Enjoyments are alloyed by fear of sickness,
High rank may have a fall, abundant wealth
Is subject to exactions, dignity
Encounters risk of insult, strength is ever
In danger of enfeeblement by foes,
A handsome form is jeoparded by women,
Scripture is open to assaults of critics,
Merit incurs the spite of wicked men,
The body lives in constant dread of death—
One course alone is proof against alarm,
Renounce the world, and safety may be won.
One hundred years[47] is the appointed span
Of human life, one half of this goes by
In sleep and night; one half the other half
In childhood and old age; the rest is passed
In sickness, separation, pain, and service—
How can a human being find delight
In such a life, vain as a watery bubble?
No doubt this kind of pessimism has always found advocates in all ages,
and among all nations in Europe as well as in Asia. It was a favourite
idea with the Stoics, and it has found favour with Schopenhauer, Von
Hartmann, and other modern philosophers; and Shakespeare makes Hamlet
give expression to it.
Happily the general tone of European philosophical thought is in another
key, and the admirers of Aristotle still constitute a majority in
Europe. The great Stagirite described God as ‘Energy,’ and in dealing
with Solon’s dictum that ‘no man can be called happy while he lives,’
gave expression to a different belief. A good man’s virtuous energies,
he asserted, are in this present life a genuine source of happiness to
him; misfortunes cannot shake his well-balanced character; he surmounts
the worst sufferings by generous magnanimity[48].
Even in the East a greater than Aristotle and no less an Authority than
the true ‘Light of the world’—bade men rejoice and leap for joy under
the most trying circumstances of life, and prize His gift of Eternal
Life as their highest good.
In India, on the contrary, the Upanishads and systems of philosophy
which followed on them, all harped on the same string. They all dwelt on
the same minor key-note. Their real object was not to investigate truth,
but to devise a scheme for removing the misery believed to result from
repeated bodily existence and from all action, good or bad, in the
present, previous, and future births.
The Sāṅkhya (I. 1) defines the chief aim of man to be deliverance from
the pain incident to bodily life and energy; or according to the Nyāya
(I. 2), from the pain resulting from birth, actions, and false
knowledge; while the Vedānta considers that ignorance alone fetters the
soul of man to a body, and the Yoga defines the divine Purusha (= the
perfect man of Buddhism) as a being unaffected by pain (kleṡa), acts,
consequences of acts, and impressions derived from acts done in previous
births (āṡaya = saṉṡkāra).
Gautama’s sympathy with these ideas is shown by the twelve-linked chain
of causation, put forth by him as an accompaniment to his four
fundamental truths (p. 43), and thus expressed (Mahā-vagga I. 1. 2):—
From Ignorance comes the combination of formations or tendencies
(instincts derived from former births[49]); from such formations comes
consciousness (vijñāna); from consciousness, individual being
(nāma-rūpa, name and form); from individual being, the six organs of
sense (including mind); from the six organs, contact (with objects of
sense); from contact, sensation (vedanā); from sensation, desire (lust,
thirst, taṉhā = tṛishṇā); from desire, clinging to life (upādāna); from
clinging to life, continuity of becoming (bhava); from continuity of
becoming, birth; from birth, decay and death; from decay and death,
suffering.
It is difficult to discover a strictly logical sequence in this curious
twelve-linked chain. The first link is a cause, the ten following are
both causes and effects, while the last is an effect only. The second
(saṃkhārā) is presented to us afterwards as one of the Skandhas (p.
109), and we have the whole inverted in a kind of circular chain in the
form of question and answer, thus:—
What is the cause of misery and suffering? _Answer_—Old age and death.
What is the cause of old age and death? _Answer_—Birth. Of birth?
_Answer_—Continuity of becoming. Of continuity of becoming?
_Answer_—Clinging to life. Of clinging to life? _Answer_—Desire. Of
desire? _Answer_—Sensation or perception. Of sensation? _Answer_—Contact
with the objects of sense. Of contact with objects? _Answer_—The organs
of sense. Of the organs? _Answer_—Name and form, or individual being. Of
individual being? _Answer_—Consciousness (viññāṇa = vijñāna). Of
consciousness? _Answer_—Combination of formations or tendencies (or
those material and mental predispositions derived from previous births
which tend to form character, compare p. 109). Of such formations?
_Answer_—Ignorance.
In making Ignorance (Avidyā) the first cause of the misery of life,
Gautama agreed with the Vedānta (though he explained Ignorance
differently, see p. 99), while in the remaining chain of causes (Nidāna)
we detect his sympathy with the Sāṅkhya theory of a chain of producers
and products.
