BUDDHA'S LIFE AND TEACHING.
So far as we can ascertain the conditions of the states on the Ganges in
the sixth century B.C. the population suffered under grievous
oppression. To the capricious nature of the sentences pronounced by the
kings and the cruelty of their punishments were added taxes and
exactions, which must have been severely felt over wide circles. The
sutras tell us that a king who required money received this answer from
his two first ministers: "It is with the land as with grains of sesame;
it produces no oil unless it is pressed, cut, burnt, or pounded."[421]
The arrangement of castes now stamped in all its completeness on the
population of the Ganges; the irrevocable mission apportioned to each
person at his birth; the regulations for expiation and penance, which
the Brahmans had introduced; the enormous amount of daily offerings and
duties; the laws of purification and food, the neglect or breach of
which involved the most serious consequences, unless averted by the most
painful expiations, were serious burdens in addition to the oppression
exercised by the state. If the expiation of offences often unavoidable
was difficult, the most carefully-regulated life, the most pious
fulfilment of all offerings and penances, did not protect men from evil
regenerations. For time consumed the merit of good works, and man was
born again to a new life, _i.e._ to new misery. Thus not even death
brought the end of sorrow; it was not enough to bring to a close a
laborious life; even if after this life a man were not tormented in hell
for unexpiated transgressions, he was born again to ever new sorrows and
pains. One way only was known to the Brahmans by which a man might
possibly escape this fate;--flight from the world; the voluntary
acceptance of the most severe unbroken torture imposed upon the body;
the annihilation of the body and finally of the soul by absorption
through meditation into Brahman. Did a man really arrive at the goal by
this rough way?--did he by inexorable persecution of himself to the
extremest limits become elevated above a new birth, and so above a new
torture of life?
The conception of such endless torment must have pressed the more
heavily upon the people as the hot climate in which they lived naturally
awaked in them the desire for repose, a desire which increased with the
increasing oppression of the state and religious duties, and was
strengthened by the fact that these causes at the same time allowed the
resistance which every healthy and strong nation can make to such
oppressions and demands to slumber. But complaint was inadmissible. All
the misfortune which a man had to bear now and expect in the future was
not an unmerited disaster, but a just ordinance of the righteous
arrangement of the world, the verdict and expression of divine justice
itself. Whether any one was born as a man or an animal, his position and
caste, and the conditions of his birth, the fortune he experienced, were
consequences, the reward or punishment, of actions done in a previous
state of existence; they were the sentences of a justice which none
could escape, of the divine order of the world, to which a man must
submit without murmurs. The Brahmans were right, the world was full of
evils; life was a chain of miseries, and the earth a vale of misery.
Pity and grace were nowhere to be found, only justice and punishment,
only righteous retribution. In past days, indeed, the Aryas had cried to
Varuna to be gracious, to pardon and blot out the offences which men had
committed against the gods, intentionally or involuntarily, from an evil
heart or from weakness and seduction (p. 53). But the theory which the
Brahmans had subsequently elevated to be the highest duty was without
sympathy or pity; it could only allot to every man, in the alternation
of birth and decay, the fruits of his deeds. No doubt the people,
impelled by the necessity to have above them conceivable,
comprehensible, helpful spirits, elevated Vishnu and Çiva from among the
faded and dishonoured forms of the ancient deities to be the protecting
powers of their life in opposition to the god of the Brahmans; but
though these gave rain and increase to the pastures and the fields,
though they cherished kindly feelings towards men, they were powerless
against the punishments after death, against regenerations, or the
existing order of the world, against the merciless justice of the gods,
which recompensed every one inexorably according to his works, and
caused every one to be born again without end to new torments. The old
healthy pleasure in life which would live for a hundred autumns, and
then looked forward to an entrance into the heaven of Yama, and
participation in the joys of that heaven with the company of the
fathers, was past. While all other nations almost without exception
regarded death as the worst of evils, and painfully sought to secure
continuance after death, the Indians were now tortured by the
apprehension that they could not die, that they must live for ever, they
filled with terrors their conception of life after death, of the endless
series of regenerations to a perpetually new life.
Was there really no mercy on earth or in heaven, no grace, no means of
release from these never-ending torments? Was the long series of
sacrifices with their endless prescripts for every step, the multitude
of rules of purification, the performance of penance for every stain,
absolutely indispensable if the Brahmans themselves allowed that this
whole sanctity of works merely bestowed merits of a second rank, and
that the treasure even of good works could be exhausted by time? Was
this arrangement of castes and the observance of their duties absolutely
irrevocable? The Brahmans required the study of the Veda not only from
their own order but also from the Kshatriyas and the Vaiçyas. Did not
the book of the law contain the requirement (p. 184) that every Dvija,
after satisfying the duties of his order, and of the father of a family
(Grihastha) should become an eremite (Vanaprastha) and penitent
(Sannyasin)? Had not the Sankhya, the doctrine of Kapila, called in
question the merit of the sacrifice and the customs of purification?
Asceticism, it is true, again removed the distinctions of the orders;
the power of penance, the mortification of the pleasures of sense and
the body, carried back the members of the three upper orders in a
similar way by sanctification, through a greater or less application of
penance, into Brahman; the legends and the Epos showed by the example of
Viçvamitra that a man could rise by the power of penance from a
Kshatriya to a Brahman. Hence all Dvijas, in strictly logical sequence,
could reach supreme salvation by mortification of the body; and it was
easy from these premisses to draw the conclusion that little or nothing
depended on descent; that the degree of asceticism and the depth of
meditation was everything. If this was the case with sanctification by
works; if birth in any one of the three higher orders did not prevent a
man from attaining the highest sanctification by asceticism, could the
castes be really different races, different emanations from Brahman, and
distinct forms of his being? Was the nucleus of the system, the doctrine
of the world-soul, so firmly established as the Brahmans maintained? Had
not the philosophy of the Brahmans already passed from scholasticism to
heterodoxy? Did it not deny, in the Sankhya doctrine, the authority of
the Veda, the existence of the gods, and the Brahmanic world-soul? As we
have seen, the teaching of Kapila left only two existences; nature and
the individual spirit.
