passionate, our thoughts affectionate and not 
hostile ; and we shall continue to suffuse that 
person with heart of love, and so ... 
too, the entire world with heart of love, rich 
and sublime, and boundless, free from anger 
or malevolence." x 

All particular experiences of dukkha had 
been incurred by one's own past karma, and 
belonged to the natural justice of the world's 
order. But the chastening rod was not 
kissed on that account. To call the heart of 

1 Dialogues, i. 127 ; c/, Oldenberg, Buddha {6th ed,], 255, 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 163 

the Sutta Pitaka the cry of outraged humani- 
ty, ravaged by that fearful rod, were to 
exaggerate, but not to an excessive degree. 
It recognizes fortitude under suffering, but 
the welcoming of pain as a discipline is not 
in its scheme of salvation. In it the eyes and 
the heart of the Indian conscience are shown 
opened to the groaning and travailing of 
sentient life as they never were before. The 
optimistic and complacent moonlight reveries 
of Atmanism are shattered, and a chill dawn 
of daylight values has crept up. Life, as it 
actually is, is felt to be intolerable, a thing to 
be mended or ended. 

To call revolt rather than resignation the 
Buddhist standpoints over against the ills 
of life, is nothing new. But since the latter 
word is often used on topics Buddhistic, it is 
as well to distinguish. The following citations 
reveal a spirit that cannot be called character- 
istically Buddhist : " Whosoever doth not 
bear his cross . . . cannot be my disciple" 
(Luke xiv. 27). " Lord, we pray not for 
tranquillity, nor that our sorrows may cease 
. . ." (Savonarola). " It is a blind self- 
seeking which wants to be freed from the 
sorrow wherewith the whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth "... (G. Eliot in Adam 
Rede). And we have only to contrast the 
typical presentations of the two persons, 
each of whom has been called " Light of the 
World," to realize deep-lying differences in 
the aspect of an ideal. 



164 BUDDHISM 

To see Dukkha pervading life, and to revolt 
and seek how to put an end to it, may not be 
the opposite of pessimism, but it is less 
" pessimism pure and simple " than seeing 
and resigning oneself. Now whereas a widely 
accepted gospel which is purely and only 
pesimistic is impossible, not to say, in- 
conceivable, it may well be maintained that 
no great gospel can have any but a pessimistic 
point of departure : " Hear, sons of men, 
evil is life ! " The test of pessimism is rather 
to be sought in the value attached by the 
gospel to the possibilities in the life that is 
thus marred by evil. Is the gospel's way of 
escape from evil, from the un-ideal, realizable 
in and through life ? If not, then such a 
gospel is not necessarily pessimism pure and 
simple, but it is not optimistic as to the 
possibilities of life. 

Let us revert to Dr. Sully's book. In- 
terpreting the terms, pessimism and optimism, 
" in their widest meaning," the author takes 
them to mean that " life has no value, or has 
value respectively " ; is " unworthy, unsatis- 
fying, lamentable," or the opposite. And 
the ground on which Buddhism is called 
pessimism by Dr. Sully is authorized by Max 
Miiller's statement, that its view of life had 
no such happy " solution " as was offered by 
the opposed beliefs of Brahmanie Pantheism 
That happy solution entailed an unearthly 
and unknown renewal of existence after this 
life. The real theme and nucleus, however, 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 165 

of Dr. Sully's book, comes to this : that the 
positive value of life increases, rather than 
diminishes, with a belief in its evanescence. 

Here is an estimate of life, as not depending 
for all its value on pantheistic or other solutions, 
judged by which the pessimism imputed to 
Buddhism may need further modification. 
Among recent imputings to this effect, Dr. 
Saleeby, in The Survival Value of Religion, 1 
wiped out a future for Buddhism on the 
ground that it was " mere pessimism," i.e., 
" since it preaches the worthlcssness of life," 
the contention of the essay being that, to have 
a high survival value, a religion must enhance 
the value of life, taken in quality, if not in 
quantity 

This conclusion would seem to merit 
general acceptance. But the claim for Bud- 
dhism may also be accepted, that it is a 
remarkable exemplification of that conclusion. 
The Dhamma, to begin with, has already 
shown a very fair power of survival, exceeding 
that of nearly every other creed. And it 
enhances, perhaps more than any creed, the 
value of life, when life is not taken in breadth 
and length, but when a special quality of life 
is selected 

This may not seem obviously true. But if 
we consult the two main ideals of life in early 
European culture, the Greek and the Christian, 
we find in both, that the life on which high 
value was set, is very restricted indeed in 
1 Fortnightly Review, 1906. 



166 BUDDHISM 

breadth. As to life considered in length, 
that is, as prolonged beyond the grave, the 
Christian solution is much more pronounced 
in its estimate than the Greek. Nevertheless, 
even for it, there is an indefinite restriction 
in breadth. " Many are called, but few are 
chosen." 

We are accustomed to picture the ancient 
Greek, living within a certain epoch of 
florescence, as reckoning his earthly life well 
worth having. We note his delight in physical 
culture, social functions, intellectual inquiry, 
and artistic beauty. And we think of him dread- 
ing the dim shades of the after life in the 
mood interpreted in Swinburne's Atalanta : 

I am gone down to the empty, weary house, 
Where no flesh is, nor beauty, nor swift eyes, 
Nor sound of mouth, nor might of hands and feet. 

Advance in archaeology, however, and even in 
literary research, has revealed to us phases 
of the ancient Greek temperament neglected 
before : evidences of aspiration after a 
blessed future with the gods, longings to 
escape (expressed in the very metaphor used 
in India by Buddhists) " from the painful, 
misery-laden wheel " of birth and of fate. 
But there appears no definitely conceived 
ideal of meliorism for humanity in this life. 
The golden age is behind. The ideal republic 
is the dream of an individual genius. Nor 
was the quality of life, such as was held to be 
here desirable, conceived as widely distributed. 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 167 

The slave and the wife were civically of small 
account. With regard to the majority in the 
state, past, present and future, the Greek 
estimate of life may be said to have been 
pessimistic. The opposite view held only 
respecting a certain quality of mundane life, 
such as the fortunate (mainly male) minority 
might live. 

The early Christian ideal yields no bright 
view of this life considered independently of 
the life to come. It sets no value on any 
joy in life as life, and holds out no hope of 
any realizable Utopia in the earthly future, 
such as is forecast by one or two Hebrew 
prophets. The taint of sin and the shadow of 
the transitory is everywhere. Life the 
winning and the holding of it runs like a 
thread of gold throughout the Fourth Gospel. 
But the context leaves no doubt that the life 
eternal of the individual soul is always 
meant, even where this is not explicitly 
stated. Life eternal is promised to him who 
" hateth his life in this world." It is true 
that " the gospel of the kingdom should be 
preached to all the world," but " then shall 
the end come." And this is described in 
terms of Armageddon. Only in a new heaven 
and earth should God dwell with men, and 
with but few who in a former birth had last 
lived on the old earth. The simile of Noah's 
little ark and the great flood brooded heavily 
on the infant Church. 

Yet even in the face of this near and 



168 BUDDHISM 

appalling future, appalling as regarded the 
great majority of mankind, the early Christian 
estimate of life, as lived by the faithful and 
holy, that is, taken qualitatively only, was 
not pessimistic. It was life of a very dis- 
tinctive quality, like a rare and precious 
flower in a weedy jungle. It was the result 
of severe selection. Energy was concentrated. 
And this kind of life was proved to be so 
pregnant of joy born of profound conviction 
and utter devotion, that its greatest votary 
could bid his followers " Rejoice without 
ceasing, and again I say unto you. Rejoice 1 " 
It is not invariably the hope of the transcend- 
ent future that so transformed their estimate 
of the possibilities of this life. It was largely 
a condition of heart and mind, the florescence 
of a new and higher ideal respecting this life, 
reconciliation with the best they knew, the 
sense of liberty from lower bonds. " If 
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." 

Akin to this joy and serenity in a special 
quality of life is the atmosphere pervading 
those poems of the Sutta-Pitaka which are 
ascribed to many of the early Buddhist saints, 
both men and women. The wonderful awak- 
ening that the new life had brought to them : 
the realization of the character of the 
Buddha, of the nature of the Norm, of fra- 
ternity with the good, of liberty from harassing 
bonds, of mental clarity, of having stepped 
out of and beyond objects in life that used 
to call up passion, enmity and illusions, the 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 169 

state, that is to say, termed Nibbana (Nir- 
vana) : all this is hymned as the having put 
an end for ever to dukkha, and the enjoying 
peace, serenity and rapture. 

And the ground for this blissful state had 
much in common with that of the early 
Christian. The latter would say that the 
fact of walking with Christ made this life 
splendid. The Buddhist arahant had carried 
out his Master's ordinance, and won mental 
illumination or " freedom." He represented 
for Buddhism, life raised to its highest value 
short of Buddhahood itself. 

This is what I have meant elsewhere l 
by calling Buddhism optimistic in its qualita- 
tative estimate of life. The Christian saint 
could humbly admit to moral warfare still 
rending him at times. The Arahant was 
believed to have won peace utterly and 
finally. But with respect to the desirable- 
ness of life taken quantitatively, or en bloc, 
Buddhism is, I repeat, frankly pessimistic. 
The craving for mere life or living was con- 
demned as ignoble, as stupid, as a moral 
bondage, as one of the four dsava's, or (mental) 
intoxications. The plunge into the full tide 
of human life, which Faust was to find so 
" interesting," was, from their point of view, 
too much compact of Vanity Fair, shambles 
and cemetery to be worth the plunge. With 
the faith, however, possessed by all systems 
of training, in the power of nurture to trans- 
3 Psychological Ethics, xoiii., kxxvi, 



170 BUDDHISM 

form, or at least modify nature, it prescribed, 
for its more serious devotees, a deliberate 
pruning away of everything which it judged 
might hinder the evolution of life of a finer, 
higher quality. These chosen spirits could 
not afford to cultivate life in breadth and 
length. 

If then, for concrete life, we substitute life 
of a certain quality, where selective economy 
concentrates the energies on certain lines of 
development, Buddhism, so far from depre- 
ciating that kind of life, pronounced it fair 
and lovely to a degree attainable by no mere 
spell of renewed life spent in celestial regions. 
It stood for a kind of happiness concerning 
which the judgment of Western thought has 
tended to be sceptical : the bliss of attain- 
ment, without satiety. Over here we have 
tried to persuade ourselves that joy lies 
mainly in pursuing a pathetic way of recon- 
ciling ourselves to failure. This conscious- 
ness of final attainment, called by early Bud- 
dhism arahatta (Araha(n)tship, literally worthi- 
ness, fitness), vimutti (emancipation, liberty), 
anna (gnosis, insight), nibbdna, is the realiza- 
tion of the final culminating stage in a single 
stream of life evolving from eternity. The 
victim of that stream's current has now 
become the master. The plant to shift the 
metaphor that takes years to reach flores- 
cence has burst into flower, and tastes its 
" crowded hour of glorious life." 

The theory of Arahantship may, or may 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 171 

not be the effort of an ancient, alien (yet Aryan) 
culture to interpret natural laws, namely 
that (1) nature, working through the conscious 
moral will, as well as through lower organ- 
isms, will sacrifice mere quantity of life, if 
thereby she may gain intensive fulness and 
more highly evolved quality of life ; or (2) 
that supremely fine development genius, for 
instance tends, not to reproduction, but, 
having blossomed, to die out. But this any- 
way is undeniable ; if, and in as far as, Bud- 
dhism holds this earthly existence capable of 
producing what it judged to be perfected 
persons, or saints, it is in a certain way and to 
a certain degree optimistic, rather than the 
reverse, in the value it sets on life. A con- 
ceivably higher value would have lain in the 
belief in a future Utopia wherein the majority 
were Arahants, or nearly so. But Buddhism, 
like Christianity, is at too close grips with real 
life for this. 

Thus far we have found that the imputation 
of thorough-going pessimism to the Buddhist 
ideal is too slovenly for the following reasons : 
Movements of religious and ethical reform 
start necessarily with pessimistic utterances. 
Buddhism preaches not so much resignation 
to evil or ill, as revolt and escape from evil 
or ill. No gospel is wholly pessimistic that sets 
high value on a certain possible ideal of life. 

Indeed it is not unlikely, as Mr. Narasu 
remarks, 1 that pessimism was, in the first 
1 Essence of Buddhism, p, 119,, 



172 BUDDHISM 

place, associated with Buddhism through 
Schopenhauer proclaiming the close agreement 
between his own teaching and such super- 
ficial and ill-based knowledge as he had 
acquired of Buddhism. The imputation, how- 
ever, thus somewhat arbitrarily set up, has 
persisted, and, as we have seen, is liberally 
renewed at second-hand. It may therefore 
meet a certain demand, to have examined 
this particular alleged character of Buddhism. 
There should certainly be no lack of interesting- 
ness in the light such as examination throws, 
as we have further to see, on the varying 
standpoints and ideals of humanity. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE NORM AS IDEAL (continued) 

THE belief of the Buddhism of the Pitakas 
in the perfectibility of human individuals 
on earth one here, one there, one now and 
one then without an eternal immaterial 
heaven as the indispensable field wherein 
to attain perfection, is a notable phase in the 
evolution of human ideas. This consumma- 
tion was held to be approached by stages 
of conscious experience entitled the four 
paths and the four fruits, the fruits being 
moments of conscious fruition or sense of 
attainment, forming the culminating point 
to each path. The paths were termed that 
of the Stream-attainer, of the Once-Returner 
(i.e. one who was in his penultimate span of 
life), of the Never-Returner, and of Arahant- 
ship. Summarized in terms of spiritual 
experience, they consisted in a progressive 
purification of mind and heart from all 
worldly, other-worldly, sensual, or inimical 
ideals, and the complete supersession of these 
by a consciousness of clear insight into the 
natural evolution of all things, with a back- 
173 



174 BUDDHISM 

ground of disinterestedness and benevolence. 
More of this state of mind in our next chapter. 

The undesirable ideals are conceived in 
such categories as modes of craving, grasping, 
or unregenerate desire, modes of defilement, 
corruption or, more literally, torment (kile'sa), 
modes of bondage or fetters. The desirable 
ideal was, as has been stated, conceived posi- 
tively as Arahantship or topmost path and 
fruition, and negatively as emancipation and 
as nibbdna (Sanskrit, nirvana). 

Around the last-named term, as readers 
doubtless know, an unparalleled amount of 
confused ideas has collected. The etymology 
of the word is as doubtful as is that of our 
" heaven. Buddhist mediaeval text-books are 
in no doubt about it. " Now, Nibbana," runs 
the Compendium of Philosophy, " which is 
reckoned as not concerned with the things of 
this world (lok-utt r ara) 9 is to be realized through 
the knowledge belonging to the four paths, and 
is the object of them and of their fruits. It is 
called Nibbana, in that it is a de-parture 
(ni-vah) from that craving which is called 
vdna " (p. 168). But, as this very passage 
shows, all medieval etymology, both oriental 
and occidental, is exegetical. That is to say, 
the structure of a word is forced into showing, 
not a primitive meaning, but that which it 
has come to signify in the tradition followed 
by the- commentator. According to the 
passage quoted, the word is derived both 
from " away-going " and from no-craving. 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 175 

This will not pass muster in modern philology. 
But it is of no great consequence. We have 
fortunately, in the Pitakas, instances of the 
older, more literal meaning of the word, show- 
ing unmistakably that Nibbana meant, not 
going away or forth, but gone out, dying 
" out " or " extinction," as of an expiring 
fire. 