His own scheme of causation (often called Paṭićća-samuppādo) occupies an
important place in Buddhistic philosophy, as supplementary to, and
complementary of, the four truths (p. 43). It was thought out before
them (see p. 39) and is equally revered.
It is on this account that the following celebrated formula is
constantly repeated like a short creed, and is found carved on numerous
Buddhist monuments:—
‘Conditions (or laws) of existence which proceed from a cause, the cause
of these hath the Buddha explained, as also the cessation (or
destruction) of these. Of such truths is the Great Ṡramaṇa the
teacher[50].’
This was the formula repeated by Assaji to Sāriputta and Moggallāna (p.
47), when they wished to join the Buddha and asked for a summary of the
spirit (artha), not the letter (vyañjana), of his doctrine (Mahā-v° I.
23. 5). Certainly the sorites-like form of statement in the scheme of
causation had charms for Oriental thinkers.
Moreover the Buddha’s method of clothing old truths in a new dress,
or—to adopt another metaphor—his plan of putting new wine into old
bottles, had in it something very attractive to all Indian minds.
Of what kind, then, was the new dress in which Gautama clothed the great
central doctrine of Indian philosophy—the doctrine of metempsychosis,
involving the perpetuation of the misery of life?
The Buddha, like all Indians, was by nature a metaphysician. He had
great sympathy with the philosophy of the Upanishads. How was it that he
disbelieved in the existence of Spirit as distinct from bodily organism?
A little consideration will perhaps make clear how he was brought to his
own peculiar agnostic view.
Probably before his so-called enlightenment and attainment of true
knowledge, he was as firm a believer in the real existence of one
Universal Spirit as the most orthodox Brāhman. He had become imbued with
Brāhmanical philosophy while sitting at the feet of his two teachers
Āḷāra and Uddaka (p. 29). At that time there were no definite or
formulated philosophical systems, separated from each other by sharp
lines. But the Sāṅkhya, Yoga, and Vedānta systems were assuming shape,
and the doctrines they embodied had been foreshadowed in the Upanishads,
and were orally current.
In short, it had been repeatedly stated in the Upanishads, that nothing
really existed but the one universally present impersonal Spirit, and
that the whole visible world was really to be identified with that
Spirit.
Then it followed as an article of faith that man’s spirit, deluded into
a temporary false idea of separate independent personal existence by the
illusion of ignorance, was also identical with that One Spirit, and
ultimately to be re-absorbed into it.
Further, it followed that man’s spirit, while so deluded and so
separated for a time from the One Spirit, was compelled to migrate
through innumerable bodily forms, and that such migration entailed
misery, from which there was no escape except by a process of
disillusionment, that is, by dissipating the illusion of separate
individuality, through the acquisition of perfect knowledge leading to
re-union with the One Spirit, as the river blends with the ocean. And
such knowledge was best gained by suppression of the passions,
abandonment of all worldly connexions, and abstinence from all action.
Finally, it was held, with apparent inconsistency, that the storing up
of merit by good works assisted in effecting this object by raising a
man, not yet fit for union with the supreme Spirit, to forms of
existence in which such union might be accomplished.
Now it is obvious that to believe in the ultimate merging of man’s
personal spirit in One impersonal Spirit, is virtually to deny the
ultimate existence of any human spirit at all. Nay more—it is virtually
to deny the existence of a supreme universal Spirit also.
For how can a merely abstract universal Spirit, which is unconscious of
personality, be regarded as possessing any real existence worth being
called true life?
To assert that such a Spirit is pure abstract Entity or (according to
Vedānta phraseology) pure Existence (without anything to exist for),
pure Thought or even pure Consciousness (without anything to think
about, or be conscious about), pure Joy (without anything to rejoice
about), is practically to reduce it to pure non-entity.
All that Gautama did, therefore, was to purge Brāhmanism of a dogma
which appeared to him to be a mere sham (Brahma-jāla I. 26).
He simply eliminated as incapable of proof the doctrine of a purely
abstract, incorporeal spirit or self, whether human or divine. The
assertion that any soul or self or Ego really existed (Atta-vādo) was an
error. It formed one of the constituents of Upādāna (p. 109), and was
the first of the ten fetters (Sakkāya-diṭṭhi, p. 127).