In the north-east of the land of the Koçalas, on the spurs of the
Himalayas, by the river Rohini, which falls into the Çaravati (Rapti), a
tributary of the Sarayu, in the neighbourhood of the modern Gorakhpur,
lay a small principality named Kapilavastu, after the metropolis.[422]
It was the kingdom of the race of the Çakyas, who are said to have
migrated from Potala in the delta of the Indus into the land of the
Koçalas. Like the kings of the Koçalas the race traced its descent to
Ikshvaku, the son of Manu. And just as great priests of the ancient
times were woven into the list of the ancestors of the kings of the
Bharatas, so the Çakyas of Kapilavastu are said to have reckoned
Gautama, one of the great saints (p. 28), among their forefathers; they
called themselves Gautamas after the family derived from this priest.
At the present time a Rajaputra family in the district, in which the
Çakyas reigned, call themselves Gautamiyas.[423] To the house of the
Çakyas belonged king Çuddhodana, who sat on the throne of Kapilavastu in
the second half of the seventh century B.C.
Of the son born to this prince in 623 B.C. the legend tells us that he
received the name Sarvathasiddha (Siddhartha), _i.e._ perfect in all
things, and that Asita, a penitent from the Himalayas, announced to the
parents that a very high vocation lay before the boy. The young prince
was brought up to succeed to the throne; he was instructed in the use of
arms, and in all that it became one of his rank to know. After
overcoming all the youths of the family of the Çakyas in the contest in
his sixteenth year, his father chose Yaçodhara as his wife, and beside
her he had two other wives and a number of concubines, with whom he
lived in luxury and delight in his palaces. Thus he lived till his 29th
year, when he saw, while on a journey to a pleasure-garden, an old man
with bald head, bent body, and trembling limbs. On a second journey he
met one incurably diseased, covered with leprosy and sores, shattered by
fever, without any guide or assistance; on a third he saw by the wayside
a corpse eaten by worms and decaying. He asked himself what was the
value of pleasure, youth, and joy if they were subject to sickness, age,
and death? He fell into reflection on the evils which fill the world,
and resolved to abandon his palace, his wives, and the son who had just
been born to him, and retire into solitude, that he might inquire into
the cause of the evils which torment mankind, and meditate on their
alleviation.
The legends tell us that Çuddhodana opposed this design; he would not
allow his son, the Kshatriya and successor to his throne, to depart, and
commanded festivals to be held to retain him. Siddhartha is surrounded
by song, dance, and play, which are to enliven and change his mood. But
in the night he mounted his horse and left the palace secretly,
accompanied by one servant. After riding all night towards the east, he
reached the land of the Mallas (on the spurs of the Himalayas, upon the
Hiranyavati); there, in the neighbourhood of Kuçinagara, the metropolis
of the Mallas (some 150 miles to the north-east of Patna), he gave in
the morning his attire to his servant and sent him back with the horses.
He retained only the yellow garment which he was wearing (yellow is the
royal colour in India), and cut his hair short, in order to live
henceforth as a mendicant. After concealing himself for seven days he
passed on, begging his way to Vaiçali (to the south of Kuçinagara) and
from Vaiçali down the Hiranyavati to the Ganges; beyond the Ganges he
turned his course to the metropolis of Magadha, Rajagriha, near which
were the settlements and schools of the most famous Brahmans.[424] Here
he quickly learned all that the chiefs of the schools, Arada Kalama,
Rudraka, and others could teach him, and understood their doctrines; but
they could not adequately explain to him the origin of the sorrows of
men, nor give him any assistance.
Dissatisfied with their instruction and doctrines Siddhartha resolved to
retire wholly from the world, and live in the forest without fire, in
order to penetrate to the truth by the most severe penances, the most
profound meditations. He now called himself Çakyamuni, _i.e._ anchorite
of the family of the Çakyas, went to the southern Magadha, and there,
near the village of Uruvilva on the Nairanjana (an affluent of the
Phalgu) he devoted himself to the most severe exercises. Seated without
motion he endures heat and cold, storm and rain, hunger and thirst; he
eats each day no more than a grain of rice or sesame. For six years he
continues these mortifications, and still the ultimate truths refuse to
disclose themselves to his reflections; at length he seemed to himself
to observe that hunger weakened the power of his mind, and resolved to
take moderate nourishment, honey, milk, and rice, which were brought to
him by the maidens of Uruvilva.[425] Then he went to Gaya in the
neighbourhood of Uruvilva, and there sank under a fig-tree into the
deepest meditation. About the last watch in the night, when he had once
more in spirit overcome all the temptations of the world, fear, and
desire, when he had found that longing could never be laid to rest, only
increased with satisfaction, as thirst that is quenched by drinking salt
water--when he had called to mind his earlier births, and gathered up
the whole world in one survey, revelation and complete illumination were
vouchsafed to him.
For forty-nine or fifty days, as the legends assure us, Siddartha
considered in his own mind whether he should publish this revelation,
since it was difficult to understand, and men were in the bonds of
ignorance and sin. At last he determined to proclaim to the world the
law of salvation. When he had explained it to two merchants, travelling
with their caravans through the forest of Gaya, he took his way first to
Varanasi (Benares) on the Ganges (588 B.C.). In the deer-park near this
city he preached for the first time, and though several of the hearers
were astonished and said, "The king's son has lost his reason," he won
over the first five disciples for his doctrine.[426] From this time the
'Enlightened' (Buddha), as the legends call him after the complete
revelation was vouchsafed to him,[427] wandered as a mendicant, with a
jar in his hand for collecting alms, through the districts of India,
from Ujjayini (Ozene) at the foot of the Western Vindhyas[428] as far as
Champa on the Ganges, the metropolis of the Angas, in order to proclaim
everywhere the truth and the law of salvation. "Many," so Buddha
preached, "impelled by distress, seek refuge in the mountains and
forests, in settlements and under sacred trees. This is not the refuge
which liberates from pain. He that comes to me for refuge will learn the
four highest truths: pain, the origin of pain, the annihilation of pain,
and the way that leads to the annihilation of pain. Whoever knows these
truths is in possession of the highest refuge."[429]
Twelve years had elapsed since Buddha left his paternal city
Kapilavastu, when at his father's invitation he returned thither; and
his father, his kindred, the whole family of the Çakyas and many of his
countrymen became converts to his doctrine. Surrounded by the most eager
of his disciples, he proceeded onward, and was among them, as the
legends say, "like the bull among the cows, like the elephant among his
young ones, like the moon in the lunar houses, the physician among his
patients."[430] Varanasi in the land of the Kaçis, Mithila in the land
of the Videhas, Çravasti (to the north of Ayodhya) in the land of the
Koçalas, Mathura in the land of the Çurasenas, Kauçambi in the land of
the Bharatas, were the chief scenes of his activity.