In the numerous similes and parables of the 
Buddha's discourses, the kindling and the 
going out and putting out (nibbdyati^ nib- 
bdpeti) of it are frequently and variously 
applied. One of these applications is to the 
three cardinal springs of unregenerate desire, 
namely, greed, hate and illusion, especially 
the first. The individual and the world itself 
are often pictured as being on fire with these, 
and the regenerate state of one who is in the 
Four Paths as a process of extinguishing the 
fires, and the Arahant state as one of extinct 
fires and " coolness " (slti-bhava). Here are a 
few instances : Ananda the disciple ^ finds 
another, Vanglsa, conscious of passionate 
feeling inflaming his thoughts : 

" My sense with passion burns, my mind's aflame ! 
well did Gotama compassionate 
Speak of a putting out (nibMyana). . . . Ml 

In the " Burning " discourse, delivered by 
the Buddha on Gaya Head, 2 watching it 
ma y be as one may even to-day a heath 
fire playing over the slope the senses and 



176 BUDDHISM 

their objects are pictured as burning with 
lust, enmity and illusion, although the anti- 
thetical state to this, namely, Arahantship, 
is not described as a process of extinct fire. 

But in one of the Sisters' shorter poems 
we get the closest possible association of the 
ideal with the simple act of extinguishing 
flame : 

With ploughshares ploughing up the fields, with seed 
Sown in the breast of earth, men win their crops, 
Enjoy their gains, and nourish wife and child. 
Why cannot I, whose life is pure, who seek 
To do the Master's will, no sluggard am, 
Nor puffed up, win to Nibbana's bliss ? 

One day, bathing my feet, I sit and watch 
The water as it trickles down the slope. 
Thereby I set my heart in steadfastness, 
As one doth train a horse of noble breed* 
Then going to my cell, I take my lamp, 
And seated on my couch I watch the flame ; 
Grasping the pin, I pull the wick right down 
Into the oil. , . . 
Lo ! the Mbbana of the little lamp ! 
Emancipation dawns ! My heart is free I 1 

There was and is, for Buddhists, a glamour 
and a thrill in the term Nibbana, such as we 
can only feel in the word linked here with it, 
and which is almost equally negative in form 
the term emancipation, freedom or liberty. 
For them there is no death-knell in the word, 
but a presentiment of bliss. 

* Psalms of the, Sisters, 72, Referred to by Dr, Pischel 
[op c&) in this connection, 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 177 

'* There is no fire like unto passion's greed, 
No hapless oast of dice like unto hate, 
No ill that equals all that makes the self, 1 
Nor is there any bliss greater than peace. 
These things to know e'en as they really are, 
This is Nibbana, crown of happiness." 8 

The reference to Nibbana as supreme happi- 
ness in the last line seems to have been a tra- 
ditional saying in the Buddha's time. Mystery 
hangs about any religious usage of the term 
previous to the Pitakas, But in one of the 
Suttas a verse, similar to that quoted in part 
above, is referred to as a sort of saw or rune. 

The Buddha is represented as conversing 
with Magandiya, a recluse, who accuses him of 
teaching revolutionary doctrines, The Bud- 
dha introduces a verse : 

Health is the highest thing to get, 8 
Nibbana is the highest bliss, 
And of all paths the Eightfold 'tis 
That unto deathless safety leads. 

Magandiya exclaims : " How strange and 
wonderful it is, sir, that you should so aptly 
quote that verse ! I have heard my teachers 
and their teachers also say it." " What 
then, Magandiya, is that health, what is 
that Nibbana ? " Magandiya strokes his 
limbs and replies : " Why, this, sir, is health, 
this is Nibbana, for I am healthy and well 
at present, and ail in no respect whatever." 

1 Literally " the Khandhas." 
tt Dhammapada, w, 202, 203, 
Ct Jfltafo, vol. i. No. 84, 



M 



m BUDDHISM 

Nothing can show more clearly than this, 
coupled with the fire-similes, that, when the 
Pali books were first compiled, Nibbana was 
a word which could mean literally blowing or 
going out of fire, and yet, at the same time, 
be symbolical of the cheerful serenity or 
conscious well-being that accompanies health 
of mind and body. And nothing is easier, 
once we cease to " think of something else," 
i.e. the myth that the extinction refers to life, 
and make it refer to a spiritual and moral 
disease burning like fire, wasting like fever. 1 

Neither can there be any reasonable doubt 
but that Buddhism invested the word with 
a deeper, more spiritual significance. We see 
it begun, as it were, in the Buddha's further 
remarks to Magandiya, while it must not be 
overlooked that the compilers of the Samyutta 
place the term as a fully accepted name for the 
goal of the Buddha-doctrine, in the very first 
sermon : " By avoiding these two extremes, 
the Tathagata has gained knowledge of the 
middle path which is vision-making, know- 
ledge-making, which makes for calm, for 
insight, for enlightenment, for Nibbana. " 2 
It is in such a string of desirable or ideal states 
of spiritual attainment that the word is used, 
in the Sutta-Pitaka more frequently than as 
an isolated term ; for instance : " this is 
good, this is excellent, to wit, the calming of 
all karma-activities, the renunciation of all 

1 Bbys Davids, Early Buddhism (1908), 73. 

1 Samyutta-NMya, v. 420 L ; Vinaya Texts, I 94 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 179 

the bases (of rebirth), the destruction of 
craving, passionlessness, ceasing, nibbana." 1 
Again: "Why has the Exalted One not 
declared whether the saint (taihagata) exists 
after death? Because, brother, this is a 
matter that does not make for things needful 
to salvation (advantage), nor for that which 
concerns the holy life, nor for distaste for the 
world, nor for passionlessness, nor for cessa- 
tion, nor for calm, nor for insight, nor for 
enlightenment, nor for Nibbana." "What 
then hath the Exalted One declared ? " " That 
which doth make for all these things, to wit : 
This is Dukkha ! This is the cause of Duk- 
kha ! This is the cessation of Dukkha ! 
This is the path leading to the cessation of 
Dukkha ! " 2 

But to return to Magandiya's reply : 
The dialogue does not continue, as we doubt- 
less wish it had (and as a later and less genuine 
document might have done) with a discussion 
of the term Nibbana. A higher ideal is 
substituted. Health and nibbana are some- 
thing more than a condition of this poor, 
faulty, physical frame, Magandiya is as a 
blind man, seeking a clean white robe, who 
is cheated into donning a stained and dirty 
one. He is advised to join himself to wiser 
associates (than his wandering recluses), who 
will teach him the "Ariyan eye "the 

1 Anguttara-NiMya, ii. 118, and eight parallel passages ; 
DlgJia-Nikaya, iii. 130, etc. 

Samyutta-NiJcaya, ii. 223, and many similar passages, 



180 BUDDHISM 

gentle or noble vision through which he will 
learn to know health, to see Nibbana, will 
learn to put away all craving for the rebirth 
of body and mind, to give up the clinging 
to " becoming," and thereby escape the 
ill-health of Dukhha. 

If it be asked : " Is there then no more 
positive definition given of Nibbana in the 
Pitakas, the reply is, Certainly ; Nibbana is 
defined as a synonym for the disciplining 
(vin'aya) and the destruction (khaya) of 
rdga (passion, lust), dosa (hate, anger), and 
moha (illusion, error, dulness), which are 
called " fires," and again, of the dsava's 
(sensuality, lust for becoming or rebirth, 
opinion, ignorance). These are answers to 
the categorical questions : " What is Nib- 
bana ? " " What is a synonym for it ? "* 
Elsewhere, with equal terseness, it is stated : 
" The cessation of becoming is Nibbana 
(bhava-nirodho nibbdnam). This, by the way, 
is an utterance placed in the mouth of 
disciples, not of the Master, whose are the 
preceding statements. 2 Elsewhere, again, 
Nibbana is made a synonym for the acquisi- 
tion or realization of Truth. Here it is the 
Exalted One who speaks in both passages, 
which should be mutually compared : (1) " 'Tis 
even as a border town " the Buddha is illus- 
trating the fact that the roads to truth and 

1 Samyutta-NMya, iv. 251, 261, 371 ; v. 8. 
8 I&iU, ii. 115 ff, ; AnguMara-Nilcaya, v, 9, of Milindctj 
i t 106, 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 181 

insight are not one but many" having walls 
and towns and gates, with a wise and prudent 
gatekeeper keeping out strangers, welcoming 
friends. From the east comes a pair of 
messengers, asking for the lord of the city. 
Him they find at the crossways. And they, 
delivering a message of truth, depart . 
And other twin messengers come even so from 
the west, from the north, . . . Now have 
I made you a parable . . . and this is 
the meaning. The town is this body; the 
gates ^ are the senses, the gate-keeper is 
conscience ; the messengers are calm and 
insight ; the lord is mind ; the message of 
truth is Nibbana. . . . 5>1 (2) " This is the 
supreme Ariyan insight, even knowledge how 
to destroy all Dukkha. This, his liberty, 
founded on truth, is firm and sure. For that 
is a lie which is not genuine, and that which is 
genuine is true, even Nibbana. . . . For 
this is the supreme Ariyan truth, even that 
which is genuine, even Nibbana." * 

To this import of moral and intellectual 
purity, and of the certainty that the end of the 
long series of living, earthly, heavenly, infernal 
was at hand, and therewith the end of all 
suffering, we may add other and favourite 
Pitaka synonyms for Nibbana :Amaia the 
ambrosial, i.e., the immortal, or, more liter- 
ally, the not-dead; Acchuta, the not-deceas- 
ing; Acchanta, the beyond-end; Akuiobhaya, 

1 Samyutla-Nilcaya, iv. 195. 
8 Majjhima-Nikaya, iii, 245, 



182 BUDDHISM 

the safe, literally, the no-whence-f ear ; Anut- 
tara yogakkhema, the beyond-less security. 

Taking all these ideas covered by the word 
Nibbana together, we discern that the Budd- 
hist attitude towards the goal of its Dhamma 
is one that the West has found it easier to call 
pessimistic than to sympathize withal. The 
sublimest aspiration is centred on a state of 
moral and intellectual purity, in this life, 
with which is bound up the blissful certainty 
that death, coming in the natural course of 
things, will, this time, no more be the threshold 
of new life anywhere in time or space ! For 
the very great number of persons to whom 
eternal life of the soul in a celestial sphere is 
the only real solution worth entertaining, the 
Buddhist ideal seems hopeless. It is only 
natural and even almost necessary for those 
who see, in the individual life, something 
begun, spiritually speaking, only when a 
living soul is breathed into embryo or new- 
born babe by a creative spirit, and which 
enters, after only one death, on an eternal 
career, to claim for this soul extended ex- 
periences and opportunities on the other side. 
But for the Buddhist the individual is now in 
eternity, has ever been so, and will so continue, 
when reborn, unless and until he find the way 
to suspend the causes of rebirth. There is 
nothing joyless or hopeless about death and 
after, for all sincerely good Buddhists. 
Visions, vague and airy, as with us, of long- 
lived bliss, as well as of rebirth on earth, 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 183 

surround the dying believer, and with these, 
as with us, are associated faith and hope. 
The longing for perfection and the rounding 
off of life's immense pilgrimage comes, at 
any given moment, to very few, and to them 
only when, their evolution approaching ma- 
turity, a change comes over their ideals, and 
when the things wherein they, in the past, 
have, with other men, taken delight, delight 
them now no more. 

Such appears clearly in the old chronicles of 
Buddhist saints, who have bequeathed us the 
story of their heart and its quest in the Book 
of Gatha's or verses " psalms" I call them, 
In these legends it is some good deed, some 
aspiration, some resolve performed in past 
ages, which has planted their feet on the long, 
long, upward road, till at length in the days of 
" our Buddha " the conditions have matured, 
and the youth or maiden, man or woman, 
fulfils her destiny, tastes rapture not of this 
world, and exults in having done with it all. 

There is no uniformity in either the way of 
their attainment, or in the specific shape which 
the goal, end, or ideal assumes in each case. 
I have judged it worth while, in translating 
this book of the lives and " psalms " of 
Buddhist saints, to issue a referendum among 
these single-minded, devoted winners of the 
sivmmum bonum of their faith some three 
hundred and thirty-seven in all inquiring 
what, in each case, the Nibbana enjoyed by 
the Arahant meant for him or her. The poems 



184 BUDDHISM 

may not always convey all that it meant for 
each ; many of them are too brief for this, 
and many of them are verses prompted by 
some particular occasion. Taken together, 
however, they yield a very instructive number 
of aspects of attainment, uttered at a time 
when the movement was beginning to win 
over the imagination and loyalty of many, 
and while yet the dew and bloom of youth 
lay on its ideals. 

There is a very large, perhaps the largest 
consensus of conviction, expressed with more 
or less rapture, that something has been got 
rid of : something felt as mainly 111 (dukkha) 
craving (t(mha\ the triad "greed, hate and 
illusion, 55 the continuance of Becoming (rebirth 
or coming back to be), or Bonds of various 
kinds. More positively expressed, this rid- 
dance is pictured, intellectually, as light, 
insight, truth, .gnosis or higher " saving " 
knowledge; emotionally, as happiness, calm, 
coolness, content, good, peace, safety ; voli- 
tionally, as freedom, self-mastery, supreme 
opportunity, saintly companionship. 

It is in this manifold psalm of victory that 
a fitting comment lies, both to the statement 
of Dr. Wundt, that the Buddhist ideal is 
Truth, as the highest fruit of knowledge, and 
the criticism of Professor Oldenberg, 1 that 
the early adherents, on the contrary, cared 
relatively little for knowledge, and were, so 

1 La the Deutsche Rundschau, Jan, 1910 ; translated in 
the BiMUst Review, Oct, 1910. 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 185 

far as personal devotion to the Buddha did 
not absorb their thought and feeling, contented 
rather to await that final dissolution of the 
long chain of life which should usher in a now 
inconceivable, but certain Beyond, a being at 
the back of life, which the attainment of 
Arahantship, or the firstlruits of Nibbana, 
guaranteed to them. 

We shall presently consider the relative 
importance of Truth as an ideal ; but we 
have first briefly to consider this transcen- 
dental Nibbana. 

