Our Oriental Heritage

  And so, after seven years of meditation, the Enlightened One, having learned the cause of human suffering, went forth to the Holy City of Benares, and there, in the deer-park at Sarnath, preached Nirvana to men.

  IV. THE TEACHING OF BUDDHA*

  Portrait of the Master—His methods—The Four Noble Truths—The Eightfold Way—The Five Moral Rules—Buddha and Christ—Buddha’s agnosticism and anti-clericalism—His Atheism—His soul-less psychology—The meaning of “Nirvana”

  Like the other teachers of his time, Buddha taught through conversation, lectures, and parables. Since it never occurred to him, any more than to Socrates or Christ, to put his doctrine into writing, he summarized it in sutras (“threads”) designed to prompt the memory. As preserved for us in the remembrance of his followers these discourses unconsciously portray for us the first distinct character in India’s history: a man of strong will, authoritative and proud, but of gentle manner and speech, and of infinite benevolence. He claimed “enlightenment,” but not inspiration; he never pretended that a god was speaking through him. In controversy he was more patient and considerate than any other of the great teachers of mankind. His disciples, perhaps idealizing him, represented him as fully practising ahimsa: “putting away the killing of living things, Gautama the recluse holds aloof from the destruction of life. He” (once a Kshatriya warrior) “has laid the cudgel and the sword aside, and ashamed of roughness, and full of mercy, he dwells compassionate and kind to all creatures that have life. . . . Putting away slander, Gautama holds himself aloof from calumny. . . . Thus does he live as a binder-together of those who are divided, an encourager of those who are friends, a peacemaker, a lover of peace, impassioned for peace, a speaker of words that make for peace.”36 Like Lao-tze and Christ he wished to return good for evil, love for hate; and he remained silent under misunderstanding and abuse. “If a man foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall come from me.” When a simpleton abused him, Buddha listened in silence; but when the man had finished, Buddha asked him: “Son, if a man declined to accept a present made to him, to whom would it belong?” The man answered: “To him who offered it.” “My son,” said Buddha, “I decline to accept your abuse, and request you to keep it for yourself.”37 Unlike most saints, Buddha had a sense of humor, and knew that metaphysics without laughter is immodesty.

  His method of teaching was unique, though it owed something to the Wanderers, or traveling Sophists, of his time. He walked from town to town, accompanied by his favorite disciples, and followed by as many as twelve hundred devotees. He took no thought for the morrow, but was content to be fed by some local admirer; once he scandalized his followers by eating in the home of a courtesan.38 He stopped at the outskirts of a village, and pitched camp in some garden or wood, or on some riverbank. The afternoon he gave to meditation, the evening to instruction. His discourses took the form of Socratic questioning, moral parables, courteous controversy, or succinct formulas whereby he sought to compress his teaching into convenient brevity and order. His favorite sutra was the “Four Noble Truths,” in which he expounded his view that life is pain, that pain is due to desire, and that wisdom lies in stilling all desire.

  1. Now this, O monks, is the noble truth of pain: birth is painful, sickness is painful, old age is painful, sorrow, lamentation, dejection and despair are painful. . . .

  2. Now, this, O monks, is the noble truth of the cause of pain: that craving, which leads to rebirth, combined with pleasure and lust, finding pleasure here and there, namely, the craving for passion, the craving for existence, the craving for non-existence.

  3. Now this, O monks, is the noble truth of the cessation of pain: the cessation, without a remainder, of that craving; abandonment, forsaking, release, non-attachment.

  4. Now this, O monks, is the noble truth of the way that leads to the cessation of pain: this is the noble Eightfold Way: namely, right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.39

  Buddha was convinced that pain so overbalanced pleasure in human life that it would be better never to have been born. More tears have flowed, he tells us, than all the water that is in the four great oceans.40 Every pleasure seemed poisoned for him by its brevity. “Is that which is impermanent, sorrow or joy?” he asks one of his disciples; and the answer is, “Sorrow, Lord.”41 The basic evil, then, is tanha—not all desire, but selfish desire, desire directed to the advantage of the part rather than to the good of the whole; above all, sexual desire, for that leads to reproduction, which stretches out the chain of life into new suffering aimlessly. One of his disciples concluded that Buddha would approve of suicide, but Buddha reproved him; suicide would be useless, since the soul, unpurified, would be reborn in other incarnations until it achieved complete forgetfulness of self.