Buddha was deeply penetrated by the conviction that the earth was a vale
of misery, and the world nothing but a "mass of pain."[431] The sorrows
which torture mankind excited his deepest compassion; he would fain help
men in their distress. Above all he was oppressed with the thought that
sorrows do not end with this life; that man is ever born again to new
misery, driven without rest through an eternal alternation of birth and
death, in order to find new sorrows without end, but no repose. He was
tortured by this "restless revolution of the wheel of the world," by the
torments of resurrection from another womb to new and greater pains;
more eagerly than any other, Buddha sought repose, peace, and death
without any resurrection. With the utmost eagerness he plunged into the
Brahmanic theory and speculation; it did not satisfy him; in it, and by
it, he found no alleviation, no end of the evil; he submitted to the
severest asceticism of the Brahmans; it crushed his spirit without
giving him rest. He therefore turned from the orthodox systems to the
heterodox doctrine of Kapila. Even that failed to satisfy him; but he
followed still further the path which it pointed out, in order to
discover the liberation from evil which he sought so earnestly. At last
he believed himself to be possessed of the delivering truth.
With the adherents of the Sankhya doctrine Buddha believed himself to
have ascertained that neither the gods nor a supreme all-pervading
world-soul exists. He also, in opposition to the orthodox doctrine,
makes the individual soul his starting-point, and the multitude of
individual spirits, which alone have true existence and reality. But if
the doctrine of Kapila found the liberation from nature and the body in
the fact that the soul attains the consciousness of her independent
existence in opposition to nature, discovers her own absolute position
as opposed to the body, and merely contemplates the latter, Buddha
struck out a far more radical way for the liberation from evil and the
freedom of the soul.
Buddha first establishes the fact that evil exists; then he inquires why
it exists and must always exist; he attempts to prove that it can and
ought to be annihilated, and finally he occupies himself with the means
of this annihilation.[432] He who will ascertain truth and acquire
freedom from evil, has first to convince himself that evil exists. Evil
is birth, sickness, the weakness of age, the restlessness and torment of
our projects and efforts, the inability to attain what we strive for,
the separation from that which we love, the contact with that which we
do not love. In this world of existence all is vanity. Happiness is
followed by misfortune; even the happiness and power of kings flows away
more rapidly than running water.[433] Mutability is the last and worst
evil; it is the fire which consumes the three worlds.[434] Birth is
changeable and worthless, for it leads to death; youth, for it becomes
age; health, for it is subject to sickness. All that exists, passes
away. This ceaseless change is bound up with pain and sorrow. Childhood
suffers the pain of weakness; youth is impelled by desires which cannot
be fulfilled, and which cause pain if unfulfilled. Age suffers the pain
of decay and sickness, and of death; with death begins a new life
through regeneration to the same or even greater torments. To this evil
of mutability, and consequently to pain, all living creatures without
exception are subject. Evil and pain are universal; men are destined to
lose what is dearest to them; and animals are destined to be eaten by
each other. From the knowledge that evil exists, that all living
creatures are subject to evil, follows the truth that men must strive to
liberate themselves from evil.
After setting forth his problem in this formal and minutely systematic
manner, Buddha goes still further. If man will free himself from pain,
pain must be annihilated. In order to attain this end the cause of it
must be discovered. This cause is desire (_trishna_). Desire is the
passion which man feels to attain content and satisfaction, the
ever-renewed impulse to have pleasant sensations and avoid the
unpleasant, which is sometimes satisfied, but more frequently the
reverse.[435] If pain is to be annihilated, desire must be annihilated.
The cause of desire is sensation, and if we inquire into sensation we
find on reflection that it is something transitory. When we have the
sensation of what is pleasant, the sensation of what is unpleasant does
not exist any longer, and _vice versâ_; sensation therefore is subject
to annihilation, and in consequence is not permanent, nor has it any
real existence. Sensation is, as the Buddhists say, "empty and without
substance."[436] It does not belong to the nature of the soul. As soon
as we can say of sensation or of any other object, "I am not this, this
is not my soul," we are free from it; and when we have attained this
knowledge, no sensation whatever, nor conception, nor perception,
exercises any charm over man.[437] If this knowledge is acquired, man is
in a position to "unbind" himself from sensation, and as soon as he has
unbound himself from sensation he has liberated himself from it; he
feels neither inclination nor disinclination; neither restlessness nor
pain, nor despair;[438] his heart no longer clings to the "causes of
content, which were at the same time the causes of discontent, more
closely than drops of rain to the leaf of the lotus."[439] If we go
further in this direction and instruct ourselves by meditation that even
the senses, eyes, ears, etc., are perishable,[440] that the body is
subject to birth and death, and consequently that it is something
transitory and without permanence, we are freed from the body and
henceforth merely contemplate it. From this point of view we perceive
that the body of a man is his executioner; and in the senses we
recognise desolated villages, in the things of the external world, the
enemies and plunderers which perpetually attack men, disquiet and ravage
them.[441] Whatever a man has hitherto felt of dependence and
inclination, of care and submissiveness to the body; whatever content
and satisfaction he has felt through the body in the body,--is now
annihilated by the knowledge that the body is nothing real, that it is
not the soul. When we have reached this point, pain is removed, because
the cause of it is removed; man is no longer dazzled by desire, and
therefore no longer distressed; he is now lord of his senses and lord of
himself. Freed from all bonds, from all inclinations to, and dependence
on, the world, he feels the happiness and joy of repose.[442]
Thus far Buddha has agreed with the doctrine of Kapila that the soul
must be separated and set free from the body, in his results, if the
mode of development be different; he now proceeds in his speculations
far beyond the Sankhya system. He was not content to have discovered the
path of liberation from the torments of sensuality, of the body, and the
external world; he asked further, How can man be raised above the
necessity of perpetually renewing this process of the liberation of the
soul from the body after new regenerations? If the Sankhya doctrine
established nature and matter as an eternal potency beside the plurality
of individual souls, and derived all existence from the creative power
of matter, Buddha rather saw the creative power, the basis of all
existence, in the individual souls, in the "breathing beings," and from
this view arrived at a different, more thorough means of liberation.