Let us first glance once more at the saints' 
verses, and, for that matter, to that other 
probably even older collection, the Sutta- 
Nipata, discussed in the essay just mentioned. 
Sisters and brethren are evidently not looking 
forward to any state of bliss different from, 
or higher than that which they are now 
enjoying. They have won ; fruition is theirs ; 
they walk among the sheaves of harvest. 
Thus one brother : 

The factors of my life, well understood, 
Stand yet a little while with severed root. 
Sorrow is slain ! That quest I've won, and won 
is purity from fourfold venom's stain, 

And a sister : 

Nibbana have I realized, and gazed 
Into the mirror of the holy Norm. 
I, even I, am hoalfed of my hurt, 
Low is my burden laid, my task is done, 
My heart is wholly set at liberty, 



186 BUDDHISM 

And another: 

True happiness is theirs 

Who, wise and freed from longing and from doubt, 
Cool and serene, have tamed the craving will, 

And yet another : 

Now all my sorrows are hewn down, cast out, 
Uprooted, brought to utter end, 
In that I now can grasp and understand 
The base on which my miseries were built, 

Craving, the cause, in me is dried up. 
Have I not trod, have I not touched the End 
Of ill, the Ariyan, the Eightfold Path ? 
Oh ! but 'tis long I've wandered down all time, 



Not knowing how and what things really were, 
And never finding what I needed sore. 
But now mine eyes have seen th' Exalted One ; 
And now I know this living frame's the last, 
And shattered is th' unending round of births : 
No more Pajapati shall come to be I 

It may be, as I have said elsewhere, 1 that, 
in thus exulting in their manifold attainment, 
they implied some state, inconceivable to 
thought, inexpressible by language, limited 
as it is to concepts and terms of life as we 
know it ; a state, neither in time nor in space, 
yet the sequel of this life's residuum. If so, 
their common reticence is nothing less than 
amazing at least to us, who have not only 
never been taught, that to crave for transcen- 
dental bliss is an error, but have been incited 
1 Psalms of the Sisters, xxxi. 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 187 

to do so. In these verses there is nothing 
pointing to an unrevealed mystery concerning 
which "we could an' if we would" sing 
something. It may be with them as with one 
who, after long toil and much peril, reaches 
home, and is content with that for the day, 
whatever life may yet give or ask for on the 
morrow. They have won up out of the Mael- 
strom of the endless round, to something 
wonderful that now is, but does not call for 
terms of after-life to describe it ; and so 
resting they sing. So Sister Mitta ; 



"O / O 

Enough for me. I want no heaven of gods ! 
Heart's pain, heart's pining have I trained 



away. 



These sentiments, sure only as to the 
past and present, silent as to the future, 
might be called the very poetry of Agnosticism, 
were it not that they are severely concen- 
trated about a certain gnosis, or insight of a 
positive and not negative nature. Life was 
judged, by the Buddhist, to be so essentially 
and inevitably a process of rise and fall, waxing 
and waning, growth and decay, that to 
pronounce it, wherever lived, absolutely bliss- 
ful and eternal, was self-contradiction of the 
most fundamental kind. In the case of the 
Arahant, action had become wholly incapable 
of being transmitted, as cause, to new being, 
inasmuch as it was no longer the outcome of 
that form of sensuous desire I have distin- 
guished as craving or thirst (t<mha). If then 
the happy assurance and content hymned in 



188 BUDDHISM 

Arahant utterances of old impjy as, for all 
we know, they may have implied a concep- 
tion of Nibbana as something involving at 
final death, 



Into something rich and strange, 

one of two things, at least, is involved : either 
(a) the soul or attd was denied not in toto, 
but only as being in any way whatever mixed 
up with the mind or body (the five khandhas), 1 
or (J) anyway, life, as we can conceive it, 
does not exhaust being. 

As to the latter assumption a conception 
of being, without any of the specific attributes 
of life -it would not be surprising to encounter 
a notion of this range in the Indian intellect, 
To our two-fold logical division of "is,"* 
" is not," this intellect reckoned-in two more*" 
alternatives : " both is and is not," " neither 
is nor is not." Hence the Indian reserves 
the right to conceive, as logically possible, 
that which is neither life nor not-life, neither 
consciousness nor not-consciousness. Be that 
as it may, I have come across no such con- 
ception as " being, but not life " in Buddhist 
doctrines; moreover, if such a notion be 
implicit in the concept Nibbana, it is fairly 
evident that saintly aspiration could scarcely 
feel, or predicate anything blissful, or otherwise 

1 This heresy is denied at great length in the youngest 
book of the Abhidhamma-Pitaka, the Kathavatthu: 
" Is a personal individuality known as corresponding to 
fact in any ultimate sense ? " 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 189 

about it. There could be no enthusiasm 
about so empty a field of vision. The 
ancient Christian poet might sing 

I know not, I know not 
What joys await us there ! 

because he could associate joys with life 
eternal in the Blessed City. But the Buddhist, 
like his pantheistic fellow-countrymen, would 
have to stop at the first line, matching the 
nescio, nescio with their neti, neti, " not thus, 
not thus." It must suffice that confident 
expectation be his ineffable bliss. If he gets 
beyond life, he must drop the terms of life. 
Of a being not manifested in some kind of 
person or individual the Buddhist could 
apparently shape no clearer conception than 
can we. All speculative writing on Nibbana 
so conceived tends to land us in Platonic or 
other animistic mysticism. We get either an 
immortality of ideas, as distinct from ideating 
minds, or we get an abstract absolute Being, 
from which all the furniture of space and 
spatialized time have been prescinded, leaving 
us with, so to speak, the bare concept of pure 
movement. 

The other assumption (a) is that of the 
Sankhya and Yoga systems. In them, how- 
ever, unlike Buddhism, the dogma of the 
individual hyper-phenomenal self is very 
plainly affirmed. Why should the Buddha 
have differed from these in confining himself 
to negative statements about the atta, and 



190 BUDDHISM 

have drawn down the veil of his " things 
undeclared "* on all questions as to whether 
there was being for the Arahant, when mental 
and bodily life was extinct ? 

A very ingenious answer to this, propounded 
by Dr. F. Otto Schrader, 2 is that, whereas the 
Buddha, like the Christ, had many things to 
say unto his followers which they could not 
bear then to profit by, he judged it better, 
for pragmatic reasons, in an age seething with 
speculative ferment, to make no pronounce- 
ment that would inevitably add fuel to such 
speculations. 

An obvious rejoinder to this is that it was 
equally incumbent on the Buddha, if he was 
omniscient, to make a positive pronounce- 
ment, equally for pragmatic reasons, rather^ 
than abandon posterity to an eternity of 
doubt 3 respecting the final destiny of his 
saints. 

That to which he is recorded, in the Pitakas, 
to have committed himself, is only this: 
(1) that at his death the perfected saint 
became extinct like the flame of an expiring 
fire, whereof no man could say, the fire gone 
out went here or went there ; (2) that the 
Annihilationists, who taught destruction at 
death of the soul, were in error as much as the 
Eternalists, who taught its continued exist- 
ence (not because their conclusions were 

1 Avy&kata, not-predicated, or unanswered, 
Journal Pali Text Society, 1905, " Nirvana." 
8 Cf, Milinda, ii, 196, the King's painful perplexity, 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 191 

wrong, but because they speculated about 
a mythical object) ; (3) that all such questions 
were not conducive to holy living, nor to 
wisdom, nor to Nibbana itself. It is also 
recorded in two of the older collections of 
discourses, that he used the expression : " per- 
fected with a 'going out' (Nibbana) wherein 
is no residuum of life. 551 This expression is used 
in referring to the death of a Buddha or 
Arahant only. The word rendered " per- 
fected," parinibbuta, parinibbdna, does not 
mean dying, still less does it mean, as 
translators often faultily render it, " entered 
into Nirvana." Literally, it is " completely 
gone out," but " gone out " for Buddhists is 
tantamount to calm and health after purifi- 
cation or training. Hence we find the word 
applied, by the Buddha, to a horse broken in 
and docile after fretting and fuming at 
restraint. Thus also, in the training of 
human beings, " as no man," runs a Buddha- 
discourse, 2 " who is himself in a bog can help 
another out," so will only one who is " him- 
self tamed, disciplined, calmed (parinibbuto)" 
tame, discipline and make calm (parinibba- 
pessati) another. Nevertheless both noun 
and verb were technically used by the Bud- 
dhists, with or without the reference to 
" residuum of life," for the final death of a 
perfected human being, in contradistinction 

* Anguttora-NMya, ii, 120; iv, 202, 313; Dlgha- 
Nikdya, iii, 135. 
1 Majjhima-NMya t i 446 ; 45, 



192 BUDDHISM 

to the other technical term for the death of 
a being not yet perfected, namely " he did 
time (kdlam akdsi)." 

" The terms [sa-]upadisesa, anupadisesa, mean- 
ing with, and without residual vital conditions, 
or bases of life, respectively, occur at rare 
intervals, either singly, or together in the 
Sutta-Pitaka. Buddhaghosa paraphrases the 
pair by "with, and without remainder of 
updddna " a word signifying both " grasping " 
and " fuel," and thus denoting, both subjec- 
tively and objectively, the cause of renewed 
living (see p. 91). His exegesis may not be 
etymologically sound, but it is none the 
worse Buddhism for that. The terms are 
applied to a saintly career which is in 
either the penultimate or the final span of 
life. Of early post-canonical works the 
Netti-pakdrana uses the pair without com- 
menting on them, but the Milinda, the 
dialogues in which on Nibbana are in- 
structive and very beautiful, does not use 
either of the terms. The mediaeval digest 
Compendium of Philosophy, merely mentions 
the two terms as convenient verbal, or 
logical, but not" actual, distinctions in a 
notion: Nibbana which is really, as it 
states, "in its nature single" (p. 168). 

This pair of terms, however, although thus 
divested of deep-cleaving significance, has 
been laid hold of by the incorrigible specula- 
tive tendency of man in East as in West, 
starved by the reserve of the founders of 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 193 

Buddhism. Other passages moreover have 
been adduced, from sayings ascribed to the 
Buddha, which to some thinkers are satisfying 
evidence that, in the case of perfected human 
beings, who in this life attain Nibbana, final 
death was not, by that teacher, considered 
as the be-all and end-all of life's long cycle. 
To Vaccha, the Brahmin, for instance, he 
declares that whatever material form or mental 
constituent be declared as composing such a 
being, " all this he has put away, cut off, made 
like the stump of a palm-tree, made non-exist- 
ent, and unable to arise in the future. Now he, 
thus set free from all the khandhas, is deep, 
immeasurable, hard to fathom, even as is the 
ocean. Hence it does not fit the case to say : 
4 he is reborn,' ' he is not reborn, 5 or both, 
or neither. 51 

Judging by other contexts, this state of 
a Tathagata (which may be rendered Buddha, 
or perhaps Arahant also) does not describe 
him at death only, but is his potential con- 
dition during his lifetime. The Buddha, 
anyway, declares that Vaccha's training 
and tradition make it very hard for him 
to see and to follow. 1 But here are other 
passages deemed crucial: A disciple asks 
the Master : 



By ag and death in fearsome rising flood, 
Tell thou me of an island, Master, tell ! 



i MayjMma-NMya, i, 486-8. 



196 BUDDHISM 

this very point, but not therefore in the least 
disposed either to find their creed pessimistic, 
or to waver in their faith. For all other 
creeds, doubt and perplexity on such a matter 
would be productive of both these results, and 
therefore fatal. Their followers will tend to 
judge Buddhism amiss, simply because they 
are " thinking of something else." For this 
one creed, its great perspective of present 
eternal life and rebirth, and of a cyclical 
evolution towards maturity of a self-trans- 
forming identity, relegates this question of 
the nature and destiny of saiutship to its 
remote and serene mountain-summit. Ara- 
hantship is as rare for them as is saintship 
among ourselves. For the mass of good 
average folk, going, with the patience and 
courage of all sane mortals, through stage after 
stage of green immaturity, through the joys 
and sorrows that have recurred, and will 
recur so infinitely often, heaven and purgatory 
and earth itself await their future. Thus 
much of prospect suffices. 

For those who, with the call of the goal 
supreme sounding in their hearts, have drunk 
deep of the ancient gospel of 111 and the 
Ending of 111, preached in the strife and 
ardour of religious revival, and who feel, 
it may be, the malaise of maturing conditions 
and of the fulness of time pressing upon them, 
is it not possible for us, in their case, so to 
dissever that goal supreme from all connexion 
with expansion of individual being, that we 



THE NORM AS IDEAL 19T 

may read in the Buddha's silence an endorse- 
ment of this modern judgment : " Reason 
mercifully interposes an impenetrable veil 
between us and any reality which is wholly 
alien to our nature" ? 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 

OUK educational curricula are designed to 
meet the needs of all classes of circumstances 
and intelligence. And we do not expect to 
find more than a very small minority capable 
or desirous of availing itself of such instruc- 
tion and such tests as it has taken the most 
highly trained intellect of the day to provide, 
Nor do we hold it unfair that the great 
majority is not able to benefit directly by 
the heavy outlay that goes to the output of 
a few. Similarly there is much doctrine in 
the Pali Suttas which was never intended as 
food for householders and their families, 
but which, like the standards set up in Christ'-s 
Sermon on the Mount, held out objects and 
prospects unattractive save to the few who, 
in the words of one chronicler, were being 
driven by the impending maturity of their 
spiritual evolution, The distinction here 
drawn is not between the Order and the laity, 
for many of the former were not more single- 
minded in leaving the world than is the case 
with religious brethren generally, In their 
case many, especially in India, were called, 
198 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 199 

but few were chosen. Moreover cases are 
given of laymen and laywomen advancing 
far in the Paths, full of devotion and intelli- 
gence. Of the laity in general, not to speak 
of discourses and conversations to and with 
individuals, the whole duty, as conceived by 
early Buddhism, may be said to be laid down 
in the Sigalovada Suttanta, or the lesson 
given to Sigala, a pious young layman. 1 

But the limits of this volume leave but a 
little space to add a few notes on the training 
and tests of the more interesting minority. 
These notes may be based on a brief summary 
of the Threefold Training, occurring in the 
Sutta-Pitaka, under which, in the Order, the 
life and exercises judged fittest to carry the 
student right up to the goal were grouped, 

" There are three grades of training, bhik- 
khus ; which are the three ? The higher 
ethics (sila, literally, habit; cf. the Greek, 
ethos), the higher consciousness, the higher 
insight (or wisdom). What is the higher 
ethics ? When a Bhikkhu lives by the code 
of discipline, and in conformity to the precepts 
of morality; when he sees danger in small 
offences ; when having undertaken the pre- 
cepts he practises them." 

" What is the second grade ? When a Bhik- 
khu, aloof from sense-appetites, aloof from evil 
thoughts, enters into and abides in the First 
Jhana (rapt meditation), wherein attention 

1 Or Singala. Digha-Nikaya, iii. 180. A translation is 
reprinted in the Buddhist Review, Jan. 1911, 



200 BUDDHISM 

is directed and sustained, which is born of 
solitude and filled with zest and pleasurable 
emotion ; when, next, from the subsiding of 
attention, initial and sustained, he enters 
into and abides in the Second Jhana, which is 
inward tranquillizing of the mind, self-con- 
tained and uplifted from the working of atten- 
tion ; which is born of concentration, full of 
zest and pleasurable emotion ; when, next, 
through the quenching of zest, he abides indiff- 
erent, and enters and abides in the Third 
Jhana, mindful and fully conscious, experienc- 
ing in the body that pleasure whereof the 
Ariyans declare ' He who is indifferent 
but mindful dwells in happiness.' When, 
next, by putting away both pleasant and 
painful emotion, by the dying out of the 
joy and misery he used to know, he enters 
into and abides in the Fourth Jhana, that 
utterly pure mindfulness and indifference, 
wherein is neither happiness nor unhappiness." 

" What is the third grade ? When a Bhik- 
khu knows as it really is that * This is 111 ; 
this is the cause of 111 ; this is the cessation 
of 111; this is the way leading to the cessation 
of III' " 

An alternative reply to the last question is 
then added : " When a Bhikkhu, by exter- 
pating the intoxicants (the four asava's), 
has of himself comprehended and realized, 
even in this life, sane (an-dsava) emancipa- 
tion of heart and of insight." 

