Therefore, it betrays an utter ignorance on the part of Buddhist
scholars when they relegate Ignorance to the past in trying
to explain the rationale of the Twelvefold Chain of Causation
(_paṭicca-samuppāda_)[f57] from the temporal point of view.
According to them, the first two factors (_angāni_) of the
Paṭicca-samuppāda belong to the past while the following eight belong
to the present and the last two to the future. Ignorance from which
starts the series of the Nidānas has no time-limits, for it is not
of time, but of the will, as is enlightenment. When time-conception
enters, enlightenment which is negatively the dispelling of Ignorance
loses all its character of finality, and we begin to look around
for something going beyond it. The Fetters would ever be tightening
around us, and the Defilements would be our eternal condition. No
gods would sing of the Awakened One as “a lotus unsoiled by the dust
of passion, sprung from the lake of knowledge; a sun that destroys
the darkness of delusion; a moon that takes away the scorching heat
of the inherent sins of existence.”[f58] If Enlightenment made the
whole universe tremble in six different ways as is recorded in the
Sutras, Ignorance over which it finally prevailed must have as much
power, though diametrically opposed to it in value and virtue, as
Enlightenment. To take Ignorance for an intellectual term and then
to interpret it in terms of time-relation, altogether destroys its
fundamental character as the first in the series of the Twelve Nidānas.
The extraordinary power wielded by the Buddha over his contemporaries
as well as posterity was not entirely due to his wonderful analytical
acumen though we have to admit this in him; it was essentially due
to his spiritual greatness and profound personality, which came from
his will-power penetrating down into the very basis of creation.
The vanquishing of Ignorance was an exhibition of this power which
therefore was invincible and against which Mara with all his hosts
was utterly powerless either to overwhelm or to entice. The failure
to see into the true meaning of Ignorance in the system of the
Paṭicca-samuppāda or in the Ariya-sacca will end unavoidably in
misconstruing the essential nature of Enlightenment and consequently of
Buddhism.
In the beginning which is really no beginning and which has no
spiritual meaning except in our finite life, the will wants to know
itself, and consciousness is awakened, and with the awakening of
consciousness the will is split into two. The one will, whole and
complete in itself, is now at once actor and observer. Conflict is
inevitable; for the actor now wants to be free from the limitations
under which he has been obliged to put himself in his desire for
consciousness. He has in one sense been enabled to see, but at the same
time there is something which he as observer cannot see. In the trail
of knowledge, Ignorance follows with the inevitability of fate, the
one accompanies the other as shadow accompanies object, no separation
can be effected between the two companions. But the will as actor is
bent on going back to his own original abode where there was yet no
dualism, and therefore peace prevailed. This longing for the home,
however, cannot be satisfied without a long hard trying experience.
For the thing, once divided into two, cannot be restored to its former
unity until some struggle is gone through with. And the restoration is
more than a mere going back, the original content is enriched by the
division, struggle, and re-settlement.
When first the division takes place in the will, consciousness is so
enamoured of its novelty and its apparent efficiency in solving the
practical problems of life that it forgets its own mission which is to
enlighten the will. Instead of turning its illuminating rays within
itself, that is, towards the will from which it has its principle of
existence, consciousness is kept busy with the objective world of
realities and ideas; and when it tries to look into itself, there is
a world of absolute unity where the object of which it wishes to know
is the subject itself. The sword cannot cut itself. The darkness of
Ignorance cannot be dispelled because it is its own self. At this point
the will has to make a heroic effort to enlighten itself, to redeem
itself, without destroying the once-awakened consciousness or rather
by working out the principle lying at the basis of consciousness. This
was accomplished as we see in the case of the Buddha, and he became
more than mere Gautama, he was the Awakened One and the Exalted
and supremely Enlightened. In willing there is really something more
than mere willing, there is thinking and seeing. By this seeing, the
will sees itself and is thereby made free and its own master. This is
knowing in the most fundamental sense of the term and herein consists
the Buddhist redemption.
* * * * *
Ignorance prevails as long as the will remains cheated by its own
offspring or its own image, consciousness, in which the knower always
stands distinguished from the known. The cheating, however, cannot
last, the will wishes to be enlightened, to be free, to be by itself.