And with the rejection of this dogma, as incapable of demonstration, he
found himself compelled to reject also, as beyond the range of man’s
cognizance, the doctrine of any Supreme Being higher than the perfectly
enlightened man. Like Kapila in the Sāṅkhya aphorisms (I. 92, V. 10) he
felt bound to admit: ‘It is not proved that there is a God.’
This, indeed, is the chief foundation on which rests the assertion that
Buddhism is a mere system of atheistic negations. And there can be no
doubt that from one point of view its statements are steeped in
negations, or rather perhaps in evasions. Its morality has been
described as more negative than positive; but this is scarcely correct,
and it would be fairer to say that it delights in telling men to abstain
from doing evil, rather than in urging them to active exertions for the
good of others. It has many positive precepts.
But if there was no probability of a soul existing separately from a
body after death, how could there be any soul-transmigration? How could
there be any agreement between the teaching of the Buddha and that of
the Brāhmans, in regard to this important central dogma? The real fact
was that the divergence of the Buddhist doctrine from the Brāhmanical,
as stated in the Upanishads, was not greater than was to be expected
from the difference of belief between the two systems in regard to the
existence of soul.
Plato, we know, held that souls ‘found their prisons in the same
natures’ at death, so that an effeminate man might be re-born as a
woman, a tyrannical man as a wolf, and so on. In Manu’s Law-book is set
forth a triple order of soul-transmigration through lower, middle, and
higher planes of existence, resulting from good, middling, and bad acts,
words, and thoughts. Thus—to instance only the lower—the soul of a man
who spoke ill of his teacher was destined to pass into an ass or a dog
(II. 201), the soul of a thief might occupy a mouse (XII. 62), the soul
of one who neglected his caste-duties might pass into a demon (XII. 71,
72); and greater crimes might lead to the soul’s being condemned to
occupy plants, stones, and minerals. Then there was also an intermediate
condition of the soul. According to one idea it went to the moon;
according to another it became a hungry ghost which required food to be
offered to it at the Ṡrāddha ceremonies.
This theory of transmigration, according to the Hindūs, explained the
origin of evil. Evil must proceed from antecedent evil, and the
resulting penalty must be borne by the evil-doer in succeeding
existences. This was the terrible incubus which it was the great object
of Indian philosophers to remove. It was equally Gautama’s object, but
how could he accept soul-transmigration, denying as he did the existence
of any spirit, as distinct from material organization? He therefore put
forth a view of his own, thus:—Every being is composed of five
constituent elements called Skandhas (Pāli Khandha), which have their
source in Upādāna (p. 103) and are continually combining, dissolving,
and recombining, viz. 1. Form (_rūpa_), i. e. the organized body. 2.
Sensation (_vedanā_) of pain or pleasure, or of neither, arising from
contact of eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin, and mind with external objects.
3. Perception (_sañña_ = _sañjñā_) of ideas through the same sixfold
contact. 4. Aggregate of formations (_saṃkhāra_ = _saṉskāra_, i.e.
combination of properties or faculties or mental tendencies, fifty-two
in number, forming individual character and derived from previous
existences; compare the similar saṃkhārā pl. at p. 102). 5.
Consciousness (_viññāṇa_ = _vijñāna_) or thought[51]. This fifth is the
most important. It is the only soul recognized by Buddhists.
Theoretically it perishes with the other Skandhas, but practically is
continued, since its exact counterpart is reproduced in a new body.
For although, when a man dies, all the five constituents of existence
are dissolved, yet by the force resulting from his actions (_karma_),
combined with _Upādāna_, ‘clinging to existence’ (one form of the
fetters at p. 127), a new set of five, of which consciousness is still
the dominant faculty, starts into being. The process of the new creation
is so instantaneous that it is equivalent to the continuance of the same
personality, pervaded by the same consciousness; though each personality
is only really connected with the previous by the force of acts done and
character formed in each—such force operating through Upādāna. In short,
to speak of transmigration of souls in Buddhism gives a wrong idea.
Metempsychosis with Buddhists resolves itself into continuous
metamorphosis or Palingenesis. For no true Buddhist believes in the
passing of a soul from one body to another, but rather in the passing on
of what may be called act-force, or of the merit and demerit resulting
from a man’s acts, so as to cause a continuous succession of
transformations—a succession which may be compared to the rolling on of
a wheel through different scenes and over every variety of ground; or to
the burning on, through day and night, of a flame which is not the same
flame at the beginning of the day and end of the night, and yet is not
different. It is this act-force (Karma), combined with Upādāna,
‘clinging to existence’ (=abhi-niveṡa in the Yoga II. 9), which is the
connecting link between each man’s past, present, and future bodies.