Then follow these verses : 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 201 

Whoso hath zeal, courage and energy, 
la apt to meditate, alert of mind, 
Guarding the forces of his body well, 
Lot him pursue the threefold higher walk, 
Loftiest code of conduct, mind, insight, 
From first to last, the last even as the first, 
Above, below, by night e'en as by day. 
Hath ho thus every quarter [of his life] 
MaHtorod with infinite concentration rapt, 
TM$ do they call the training and the course 
And eke the pure and holy pilgrimage. 
Him do they call The Wakened of the World, 
Brave hero faring to the Way's high End. 
To him when consciousness doth near its end, 
To him from craving utterly set free, 
KIBBANA of the burning flame 1 hath come, 
And to his heart Release and liberty, 8 

Under the first head we see comprised a 
discipline for the conduct both of the body 
and the social self (to use William James's 
expression) ; under the second, we have a 
scheme for taming and training the mind, 
considered as an instrument beating out its 
reactions, cognitive, emotional, volitional. 
Under the third we have this trained mind 
confronting the most general or philosophical 
problems ol life. 

Concerning the attitude of the man-or- 
woman-in-orders toward the body, the Buddha 
in the address to a few former fellow-ascetics 
with which he inaugurated his career as a 
teacher, advocated a " middle path," opposed 

* " An it woro of a lamp, 51 runs Buddhaghosa's Com- 
mentary. 

1 Anguttwa-NiBya, I 236 f. 



202 BUDDHISM 

equally to self-indulgence and to self-mortifi- 
cation. There was obvious logic in such a 
position, springing from his view, set out 
in a preceding chapter, of Dukkha. The 
former course led sooner or later to pain and 
sorrow ; the latter was painful from the first. 

India has perhaps elaborated the gospel 
of salvation through asceticism further than 
any other country. Such practices were held 
to benefit not only the ascetic, but the lay- 
world who, so to speak, " ran " him and won 
merit by his presence. Such practices were 
spoken of collectively as tapas, " burning " or 
" glow," and they constituted a system parallel 
to, but mostly independent of, any contempor- 
ary system of salvation by sacrificial rites. 
They are all condemned, no less than such 
rites, by the Sutta-Pitaka as different forms 
of tormenting either the self, or others, namely 
animals and slaves. 

There was only one kind of " burning " 
cultivated by Buddhism. This was the 
" ardent " (dtdpiri) disposition of the earnest 
soul, whose sensitive conscience would feel, 
not, as we say, the bite of ie-mor$e, but those 
burning (tapaniya) states when realizing : 
" I have left undone those things that I ought 
to have done, and done those things that I 
ought not to have done." 1 It was only those 
who had got beyond all this, who could be 
described as " become cool." 

In theory, religiously considered, the body 
1 Angidtara-NMya, i. 49. 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 208 

was, for Buddhists, as for Christians who had 
left the world, a "foul" or "vile" thing, 
and the senses so many channels of danger 
and suffering. Susceptibility to beauty of 
person needed correction by episodes in train- 
ing involving the contemplation of decaying 
objects. The more practical aspect of physical 
culture was to care so far for the needs of the 
body, as to press it into the service of the 
quest for Arahantship. To this conclusion 
the Buddha came, as he is made to relate, 
after severe tapas had almost worn the life 
out of him : " Not by this bitter course of 
painful hardship shall I arrive at that separate 
and supreme vision of all-sufficing Ariyan 
knowledge, passing human ken. Might there 
not be another path to enlightenment ? " x 
And he forthwith took nourishment, and for 
the meditations that brought enlightenment, 
chose a fair woodland spot soothing and brac- 
ing to sense. From that time austerities 
troubled him no more. A recluse compli- 
ments him on the way his disciples honoured 
him for his frugal, simple life and love of 
solitude. " That can hardly be," he replies, 
" for while some of my disciples affect ascetic 
practices, I some days eat more, or wear 
robes made for laymen, or accept invitations 
to dine, or dwell indoors, or among my 
fellows." 2 And in the rules of the Order the 
body is to be decently draped, cleansed and 
massaged, regularly fed, sheltered in the 
1 Majfliima-Nikdya, i. 246. 2 Majfivima-NiMya, ii. 5 f. 



204 BUDDHISM 

rainy season, rested during the noonday heat, 
and medically heated when ailing. For pro- 
longed meditation the posture of sitting 
upright with crossed legs was chosen as, 
for Oriental habits, freest from discomfort. 
The ascetic practices alluded to persisted 
and came later to be grouped as a scheme 
of thirteen extra vows or burdens. 1 But 
the spirit of early Buddhism was to reduce 
living to a healthful simplicity, at least for 
those who had devoted their lives to realizing 
the ideal, and to propagate the Norm. So 
they would get near to the liberty of the bird 
to use the Buddhist metaphor which in 
flying " bears with it but the power to fly." 

The monachistic habit or practice of seclu- 
sion in the wild, common to Indian recluse- 
ship from time immemorial, and probably 
imported from India to Egypt and so to the 
newly Christianized Europe, was largely and 
systematically practised by Buddhists. It 
was both practised by the founder himself, 2 
and recommended to the follower, as the best 
opportunity for cultivating detachment, spirit- 
ual calm, and thorough-going meditation on 
any given subject prescribed by the recluse's 
superior. Many of the Order, unfitted for 
taking part, even as teachers, in the battle of 
life, spent all their days in seclusion, being 
known as forester Bhikklms. Others sought 
the silence of the upland woods and caves to 
complete the utter mastery of detachment, 

1 MUinda, il, Bk. VI * Vinaya Tab, il 312 1 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 205 

requisite to usher in the cool and peace 
of Nibbana, or to recruit from wearing mission 
work. 

The poems of the saints to which I have 
referred afford an interesting pageant of 
glimpses into the ways of these lonely com- 
moners of air. And it is pleasant to see how 
largely the joy of life in the wild (generally 
supposed to be a phase of modem conscious- 
ness only) gets blended with the spiritual 
aspirations. We see the solitary as a lover 
of the heights were they not " clean and 
pure," " lonely and free from crowds," " a 
hiding-place," and type of the lofty thoughts 
of great minds ? 1 We see him " become in 
heart a wild creature," filled with the " forest 
sense of things" (arannasanni), bathing in 
mountain tarn, listening in his cave to the 
music of the rains and to the crash of the 
storm, joying in the beauty of crag and cloud, 
of verdure and blossom, of bird-life and the 
cries of forest-creatures. 

I am tempted just here to stray off the high 
road of our subject, and invite the reader for 
a few moments to follow these men and women 
to whom I have lent Burns' fine phrase, and 
sample this early Wordsworthian note in 
their poems. The discovery of it was a keen 
delight, and there is no point in early Bud- 
dhism less hackneyed ; for although Professor 
Oldenberg's scholarly edition of the Brethren's 

1 Milinda, ii, 353 : " On the alpine qualities of a 
bhikkhiu" 



206 BUDDHISM 

poems (the late Professor Pischel's fit pendant 
of the Sisters 3 poems included) was one of the 
first publications of the Pali Text Society 
(1883), the attention of English readers, so 
far as I know, was never drawn to it till two 
years ago. 1 

Of the 264 poems ascribed to these early 
Arahants, about one-sixth treat of the en- 
vironing nature and its charm, either by an 
incidental touch, or in considerable detail. 
In most instances, seclusion in wild nature 
is made the background for higher themes. 
In some cases, the joy of life in the wild is 
blended and made co-equal with the spiritual 
theme, In a few poems the theme is Nature 
pure and simple. 

Calling these three groups, A, B, and C, 
I give examples of each : 

A. 

VlMlLl 

(in his hill-cave in Kosala, after a thunderstorm). 
The burdened earth is sprinkled by the rain, 
The winds blow cool, the lightnings roam on high. 
Eased and allayed th' obsessions of the mind, 
And in my heart the spirit's mastery, 

ANGTJLBtALA. 1 

. , , Deep in the wild beneath some forest tree, 
Or in the mountain cave, now here, now there, 

1 In my article, " The love of nature in Buddhist poems/ 1 
i the Quest, April, 1910, 
1 See p. 162, 



in 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 207 

I stand and let my over-charged heart 
Transported beat. Happy I seek my rest, 
Happy I rise, happy I pass the day, 
Remote from evil ah ! how shall I tell 
The sweet compassion of my Lord for me ! 

B. 

EKAYIHABIYA 

(Lone-dweller). 

To him for whom there's nothing left before 
Or after, or elsewhere exceeding good 
It is that he do live in woods alone. 
Lo ! now alone I'll get me hence and go 
To lead the forest-life the Buddha praised, 
In quest of happiness and still retreat. 
Yea, swiftly and alone and for my good 
I'll seek the jungle that I love, the haunt 
Of elephants, th' ascetic's realm of joy, 
Whore, in Cool- Wood's green shade cool waters lie 
Within the mountain glen : there will I bathe 
My limbs, and to and fro 1*11 roam alone. 

Lone and unmated in the lovely woods, 

When shall I come to rest, work wrought, heart 

cleansed ? 

Oh ! that I might win through who am so fain ! 
I only may achieve the task ; herein 
None other may accomplish aught for me. 
I'll bind my spirit's armour on, and so 
The jungle will I enter, that I'll not 
Come forth again until Nibbana's won. 
I'll seat me on the mountain- top, the while 
The wind blows cool and fragrant on my brow, 
And burst the baffling mists of ignorance. 
Then on the flower-carpet of the wood, 
Anon in the cool cavern of the cliff, 
Bleew'd in the bliss of Liberty I'll take 



208 BUDDHISM 

Mine ease in thee, old Fastness o' the Crag. 1 
My heart's desire fulfilled, e'en as the moon 
On fifteenth day, all deadly canker slain, 
And never more Sawasara's round for me ! 

BHfTA, 

When in the lowering sky thunders the stormcloud's drum, 
And all the pathways of the birds are thick with rain, 
The brother sits within the hollow of the hills 
Alone, rapt in thought's ecstasy no higher bliss 
Is given to men than this. 

Or where by rivers on whose bank together crowd 
Full many a flower, and fragrant rushes scent the air, 
With heart serene the brother sits upon the strand 
Alone, rapt in thought's ecstasy no higher bliss 
Is given to men than this, 

a 



Whene'er I see the crane, her clear, pale winga 
Outstretched in fear to flee the black storm-cloud, 
A shelter seeking, to safe shelter borne, 
Then doth the river Ajakarani 

Give joy to me. 

Whene'er I see the crane, her plumage pale 
And silver-grey outstretched in fear to tloo 
The black storm-cloud, seeing no refuge nigh, 
The refuge seeking of the rocky cave, 
Then doth the river Ajakarani 

Give joy to me, 

Who doth not love to see on either bank 
Clustered rose-apple trees in fair array, 
Beyond the great cave of the hermitage, 

1 Girib'baja, the ancient burg near the new Eajagaha 
of the Buddha's time, 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 209 

Or hear the soft croak of the frogs, their foes 
The winged myrmidons withdrawn, proclaim ; 
Not from the mountain streams is't time to-day 
To flit. Safe is the Ajakaram. 
She brings us luck. Here is it good to be ! 

KASSAPA THE GEE AT. 1 
* * * * * 

Towering like battlements of azure cloud, 
Like pinnacles on lofty castle built, 
Re-echoing to the cries of jungle folk : 
Those are the highlands of my heart's desire. 
Fair uplands rain-refreshed and resonant 
With crested creatures' cries antiphonal, 
Where venerable Eishis oft resort ; 
Those are the highlands of my heart's desire. 
Here is enough for me who fain would dwell 
In meditation rapt and solitude. 
Here is enough for me who fain would seek 
Well-being undisturbed in calm retreat. 
# * * * * 

The Commentary on these poems, compiled 
by Dhammapala in or just before the sixth 
century A,D. from earlier records (so he says), 
now lost, gives a brief account of the life of 
each Brother, and of the circumstances 
leading up to the poem. MSS. of this work 
are very rare, and until we were able to 
purchase one from Burma, there was but one 
in Europe, at Copenhagen, and that unfinished. 
The former MS. is now in process of being 
edited, 2 and, in the case of Brethren like the 

* Leader of the Order after the Buddha had passed 
away. The stanzas above are but a sample of the whole. 

* By Miss Mabel Hunt. 



210 BUDDHISM 

foregoing, its contents throw their genuine 
feeling for nature into clearer relief. Thus in 
one Thera's story we read : " And because he 
loved the woods, he was known as Woodland- 
Vaceha. . . . And it was in praise of the 
forest life that he uttered his poem, replying 
to the bhikkhus who asked him : 
" ' What comfort can you find in the forest ? ' 
" ' Jewels, my friends, from forest and from 
mountain 



. 5 55 



Crags with the hue of heaven's blue clouds, 
Where lies embosomed many a shining tarn 
Of crystal-clear cool waters. . , , 

Again, of Usabha it is written : " Finishing 
his novitiate, he went to study in the forests 
of Kosala at the foot of the mountains. Now 
at the time of the rains, the clouds had 
emptied themselves on the crests of the hills, 
and trees, bushes and creepers waxed dense 
with foliage. Then the Thera, going forth 
one day from his cave, saw the loveliness 
of the woods and the mountains and con- 
sidered seriously : " These trees and creepers 
are unconscious, yet by the season's fulfilment 
have they won growth. Why should not I, 
who have also obtained a suitable season, win 
growth in the things that are good ? " And 
he uttered this verse : 

The trees on high, by towering clouds refreshed 
With the new rain, break forth in verdant growth. 
To Usabha, who for detachment longs, 
And hath the forest sense of things, doth come 
From this responsive time abundant good* 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 211 

We are irresistibly reminded here of that 
modem autumn pendant, in which, with a 
diametrically opposite philosophical basis and 
religious faith, the nature-lesson and the 
spiritual response are yet so parallel : 

Yet wait awhile and see the calm leaves float 
Each to his rest beneath their parent shade. 

* * * * 

Unconscious they in waste oblivion lie ... 
Man's portion is to die and rise again. 
Yet he complains. 



i 



The Sisters' poems show an absence of this 
nature-love that is in them only natural. 
They are more occupied with the fact of their 
new freedom of mobility. For them, solitude in 
the woods, in springtime hours especially, was 
k a new and fearful joy, liable to be marred 
by male intruders and the call of sense and 
sex. 