  When his disciples asked him to define more clearly his conception of right living, he formulated for their guidance “Five Moral Rules”—commandments simple and brief, but “perhaps more comprehensive, and harder to keep, than the Decalogue”:42

  1. Let not one kill any living being.

  2. Let not one take what is not given to him.

  3. Let not one speak falsely.

  4. Let not one drink intoxicating drinks.

  5. Let not one be unchaste.43

  Elsewhere Buddha introduced elements into his teaching strangely anticipatory of Christ. “Let a man overcome anger by kindness, evil by good. . . . Victory breeds hatred, for the conquered is unhappy. . . . Never in the world does hatred cease by hatred; hatred ceases by love.”44 Like Jesus he was uncomfortable in the presence of women, and hesitated long before admitting them into the Buddhist order. His favorite disciple, Ananda, once asked him:

  “How are we to conduct ourselves, Lord, with regards to womankind?”

  “As not seeing them, Ananda,”

  “But if we should see them, what are we to do?”

  “No talking, Ananda.”

  “But if they should speak to us, Lord, what are we to do?”

  “Keep wide awake, Ananda.”45

  His conception of religion was purely ethical; he cared everything about conduct, nothing about ritual or worship, metaphysics or theology. When a Brahman proposed to purify himself of his sins by bathing at Gaya, Buddha said to him: “Have thy bath here, even here, O Brahman. Be kind to all beings. If thou speakest not false, if thou killest not life, if thou takest not what is not given to thee, secure in self-denial—what wouldst thou gain by going to Gaya? Any water is Gaya to thee.”46 There is nothing stranger in the history of religion than the sight of Buddha founding a worldwide religion, and yet refusing to be drawn into any discussion about eternity, immortality, or God. The infinite is a myth, he says, a fiction of philosophers who have not the modesty to confess that an atom can never understand the cosmos. He smiles47 at the debate over the finity or infinity of the universe, quite as if he foresaw the futile astromythology of physicists and mathematicians who debate the same question today. He refuses to express any opinion as to whether the world had a beginning or will have an end; whether the soul is the same as the body, or distinct from it; whether, even for the greatest saint, there is to be any reward in any heaven. He calls such questions “the jungle, the desert, the puppet-show, the writhing, the entanglement, of speculation,”48 and will have nothing to do with them; they lead only to feverish disputation, personal resentments, and sorrow; they never lead to wisdom and peace. Saintliness and content lie not in knowledge of the universe and God, but simply in selfless and beneficent living49 And then, with scandalous humor, he suggests that the gods themselves, if they existed, could not answer these questions.

  Once upon a time, Kevaddha, there occurred to a certain brother in this very company of the brethren a doubt on the following point: “Where now do these four great elements—earth, water, fire and wind—pass away, leaving no trace behind?” So that b
rother worked himself up into such a state of ecstasy that the way leading to the world of the Gods became clear to his ecstatic vision.

  Then that brother, Kevaddha, went up to the realm of the Four Great Kings, and said to the gods thereof: “Where, my friends, do the four great elements—earth, water, fire and wind—cease, leaving no trace behind?”

  And when he had thus spoken the gods in the Heaven of the Four Great Kings said to him: “We, brother, do not know that. But there are the Four Great Kings, more potent and more glorious than we. They will know it.”

  Then that brother, Kevaddha, went to the Four Great Kings (and put the same question, and was sent on, by a similar reply, to the Thirty-three, who sent him on to their king, Sakka; who sent him on to the Yama gods, who sent him on to their king, Suyama; who sent him on to the Tusita gods, who sent him on to their king, Santusita; who sent him on to the Nimmana-rati gods, who sent him on to their king, Sunimmita; who sent him on to the Para-nimmita Vasavatti gods, who sent him on to their king, Vasavatti, who sent him on to the gods of the Brahma-world).