In its subtle and irresistible operation it may be compared to stored-up
chemical or electric energy. It is a force which continually creates and
re-creates the whole man, and perpetuates his personal identity through
separate forms, whether it compels him to ascend or descend in the scale
of being.
Yet to say that personality is transmitted, when there is no
consciousness of any continuity of identity, amounts, after all, to
denial of continuous existence.
Be it observed, too, that the scale of existence is limited in Buddhism
to six classes of beings—gods, men, demons, animals, ghosts, and
dwellers in hell (p. 121). Transmigration is not extended, as in the
Brāhmanical system, to plants, stocks, and stones; though a man could be
born as a tree-god (p. 112).
Gautama Buddha himself was merely the last link in a long chain of
corporeal forms, and he had been preceded by twenty-four Buddhas, who
were to previous ages of the world what he was to the present. Every one
of these Buddhas was gifted with the faculty of recollecting his
previous personalities, and Gautama often gave an account of his own
former existences. The stories of about five hundred and fifty of his
births (Jātakas) are even now daily repeated to eager listeners in every
Buddhist country, and are believed to convey important lessons, though
full of puerilities.
The interchange of ideas between Brāhmanism and Buddhism is well
exemplified not only by the twenty-five Buddhas, who correspond to the
fourteen Manus, or representative men, in each world-period (Antara),
but also by the birth-stories, many of which are mere modifications of
old fables long current in India, while others have been imported from
Buddhism into Sanskṛit literature. They constantly remind one of similar
stories in the Pañća-tantra, Hitopadeṡa, Rāmāyaṇa, and Mahā-bhārata. The
noteworthy point about the repeated births of Gautama Buddha is, that
there appears to have been no Darwinian rise from lower to higher forms;
but a mere jumble of metamorphoses. Thus we find him born four times as
Mahā-brahmā, twenty times as Indra, once as a hare, eighty-three times
as an ascetic, fifty-eight as a king, twenty-four as a Brāhman, once as
a gamester, eighteen times as a monkey, six as an elephant, eleven as a
deer, once as a dog, four times as a serpent, six as a snipe, once as a
frog, twice as a fish, forty-three times as a tree-god, twice as a pig,
ten times as a lion, four as a cock, twice as a thief, once as a
devil-dancer, and so on. He was never born as a woman, nor as an insect,
nor as a Preta, nor an inhabitant of hell (p. 119), and in all his
births he was a Bodhi-sattva (pp. 98, 135). And in all he suffered and
sacrificed himself for the good of the world.
Here is the substance of an account of Gautama’s birth as a hare, given
by himself (Ćariyā-Piṭaka I. 10, translated by Dr. Oldenberg):—
‘In one of my lives I was a hare living in a forest. I ate grass and did
no one any harm. An ape, a jackal, and an otter dwelt with me. I used to
teach them their duties and tell them to abstain from evil and give alms
on the four fast-days in every month. They did as I told them, and gave
beans, corn, and rice. Then I said to myself:—Suppose a worthy object of
charity passes by, what can I give him? I live on grass only; I cannot
offer a starving man grass; I must give him myself. Thereupon the god
Ṡakra, wishing to test my sincerity, came in a Brāhman’s form and asked
me for food. When I saw him I said joyfully:—“A noble gift will I give
thee, O Brāhman; thou observest the precepts; thou painest no creature;
thou wilt not kill me for food. But go, collect wood, place it in a
heap, and kindle a fire. Then I will roast myself, and thou may’st eat
me.”
‘He said:—“So be it,” and went and gathered wood and kindled a fire.
‘When the wood began to send forth flame, I leaped into the midst of the
blazing fire.
‘As water quenches heat, so the flames quelled all the sufferings of
life. Cuticle and skin, flesh and sinews, bones, ligaments, and heart—my
whole body with all its limbs—I gave to the Brāhman.’