Young art thou, Sister, and faultless what seekest tJiou 

in the holy life ? 
Cast off that yellow-hued raiment and come ! , , ,* 

But they, too, were feeling after wider and 
higher standpoints, which might be forwarded 
through communing with their ancient and 
forgotten Mother. There are one or two 
among their poems, naif and stammering 
compared with their brethren's more fluent 
lyrics, which have for me the deeper pathos of 

1 Keble's " Ked o'er the forest peers the setting sun,"- 
Christian lear. 
* Psalm of ike Early Buddhists, i, 150, 



212 BUDDHISM 

the halting notes of a bird, when first let out 

into the woods from a cage : 

Though I be suffering and weak, and all 

My youthful spring be gone, yet have I come 

Leaping upon my staff, and clomb aloft 

On mountain peak. My cloak have I thrown off, 

My little bowl o'ertumed : so sit I here 

Upon the rock. And o'er my spirit sweeps 

The breath of Liberty ! I win, I win 

The Triple Lore ! The Buddha's will is done I 1 

Turning to the second group of disciplines, 
I must pass perforce with the barest comment 
over the ancient fourfold Jhana formula. 
The practice was not specifically Buddhistic. 
" 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. 2 But the 
whole subject still awaits competent treat- 
ment. Jhana meditation was the reverse 
of desultory reverie, and was to be entered 
upon, after much practice, by closing the 
avenues of sense through a hypnotic exhaus- 
tion of the sense of sight. Now, amongst 
ourselves knowledge of hypnosis is in its 
infancy. We are not prepared to admit that 
a greater freedom and clarity of imagination, 
representative and constructive, may be 
secured by blocking out sense-impressions 

1 Psalms of the Early Buddhists, L, 28. On the love 
of nature in the Brethren's poems, see my article in 
The Quest, April, 1910, 

2 Bhys Davids' Early Buddhism, 86. 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 213 

artificially. But this is what Buddhists claim 
for the practice, as systematized by them. 
Complete trance might indeed be induced, but 
not by the four first stages quoted above. The 
object of these four was to render emotion 
and intellect tamed, plastic and harmonious. 
The more ulterior objects were (1) for one 
who was not aiming directly at Arahantship, 
to produce a tendency to rebirth hereafter 
in one of the sublimer, i.e., more dematerialized 
heavens ; (2) for one aiming at Arahantship 
here and now, to produce a tendency 
to the Nibbana-consciousness, by suppressing 
certain states and dispositions pictured as 
five " hindrances " and ten " fetters." These 
were sensual, malevolent, slothful and doubt- 
ing moods, a hankering after precisely the 
heavens aspired to by others, conceit or 
egoism, distraction or excitement, and lastly 
ignorance. 1 Incidentally, attainment in Jhana 
was held to induce a peculiar bliss, and is 
still held, in Buddhist countries, where it is 
practised by a small minority, to have this 
power. 2 

The reader, with his own ancient tradition 
strong in him, may judge that, if all mental 
states be brought, through Jhana, under 
control, this can only mean that a controller 
must be functioning, whether we call it ego, 

1 Psychological Ethics, kxxvil-xc. ; Samyutta-Nikaya, 
v. 308, 309. 

2 S. 2. Aung, Compendium, 57. E. E. Rost, " Medita- 
tion," Buddhist Review, Oct. 1911, 



214 BUDDHISM 

soul or spirit. Perhaps this thought tended to 
intrude itself also among those who practised 
Jhana. Such a view was judged, as we have 
seen, to be illusory (like our " sun-rising " 
myth), and the danger of it lends significance 
to the listing of conceit (mana) about the ego 
to the fetters just mentioned. The great 
innovation made by the Buddha in the 
philosophy of the ego calls at this point for 
some digressive discussion. There is to super- 
ficial consideration something contradictory 
in a theory which swept aside the " I " as 
absolute, as super-phenomenal, and yet which 
was accompanied by a practical discipline of 
such self-concentrated regard. Nevertheless, 
the discipline was prescribed chiefly that the 
theory might be the better understood. 

It was precisely through the plurality and 
manifoldness of our experience, conceived as 
pictures, etc., passing before a static, unchang- 
ing beholder, that the more crudely conceived 
" inner man " evolved into the abstract 
self or ego. The stages of Jhana were 
intended to break up this perspective deemed 
illusory. First, the attention by way of 
sense-cognition is hypnotically stimulated 
and concentrated, till mind working through 
sense is arrested. Then intellectual zest or 
keen interest dies away; and then mind as 
happy, easeful emotion ceases, and a sort of 
zero-point is attained, leaving the vaguer 
consciousness of wide abstraction : infinity 
of space; next, infinity of receptive con- 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 215 

sciousness (vinndm), a potentiality of sensa- 
tion and emotion, but with no actuality; 
then as it were a negative consciousness, or 
awareness that the preceding stage, so far 
from revealing any persisting entity, was " no- 
thing whatever" (n'atihi kind). Finally, a 
stage is reached described as neither conscious 
nor unconscious, faint and delicate mentality 
fading into complete trance. And the expert 
Jhanist could so predetermine this self- 
hypnosis as to induce it and emerge from it 
when he chose. 1 But beside its use as a 
discipline of the will, or voluntary intellection, 
the philosophic inference he was taught to 
infer from it was, that after every abstractable 
phase had been prescinded from consciousness, 
no abstract Self revealed itself " at the back 
of " mind. 

" Serene, pure, radiant is your person, 
Sariputta ; where have you been to-day ? " asks 
one great apostle of another. " I have been 
alone, in first Jhana, brother," is the reply, 
" and to me came never the thought : / am at- 
taining it ; I have emerged from it, And thus, 
is the comment, individualizing and egoistical 
tendencies have been well ejected for a long 
while from Sariputta ! " 2 And so on, through 
the four grades, and other five grades of 
undifferentiated imagining till trance had 
been reached. 

This unobtrusion of the self attained the 

1 MajjJiima-Nilc&ya, Suttas 43, 44, 

2 Samyutta-NMya, iii 235. 



216 BUDDHISM 

Founder's explicit approval in a more general 
connexion than the practice of Jhana. As 
with some phases of evangelical Christianity, 
so with Buddhism was it customary for one 
attaining to the consciousness of Nibbana to 
testify solemnly to the same. Two disciples 
thus attaining are related to have waited on the 
Buddha, and to have thus made, confession 
of their faith : " Lord, he who is Arahant, 
who has destroyed the intoxicants (dsavas. 
of illusion), who has lived the life, who has 
done that which was to be done, has laid 
aside the burden, has won his own salvation, 
has utterly destroyed the fetters of becoming, 
is by perfect knowledge emancipated, 1 to 
him it does not occur: "There is who is 
better than I, equal to me, inferior to me" 
So saying, they made obeisance and went out. 
And the Master said, " Even so do men of 
true breed declare the gnosis they have won ; 
they tell of their gain (attha), but they do not 
bring in the ego (attd)."* 

Once more, we find the Buddha, when the 
self had been obtruded, diverting the point 
of the episode to the duty of altruistic regard. 
The story is told, in the Udana, a little manual 
of short episodes framing a metrical logion, 
that the king of Kosala and his wife discuss 
the Atmanistic or Vedlntist doctrine that 
the Self (the immanent deity) is dearer 

1 These are all standard formulas, attesting saint- 
ship. 

2 AnguMara-N,, iii. 359. 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 217 

than all else. 1 It may be that to the royal 
pair the idea conveyed no more and no less 
than to a Christian do the words, " What shall 
a man give in exchange for his soul ? " Any 
way the king mentions the conversation to 
the Buddha, who thereupon replies ; 

The whole wide world we traverse with our thought, 

- Nor coine on aught more dear to each than Self. 
Since aye so dear the Self to other men, 

Let the Self -lover harm no other man ! 

To resume : for the Buddhist of the Pitakas 
danger lurked in every form of sustained 
self-reference, whether the reference arose 
from metaphysical, psychological, ethical or 
eschatological considerations. All such em- 
phasis in the mind was classed as mdna, 
a word which much resembles in meaning our 
composite term " conceit," and which we 
find thus connected : " mind involved in 

* I '-making, 4 mine '-making conceit." 2 Be- 
cause Buddhism in India, as it succumbed 
to Vedantism, became associated with the 
rnetaphysic of appearance and reality, it is 
supposed to be much concerned with mdyd, 
or illusion (i.e., of phenomena as unreal). 
But for early, and all subsequent Theravada 
Buddhism, mdnd, and not mdyd, is the only 
world of illusion that is considered, and that 
really matters. The context of the quotation 
just given is the problem of practical philo- 

Brihaddranyaka Upanishad, 1, 4, 8. 
ik., ii 253 ; in. 80. 



218 BUDDHISM 

sophy and religion : how given the recipient 
organism and the world of external impres- 
sions to attain spiritual freedom, and not 
to suffer the conceit of self -reference to arise. 

There are other formulated methods for 
regulating mental procedure beside the Jhana 
practice. They are called wisdom- winged 
states of mind, or the name may be also 
rendered things pertaining to enlighten- 
ment. They aim more at training will and 
intellect. Jhana is more concerned with 
control of sense and emotion, in order the 
better to think. They include the famous 
category called the Ariyan or Noble Eightfold 
Path, which, in the earliest teaching, is put 
forward as in itself a sufficient guide and 
means to Arahantship, or, as the last of the 
four Ariyan or Noble Truths, as the way for 
putting an end to Dukkha. Simple code of 
ethics as it seems at first sight to be, the 
qualifying word sammd (=summa, supreme) 
attached to each factor denoted the high 
ideal to be aimed at, and the severe standard 
to judge by. 

Another discipline for the systematic ex- 
pansion and control of ethical emotion was 
that known as the Sublime Moods, or the 
Illimitables. Here the sentiments of love, 
pity and sympathizing joy were to be taken 
severally and, commencing with known in- 
dividuals, be made to suffuse or pervade first 
these, then groups, ever widening till the whole 
world of sentient things was included. The 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 219 

fourth sentiment, equanimity, cultivated simi- 
larly, would serve to compose and regulate 
the preceding sentiments. Akin to these was 
the elemental disposition; fire-heart, water- 
heart, etc. wherein the consideration of the 
earth, e.g., patiently suffering things clean or 
unclean cast upon it, was to abate all feelings 
of resentment an association resembling 
Christ's illustration of the impartial sun. 

Absence of resentment and of the expres- 
sion of resentment is a practice that would 
of itself go far to abolish dukkha. However, 
let it not be supposed that the more positive 
effort in ethical emotion enjoined above 
lacked comprehensive statement. One of the 
better known Pitakan expressions of universal 
benevolence is, as such, unsurpassed in 
ancient literature. 

E'en as a mother watcheth o'er her child, 
Her only child, as long as life doth last, 
So let us, for all creatures, great or small, 
Develop such a boundless heart and mind. 
Ay, let us practise love for all the world, 
Upward and downward, yonder, thence, 
Uncramped, free from ill-will and enmity. 1 

This figure of the mother and her child, 
Buddhaghosa connects with the foregoing 
Sublime Moods in a pretty passage of exe- 
getics. Namely, her desire for her child's 
growth is as the first of the four (mettd), for 
her child's recovery from sickness, as the 
second (karuna), for the maintenance of the 
a, vorsea|149, 150 ; Khudd$Jca'paiJia t ix* 



220 BUDDHISM 

talents lie shows promise of, as the third 
(mudita), while her care not to hinder the 
career of her grown-up son is as the fourth 
(upekkhd). 

In this chapter we are dealing not with the 
active life of Brother or Sister in early Bud- 
dhism, but with the training. It is to be 
hoped, therefore, that, in all fairness to this 
practical side of the Dhamma, it will not be 
supposed that, for a member of the Order, 
" sublime " sentiments were held to constitute 
in themselves the ethical life. And yet this 
is what a distinguished pioneer writer on 
Buddhism the late Spence Hardy with a 
foreigner's characteristic want of muditd, 
could bring himself to say, 1 namely, that the 
bhikkhu thought about the virtues of solidar- 
ity without practising them. These exercises 
were but preparations of heart and will for 
that ministering to the, mainly, spiritual and 
intellectual needs of others, to which life in 
the Order was largely devoted, and the 
importance of which our zeal for material 
forms of generosity and ministration scarcely 
appreciates at its real value, so sorely are 
"the poor ever with us, 35 And Buddhism 
did not believe in giving free rein to good 
impulses unregulated by intellectual control. 

But no encouragement was permitted to 

emotional expansion except in intimate 

dependence upon the culture of ideas and the 

will. And for the Buddhist, not to say the 

1 Eastern Monachim, 249. 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 221 

Indian, thought and will were, even logi- 
cally, hardly distinguishable. Che'tana, which 
modern Buddhists identify with volition, 
is, etymologically, only "thinking," chitta&nd 
cheto being consciousness, thought, or " heart " 
in the meaning it had for us in our Jacobean 
Bible. 1 And all intellection has chet'and as 
its principal factor. This intimate connection 
between thinking and willing is further re- 
vealed in the disciplines for developing abnor- 
mal psychic faculty, known as iddhi, a subject 
into which we cannot now go. Our psycho- 
logy, till recent years, has been Mghly 
developed on the subject of sense-cognition, 
and for us intellect is mainly receptive and 
co-ordinating and ratiocinative. But the 
Indian mind has ever held that thought can 
translate itself into outgoing energy, not only 
by way of the voice and the limbs For the 
Buddhist, man did not indeed make gods in 
his own image, but he had latent within him 
god-like and creative powers, such as severe 
training might develop. 

Where we best see emotion pressed by 
Buddhism into the service of thought and 

1 E.g., " Why reason ye in your hearts ? " , , , 
- " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts." etc. It is 
for the student of Buddhist philosophy a matter of great 
interest to note, that one of the most constructive intellects 
among philosophical reformers has just published an essay 
in which, all unwittingly, the BuddJiist conclusion is 
worked up to by the light of modern knowledge. JowmaZ 
of Psychology, Dec., 1911 : S. Alexander, " Foundations 
and Sketch-plan of a Conational Psychology." 



222 BUDDHISM 

will is in its attitude towards Desire. The 
whole world of earth, with its purgatories * 
and its nearer heavens, is conceived and 
named in terms of desire, that is kdma, desire 
being understood very generally, as wishing or 
wanting. And that which^ wishes or wants, 
is known as tonka (Sanskrit trishnd), always 
rendered by Rhys Davids and myself as crav- 
ing (or sometimes, poetically, by " thirst "). 
It stands always for natural, unregenerate 
desire and impulse. In pursuing the final 
ideal, all kdma's (both forms and objects of 
this natural craving), whether they be earthly 
or heavenly, are reckoned as hindrances. 

But strenuous volition was too vitally 
essential in the Buddhist scheme of regenera- 
tion to be made coincident only with taahd. 
To the pilgrim in the Four Paths, all kdma 
had become transformed into aspirations and 
purposes called sammd-sankappa (supreme or 
right design or aspiration), ^ and dhamma- 
chanda (normal desire or intention). Chanda is 
paraphrased by " state-of-desire to do." It 
is sometimes made to take the place of 
tanhd. For instance, dukkha is said to be 
"rooted in chanda" 2 as indeed, elsewhere, 
all states of consciousness are said to be. 3 
And in one passage the Buddha's system of 
holy living is called the removal of chanda. 

1 With Rhys Davids I do not call these, as most trans- 
lators do, " hells " (niraya), because there was no eternal 
life in them any more than in the heavens. 

* Samyutto-N., iv. 328. 8 Angultara-N., iv, 339. 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 228 

But note the context. This very removal 
is to be accomplished through the agency 
of chanda. The inquiring Brahmin asks the 
Elder, Ananda, how chanda is to be got rid of. 
Ananda repeats the discipline, included in 
the " wisdom-winged states," in which will 
(chanda), energy and investigation are to be 
developed. "But how," is the comment, 
"will you put away chanda by chanda ?" 
The Elder replies: "Was there not desire, 
effort, intelligence and deliberation in your 
mind, when you set out to question me in this 
park ? And now that you have found me, 
is not all that abated ? " l 

Many other passages might be quoted to 
show that eager, determined chanda is the 
essential and chief criterion of a genuine 
sekha, or candidate for Arahantship. Hence 
(as I 'have said elsewhere 2 ) " it is strictly in 
accordance with the spirit of the older writings, 
if with an added tinge of intense emotion, 
when the author of the Milinda declares 
that Nibbana is to be realized, not by quies- 
cent meditation only, nor in hypnotic trance, 
much less by mortification of desire, but^ by 
rational discontent, strong anguish, longing, 
followed by a forward leap of the mind into 
peace and calm, then again by a vibrating 
zeal, in which the aspirant strives with 
might and main along the path," etc. 3 

1 Samyutta-N., v. 272. 

8 Dictionary of Religion and Ethics, " Desire." 

8 ii. 199 f, 



224 BUDDHISM 

That Buddhism should be so often described 
as teaching " extinction of desire," without 
due qualification in such a statement, results 
not only from want of knowledge concerning 
the scope and grades of a doctrine, which was 
for all sorts and conditions of men, but also 
from the fact that the two pioneer translators 
of Buddhist anthologies were neither English 
nor psychologically trained. 1 Between them 
they have rendered no fewer than sixteen 
Pali words of varying import by the one 
word desire, the sixteen all referring to forms 
of vicious or excessive desire. And the 
views of philosophical and popularizing writers 
have suffered distortion accordingly. 

