Though all beings do not pass through every stage of the great
journey, all beings who attain to the highest enlightenment, by
any course whatever, acquire certain faculties not belonging to
particular conditions of birth, but only to particular conditions of
psychical development. These are, the _Roku-Jindzū_ (Abhidjnâ),
or Six Supernatural Powers:[6] (1) _Shin-Kyō-Tsu,_ the power of
passing any-whither through any obstacles,--through solid walls,
for example;--(2) _Tengen-Tsū,_ the power of infinite vision;--(3)
_Tenni-Tsū,_ the power of infinite hearing;--(4) _Tashin-Tsū,_ the
power of knowing the thoughts of all other beings;--(5) _Shuku-jū-Tsū,_
the power of remembering former births;--(6) _Rojin--Tsū,_ infinite
wisdom with the power of entering at will into Nirvana. The Roku-jindzū
first begin to develop in the state of _Shōmon_ (Sravaka), and expand
in the higher conditions of _Engaku_ (Pratyeka-Buddha) and of Bosatsu
(Bodhisattva or Mahâsattva). The powers of the Shōmon may be exerted
over two thousand worlds; those of the Engaku or Bosatsu, over three
thousand;--but the powers of Buddhahood extend over the total cosmos.
In the first state of holiness, for example, comes the memory of a
certain number of former births, together with the capacity to foresee
a corresponding number of future births;--in the next higher state the
number of births remembered increases;--and in the state of Bosatsu
all former births are visible to memory. But the Buddha sees not only
all of his own former births, but likewise all births that ever have
been or can be,--and all the thoughts and acts, past, present, or
future, of all past, present, or future beings.... Now these dreams
of supernatural power merit attention because of the ethical teaching
in regard to them,--the same which is woven through every Buddhist
hypothesis, rational or unthinkable,--the teaching of self-abnegation.
The Supernatural Powers must never be used for personal pleasure, but
only for the highest beneficence,--the propagation of doctrine, the
saving of men. Any exercise of them for lesser ends might result in
their loss,--would certainly signify retrogression in the path.[7]
To show them for the purpose of exciting admiration or wonder were
to juggle wickedly with what is divine; and the Teacher himself is
recorded to have once severely rebuked a needless display of them by a
disciple.[8]
This giving up not only of one life, but of countless lives,--not only
of one world, but of innumerable worlds,--not only of natural but also
of supernatural pleasures,--not only of selfhood but of godhood,--is
certainly not for the miserable privilege of ceasing to be, but for
a privilege infinitely outweighing all that even paradise can give.
Nirvana is no cessation, but an emancipation. It means only the passing
of conditioned being into unconditioned being,--the fading of all
mental and physical phantoms into the light of Formless Omnipotence and
Omniscience. But the Buddhist hypothesis holds some suggestion of the
persistence of that which has once been able to remember all births
and states of limited being,--the persistence of the identity of the
Buddhas even in Nirvana notwithstanding the teaching that all Buddhas
are one. How reconcile this doctrine of monism with the assurance of
various texts that the being who enters Nirvana can, when so desirous,
reassume an earthly personality? There are some very remarkable texts
on this subject in the Sutra of the Lotos of the Good Law: those for
instance in which the Tathâgata Prabhûtarâtna is pictured as sitting
_"perfectly extinct upon his throne"_ and speaking before a vast
assembly to which he has been introduced as "the great Seer who,
_although perfectly extinct for many kôtis of æons,_ now comes to hear
the Law." These texts themselves offer us the riddle of multiplicity
in unity; for the Tathâgata Prabhûtarâtna and the myriads of other
extinct Buddhas who appear simultaneously, are said to have been all
incarnations of but a single Buddha.