According to the legends the way to this liberation was revealed to
Buddha in the night under the fig-tree of Gaya, when in the deepest
meditation he represented to himself the web of regenerations, how many
and what dwellings he had inhabited previously, and how many had been
the dwellings of other creatures; how he and the rest of the world lived
through a hundred thousand millions of existences--when he called to
mind the periods of destruction and the periods of regeneration.
"There," he said, "was I, in that place; I bore this name; I was of this
tribe and that family, and this caste; I lived so many years; I
experienced this happiness and that misfortune.[443] After my death I
was born again; I lived through these fortunes, and here, at last, I
have again come to the light. Is there then no means of escaping this
world, which is born, changes, and dies, and again grows up? Are there
no limits to this accumulation of sorrows?" At last, attaining to
immobility in thought about the last watch, just before the break of
day, he once more collected his powers and asked himself:[444] What is
the cause of age, death, and all pain? Birth. What is the cause of
birth? Existence. What is the cause of existence? Attachment to
existence. What is the cause of this attachment? Desire. What is the
cause of desire? Sensation. Of sensation what is the cause? The contact
of a man with things excites in him this or that sensation, sensation
generally.[445] What is the cause of contact? The senses. What is the
cause of the senses? Name and shape, _i.e._ the individual existence.
What is the cause of this? Consciousness. And of consciousness, what?
The existing not-knowledge,[446] i.e. the intellectual capacity; this is
no other than the soul itself. In order to annihilate pain, birth must
be annihilated; the annihilation of birth requires the annihilation of
existence; this requires the destruction of attachment to existence; and
to accomplish this destruction desire and sensation must be annihilated;
and this again requires the annihilation of contact with the world. But
as contact with the world rests on the receptivity of the senses, which
in turn rests on the individual existence, this existence rests on
consciousness, and consciousness on the not-knowledge, _i.e._ on the
possibility of not-knowledge in the individual spirit, on the
intellectual state; not-knowledge must in the end be annihilated. This
takes place by the true knowledge, which shows that the sensations of
men are only of a transitory nature, illusions, not belonging to his
true being; thus it is that the individual is loosed from pain and the
body, or merely contemplates it as it contemplates all existence; and
thus dependence on existence and desire are softened or removed. The
same result is also attained by the annihilation of not-knowledge as the
basis of individual existence, by the quenching of the individual, by
Nirvana, _i.e._ the extinction, the "blowing away" by which the
individual "falls into the void," and cannot be born again. From the
annihilation of the basis of existence follows the annihilation of
existence; it cannot arise again when the basis is destroyed.
Though this series of causes and effects may first have received the
form in which we have it in the schools of the adherents of Buddha, the
nucleus belongs beyond a doubt to the founder of the doctrine. It shows
sufficiently with what dialectical consistency--though proceeding like
all the products of the Indian mind from fantastic hypotheses, and
coloured with fantastic elements, so that sequence of time is often
taken for the relation of cause and effect--Buddha attempted to
penetrate to final causes and ultimate aims. Evil is existence
generally. If evil is to be removed, existence must be removed, and not
existence only but the roots of it. This proposition is the leading
motive in his reasoning. He keeps steadily to the logical formula that
all existence is the operation of a cause, and consequently existence
can only be destroyed when the cause of it is destroyed. The nucleus of
his argument is: Whence do men come? They arise out of their nature,
which is the existing not-knowing, or, as we should say, the substratum
of knowing, the intellectual capacity. Where do men go in death? This
intellectual basis is compelled by its own nature to assume ever new
forms, to put on a new robe from the material of nature or the elements.
How can the soul, the intellectual capacity, be checked in this? By
self-annihilation.