Perhaps the best and most often recited Jātaka is the last birth but
one, in which he was born as prince Vessantara (Vaiṡyāntara). This is
called the Mahā-jātaka, ‘great birth.’ It may be summarized thus:—
‘Vessantara (afterwards Buddha) was so liberal that he gave to every one
who asked. Among his possessions was a white elephant, which had the
power of bringing down rain whenever it was needed. At last he gave away
this also to a neighbouring country suffering from drought. This so
incensed his own people that they persuaded the king his father to
banish him with his wife and two children to the forest. They set out in
a chariot drawn by horses. First he gave away the horses and next the
chariot to Brāhmans who begged for them. Then when another Brāhman asked
for the children, Vessantara gave them up too, saying: “May I for this
act become a Buddha!” In short his sufferings and theirs in banishment,
and his generosity to every one, led to his recall with great
rejoicings. When he died he was born again in the Tushita heaven, whence
he descended as a white elephant into the womb of Māyā, and was born as
Gautama’ (p. 23).
Another wise man of the East, who lived long before Gautama, spoke of
‘the path of the just shining more and more unto the perfect day.’ Of
this kind of progressive advance towards higher planes of perfection,
the Indian sage knew nothing. Nor to the Buddha, of course, would the
Christian idea of ‘original sin,’ or of imputed Perfection have conveyed
any meaning whatever. With Gautama, righteousness and unrighteousness,
holiness and sin, were the product of a man’s own acts. They were
produced by no one but himself, and they were merely troublesome forces
(see p. 124) causing, in the one case, a man’s re-birth either in one of
the heavens or in higher earthly corporeal forms, and, in the other, his
re-birth in one of the hells or in lower corporeal forms. ‘Not in the
heavens,’ says the Dhamma-pada (127), ‘not in the midst of the sea, not
if thou hidest thyself in the clefts of the mountains, wilt thou find a
place where thou canst escape the force resulting from thy evil
actions.’
Here also is the substance of a passage in the Deva-dūta-sutta
(translated by Dr. Oldenberg):—
‘Do not relatives and friends welcome a man who has been long
travelling, when he returns safely to his home? Even so, a righteous
man, when he passes from this world to another, is welcomed by his good
works, as by friends.
‘Through the six states of transmigration does the power of our actions
lead us. A life in the heavens awaits the good. The wardens of hell drag
the wicked before the king of hell, Yama, who says to them:—“Did you
not, when on earth, see the five divine messengers, sent to warn you—the
child, the old man, the sick, the criminal suffering punishment, and the
dead corpse?”
‘And the wicked man answers:—“I did see them.”
‘And didst thou not think within thyself:—“I also am subject to birth,
old age, death. Let me be careful to do good works?”
‘And the wicked man answers:—“I did not, sire; I neglected in my folly
to think of these things.”
‘Then king Yama pronounces his doom:—“These thy evil deeds are not the
work of thy mother, father, relations, friends, advisers. Thou alone
hast done them all; thou alone must gather the fruit.” And the warders
of hell drag him to the place of torment, rivet him to red-hot iron,
plunge him in glowing seas of blood, torture him on heaps of burning
coal; and he dies not, till the last residue of his guilt has been
expiated.’
And this Buddhist theory of every man’s destiny being dependent on his
own acts is quite in keeping with Brāhmanical ideas. ‘In that (new body)
he is united with the knowledge gained in the former body, and then
again goes on working for perfection; for even against his will he is
forced on (from one body to another) by his former works’ (Bhagavad-gītā
VI. 43, 44). And again:—‘The act committed in a former birth
(pūrva-janma-kṛitaṃ karma), that is called one’s destiny;’ and again,
‘As from a lump of clay a workman makes what he pleases, even so a man
obtains whatever destiny he has wrought out for himself’ (Hitopadeṡa,
Introduction). In Brāhmanism the influence of Karma or ‘act’ in
determining every being’s form at the time of his own re-birth is
universal.
Thus also the Nyāya of Gautama (III. 132) affirms that the new body
(after death) is produced through the irresistible force of actions done
in the previous body (pūrva-kṛita-phalānubandhāt tad-utpattiḥ). The
cosmogony of the same philosophy (Vaiṡeshika branch), taught that the
concurrence of eternal atoms to form the world was the result of
Adṛishṭa or the ‘unseen force’ derived from the acts of a previous
world.
We are reminded, too, of our poet’s own sentiment: ‘Our deeds still
travel with us from afar, And what we have been makes us what we are;’
and of Don Quixote’s saying, ‘Every man is the son of his own works;’
and of Wordsworth’s, ‘The child is father of the man;’ and of
Longfellow’s, ‘Lives of great men all remind us, we can make ourselves
sublime.’
In short, we are the outcome of ourselves. Nor can ceremonies avail
aught, nor can devotion to personal gods avail aught, nor can anything
whatever possess the slightest efficacy to save a man from his own acts.