A reconciliation is offered by the hypothesis of what might be
called a _pluristic monism,_--a sole reality composed of groups of
consciousness, at once independent and yet interdependent,--or, to
speak of pure mind in terms of matter, _an atomic spiritual ultimate._
This hypothesis, though not doctrinably enunciated in Buddhist texts,
is distinctly implied both by text and commentary. The Absolute of
Buddhism is one as ether is one. Ether is conceivable only as a
composition of units.[9] The Absolute is conceivable only (according to
any attempt at a synthesis of the Japanese doctrines) as composed of
Buddhas. But here the student finds himself voyaging farther, perhaps,
beyond the bar of the thinkable than Western philosophers have ever
ventured. All are One;--each by union becomes equal with All! We are
not only bidden to imagine the ultimate reality as composed of units of
conscious being,--but to believe each unit permanently equal to every
other _and infinite in potentiality_.[10] The central reality of every
living creature is a pure Buddha: the visible form and thinking self,
which encell it, being but Karma. With some degree of truth it might be
said that Buddhism substitutes for our theory of a universe of physical
atoms the hypothesis of a universe of psychical units. Not that it
necessarily denies our theory of physical atoms, but that it assumes a
position which might be thus expressed in words: "What you call atoms
are really combinations, unstable aggregates, essentially impermanent,
and therefore essentially unreal. Atoms are but Karma." And this
position is suggestive. We know nothing whatever of the ultimate nature
of substance and motion: but we have scientific evidence that the known
has been evolved from the unknown; that the atoms of our elements _are_
combinations; and that what we call matter and force are but different
manifestations of a single and infinite Unknown Reality.
There are wonderful Buddhist pictures which at first sight appear to
have been made, like other Japanese pictures, with bold free sweeps of
a skilled brush, but which, when closely examined, prove to have been
executed in a much more marvelous manner. The figures, the features,
the robes, the aureoles,--also the scenery, the colors, the effects of
mist or cloud,--all, even to the tiniest detail of tone or line, have
been produced by groupings of microscopic Chinese characters,--tinted
according to position, and more or less thickly massed according to
need of light or shade. In brief, these pictures are composed entirely
out of texts of Sutras: they are mosaics of minute ideographs,--each
ideograph a combination of strokes, and the symbol at once of a sound
and of an idea.
Is our universe so composed?--an endless phantasmagory made only by
combinations of combinations of combinations of combinations of units
finding quality and form through unimaginable affinities;--now thickly
massed in solid glooms; now palpitating in tremulosities of light
and color; always and everywhere grouped by some stupendous art into
one vast mosaic of polarities;--yet each unit in itself a complexity
inconceivable, and each in itself also a symbol only, a character, a
single ideograph of the undecipherable text of the Infinite Riddle?...
Ask the chemists and the mathematicians.
[Footnote 1: Scarcely a day passes that I do not hear such words
uttered as ingwa, gokuraku, gōshō,--or other words referring to Karma,
heaven, future life, past life, etc. But I have never heard a man or
woman of the people use the word "Nehan;" and whenever I have ventured
to question such about Nirvana, I found that its philosophical meaning
was unknown. On the other hand, the Japanese scholar speaks of Nehan
as the reality,--of heaven, either as a temporary condition or as a
parable.]
[Footnote 2: This astronomical localization of higher conditions
of being, or of other "Buddha-fields," may provoke a smile; but it
suggests undeniable possibilities. There is no absurdity in supposing
that potentialities of life and growth and development really pass,
with nebular diffusion and concentration, from expired systems to
new systems. Indeed, not to suppose this, in our present state of
knowledge, is scarcely possible for the rational mind.]
[Footnote 3: One is reminded by this conception of Mr. Spencer's
beautiful definition of Equanimity:--"Equanimity may be compared to
white light, which, though composed of numerous colors, is colorless;
while pleasurable and painful moods of mind may be compared to the
modifications of light that result from increasing the proportions of
some rays, and decreasing the proportions of others."--_Principles of
Psychology._]
[Footnote 4: The expression "infinite bliss" as synonymous with Nirvana
is taken from the _Questions of King Milinda._]
[Footnote 5: In the Sutra of the Great Decease we find the instance
of a woman reaching this condition:--"The Sister Nanda, O Ananda, by
the destruction of the five bonds that bind people to this world, has
become an inhabitant of the highest heaven,--there to pass entirely
away,--thence never to return."]