In the third grade of the higher training, 
we note, taking both definitions, that the 
object and end of the training is such mental, 
emancipation, or liberty as enables the" 
subject to know things as they really or 
truly are. 

The last expression is of considerable 
interest, as I have elsewhere endeavoured to 
show. 2 It is no hole and corner phrase, 
but runs right through three of the four chief 
Nikayas. It reminds us at once of Matthew 
Arnold's definition of the mission and ideal of 
literary criticism: the "endeavour to see 
the object as in itself it really is," or " things 

1 Mas Miffler and Fausboll, S.B.E. x. ; so St. Hilaire, 
Bumouf, Toucans, with d&ir. 

1 PsyMogical EtUcs, kviii. ; Buddhism (Rangoon), 
1904, u Seeing things as they really are." 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 225 

as they really are." Much, for that matter, 
in Arnold's thoughts is soundly Buddhist, 
and in pathetic contrast to his ignorance of 
Buddhism, His famous line, so pertinent to 
this very ideal : 

Who saw life steadily and saw it whole, 

reads almost as an echo of a Buddhist verse 
on the Master : 

He hath discerned all this life o' the world, 
In all the world the how and thus of things, 
From all detached and leaning upon naught ; 
Who all hath mastered, from all bonds is loosed : 
Touched is for him high peace and the blest calm, 1 
Where no fear cometh more. 

It is impossible to render the phrase 
yathd-bhutam literally, for so it means 
" according-as-become." A kindred expres- 
sion in Greek for fact or truth is ge-, gig-no 
mena, the " come-to-be" or "happened"; 
anyway the meaning of the Pali is clear 
enough and the phrase is peculiarly Bud- 
dhist. It does not occur in any Upanishad, 
nor in such of the ancient Jain documents as 
have been edited, although pasages are not 
infrequent where a Buddhist compiler would 
have inserted it. If we consult the Nikayas 
to see what are the things that should be 
seen and known as they really are, we find, 
in one Nikaya alone, the following range of 
subjects. Not only the nature, cause, and 
abolition of ill or suffering, but also 

1 NibbaEa. Anguttara-NMya, ii. 24. 



226 BUDDHISM 

The nature and impermanence of the 
external world and everything in it ; 

The nature and impermanence of person- 
ality or the individual compound ; 

The non-existence of a permanent, trans- 
migrating soul; 

The universality of cause and effect ; 

The nature of good, one's own and others' ; 

The nature of moral and intellectual eman- 
cipation, etc. 

I do not think it accurate to force the 
significance of the Buddhists' using "become " 
where Arnold in this our day said " are." Yet 
when we find bhutam used in place of the 
usual " arising " or " cause " : samud'aya, 
we have some excuse in ascribing significance 
to the accompanying yathd-bhutam. "This 
has come to be (bhutam), Sariputta, do you see ? 
This has become, Sariputta, do you see?" 
"It has become, master; by right insight 
one sees it even as it has become (yathabhutan)." 1 

The capacity for regarding things, even 
the apparently most statical and permanent, 
even soul and deity, under this aspect, was 
made by the Buddha the criterion of a right 
grasp of his philosophy. Such an one is 

1 Samyvtia-Nik&ya, ii. 48 ; cf. MajjUma-Nikfiya, I 260. 
That we have lost our strong Saxon weorthan, and have 
to make shift with the weak * become,' blurred by other 
implications, puts us at a disadvantage in Pali as com- 
pared with Germans, who have retained their werden, and 
with the French, whose devenir M. Bergson is wielding 
with such Buddhist emphasis, 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 227 

called sankhata-dhamma t " one who has 
reckoned up things," 1 and a-sekha, adept, 
non-learner ({.&, Arahant). And the stand- 
point includes four points : (1) a? has come to be 
(as effect of a cause). (2) Because of specific 
conditions, or nutriment. (8) x ceases with 
the exhaustion of that nutriment. (4) He 
who thus sees ceases to be "subject, or de- 
voted, to x. In other words, he gains another 
step in emancipation, or independence of heart 
and mind. 

Now we have seen that saintly Buddhists, 
who realized their ideal, conceived it in a 
variety of ways. But here, I contend, is 
truth put forward as an ideal in a way un- 
surpassed for earnestness by any other ancient 
movement of thought. It is possible that 
Dr. Wundt 2 pronounced truth to be the 
Buddhist ideal from the fact that the funda- 
mental doctrine of 111 and its cessation, to- 
gether with the " Eightfold Path " thereto, 
is formulated as the Four Ariyan Truths. 
This necessity of seeing things as they truly 
have become is therefore additional evidence 
supporting his view, a view which I would 
only modify by ranking Truth as one, and not 
the sole, ideal of Buddhism. 

Truth is immortal speech, the everlasting Norm. 
On NORM ano^ooD and TRUTH the saint hath ta'en his 
stand. 8 

1 Sutta-Nipata, 1038. 

* Volker psychologie, ii. 3, 720. 

8 8amyutta-NiM,ya, i. 189, 



22S BUDDHISM 

The Pali word which I have rendered 
" insight " is but one of the many terms for 
mental activity and attainment built, in 
Indian tongues, on the roots " to know " and 
" to see." Our European languages are not 
rich enough in terms of higher intelligence to 
produce equivalents. Perhaps our religious 
ideals have tended to be emotional rather 
than intellectual. For instance, ndna may 
mean any knowledge, from trivial to highest. 
But anna means only the highest, while 
panna and abhinnd express the active intelli- 
gence expanding in that direction. Equally 
numerous are the terms for clarity of mental 
vision. 

Finally, with respect to the nature of the 
" emancipation " essential to Arahantship, 
vimutti is not only a Buddhist ideal, but one 
advocated by Indian philosophical creeds 
very generally. But it was conceived, as 
subjective experience, variously. In animis- 
tic creeds, it was held to be the result of realiz- 
ing the detachment of soul from all connection 
with matter. And it was experienced in one 
creed as bliss, in another as total unconscious- 
ness, and so on. 1 Buddhism conceived various 
channels debouching in emancipation. There 
was that mentioned above as the destruction 
of the intoxicants 2 (khmdsava, "one who 
has the dsava's destroyed," is a common 
synonym for Arahant). Or it is " craving," 

1 R. Garbe, Die SanJchya-PUksophie, pp. 323-25. 
8 Samyutta-Nih, v. 410. 



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 229 

that is destroyed. 1 Or it is by examining and 
turning away from all theories and aspira- 
tions ^as to possible celestial realms of rebirth. 
This is termed emancipation by insight. 2 

And see, Master ! Sundan who comes 

To tell thee of Emancipation won, 

And of the right no more to be reborn ; 

Who hath herself from passion freed, 

Unyoked from bondage, loosened from the world. 3 

Or there is the emancipation of the heart 
or mind through love : " All the means that 
can be used as bases for doing right are not 
worth one sixteenth part of the emancipa- 
tion of the heart through love. That takes 
all those up into itself, outshining them in 
radiance and in glory." 4 Similarly there was 
emancipation of heart through the other three 
sublime moods named above. 

In later Abhidhamma, the realization of 
the three salient features, signs or marks, 
characterizing all phenomena, was pictured as 
a threefold avenue to emancipation. These 
were the absence of soul, the presence of 111, 
and th j absence of permanence. To make this 
doctrine impressive, striking adjectives were 
selected to characterize the emancipated 
state ; things as soulless were " empty " 
void of soul to realize this was " Empty- 
Release." Things as transient had no sign or 
mark of permanence to realize this was 

1 Angultara-N. ii. 1. 2 Dialogues, ii. 68. 

3 Psalm of the Sisters, 140, 4 Iti-wtidka, 19. 



230 BUDDHISM 

' * No-lasting-sign-Release. ' ' Things as involv- 
ing suffering were not to be hankered after 
to realize this was " End-of-banefuHonging- 
Release." These are uncouth names to us, 
and a plucking at lax strings that give out 
no resonance. But even a Bunyan would 
need the sounding-board of a Buddhist tra- 
dition to devise names that could stir our 
hearts, as these have doubtless vibrated in the 
Buddhist religious consciousness. 

And it is no dirge that these three chords 
give out, strange as this may seem to many 
among us. It was not the Buddhist laity 
alone who could live happily and look forward 
with confidence. He too, or she, who had 
wearied of both the bravery and the squalor 
of life, even of the horizons of a happy sequel, 
who had sickened with the divine distemper 
heralding the final victory, who had staked all 
and won 

In whom the Asavas are dr&d up ... 

Whose range is in the Void and th s Unmarked, 

And Liberty. . . .* 

for these their goal and their memories are 
girt about with deep wells of joy. " Dwelling 
in the rapture, the bliss, the joy, of emancipa- 
tion, of fruition, of Nibbana" when ponder- 
ing the distinction, the attainment to which 
they had come: in such phrases run the 
various records. 

" It is in very bliss we dwell," runs a psalm 
of the Norm, " we who hate not those who 
1 Psalms of the Brethren, xcii. 



THE QUEST OP THE IDEAL 231 

hate us . . . we i n health among the 
ailing . , free from care among the 
careworn ... we who have no hind- 
rances ; we shall become feeders on rapture " 
(ptti-bhakkhd 1 ) . . (Compendium, 243.) 
Mr. Aung earnestly dissents, as a scrupulously 
accurate translator, from the usual rendering 
of plti by joy, or any purely emotional term. 
The word, he writes, means interest, ia which 
Buddhists distinguish five degrees of intensity, 
up to thrill and rapture. It is the intellectual 
excitement in an object felt as desirable. If, 
however, with M. Bergson, we assign to " joy," 
as distinct from " pleasure," the lofty meaning 
of intellectual rapture and triumph over 
intuitive and creative work, 2 then is " joy " 
not far wrong for the plti of high intensity 
that inspires these Arahant efforts to express 
their sense of vision and of victory, as one 
after another, " experiencing the bliss of 
emancipation," he or she utters or " breathes 
out " some verse : 

Now have they prospered, all my highest aims, 
To compass which I sought this still retreat. 
The holy lore and liberty, my quest, 
Shone clear when vain conceits were cast away. 
* * * * 

I what 'twas well to do have done, and what 
Is verily delectable, therein 
Was my delight ; and thus through happiness 
Has happiness been sought after and won.* 

1 Dhammupada, ver. 197-200. 

a Hiblert Journal, Oct., 1911 : " Life and Conscious- 
ness." s Psalms of the Brethren, lx., Mi. 



252 BUDDHISM 

To some then even the quest and its dis- 
ciplines were happiness ; to others, in the words 
of Nagasena, 1 whereas Nibbana is all bliss 
unalloyed, the process of seeking after it 
involves pain. But the state itself is realized 
in consciousness " by freedom from distress 
and danger, by confidence, by peace, by calm, 
by bliss, by happiness, by sweetness, by purity, 
by coolness." 2 

How strange is the intellectual landscape 
to repeat Henry Warren's phrase coloured 
by these emotions, when compared with that 
of other religious anthologies ! Nibbana is 
likened, with glowing eloquence, by Nagasena 
to a wonderful city of the Norm dhamma- 
nagara built for mankind by the Buddha as 
architect, lit up by the Norm, with moral 
conduct for its ramparts, prudence for its 
moat, knowledge for its gate-battlements, 
energy for its watch-tower, and bazaars where 
men come to exchange their karma for the 
intellectual and spiritual requisites of the 
Arahant 

But this " glorious city, stainless and nude- 
filed, pure and white, ageless, deathless, secure, 
calm and happy" is" no place in earth or 
heaven " There is no spot, king, Kast, 
South, West or North, above, below or beyond, 
where Nibbana is situate, and yet Nibbana is, 
and he who orders his life aright, grounded m 
virtue, and with rational attention, may 
realize it, whether he live in Greece, China, 
1 MiUnda, ii. 182 i * I&i'd, 196 



THE QUEST OP THE IDEAL 233 

Alexandria or in K6sala," For he enters 
that city who " emancipates his mind in 
Arahantship." 1 

Even were it clear, from the saintly rhap- 
sodies of Buddhist scriptures, that this present 
Nibbana was the threshold of an ageless, 
spaceless and generally inconceivable yet posi- 
tive state of being, it is not a little wonderful 
that the early saints, many of them persons of 
no more culture and learning than were the 
majority of the early Christians, should have 
so loyally refrained from speculating about, 
and exulting over, it as a positive event in 
"he future. 

There is, in fact, in this literature of Budd- 
ist saintship, a very wholesome corrective to 
,arrowness of view respecting what may or 
raay not suffice for the goal of religious aspira- 
tion. It is impossible to know the literature 
and yet be sceptical as to the faith, the enthu- 
siasm and the emotion being as ardent as 
may be found in any religious literature. We 
may well wonder over it ; but we may no 
less " thank whatever gods there be " for this 
phase of the unconquerable spirit of man, 
who, while realizing the unutterable vastness 
in length and breadth of life, could not only 
claim to cut himself free from it, but could also 
see, in the process, a moral and intellectual 
apotheosis to that life, and could hail it with 
a very swan's song of saintly rapture 
1 Milmda, 212 f. ; 202 f. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE IMPOET OF DHAMMA 

LET it be clearly understood that, in evolving 
an outline of the fundamental postulates of 
Buddhism from the Commentator's exposition 
of the term Dhamma, I have not gone the./, 
orthodox way to work. This way woufc 
doubtless have been, with my esteemed colk 
borator, Mr. S. Z. Aung, to state the gist c' 
Buddhist philosophy in the three propositions 
"All things are impermanent . . . 
pain-engendering . . . without soul" 
Kamma-niyama, he would add, is included in 
the doctrine of becoming-by-way-of cause; 
and this again is included in the first two 
propositions. (I quote from a letter.) 

But I write, in the first place, for Western 
readers, to whom these corner-stones of Bud- 
dhist tradition and the lie of them are 
unfamiliar. And I trust that, like those swift 
messengers from the West in the story, 1 this 
heterodox method of presentation may reach 
the crossways of consciousness and be admitted 
as bearing a no less trustworthy tale. As a 
recast, it may not be without suggestiveness, 
1 Page 180L 
234 



THE IMPORT OF DHAMMA 235 

The meaning of Dhamma most familiar to 
us :- that of Teaching, Word, Doctrine is 
as expressive and as weighty as are the corre- 
sponding words, or The Gospel, to a Christian, 
the Law to a Jew. For all Buddhists of what- 
ever branch Dhamma or Dharma stands, 
with those other two, Buddha and Sangha 
(Order, Church or Fraternity), as the unique 
gem-trinity Rat'anattaya or supreme cate- 
gories of Buddhist devotion and reverence. 
And as there have been, in this world and its 
forerunners in the eternal universe, previous 
Buddhas each with his Sangha, so have there 
been previous Pitakas containing the etern- 
ally renewed teaching of the Norm. The 
chronicles of Dhammapala, e.g., of the fifth (?) 
century, A.D., relate of Punna, one of the first 
women-apostles, that in a previous birth, 
when Vipassi was Buddha, she " had learnt 
the Three Pitakas and taught the Norm.'* l 

The meaning of the word dhamma, as norm, 
standard or rule, is perhaps best shown in the 
interesting Aggafma or Genesis Discourse. 2 
I give an outline of it here on that account. 
It is a striking specimen of archaic science 
attempting a rational theory of the origin of 
human institutions. 