Here Buddha found himself at the most difficult problem of Indian
speculation, which failed to find an internal transition from not-being
to being, from being to not-being, so that in it the principles always
remain the same, and cause and effect are equally eternal. Hence in
order to be consistent, he must seek the solution of his problem, the
cessation of the regenerations, in the annihilation of the cause of
these regenerations; and this cause was in his view the intellectual
capacity. As the soul is first set free from sensation, and then from
the body, so man must finally be set free from the soul, the self, the
_Ego_, by destroying the basis and possibility of this; while the
adherents of the Sankhya doctrine merely separated the soul from the
body, merely looked on at the revolution of the wheel of nature; and the
Brahmans would plunge the soul in Brahman. At a later time a great deal
of controversy arose as to what Buddha meant by Nirvana, and persons of
great eminence in the Buddhist church have had recourse to the
explanation that he alone knows what Nirvana is who finds himself in
that state. Yet from the process and tendency of Buddha's philosophy, as
well as from the most ancient definitions, it is sufficiently clear what
condition, what results, were meant to be attained by Nirvana. The most
ancient explanations term it, "the cessation of thought, when its causes
are suppressed:" they denote it as a condition, "in which nothing
remains of that which constitutes existence."[447] With the
impossibility of feeling impressions, of knowing anything, and therefore
of desiring anything, the being of the individual also ceases,
according to Buddha's view, and it was the extinction of this at which
he aimed. In Nirvana, according to the older legends, nothing remains
but "emptiness;" it is frequently compared with "the exhaustion of a
lamp when it goes out."[448] But how this condition is brought about we
are not told; we only know that all contact, external or internal, with
the world must be removed.[449] When every distinct conception, and even
everything that may give rise to such a conception, had been avoided;
when a man had put aside every thought, and every excitement of the
spirit, he ought to succeed in destroying the thinking principle within
him. The man of knowledge has discovered that all which is, is
worthless; that nothing exists really and essentially; he has broken
through the shells of deception and ignorance. He has diverted and
liberated his feeling from these frivolities, and now passes into the
condition in which he has nothing more to think of, nothing more to
feel, and consequently nothing more to desire; that is, he has attained
a state in which feeling and thoughts are extinguished, and continue
extinguished. If any feeling or conception remains in this condition,
the _Ego_ in Nirvana would feel peace and joy at the thought that
nothing any longer existed, that itself ceased to exist. Thus it becomes
clear what was the object sought in Nirvana, and we cannot have any
doubt that this attempt at annihilation, if made in earnest, must
practically lead to the same results as the absorption of the Brahmans
in Brahman--that it caused men to become dull, stupid, and
brutalised.[450]
Buddha was of opinion that through this series of thoughts he had
discovered the final causes, the absolute truth as well as absolute
liberation. When he has arrived at the final ground of existence, the
man of meditation can say to himself, according to the legends: "The
dreadful night of error is taken from the soul, the sun of knowledge has
risen,[451] the gates of the false path which lead to existences filled
with misery are closed.[452] I am on the further shore; the pure way to
heaven is opened; I have entered upon the way of Nirvana.[453] On this
way are dried up the ocean of blood and of tears, the mountains of human
bones are broken through, and the army of death is annihilated, as an
elephant throws down a hut of reeds.[454] He who follows this path
without faltering, escapes from pain, from mutability, from the changes
of the world, and the wheel of revolution, the regenerations. He can
boast: 'I have done my duty; I have annihilated existence for myself. I
cannot be born again; I am free; I shall see no other existence after
this.'"[455] An old formula of faith, which is often found under
pictures of Buddha, runs thus: "The beings which proceed from a cause,
their cause he who pointed out the way (Tathagata) has explained, and
what prevents their operation the great Çramana has also
explained."[456]
Had Buddha contented himself with the results of his speculation, the
only consequence of his doctrine would have been this; he would have
added one more to the philosophical systems of the Indians; he would
have founded a new philosophical system, a subdivision of the heterodox
Sankhya doctrine. The question was really the same, whether the soul was
destroyed when in the one case it was plunged in Brahman, and in the
other annihilated by Nirvana; whether those who sought after liberation
had to become masters of their senses like the Brahmans, or to release
themselves from sensation and the body and existence like Buddha. For
both methods the profoundest meditation was necessary as a means; the
final manipulations and results were mystical on both sides; the only
difference was that the logical consistency of Buddha was more simple
and acute, the dialectics of the orthodox system more varied and
fantastic; the penances of the Brahmans were severe and painful, while
Buddha contented himself with a moderate asceticism. From his disciples
who would attain the highest liberation he demanded nothing more than
that they should renounce the world, _i.e._ should devote themselves to
a life of chastity and poverty. Then like their master they must shave
head and chin, while the Brahman penitents wore a tail of hair, put on a
robe of yellow colour, such as Buddha wore,--a garment of sewn rags was
best--take a jar in their hands for the collection of alms, and go round
the country begging, after the example of Buddha, in order to point out
to people the way of salvation. Only the rainy season might be spent in
retirement, in common discussion on the highest truths, or in lonely
meditation on the way of Nirvana.
This new mode of asceticism would not have gone beyond the limits of the
school, had not Buddha added a moral for the whole world to his
philosophy for the initiated. As we have in the Sankhya system a kind of
rationalistic reaction, after the Indian measure it is true, against the
flighty theorems of the Brahmans, so in the practice of Buddha the
prominent features are more simple, healthy, and sensible. The Sankhya
system places liberation essentially in the release of the spirit from
nature by the power of knowledge; according to Buddha's doctrine
liberation must be sought not only in the path of knowledge but also in
the will and temper. When the temper is rendered peaceful; when desire
ceases, and the withering of the soul comes to an end, then knowledge
can begin.[457] In this repose of the passions, which arise from egoism,
there is a very definite practical and moral feature, of great
importance for development and edification. Buddha allowed that every
one could not attain the highest liberation by the mode of asceticism
and meditation which he taught; but he did not therefore leave the
people to their fate, like those who preceded him in philosophy; he did
not, like these, point to the sacrifices, customs, purifications, and
penances. Even for those who were not in a position to liberate
themselves wholly from the misery of the earth and the torments of
regenerations, by entering into the way of illumination, were to have
their pains and sorrows alleviated as far as possible. The desire to do
away with the passions, and with selfishness, the lively sympathy, the
earnest effort to alleviate the sorrows of men, from which Buddha's
philosophy starts, are also the source of his ethics, which are to be
preached to the whole nation. As contact with the world is the chief
cause of desire, and therefore of the pain and distress which come upon
men, the main object is to come into contact with the world as little as
possible, to live as far as may be in peace and quietness. The
requirement of a still and quiet life is the first principle of the
ethics of Buddha. Even the layman must bring repose into his senses. He
must moderate his impulses and passions, his wishes and his desires, if
he cannot annihilate them. He must guard against the excitement of
passions, for these are the chief cause of the pains which torment
mankind. He must be chaste and continent within the limits of reason; he
must drink no intoxicating liquor; at the accustomed hours he must take
the necessary food (otherwise the belly causes a multitude of
sins[458]); he must clothe himself simply. He must not attempt to amass
much silver and gold, or waste the property which he has, in order to
procure enjoyment. In a word, "he must turn his back on pain, ambition,
and satisfaction."[459] The evils which are unavoidable in spite of a
simple, moderate, and passionless life, he must bear with patience, for
in this way they become most tolerable. Injustice coming from others
must also be received with patience; ill-treatment, even mutilation and
death, must be borne quietly, without hatred towards those who inflict
them: "mutilation liberates a man from members which are perishable,
execution from this filthy body, which dies." Those who treat us in this
manner are not to be hated, because all that comes upon a man is a
punishment or reward for actions done in this or a previous life.[460]
Though Buddha adheres to the conception of the Brahmans, which had long
been the common property of the nation, that a man's lot in this world
is the consequence of actions done in an earlier existence, he could
nevertheless point to further alleviations of the evils of life than
those attained by moderation and patience. All men without regard to
caste, birth, and nation, form in Buddha's view a great society of
suffering in the earthly vale of misery; it is their duty not mutually
to add other sorrows to those already imposed upon them by their
existence; on the contrary, they ought mutually to alleviate the burden
of unavoidable misery. As every man ought to attempt to lessen the
pains of existence for himself, so it is also his duty to lessen those
of his fellows. In Buddha's doctrine not our own sorrows but the sorrows
of our fellow-men are a cause for distress.[461] From this principle
Buddha derived the commands of regard, assistance, sympathy, mercy,
love, brotherly kindness towards all men. If, according to the doctrine
of the Brahmans, and of Buddha also, there was no love, no grace, and no
pity in heaven, they are henceforth to exist on earth. The love which
Buddha preaches is essentially sympathy; it arises from another source
than the love of Christianity. It is not in Buddhism the highest
commandment for its own sake alone: it is not the liberating, active,
creative, ethical power, which not only removes selfishness from the
negative side, but also positively transforms the natural into the moral
man, and exalts the family, community, and state into moral communities.