[Footnote 6: Different Buddhist systems give different enumerations
of these mysterious powers whereof the Chinese names literally
signify:--(1) Calm--Meditation-outward-pouring-no-obstacle-wisdom
(2) Heaven-Eye-no-obstacle-wisdom; (3) Heaven
Ear-no-obstacle-wisdom;--(4) Other-minds-no-obstacle-wisdom;--(5)
Fornier-States-no-obstacle-wisdom;--(6)
Leak-Extinction-no-obstacle-wisdom.]
[Footnote 7: Beings who have reached the state of Engaku or of Sosatsu
are not supposed capable of retrogression, or of any serious error; but
it is otherwise in lower spiritual states.]
[Footnote 8: See a curious legend in the Vinaya texts,--_Kullavagga,_
V. 8, 2.]
[Footnote 9: This position, it will be observed, is very dissimilar
from that of Hartmann, who holds that "all plurality of individuation
belongs to the sphere of phenomenality." (vol. ii. page 233 of
English translation.) One is rather reminded of the thought of Galton
that human beings "may contribute more or less unconsciously to the
manifestation of a far higher life than our own,--somewhat as the
individual cells of one of the more complex animals contribute to
the manifestation of its higher order of personality." (_Hereditary
Genius,_ p. 361.) Another thought of Galton's, expressed on the same
page of the work just quoted from, is still more strongly suggestive
of the Buddhist concept:--"We must not permit ourselves to consider
each human or other personality as something supernaturally added
to the stock of nature, but rather as a segregation of what already
existed, under a new shape, and as a regular consequence of previous
conditions.... Neither must we be misled by the word 'individuality.'
... We may look upon each individual as something not wholly detached
from its parent-source,--as a wave that has been lifted and shaped by
normal conditions in an unknown and illimitable ocean."
The reader should remember that the Buddhist hypothesis does not imply
either individuality or personality in Nirvana, but simple entity,--not
a spiritual _body,_ in our meaning of the term, but only a divine
consciousness. "Heart," in the sense of divine mind, is a term used
in some Japanese texts to describe such entity. In the _Dai-Nichi Kyō_
Sō (Commentary on the Dai-Nichi Sutra), for example, is the statement
"When all seeds of Karma-life are entirely burnt out and annihilated,
then the _vacuum-pure_ Bodhi-heart is reached." (I may observe that
Buddhist metaphysicians use the term "vacuum-bodies" to describe one
of the high conditions of entity.) The following, from the fifty-first
volume of the work called _Daizō-hō-sū_ will also be found interesting
"By experience the Tathâgata possesses all forms,--forms for multitude
numberless as the dust-grains of the universe.... The Tathâgata gets
himself born in such places as he desires, or in accord with the desire
of others, and there saves [lit., 'carries over'--that is, over the Sea
of Birth and Death] all sentient beings. Wheresoever his will finds an
abiding-point, there is he embodied: this is called Will-Birth Body....
The Buddha makes Law his body, and remains pure as empty space: this is
called Law-Body."]
[Footnote 10: Half of this Buddhist thought is really embodied in
Tennyson's line,--"Boundless inward, in the atom; boundless outward, in
the Whole."]
V
... "All beings that have life shall lay
Aside their complex form,--that aggregation
Of mental and material qualities
That gives them, or in heaven or on earth,
Their fleeting individuality."
_The Book of the Great Decease_.
In every teleological system there are conceptions which cannot bear
the test of modern psychological analysis, and in the foregoing
unfilled outline of a great religious hypothesis there will doubtless
be recognized some "ghosts of beliefs haunting those mazes of verbal
propositions in which metaphysicians habitually lose themselves."