The Buddha has been asking two young 
Brahmins, who have left all to follow him, how 
their class has judged of their decision. They 
tell him the Brahmins are scandalized at their 

1 Psalms of the Sisters, 116. 

2 Dialogues, iii., No. xxvii. ; cf. 1 105-7. 



236 BUDDHISM 

leaving their class : the true aristocrats, 
clear-complexioned, pure descendants and 
heirs of the great god Brahma to follow 
shaveling friar-folk of a lower class. The 
Buddha then proceeds to show, first that such 
talk is very "high-faluting," inasmuch as 
Brahmin children are obviously of very human 
birth, and that no social class or caste (liter- 
ally, colour) had a monopoly of pure or impure 
living. A man was only pronounced perfect 
or holy, who, no matter what his class, had 
satisfied a certain norm of holy attainment. 
For it is ever a norm that determines what is 
best. 

"For instance the king of Kosala shows 
me reverence only because I have attained 
to a certain standard, to which he knows he 
has not attained. In honouring me, he honours 
a norm. So you two, when men ask, c Who 
are you ? ' say ye, ' We arc recluses of the 
Sakyans, sons of the Exalted One, born from 
his mouth, born of the Norm, created by the 
Norm, heirs of the Norm/ And why ? Be- 
cause such names as these : belonging to the 
Norm, or to the Highest ; and again, One 
with the Norm, or the Highest, are tantamount 
to Tathagata." l 

He then goes on after this sort: "There 
comes a time when this earth passes away, 
beings having been reborn elsewhere. There 

1 The namo applied to his office and mission by the 
Buddha, and moaning " The Thus-como " or " Thus- 
gone." See also p. 19& 



THE IMPORT OF DHAMMA 237 

comes Ao a time when this world begins to 
evolve 6nce more, all having become water 
and dark, a darkness to make you blind. 
And beings deceasing from radiant worlds 
are reborn, self-luminous on this earth, 
sustained by rapture, floating in space. As 
earth emerges from the waters like a milky 
scum or ghee, odorous and sweet, those beings 
taste it. Feasting thereon, they gradually 
acquire solidity and lose their own luminance. 
Thereupon sun, moon and stars become visible, 
and the natural seasons recommence. And 
this race of beings acquire different degrees of 
comeliness ; and the fair despise the ugly. 
And thereupon the earth ceases to taste sweet, 
but vegetation of low, then higher grade 
evolves, till at length the earth brings forth 
"'abundance of a rice that needs no tilth. Then 
sex-differences evolve, and great moral up- 
heavals result. As households come into 
being, rice is stored, land is enclosed, and with 
the rights of property arise dishonesty, strife 
and injustice, till at length a ruler is chosen 
to maintain fair play, the rest supporting him. 
And he is selected for his personal gifts ; 
in other words such lords of the fields (khetta, 
khattiya), came up originally to a certain Norm. 
Or again, as princes, they attracted folk (raja; 
ranj) by the Norm they upheld. Again, certain 
humans, distressed at the sins of society, retire 
into woods to meditate, or dwell outside the 
towns, making books (sic). Now these, put- 
ting away (bahenti) evil, came to be called Brah- 



238 BUDDHISM 

mins. Them also men distinguished from 
others, solely because, in thought, word, deed 
they came up to a certain human Norm. 
Others again, leading domestic lives and 
proficient (vissuta) in certain industries, there- 
by fulfilling a different standard, are called 
Vessas, and others again, passed muster only 
in minor or low crafts (khudda], and became 
known as Suddas, these too only differing 
from other people by a certain Norm, 

" Now there comes a time when a Khattiya, 
a Brahmin, Vessa, or Sudda, misprizing his 
own Norm, goes forth from his home into the 
homeless life, saying: 'I will become a 
recluse.' And thus the class of recluses 
comes into being, differing from others only in 
the possession of a special Norm. If these 
are good they are reborn in a happy heavenly- 
world ; if bad, into misery ; if both good and 
bad, into a future of mixed happiness and 
misery. If a Khattiya, or one of the other 
three groups, is self-restrained in deed, word 
and thought, has followed the practice of the 
seven priciples which are the Wings of Wisdom 
(bodhipakkhiyd dhamma), he attains to com- 
plete extinction of evil in this present life. 
And of these four groups, the one who, as 
a bhikkhu, is Arahant, who has destroyed all 
moral taint, who has wrought his whole duty, 
who has laid down the burden, who has won 
his own salvation, who has wholly broken off 
the fetter of rebirth (literally : of becoming), 
who through knowledge made perfect is free 



THE IMPORT OF DHAMMA 289 

he is declared to be chief in virtue of a 
Norm. 

" For a Norm is what men call highest, both 
for this life and the next." 

" We may not," comments Rhys Davids 1 
on the legend of this Dialogue, " accept its 
historical accuracy. Indeed a continual note 
of good-humoured irony runs through the 
whole story, with its fanciful etymologies of 
the names of the four classes, or ' colours ' 
(varm.d) ; and the aroma of it would be lost 
on the hearer who took it quite seriously. 
But it reveals a sound and healthy insight, and 
is much nearer to the actual facts than the 
Brahmin legend it was intended to replace." 
For our immediate purpose its chief interest 
lies in its explication of the import of Dhamma, 
as primarily norm, or standard. Khattiyas 
might be distinguished as originally admin- 
istrators of justice; Brahmins, as originally 
followers of religious, pure, or righteous lives, 
But the dhamma of the other two classes was 
indisputably their proficiency in certain secu- 
lar unmoral arts and crafts. Hence, whereas 
Dhamma may imply righteousness, justice, 
truth, virtue, law, its most fundamental 
meaning is more general, being "that on 
account of which" be it righteousness, or 
some unmoral proficiency a distinction is 
assigned, in other words a rule, test, standard 
or norm. 

1 Dialogues, i. 107, 



CONCLUSION 

IN this slight and very inadequate study of 
the Buddhist Dhamma, interpreted as a doc- 
trine of the Norm, I have connected it, by 
way of the allied terms dhammatd > normness, 
and niyamata, governance, with the Buddhist 
concept of a fivefold niyama or order, observ- 
able in the universe. Whether we contem- 
plate Buddhism as a religion, or as a norma- 
tive or practical philosophy (ethics), or whether 
we inquire into the fundamental inductions 
implicated in its practical doctrine, we can 
see everywhere the notion of a cosmos, 
external world and internal experience 
proceeding as incessant flux, without begin- 
ning, without ending, inexorable, necessary. 
We have seen that in this cosmos, or cosmic 
order, room is found for a kamma-niyama, or 
law of what we should call moral action, 
namely, that thoughts, words and deeds of 
sentient beings which are of a nature to pro- 
duce results on sentience will produce such 
results, either on the agent in this life, or by 
re-creating him, or otherwise affecting him in 
other lives. 

Into the niyama of material processes, 
as elaborated by mediaeval Buddhism, our 
240 



CONCLUSION 241 

knowledge of the scholastic literature is yet 
too immature to warrant our entering here. 
It may be gathered in outline from the little 
manual Compendium of Philosophy. 1 Allu- 
sion will also be found in that work to theories 
of space and of time, and to the threefold 
rhythm, in time as in life itself, of a nascent, 
a static and a cessant phase. 

We saw, finally, that in the universal order, 
a dhamma-niyama was distinguished, that is 
to say, the law of nature concerned with the 
evolution of a perfect type or super-man. 
Buddhists would probably admit that this 
included all Arahants, as differing from a 
Buddha only in degree of powers and attain- 
ments. But the law is cited (see above, 
page 120) only in reference to a Buddha. 
It implies a serial, organic tendency in the 
universe towards a normal or perfect type. 
By the thought and action of this culminating 
type of individual the upward tendency in the 
many is held to be greatly forwarded, the rise 
being considerable during his lifetime, subse- 
quently less. By upward tendency is here 
meant, it need hardly be said, better con- 
formity, in character and conduct, to the 
moral law or kamma-order. The acts of 
mankind become more prevailingly such as 
have pleasant results. 

This betterment lasts for some centuries. 
Gotama Buddha allowed ten centuries for his 
sad-dhamma, good law, gospel, or Norm as 
1 Pp. 154, 250, 271. 



242 BUDDHISM 

revealed by him, to stand, but five centuries 
only, when he conceded that women should be 
admitted as members of his Fraternity. And 
so far as Indian Buddhism is concerned, the 
prophecy was fulfilled in a period about mid- 
way between the two dates. By that time, 
at least, the sad-dhamma was no longer stand- 
ing firm. That his great thought and work 
of love had, by that time, perished and left 
no impress on countless numbers of his 
fellows is not meant here, and doubtless was 
not meant originally. Here however we are 
concerned with the width and sweep of the 
Buddhist conception of law, or world-order. 
Not even so immense and culminating an 
event as that of the world's redemption and 
salvation was by it considered as unique. No 
fiat uttered once for all : " I will send my 
only-begotten Son" was admissible in a 
cosmodicy that was eternal Everything 
could happen; nothing could be unique. 
And so the Niyama-scheme included even 
this : - the strand, the golden thread of a 
Dhamma-order, an order which the other four 
strands of nature toiled for ages to foster and 
minister to, an order which was the articulate 
expression of the five-fold order itself 
the human life of perfect knowledge and 
service lived by a Saviour-Buddha, There 
were held to be frequent approximations to 
this perfect type : men who attained to great 
knowledge, through vision of many things 
past finding out by ordinary mortals. But 



CONCLUSION m 

they were wise each man for himself alone, 
and so were called Pacche'ka-Buddhas. They 
lacked the power or the temperament to teach. 
And this was reckoned as a relative lack of 
knowledge, since the Buddha who devotes 
his life to helping mankind was termed, not 
Saviour, but Omniscient (sabbannu] Buddha. 
To understand all, says a French epigram, is 
to forgive all. The Buddhist goes farther; 
to understand all, is not only to forgive, but 
to give to give one's self through insight into 
others' need. Pacche'ka-Buddhas and even 
Arahants may in these days be hard to find. 
But that a Buddha named Metteyya should 
in the fulness of time arise, is recorded in 
the Canon as a prophecy made by Gotama 
himself. 

We, in this Buddhantara, or interim age, 
may witness no such auspicious advent. But 
some of us may yet live to see a niche assigned 
to Buddhism as a philosophic tradition among 
other such traditions, ancient and mediaeval, 
either credited with originality, or at least 
admitted, on evidence considerably more 
sound than any that has yet been brought 
forward, as an interesting evolution of some 
genuinely prior group of thinkers. In its 
mother-land, Buddhism, in medieval and 
modern times, has stood as little chance of 
being appreciated by Indian philosophers^ as 
experimental, evolutionary or pluralistic philo- 
sophy is likely to be approved of by students 
nourished on Thomas Aquinas. And those 



244 BUDDHISM 

thinkers who with trend of thought more in 
sympathy with that of Buddhism, have been 
and are casting our traditional standpoints into 
the crucible to re-construct them, have as 
yet thought and taught without access to 
their Buddhist prototypes of an earlier age. 
In so far, however, as these thinkers I may 
instance James, Bergson and Alexander 
represent a flowing tide in the affairs of 
philosophy, their work and influence will aid, 
whether they know it or not, in securing a 
just and more sympathetic appraisement for 
Buddhist Abhidhamma, when the literature 
has been more fully presented and adequately 
discussed by scholars from the West and also 
from the East, 

Till this comes to pass, fuller recognition 
cannot be expected, or even desired, so many 
and so pathetic are the mistaken conclusions 
due to scanty knowledge and the attitude of 
a different tradition. As an instance let this 
suffice. In the Indian Antiquary, not long 
ago, a writer, trained in Catholic scholastic 
philosophy, took writers on Buddhism to task 
for making the Buddha, " who had a thorough 
knowledge of themetaphysic of his time," pro- 
claim, in the theory of the groups (khandha's) 
a tissue-of absurdities. For the Buddha knew 
well enough that " accidents must be inherent 
in a substance in order to possess any reality 
at all. He could not have taken quality for 
essence without making himself the laughing- 
stock of those around him. To teach an incon- 



CONCLUSION 245 

gruous jumble of subjectless attributes is as 
unthinkable as a suit of clothes walking about 
without a wearer." 

We can imagine a Buddhist well amused 
at this fancy of dtman shivering or shamed 
and most needy, But the point for us is, 
that the Buddha, for all the knowledge here 
allowed him, did and does seem to teach a 
tissue of absurdities to those of every age and 
tradition, who can only conceive things and 
beings as " substances having qualities," 
The Bauddhas, as the Indian Absolutists 
called them, disallowed that this was the true 
way of conception, and averred that it was 
the standpoint of the unlearned puthuj'jana, or 
" many-folk." To their opponents, on the 
other hand, Becoming seemed irrational beside 
Being. " How can that which is proceed 
. from that which is not ? " Or " how can you 
build upon nothing ? " the Vedantist will 
say, as if building on a basis were now the 
most fundamental aspect of reality. It is so 
only in an idiom which sprang from a belief 
now superseded. The argument is founded 
on the Ptolemaic conception of the earth's 
fixity in space, with all the heavens revolving 
about it. Yet while we held both Ptolemaic 
view and idiom, while in India at the back 
of men's speech lurked the old myth of the 
world resting on elephant or tortoise, this same 
earth, seeming so fundamentally stable, was 
engaged in an encyclical choric dance, with 
never anything in her of an ultimate funda- 



246 BUDDHISM 

mental basis. Copernicus taught us that, in 
the very nature of things, there can be no 
fundamental basis, no permanent fixity. Was 
this perhaps what Buddhism was feeling after, 
when it caught hold of a three-fold rhythm 
in life and time, and pictured causation not 
as a mechanical succession of moments, but 
as one moment or state being wrought up 
into, and informing the next with a ceaseless 
pulsation ? 

Anti-Ptolemaic it was further in this respect 
that it was not, in its Theravadin tradition, 
ego-centric. It is the weakness of Idealistic 
systems, Professor Alexander has reminded 
us, 1 to consist in endeavours, not to interpret 
disinterestedly, and independently of self, but 
to see in or experience, ultimately, construc- 
tions of mind or self. The Buddhistic atti- 
tude, on the contrary, loses the temporary 
self in the object, so that the cosmos, without 
and within, is ultimately Object, the subject 
(or self) being termed in this connection, 
" objectic " (drammcmika).* The object is 
the relater, the subject is the related. 