It is said that Buddhism leaves the will unfettered; but surely fatalism
is taught when the force of one’s own deeds in previous births is held
to be irresistible.
The only creator, then, recognized by true Buddhists is Act-force. ‘My
action is the womb that bears me,’ says the Aṅguttara Nikāya. It is this
Act-force that creates worlds. It is this Act-force, in conjunction with
Upādāna (p. 109), that creates all beings in any of the six classes into
which they are divided—gods, men, demons, animals, ghosts, and the
dwellers in hell. We often talk of the force of a dead man’s acts—of his
being dead and yet speaking. It is this force which in Buddhism resists
death; for no force can ever be lost.
And what does the modern Positivist philosopher assert? He maintains
that both body and mind are resolved into their elements at death. The
only immortal part of us consists in the good deeds, words, thoughts,
and influences we leave behind us, to be made use of by our descendants
and improved on for the elevation of humanity. And the aggregate of
these, combined with the force of will, constitute, according to the
Buddhist, a power strong enough to re-create not only human beings but
the whole material world.
It was thus that the force of Gautama’s own acts had constantly
re-created him through a long chain of successive personalities,
terminating in the perfect Buddha, who has no further births to undergo.
Turn we now to that division of the Buddhist system which concerns
itself with the external universe, and seeks to explain its
constitution, form, and the various divisions of which it consists.
And here we must be careful to note the peculiar views of Buddhism,
notwithstanding the large admixture of Brāhmanical ideas.
For Buddhism has no cosmogony like the Sāṅkhya, Vedānta, and Vaiṡeshika.
Nor does it explain the creation of the universe, in our sense. It only
concerns itself with cosmology, and it dissents from Brāhmanical
cosmology in declining to admit the eternity of anything whatever,
except change or revolution or a succession of revolutions. Buddhism has
no Creator, no creation, no original germ of all things, no soul of the
world, no personal, no impersonal, no supramundane, no antemundane
principle.
It might indeed have been supposed that since Gautama denied the eternal
existence of either a personal God or of Spirit, he would at least have
given eternal existence to matter.
But no; the only eternal things are the Causality of Act-force and the
succession of cause and effect—the eternity of ‘Becoming,’ not of
‘Being.’
The Universe around us, with all its visible phenomena, must be
recognized as an existing entity, for we see before our eyes evidence of
its actual existence. But it is an entity produced out of nonentity, and
destined to lapse again into nonentity when its time is fulfilled.
For out of nothingness it came, and into nothingness must it return—to
re-appear again, it is true, but as a new Universe brought into being by
the accumulated force of its predecessor’s acts, and not evolved out of
any eternally existing spiritual or material germ of any kind.
It is thus that Universe after Universe is like a succession of
countless bubbles for ever forming, expanding, drifting onwards,
bursting and re-forming, each bubble owing its re-formation to the force
generated by its vanished predecessor. The poet Shelley might have been
called a Buddhist when he wrote:
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay;
Like the bubbles on a river,
Sparkling, bursting, borne away. (Hellas.)
Or like lotuses, for ever unfolding and then decaying, each decay
containing the germ of a new plant; or like an interminable succession
of wheels for ever coming into view, for ever rolling onwards,
disappearing and reappearing; for ever passing from being to non-being,
and again from non-being to being. It was this ceaseless rotation that
led to the wheel being adopted as the favourite symbol in Buddhism (p.
122).
Christianity recognizes in a very different way this ‘law of
circularity’ in the physical world, as the Rev. Hugh Macmillan has ably
pointed out.
As to the question from whom? or whence? or how? came the original force
or impetus that started the first movement, the Buddha hazarded no
opinion. He held this to be an inexplicable mystery—an insoluble riddle.
He confessed himself to be a thorough Agnostic. He saw nothing but
countless cycles of causes and effects, and never undertook to explain
the first cause which set the first wheel in motion. It was not, then,
without a deep significance that Gautama placed Ignorance first in his
chain of Causation (p. 102. Note, however, the explanation given at p.
99).
After all, these Buddhistic speculations amount to little else than
Brāhmanism stripped of some of its transcendental mysticism. We know,
for example, that the true Vedānta philosophy makes the Universe proceed
out of an eternal Illusion, or Ignorance associated with the impersonal
Spirit Brahman, into which it is again absorbed.
Can it be affirmed, then, a Buddhist might say, that either this pure
impersonal Spirit (or Ignorance) is virtually very different from pure
nothingness?