But truths will be perceived also,--grand recognitions of the law of
ethical evolution, of the price of progress, and of our relation to the
changeless Reality abiding beyond all change.
The Buddhist estimate of the enormity of that opposition to moral
progress which humanity must overcome is fully sustained by our
scientific knowledge of the past and perception of the future.
Mental and moral advance has thus far been effected only through
constant struggle against inheritances older than reason or moral
feeling,--against the instincts and the appetites of primitive brute
life. And the Buddhist teaching, that the average man can hope to
leave his worse nature behind him only after the lapse of millions of
future lives, is much more of a truth than of a theory. Only through
millions of births have we been able to reach even this our present
imperfect state; and the dark bequests of our darkest past are still
strong enough betimes to prevail over reason and ethical feeling. Every
future forward pace upon the moral path will have to be taken against
the massed effort of millions of ghostly wills. For those past selves
which priest and poet have told us to use as steps to higher things are
not dead, nor even likely to die for a thousand generations to come:
they are too much alive;--they have still power to clutch the climbing
feet,--sometimes even to fling back the climber into the primeval slime.
Again, in its legend of the Heavens of Desire,--progress through which
depends upon the ability of triumphant virtue to refuse what it has
won,--Buddhism gives us a wonder-story full of evolutional truth.
The difficulties of moral self-elevation do not disappear with the
amelioration of material social conditions;--in our own day they rather
increase. As life becomes more complex, more multiform, so likewise
do the obstacles to ethical advance,--so likewise do the results of
thoughts and acts. The expansion of intellectual power, the refinement
of sensibility, the enlargement of the sympathies, the intensive
quickening of the sense of beauty,--all multiply ethical dangers just
as certainly as they multiply ethical opportunities. The highest
material results of civilization, and the increase of possibilities of
pleasure, exact an exercise of self-mastery and a power of, ethical
balance, needless and impossible in older and lower states of existence.
The Buddhist doctrine of impermanency is the doctrine also of
modern science: either might be uttered in the words of the other.
"Natural knowledge," wrote Huxley in one of his latest and finest
essays, "tends more and more to the conclusion that 'all the choir
of heaven and furniture of the earth' are the transitory forms of
parcels of cosmic substance wending along the road of evolution from
nebulous potentiality,--through endless growths of sun and planet
and satellite,--through all varieties of matter,--through infinite
diversities of life and thought,--possibly through modes of being of
which we neither have a conception nor are competent to form any,--back
to the indefinable latency from which they arose. Thus the most obvious
attribute of the Cosmos is its impermanency."[1]
And, finally, it may be said that Buddhism not only presents remarkable
accordance with nineteenth century thought in regard to the instability
of all integrations, the ethical signification of heredity, the lesson
of mental evolution, the duty of moral progress, but it also agrees
with science in repudiating equally our doctrines of materialism and
of spiritualism, our theory of a Creator and of special creation,
and our belief in the immortality of the soul. Yet, in spite of this
repudiation of the very foundations of Occidental religion, it has been
able to give us the revelation of larger religious possibilities,--the
suggestions of a universal scientific creed nobler than any which
has ever existed. Precisely in that period of our own intellectual
evolution when faith in a personal God is passing away,--when the
belief in an individual soul is becoming impossible,--when the most
religious minds shrink from everything that we have been calling
religion,--when the universal doubt is an ever-growing weight upon
ethical aspiration,--light is offered from the East. There we find
ourselves in presence of an older and a vaster faith,--holding no gross
anthropomorphic conceptions of the immeasurable Reality, and denying
the existence of soul, but nevertheless inculcating a system of morals
superior to any other, and maintaining a hope which no possible future
form of positive knowledge can destroy. Reinforced by the teaching
of science, the teaching of this more ancient faith is that for
thousands of years we have been thinking inside-out and upside-down.
The only reality is One;--all that we have taken for Substance is only
Shadow;--the physical is the unreal;--_and the outer-man is the ghost_.
[Footnote 1: _Evolution and Ethics_.]
X