In Buddhism love wishes above all things to lament with others, and by
helpful communion to make life more endurable; it is simply the means to
alleviate the sorrows of the world. Hence Buddha commands us to be
without selfishness towards all men, to spend nothing on ourselves that
is intended for another. To speak hard words to a fellow-man is a great
sin; no one is to be injured by scornful speeches.[462] What can be done
must be done for the amelioration of a fellow-man and the promotion of
his prosperity. A man must be liberal towards his relations and friends;
gentle towards his servants; he must give alms without any intermission,
and practise works of mercy;[463] he must provide nourishment for the
poor; and must take care of the sick and alleviate their sorrows. He
must plant wholesome herbs, trees, and groves, especially on the roads,
that the poor and the pilgrims may find nourishment and shade; he must
dig wells for them, receive travellers hospitably, for that is a sacred
duty, and erect inns for them.[464] If the Brahmans are cautioned
against the killing of animals, and the eating of flesh is restricted
among them as much as possible (p. 168), Buddha is still more strict in
this respect. Nothing that has life is to be put to death, neither man
nor animal; pain is not to be inflicted on any living creature; a man
must have sympathy with the sufferings even of animals, and tend such as
are old and weak.
Consistent in his attempt to discover the alleviation of pain in the
heart and mind of man, Buddha remits even the sins of commission by
internal change and improvement of mind. If a man has committed a sin of
thought, word, or act,[465] he must repent and acknowledge it before his
co-religionists, and those who have attained a higher degree of
liberation. Repentance and confession diminish or blot out the sin,
according to the degree of their depth and sincerity, and not painful
penances and expiations, which only increase the torments of the body,
the thing which we desire to diminish.[466] No one is to make a parade
of good works; these he should conceal, and publish his failings.[467]
Thus the ethics of Buddha are comprehended in the three principles of
chastity, patience, and mercy, _i.e._ of a moderate and passionless
life, of ready and willing submission to any annoyance or unavoidable
evil, and finally of sympathy and active assistance for our fellow-men.
An old formula tells us: "The eschewing of evil, the doing of good, the
taming of our own thoughts, this is the doctrine of Buddha."[468]
The legends tell us of a great disputation held at Çravasti (the
metropolis of the Koçalas), in which Buddha was victorious over six holy
penitents of the Brahmans; the leading Brahman even took his own life in
disgust and disappointment. As the legends relate, the Brahmans were
afraid that Buddha's doctrine would diminish their honour and
importance, that they would receive fewer gifts and presents; they were
distressed that Buddha allowed even the lowest and impure castes to
enter the order of penitents. According to the statement of the sutras
the Brahmans caused the communities to inflict fines on such persons as
listened to Buddha's words, and from the kings of certain districts they
procured edicts forbidding his doctrine. Though the Brahmans may have
succeeded in prejudicing one or two princes against Buddha and his
doctrine, in other regions of India, not to mention his own home, he did
not miss the effectual protection of the secular arm. From the very
first year of the public appearance of Buddha, Bimbisara king of Magadha
is said to have given him his protection and support, and to have
assigned to his disciples the Bamboo-garden, near the metropolis
Rajagriha, for their residence. The king of the Koçalas also,
Prasenajit, supported Buddha, and his metropolis, Çravasti, became a
favourite residence of Buddha in the rainy season, a centre of the new
doctrine, to the north of the Ganges, as Rajagriha was on the south of
the river. Lastly, the legends speak of Vatsa, the king of the Bharatas,
who resided at Kauçambi, and Pradyota of Ujjayini, and Rudrayana of
Roruka, a region which apparently lay to the east of Magadha, among the
protectors of Buddha. Towards the princes Buddha's conduct was prudent
and circumspect; he did not impart to any of their magistrates or
servants the initiation of the beggar; he adopted none of them into the
community of the initiated without the express sanction of the
king.[469]
On the people his appearance and disputations with the Brahmans could
hardly make any other impression than that he also was one of the
philosophising penitents who wandered through the lands of the Ganges,
teaching and begging, with or without disciples.[470] If the Brahmans
persecuted Buddha, they called out to them: What would ye have?--he is a
mendicant like yourselves! Buddha is said to have suffered the most
severe persecution, when past his seventieth year, from Devadatta, a
near relation. Even in youth the eager rival of Siddartha in martial
exercises, Devadatta is said to have been filled with cruel envy by the
success of Buddha's teaching. So he determined to appear as a teacher in
Buddha's place, and for this object he united himself with Ajataçatru,
the son of Bimbisara of Magadha. The latter was to murder his father,
the protector of Buddha; Devadatta desired to assassinate Buddha
himself, and then the two, by mutual support, would hold the first
place. Devadatta assembled 500 disciples; Ajataçatru, in the year 551
B.C., dethroned his father, and according to the legends of the
Buddhists caused him to die of starvation in a dungeon. After the death
of his protector the Enlightened was to perish also. From the top of the
vulture mountain near Rajagriha, Devadatta hurls a stone on Buddha as he
passes by underneath; but he merely wounded him slightly on the toes; in
vain is an elephant maddened with palm wine let loose upon Buddha, the
raging animal kneels down before him. To escape these persecutions
Buddha leaves Magadha and turns to Çravasti. Devadatta pursues him, in
order to attack him afresh there, and destroy him by the poisoned nails
of his fingers; but when he approaches Buddha he sinks into hell, while
king Ajataçatru is converted, and from a persecutor of Buddha becomes a
zealous protector of his doctrine.[471]
This legend is obviously told in order to glorify the victorious
sanctity of Buddha, nevertheless it contains a certain nucleus of
history. At a very early time there was a division among the adherents
of Buddha; the author and leader of this division was called Devadatta.