  Then that brother, Kevaddha, became so absorbed by self-concentration that the way to the Brahma-world became clear to his mind thus pacified. And he drew near to the gods of the retinue of Brahma, and said: “Where, my friends, do the four great elements—earth, water, fire and wind—cease, leaving no trace behind?”

  And when he had thus spoken, the gods of the retinue of Brahma replied: “We, brother, do not know that. But there is Brahma, the great Brahma, the Supreme One, the Mighty One, the All-seeing One, the Ruler, the Lord of all, the Controller, the Creator, the Chief of all, . . . the Ancient of days, the Father of all that are and are to be! He is more potent and more glorious than we. He will know it.”

  “Where, then, is that great Brahma now?”

  “We, brother, know not where Brahma is, nor why Brahma is, nor whence. But, brother, when the signs of his coming appear, when the light ariseth, and the glory shineth, then will he be manifest. For that is the portent of the manifestation of Brahma when the light ariseth, and the glory shineth.”

  And it was not long, Kevaddha, before that great Brahma became manifest. And that brother drew near to him, and said: “Where, my friend, do the four great elements—earth, water, fire and wind—cease, leaving no trace behind?”

  And when he had thus spoken that great Brahma said to him: “I, brother, am the great Brahma, the Supreme, the Mighty, the All-seeing, the Ruler, the Lord of all, the Controller, the Creator, the Chief of all, appointing to each his place, the Ancient of days, the Father of all that are and are to be!”

  Then that brother answered Brahma, and said: “I did not ask you, friend, as to whether you were indeed all that you now say. But I ask you where the four great elements—earth, water, fire and wind-cease, leaving no trace behind?”

  Then again, Kevaddha, Brahma gave the same reply. And that brother yet a third time put to Brahma his question as before.

  Then, Kevaddha, the great Brahma took that brother and led him aside, and said: “These gods, the retinue of Brahma, hold me, brother, to be such that there is nothing I cannot see, nothing I have not understood, nothing I have not realized. Therefore I gave no answer in their presence. I do not know, brother, where those four great elements—earth, water, fire and wind—cease, leaving no trace behind.”50

  When some students remind him that the Brahmans claim to know the solutions of these problems, he laughs them off: “There are, brethren, some recluses and Brahmans who wriggle like eels; and when a question is put to them on this or that they resort to equivocation, to eel-wriggling.”51 If ever he is sharp it is against the priests of his time; he scorns their assumption that the Vedas were inspired by the gods,52 and he scandalizes the caste-proud Brahmans by accepting into his order the members of any caste. He does not explicitly condemn the caste-system, but he tells his disciples, plainly enough: “Go into all lands and preach this gospel. Tell them that the poor and the lowly, the rich and the high, are all one, and that all castes unite in this religion as do the rivers in the sea.”53 He denounces the notion of sacrificing to the gods, and looks with horror upon the slaughter of animals for these rites;54 he rejects all cult and worship of supernatural beings, all mantras and incantations, all asceticism and all prayer.55 Quietly, and without controversy, he offers a religion absolutely free of dogma and priestcraft, and proclaims a way of salvation open to infidels and believers alike.

  At times this most famous of Hindu saints passes from agnosticism to outright atheism.56* He does not go out of his way to deny deity, and occasionally he speaks as if Brahma were a reality rather than an ideal;58 nor does he forbid the popular worship of the gods.59 But he smiles at the notion of sending up prayers to the Unknowable; “it is foolish,” he says, “to suppose that another can cause us happiness or misery”60—these are always the product of our own behavior and our own desires. He refuses to rest his moral code upon supernatural sanctions of any kind; he offers no heaven, no purgatory, and no hell.61 He is too sensitive to the suffering and killing involved in the biological process to suppose that they have been consciously willed by a personal divinity; these cosmic blunders, he thinks, outweigh the evidences of design.62 In this scene of order and confusion, of good and evil, he finds no principle of permanence, no center of everlasting reality,63 but only a whirl and flux of obstinate life, in which the one metaphysical ultimate is change.