" Let us faithfully and patiently cultivate 
the dawning ' Copernican ' consciousness " : 
namely, that ultimate reality and "our 
supreme and vital need " is no fixed basis nor 
moveless central stand, but throbbing energies 
whirling in ordered rhythm, whether of solar 

1 Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1909 : " Ptolemaic and Coper- 
nican views of the place of mind in the universe," 
* S f Z, Aung, op. tit., p, ?, 



CONCLUSION 247 

systems or our own hearts and intelligences, 
the consciousness of a dynamical order replac- 
ing that of a statical order ; a Way of life, 
which, like the spinning globe, bears no for- 
ward on its bosom, more swiftly than we can 
journey on it; so that "beyond our best 
there ever rises a better hope." 1 Such seems 
to me the end and outcome of Buddhist 
philosophy, even if neither its earlier nor its 
later teachers formulated it in terms for which 
we have to thank the great re-creation of our 
science achieved in the seventeenth century, 
If it be objected that the philosophic ideal of 
Buddhism is calm and peace, the obvious 
answer is that calm and peace are the attributes 
of harmonious rhythm of one who like the 
Most High " rides upon the storm," of one 
whose mind is not overwhelmed or harassed by 
its discernment of change, movement, becom- 
ing, as the truly real, but which masters its 
vision. In an age of evolutionary science and 
of increasing and habitual swift physical move- 
ment, such notions are brought near to us, It 
was a great and pioneer fetch of the mind to 
have disposed thought towards dynamical 
concepts under the conditions obtaining over 
2,000 years ago. 

And when we watch the way in which Gota- 
ma Buddha and his followers met the errors 
and the problems of their own day, recasting, 

1 Lady Welby ; quoted in Sir E. Arnold's Deathand 
Afterwards (1887). The anonymity I have her kind, jf 
reluctantly given permission to 



248 BUDDHISM 

it may be, a yet more ancient body of doctrine 
to cope with present needs, can we doubt 
that, if a Metteyya Buddha arose here and 
now, he would recast their Dhamma, and, 
instead of making " converts " to a Norm 
adapted to bygone conditions, would evolve, 
with travail of soul, a gospel and a philosophy 
built out of the knowledge and the needs of 
to-day ? In these slight studies the effort has 
been made to follow R. L. Stevenson's advice 1 
and present the subject-matter from within, 
with something of the actor's sympathy. But 
the conviction is also present that, for con- 
vinced Buddhists of to-day, who stand on the 
threshold of a great crisis, as well as for 
scholars in general, an inquiry into the bases 
of ancient Buddhist thought may become a 
living force in present evolution, even as the 
explorer, carving a way to the forward view, 
turns to adjust his bearings by some rearward 
range of hills with kindred trend. 
* See above, p. 109. 



CHRONOLOGICAL NOTE 

SIXTH CKNTUEY B.C. Probable period of Go'tama Buddha's 
life and work, The orthodox Ceylon tradition (recorded 
in the metrical chronicles Mahdnmsa and Dlpavamsa 
the " great " and the " island " chronicle place the birth 
of Go'tama late in the 7th century B.C., viz., in 624, and 
his death (Parinibbana) in B.C. 541 Thus the year 1912 
is, for Buddhists, 2456 B.B. (Buddhist Era). These 
dates are obtained by reckoning backwards the sum of 
*\he years assigned to each Ceylon king's reign, recorded 
in the chronicles/ till Asoka's son Mahinda introduced 
Buddhism into Ceylon. This is dated in the eighteenth 
year after Asoka's coronation, and in the first year of the 
reign of Devanam-piya-Tissa (Tissa, beloved of gods) 
King of Ceylon, Asoka is further stated to have been 
crowned "two hundred and eighteen years after the 
Parinibbana of the Sambuddha," 
Now this method of reckoning fractions of years, when 



the interval, after a time, to an appreciable extent. It is 
unfortunately impossible to say exactly to what extent. 
But historical critics have a rough corrective in the 
important rook-cut edicts of Asoka. In oue of these, 



250 CHRONOLOGICAL NOTE 

inscribed both at Kapur di Giri on the Indus in Kashmir, 
and at Khauli on the Jumna, near Masuri, Asoka refers 
to neighbouring rulers: Antiyoka (Antioohus) Yona 
raja (King of Greece), "and beyond him four kings, 
Tulamaye (Ptolemy), Antikina (Antioohus), Maka (Magas), 
and Alikasandare (Alexander). 1 ' Working by this and 
other clues, it is judged that a more accurate approximate 
date for the eighty to eighty-one years of the Buddha's 
life is 563-483 B.C. 



NOTE to p. 32. The criticism to which this theory oxposen 
itself through lack of sound historical evidence, and 
through lack of adequate internal testimony to its alleged 
dependence, has been administered in outline by Rhys 
Davids (American Lectures on BuddM#m, 1896, 24-6), 
and more fully by H, Oldenberg (Buddha, 5th ed t 
65-71, which summarizes prior, more detailed discussion. 
See /.)- 



BiBUdGRAPHY 

CANONICAL AUTHORITIES 

OF the Pali Pitakas the Vinaya Pitaka is nearly all 
translated (Rhys Davids and Oldenberg), in Sacred Boob 
of the East, xiiL, xviL, xx, as Vinaya Texts. The Sutta 
Pitaka contains, in the four Mkayas or collections :-- 
fiigha, Majjhim, Sarnyutta, AnguUam practically the 
whole body of early doctrine. The first two are in process 
of being translated by Rhys Davids and myself, as Dia- 
, logues of the Buddha. The last two are as yet untranslated. 
Dr. Neumann has translated the Majjhima into German, 
Bhikkhu Nyanatiloka has translated a portion of the 
Anguttara into German, Other translated portions of 
the Pitaka are Buddhist Suttas, S.B.E. xL by Rhys 
Davids ; Dhammapada and Sutta-Nipata, S.B.E. x., Mai 
Miiller and Fausboll. Zto'-Ftrffafo, as Sayings of Buddha, 
by J t Moore, 1908. Vdaw, by D. M, Strong, 1902* 
Psalm of the Early Buddhists, by the writer, 1909, 1912. 
The Jatalca, by R. Chalmers, W. Rouse, etc., 18954907. 
Of the Abhidhamma-Pitaka only the first book has 
been translated, as Buddhist Psychological Miw> by the 
writer, 1900. Bhikkhu Nyanatiloka has translated another 
book, the Puggak-Pannatti, into German, as Das Bud der 
Charaktere, 1810, 



252 BIBLIOGRAPHY 



LATER PALI WORKS 

The Questions of King Milinda, translated by Rhys 
Davids, S.BJE. xxxv, xxxvi. 

The Mah&iumsa, translated by Professor W. Geiger 
and Mrs. Bode, 1912. 

The Dlyavamsa, translated by Professor H. Oldenberg, 
1879. 

Compendium of Philosophy, a mediaeval digest of Abhi- 
dhamma, translated by S. Z. Aung and the writer, 
1910. 

(No other medieval works have as yet been translated,) 



Of works on India in Buddhist times the reader may 
consult ; 

Buddhist India, by Rhys Davids (The Stories of the 
atious), 2nd ei 1904 

The Early History of India, by Vincent Smith, 2nd, ei, 
1909, 

History of Mia, for senior classes, Part I, by E. 
Marsden, 1909. 

On Juan Chwang, by T, Watters, 1904-5, 

Phonetic note, The upright " m " in italicized Pali 
names, or vice nrsa, e.g., Samyutta, is pronounced " ng," 
The upright (or italicized) n does not affect pronunci- 
ation appreciably. To aid pronunciation, and to harass 
the reader as little as possible with unfamiliar marks, the 
transliteration, in other respects, is not meticulously 
accurate. Ohitta, e.g., should be citta, 



INDEX 



ABBIDHAMIA, 32 ff., 38 ff. Com- 
yendiwn of, 44, potttffl 

Aiterborn (epigow), 29, 40 

Alexander, S., 221 n., 244 

Analysis, Buddhist spirit of, 61-7 

Anatta (see Soul, No) 

Arahantship, 169 ff. 

Aristotle, 36, 41 1, 61, 99 

Ariyan, 69 

Arnold, M., 224 

Aryans, 24, 65 

Isavas, 200, 216 

Asceticism, 202 f. 

Asoka, his edicts, 10, 12, 35, 108 ; 
and the Khattiyas, 24 

liananism, 56 ff., Ill f, 

jtag, S. Z,, 77, 82, 218, 231, 246 

Bauddhas, 245 

Becoming (bhava), 78, 80 ff., 98, 
132 ff., 144 n., 226, 245 

Being, 51, 144, 188 1 (8* Be- 
coming) 

Belief, 126 

Bergson, 136 f., 226, 231, 244 

Bhavagad-Gita, 118 

Bhavanga, 76 

Brahma, 53, 57, 98, 152 

Brahman, 57 

Brahmins, 19, 23, 59, 114 i; 
their culture, 102 

Bnddha (see Gotama) 

Buddhaghosa, 13, 36, 39, 44 f,, 
49, 63, 74, 79, 138, 148 ff., 
219 

Buddhas, 83 ff., 85 f,, 125 

Bunyan, 81, 230 

Burma, 10, H, 42 

Causation, Dbamma as, 49, 78 ff. ; 

first grasped, 96-106 
Cause, deflned, 87-9; causa 

genesis, 90 ff, ; as " wrought 

up," 134 ff. 



Ceylon, 10, 12, 18 f. 

Change (see Becoming) 

China, 22 

Chinese pilgrims, 26, 70 

Conditions of growth of Buddhism, 

112 ff. 

Confucius, 34 
Consciousness, 72 ; how conceived, 

62 ff., 74 ff. 

Copernican conception, 247 f. 
Cosmodicy, 117, 152, 156 
Craving, 187 (see Desire) 

Davids, Bhys, 11-13, 35, 212, 239, 

250 

Demokritus, 46 f., 99, 101 
Desire, 222 ff. 
Deussen, 84 
Dhamma, defined, 32 ff,; Import 

of, 49 f. ; as phenomenon, 51 

ff. ; as causality, 49, ch. iv. ; 

as moral law, 49, 107 ff,; 

as doctrine, 49/235 ; as ideal, 

150 ff.; as standard, 235 ff.; 

in pfariti, thiags-as-kzwton, 

88; as cosmic order, 120, 

242 1 
Dulkha, ill, pain, sorrow, 52 

order of, 00 ff., 157 fL, 200 
Duroiselle, C., 194 

Ego, 21347 (and m Soul) 
Emancipation, 170, 200, 226, 

227 ff. 
Ethics, 199, 240 (and 100 Moral law) 

Fruits, fruition, 173, 185, 230 

Garbe, B , 32, 228 

Gods, 53 f., 57 

Good, 89, 121 ff., 227, 229 

Gotama Buddha, 12 f., 17, 23, 
244 f; date, 41, 249 f ; grasp 
of natural law, 97 ff. 



253 



254 



INDEX 



Happiness, 149, 168, 177, 186, 

230 f. 

Hardy, Edmund, 28 
Hearn, L., 148 n. 
Eerakleitus, 46 f ., 77, 85 
Hume, 79 
Huxley on Buddhism, 117 

Ideal, Norm as, 33, 150 ff. ; quest 
of, ch. v., ; intellectual, 228 
type, 120, 240 f. 

Identity, now conceived, 74, 131 f. 

Illimitables, the, 218 

Impermanence, 52 f., 59, 138 

Indian, nature of, 65 

Insight, 67, 83, 97, 170, 187, 199, 
228 

Intuition, 101 ff., Ill 

Intuitioniat (see System) 

Jains, 26, 103, 161 ; their logic, 37 

James, W., 244 

Japan, 14 

Jhana, 38, 199 ff.; nature of 

212 ff. 
Joy, 168, 230 f. 

Kamma (JCarma) 119 ff. 
Kanishka, 26 
Khandlaas, 69 ff., 244 
Kosala, 11 

ledi Sadaw, 44 

leibnitz, 60, 185 f. 

Life, theories of, 143 ff. ; Christian, 
1671; Greek, 168; Buddhkfc 
168 ff., 187, 196; ("simple") 
204 

Logic, Indian, 37, 131 

love (ges Sublime Moods) 

McDougall, 153 
Magadha, 11 
Maha-yana, 22, 27, 64 f. 
MSna (conceits), 69, 214-17 
Matter, philosophy of, 240 f. 
Mean, doctrine of the, 8? 134 ; 

(ethicalX66, 202 
Metteyya, Ananda, 147 n. 
Mettpyya Buddha, 243 
Milinda, 43, 63, 80 f., 141 ff., 

228, 232 

Mind aa object, 66 f., 246 
Monachisra, 204 ff. 
Moral law, 49, 107 ff., 240 
Moral principle in Buddhism 

lie ff. 



Narasu, 171 
Natural law, 78-81, 110 
Nature, love of, 205 ff. 
Nibbana (nirvana), 170 ff., 174 ff. 

201 ; " city " of, 232 f. 
Niyama (see Order, System) 
Non-theistic systems, 152 
Norm, for Dhamma, 33, 35, 43 

227 

Oldenberg, H., 12, 162 n., 184 

194, 206, 250 

Order (cosmos), 118 ff., 152, 240 
Order, the (Sangha), 17, 50, 235 

Pacchaya-satti, 134 ff. 

Pali, defined, 10 ff. 

Pali Text Society, 13, 206 

Parinibbana, 191 

Parnienides. 82-4 

Path, eightfold, 150 f., 180, 218 

Four, 173 
Pessimism, 164 ff. 
Phenomenalism, 49 ff. 
Philosophical systems, 29 
Pischel, B., 31 
Pitakas, the Three, 12 pawiwt 

put into writing, 18 f. 
Plato, 36. 41, 84 
Platonism, 189 
Plottnus, 74 
Psalms, Buddhist, 176, 183, 186 

206 ff., 229 

Psychology, Buddhist, 61 ff. 
Ptolemaic conceptions, 245 

Sciaticas, Theory of, 59 f. 



St. Hi&ire, J58 1 

Sak^s, 17, 60 

Saleeby, 165 

Samsara, 146 

SankhSra's, 71, 73 

Sankhata, 82 

Sankhya, 31, 95, 102, 161, 189 

Sanskrit, 12, 44 

SarvastivadmK, 37 

Scepticism, Buddhism v,, 61, 85 ff. 

Schopenhauer, 172 

Schrader, F. 0., 190 

9elf (sec Soul) 

Siam, 10, 12, 14, 42, 44 

Sila, 154 f. 

Solidarity, 120, 21fl f. 

Soul and organism, 73 ; and Kara a 

(see Kamma) 
Soul, theory of no, 49 ff., 188 ff. 



INDEX 



255 



Moods, The, 218, 229 
y, 160, 164 
^tevenson, B. L., 109, 248 
System (nyaya, causation), 89 f. 
(niyama, order) 118 ff. 
(ethical) 124 f. 

(akaktisu, J., 37 . 
<Tathagata, 193, 236 n. 
^Tlieravada, 27 
/Tibet, 14 t, 27 
traditional standpoints, 15 ff, 
^Transmigration, 137 ff. 

h, 180 t, 184; as ideal, 225-7 



iJpanishads, 57, 



Utilitarian (tee System (ethical)) 

Values, doctrine of, 150 ff. 
Ved&ntist, 25, 79, 118, 160, 216 

245 
Vidyabhusana, S. C., 37 

Walleser, M., 25 

Warren H., 144 n., 151, 232 

Welby, V., 247 

Wheel of Causality, 90 ff. 

Will, 221 ff. 

Wisdom, 218, 288 

Works, 129 ff. (and see Kamma) 

Wundt, Dr., 184, 227 

YogasQtras, 31, 107, .189 



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