Even in the seventh century A.D. there were monasteries in India which
followed the doctrine and rules of Devadatta. Among the eight disciples
of Buddha, according to the legends, Çariputra and Maudgalyayana, young
Brahmans of the village of Nalanda near Rajagriha, took the first place.
After these the sutras mention Kaçyapa a Brahman, Upali a Çudra, who had
been a barber, _i.e._ who had carried on one of the lowest, most impure,
and contemptible occupations before he followed Buddha, and two nephews
of Buddha of the race of Çakya, Anuruddha and Ananda. Ananda is said to
have accompanied Buddha for twenty-five years without interruption; to
"have heard the most, and kept the best what he heard." After these,
Nanda, a step-brother of Buddha, and Buddha's own son, Rahula, are
mentioned in the first rank.
It was not the favour or dislike of princes, nor the speculative power
of his doctrine, nor the devotion of his nearest scholars, which
procured a reception for Buddha's doctrine. On the contrary, the
success of Buddha rests precisely on the fact that his teaching is not
restricted to doctrine, nor to a school. He ventured to step out of the
circle of the Brahmans, and the learned in the Veda, beyond the lonely
life in the forest; he was bold enough to break through the limitations
imposed upon instruction by tradition and law. He did not, like the
Brahmanic teacher, hold sittings with his pupils, at which they alone
were present; he spoke in the open market place, and addressed his words
not only to the Dvijas, but to the Çudras and Chandalas also--an
unheard-of event: for this purpose he speaks the language of the people,
not Sanskrit, the language of the Brahmanas and the learned; he preached
in a popular style, while the doctrines of the Brahmans, set forth in
the formulas of the schools, must have remained unintelligible to the
people, even if repeated in their language. With the people Buddha dwelt
far more on his ethics than on his metaphysics, though he did not
exclude the latter, and his ethical lectures in each case developed the
principle in application to the particular instance.[472] In other
respects his method of teaching must have been the most effective which
could be applied in India, unless we are deceived by the legends. By
means of the complete illumination vouchsafed to Buddha, he saw through
the web of regenerations. For every man he deduced the circumstances of
his present life, his good or evil fortune, from the virtues and sins of
a previous existence. To a man whose eyes had been put out by the order
of a king he revealed the fact that in a previous existence he had torn
out the eyes of many gazelles; but as he had also done good deeds in
that life he had been born again in a good family, with a handsome
exterior.[473] He told another that in a previous existence he had
killed an anchorite, and for this he had already suffered punishment in
hell for several thousand years; he would also lose his head in this
life, and would suffer the same misfortune for four hundred successive
existences.[474]
However effective Buddha's method may have been, it was the tendency of
his doctrine which could not fail sooner or later to open the hearts of
the people. The lower castes were subject to the ill treatment and
exactions of the state, to the haughty pride of the Brahmans; they were
pressed into the unalterable arrangement of the castes, and thus branded
by law and custom, they were exposed to the severest oppression. The
doctrine of morals was resolved into the observance of the duties of
caste, into the endless series of offerings and sacrifice, purifications
and expiations; thus it became degraded into an artificial and painful
sanctification by works, which no one could ever satisfy. Religion was
lost in a confused medley of gods and magic on the one hand, and of
obscure and unintelligible speculation on the other. In opposition to
these circumstances, requirements, and doctrines, Buddha declared that
no one, not even the lowest and most contemptible castes, were excluded
from hearing and finding the truth; that alleviation of pain and rest,
salvation and liberation, could be acquired by any one. Instead of the
observance of the duties of caste he required the brotherly love of all
men; in opposition to distorted ethics he restores its due rights to
natural feeling. The sacrifice and sanctification by works of the
Brahmans is replaced by the taming of the passions, and sympathy, by
the fulfilment of simple duties, painful penances by easy asceticism,
by the plain morality of patience and quietism; the Veda and gods of the
Brahmans by a theory at any rate more intelligible, accompanied by the
doctrine that even without this theory every one of his own heart and
will could enter upon the way of salvation, and by such conduct
alleviate his fortune in this and the following courses of life, while
the initiated could at once force their way to death without
regeneration. Any man could assume the yellow robe if he vowed to live
in poverty and chastity, and wander through the land as a mendicant, a
mode of obtaining a livelihood which is not difficult in India.
If the doctrine of the Brahmans had banished mercy out of heaven, it had
reappeared on earth in the "Enlightened," the "pointer of the way," who
met the pride and haughtiness of the Brahmans with gentleness and
humility; who showed sympathetic pity for the lowest and poorest, for
all the weary and heavy-laden;[475] who in the midst of oppressed
nations taught how unavoidable evils could be borne most easily; how
they could be alleviated by mutual help; who called on all to ameliorate
their lot by their own power, and considered it the highest duty to
obtain this amelioration for ourselves and provide it for others.