  As he proposes a theology without a deity, so he offers a psychology without a soul; he repudiates animism in every form, even in the case of man. He agrees with Heraclitus and Bergson about the world, and with Hume about the mind. All that we know is our sensations; therefore, so far as we can see, all matter is force, all substance is motion. Life is change, a neutral stream of becoming and extinction; the “soul” is a myth which, for the convenience of our weak brains, we unwarrantably posit behind the flow of conscious states.64 This “transcendental unity of apperception,” this “mind” that weaves sensations and perceptions into thought, is a ghost; all that exists is the sensations and perceptions themselves, falling automatically into memories and ideas.65 Even the precious “ego” is not an entity distinct from these mental states; it is merely the continuity of these states, the remembrance of earlier by later states, together with the mental and moral habits, the dispositions and tendencies, of the organism.66 The succession of these states is caused not by a mythical “will” superadded to them, but by the determinism of heredity, habit, environment and circumstance.67 This fluid mind that is only mental states, this soul or ego that is only a character or prejudice formed by helpless inheritance and transient experience, can have no immortality in any sense that implies the continuance of the individual.”68 Even the saint, even Buddha himself, will not, as a personality, survive death.69

  But if this is so, how can there be rebirth? If there is no soul, how can it pass into other existences, to be punished for the sins of this embodiment? Here is the weakest point in Buddha’s philosophy; he never quite faces the contradiction between his rationalistic psychology and his uncritical acceptance of reincarnation. This belief is so universal in India that almost every Hindu accepts it as an axiom or assumption, and hardly bothers to prove it; the brevity and multiplicity of the generations there suggests irresistibly the transmigration of vital force, or—to speak theologically—of the soul. Buddha received the notion along with the air he breathed; it is the one thing that he seems never to have doubted.70 He took the Wheel of Rebirth and the Law of Karma for granted; his one thought was how to escape from that Wheel, how to achieve Nirvana here, and annihilation hereafter.

  But what is Nirvana? It is difficult to find an erroneous answer to this question; for the Master left the point obscure, and his followers have; given the word every meaning under the sun. In general Sanskrit use it meant “extinguished”—as of a lamp or fire. The Buddhist Scriptures use it as signifying: (1) a state of happiness attainable in this life through the complete elimination of selfish
desires; (2) the liberation of the individual from rebirth; (3) the annihilation of the individual consciousness; (4) the union of the individual with God; (5) a heaven of happiness after death. In the teaching of Buddha it seemed to mean the extinction of all individual desire, and the reward of such selflessness—escape from rebirth.71 In Buddhist literature the term has often a terrestrial sense, for the Arhat, or saint, is repeatedly described as achieving it in this life, by acquiring its seven constituent parts: self-possession, investigation into the truth, energy, calm, joy, concentration, and magnanimity.73 These are its content, but hardly its productive cause: the cause and source of Nirvana is the extinction of selfish desire; and Nirvana, in most early contexts, comes to mean the painless peace that rewards the moral annihilation of the self.74 “Now,” says Buddha, “this is the noble truth as to the passing of pain. Verily, it is the passing away so that no passion remains, the giving up, the getting rid of, the emancipation from, the harboring no longer of, this craving thirst”75—this fever of self-seeking desire. In the body of the Master’s teaching it is almost always synonymous with bliss,76 the quiet content of the soul that no longer worries about itself. But complete Nirvana includes annihilation:, the reward of the highest saintliness is never to be reborn.77

  In the end, says Buddha, we perceive the absurdity of moral and psychological individualism. Our fretting selves are not really separate beings and powers, but passing ripples on the stream of life, little knots forming and unraveling in the wind-blown mesh of fate. When we see ourselves as parts of a whole, when we reform our selves and our desires in terms of the whole, then our personal disappointments and defeats, our varied suffering and inevitable death, no longer sadden us as bitterly as before; they are lost in the amplitude of infinity. When we have learned to love not our separate life, but all men and all living things, then at last we shall find peace.