According to Buddha's view the castes must fall to the ground. There was
no world-soul from which all creatures emanated, and therefore the
distinctions which rested on the succession of these emanations did not
exist. In the first instance, however, he attacked the castes from the
point of view that the body can only have a subordinate value. "He who
looks closely at the body," he said, "will find no difference between
the body of the slave and the body of the prince. The best soul can
dwell in the worst body." "The body must be valued or despised in
respect of the spirit which is in it. The virtues do not inquire after
the castes."[476] But he also applied the distinction of castes to show
that in fact they give a higher or lower position to men; that the
arrangement brings external advantages or disadvantages. It was the
conception of the more or less favourable regenerations which caused him
to assume these distinctions and bring them into the series of
regenerations. He allowed that there was a gradation leading from the
Chandalas to the Brahmans, that birth in a higher or lower position was
a consequence of the virtues or failings of earlier existences; but the
distinctions were not of such a kind that they limited the spirit; that
they could in any way prevent even the least and lowest from hearing the
true doctrine and understanding it, and attaining salvation and
liberation. Hence while the castes do indeed form distinctions among
men, these distinctions are not essential, but in reality indifferent.
If the Brahmans reproached Buddha that he preached to the impure, he
replied: "My law is a law of grace for all."[477] He received Çudras and
Chandalas, barbers and street-sweepers, slaves and remorseful criminals,
among his disciples and initiated.[478] Nor did he exclude women; even
to them he imparted the initiation of the mendicant.[479] On one
occasion Ananda, the scholar of Buddha, met a Chandala maiden drawing
water at a fountain, and asked to drink. She replied that she was a
Chandala and might not touch him. Ananda answered: "My sister, I do not
ask about your caste, nor about your family; I ask you for water if you
can give it me." Buddha is then said to have received the maiden among
his initiated.[480]
For twenty-four years, we are told, Buddha wandered from one place to
another, to preach his doctrine, to strengthen his disciples in their
faith, to arrange their condition, and in the rainy season to show to
the initiated the way to the highest liberation, to death without
regeneration. According to the legends of the Northern Buddhists, he saw
towards the end of his days the overthrow of his ancestral city, and the
defeat of his adherents. The Çakyas of Kapilavastu are said to have
become odious to Virudhaka (Kshudraka in the Vishnu-Purana), the
successor of king Prasenajit on the throne of the Koçalas. He marched
against them with his army; obtained possession of the city of
Kapilavastu, and caused the inhabitants to be massacred. Buddha is said
to have heard the noise of the conquest, and the cry of the dying. When
the king of the Koçalas had marched away with his army, Buddha, we are
told, wandered in the night through the ruined corpse-strewn streets of
his home. In the pleasure-garden of his father's palace, where he had
played as a boy, lay maidens with hands and feet cut off, of whom some
were still alive; Buddha gave them his sympathy and comforted them. The
massacre of Kapilavastu, the slaughter of the Çakyas, if it took place
at all, cannot have been complete, for at a later time the race is
mentioned as existing and active.
In the eightieth year of his life Buddha is said to have visited
Rajagriha and Nalanda in the land of Magadha; afterwards he crossed the
Ganges, and announced to his disciples in Vaiçali, the metropolis of
the tribe of the Vrijis (p. 338), that he should die in three months. He
exhorted them to redoubled zeal, begged them, when he was no more, to
collect his commands, and preach them to the world. Accompanied by his
pupils Ananda and Anuruddha he then set out to the north, to the land of
the Mallas, and Kuçinagara, where in former days he had laid aside the
royal dress and assumed the condition of a mendicant. Falling sick on
the way, he came exhausted into the neighbourhood of Kuçinagara, where
Ananda prepared a bed for him in a grove. Here he said farewell, sank
into meditation, and died with the words "Nothing continues," never to
be born again. At Ananda's suggestion the Mallas buried the dead
Enlightened with the burial of a king. After preparations lasting
through seven days the corpse was placed in a golden coffin, carried in
solemn procession before the eastern gate of Kuçinagara, and laid on a
wooden pyre. The ashes were placed in a golden urn, and for seven days
festivals were held in honour of the "compassionate Buddha, the man free
from stain" (543 B.C.).[481]
FOOTNOTES:
[421] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 146.
[422] Köppen, "Religion des Buddha," s. 84. Kapilavastu means habitation
of Kapila. It was the philosophy of Kapila which lay at the base of the
teaching of Buddha.
[423] The Gautamas were the most important priestly family among the
Videhas. Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 1, 557; 2, 67; Burnouf, "Introduction,"
p. 155; A. Weber, "Ind. Studien," 1, 180.
[424] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 154.
[425] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 77, 154, 157.
[426] Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 94.
[427] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 70.
[428] Köppen, on the ground that Ujjayini is not mentioned among the
southern Buddhists, limits the sphere of the activity of Buddha to the
triangle formed by Champa, Kanyakubja, and Çravasti.
[429] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 186. Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 220.
[430] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 167.
[431] _e.g._ Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 487.
[432] These are the four sublime truths (_aryani satyani_) of Buddhism;
pain, the creation of pain, the annihilation of pain, and the way which
leads to the annihilation of pain.
[433] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 410, 430.
[434] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 418, 428, 629.
[435] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 498, 508.
[436] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 459, 462.
[437] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 509, 510.
[438] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 460.
[439] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 418.
[440] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 405.
[441] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 418, 420.
[442] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 251, 327, 460.
[443] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 389, 393, 486.
[444] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 486 ff.
[445] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 460.
[446]3 Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 488-509. For further information about
the series of the causes of being (_nidana_), which is not very
intelligible, see Köppen, s. 609. My object is merely to indicate the
line of argument.
[447] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 73, 83, 589 ff.
[448] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 252.
[449] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 326.
[450] Schlagintweit, "Buddhism in Tibet," p. 91 ff.
[451] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 369.
[452] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 265.
[453] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 271.
[454] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 203, 342.
[455] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 462, 510.
[456] Köppen, s. 223.
[457] Köppen, s. 125.
[458] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 254.
[459] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 327.
[460] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 253, 410.
[461] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 429.
[462] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 274.
[463] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 325.
[464] Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 2, 258.
[465] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 300.
[466] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 299.
[467] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 261.
[468] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 126, 153. Köppen, s. 224.
[469] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 163, 189, 145, 190, 211.
[470] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 101.
[471] Köppen, s. 111.
[472] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 126.
[473] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 414.
[474] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 195, 274, 381, 382.
[475] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 174, 183.
[476] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 375, 376.
[477] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 198.
[478] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 162, 197, 205, 212, 277.
[479] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 206.
[480] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 205 ff.
[481] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 351; Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 2^2, 80.