Ignorance always presupposes the existence of something outside and
unknown. This unknown outsider is generally termed ego or soul, which
is in reality the will itself in the state of Ignorance. Therefore,
when the Buddha experienced Enlightenment, he at once realised that
there was no Atman, no soul-entity as an unknown and unknowable
quantity. Enlightenment dispelled Ignorance and with it all the bogies
conjured up from the dark cave of ego disappeared. Ignorance in its
general use is opposed to knowledge, but from the Buddhist point of
view in which it stands contrasted to Enlightenment, it means the ego
(_ātman_), which is so emphatically denied by the Buddha. This is not
to be wondered at, seeing that the Buddha’s teaching centred in the
doctrine of Enlightenment, the dispelling of Ignorance.
Those who only see the doctrine of non-atman in Buddhism and fail
to inquire into the meaning of Enlightenment are incapable of
appreciating the full significance of the Buddha’s message to the
world. If he simply denied the existence of an ego-entity from the
psychological point of view after reducing it into its component
factors, scientifically he may be called great as his analytical
faculties stood far above those of his contemporaries in this respect;
but his influence as a spiritual leader would not have reached so far
and endured so long. His theory of non-atman was not only established
by a modern scientific method, but essentially was the outcome of his
inner experience. When Ignorance is understood in the deeper sense, its
dispelling unavoidably results in the negation of an ego-entity
as the basis of all our life-activities. Enlightenment is a positive
conception, and for ordinary minds it is quite hard to comprehend it in
its true bearings. But when we know what it means in the general system
of Buddhism, and concentrate our efforts in the realisation of it,
all the rest will take care of themselves, such as the notion of Ego,
attachment to it, Ignorance, Fetters, Defilements, etc. Moral Conduct,
Contemplation, and Higher Understanding—all these are meant to bring
about the desired end of Buddhism, that is, Enlightenment. The Buddha’s
constant reiteration of the theory of causation, telling his disciples
how when this is cause that is effect and how when cause disappears,
effect also disappears, is not primarily to get them acquainted with a
kind of formal logic, but to let them see how Enlightenment is causally
related to all human happiness and spiritual freedom and tranquillity.
As long as Ignorance is understood as logical inability to know, its
disappearance can never bring out the spiritual freedom to which
even the earliest known literature of Buddhism makes so frequent
and so emphatic allusions. See how the Arhat’s declaration of
spiritual independence reads in the Nikayas: “There arose in me
insight, the emancipation of my heart became unshakeable, this is
my last birth, there is now no rebirth for me.”[f59] This is quite
a strong statement showing how intensely and convincingly one has
seized the central facts of life. The passage is indeed one of the
characterisations of Arhatship, and when a fuller delineation of it
is made, we have something like the following: “To him, thus knowing,
thus seeing,[f60] the heart is set free from the defilement of lust,
is set free from the defilement of becoming, is set free from
the defilement of Ignorance. In him, thus set free, there arises the
knowledge of his emancipation, and he knows that rebirth has been
destroyed, that the Higher Life has been fulfilled, that what had
to be done has been accomplished, and after this present life there
will be no beyond.”[f61] In essence the Arhat is the Buddha and even
the Tathagata, and in the beginning of the history of Buddhism the
distinction between these terms did not seem quite sharply marked. Thus
to a great extent they may be qualified in the same terms.
* * * * *
When the Buddha was talking with his disciples concerning various
speculations prevalent in his days, he made the following remarks about
the knowledge of things in command by the Tathagata:
“That does he know, and he knows also other things far beyond, far
better than those speculations; and having that knowledge he is not
puffed up; and thus untarnished he has, in his own heart, realised the
way of escape from them, has understood, as really they are, the rising
up and passing away of sensations, their sweet taste, their danger,
how they cannot be relied on, and not grasping after any of those
things men are eager for, he the Tathagata is quite set free. These
are those other things, profound, difficult to realise, and hard to
understand, tranquillising, sweet, not to be grasped by logic, subtle,
comprehensible only by the wise, which the Tathagata, having himself
realised and seen face to face, hath set forth; and it is concerning
these that they who would rightly praise the Tathagata in accordance
with the truth, should speak.”[f62]
These virtues for which the Tathagata was to be praised were manifestly
not derived from speculation and analytical reasoning. His intellectual
sight was just as keen and far-reaching as any of his contemporaries,
but he was endowed with a higher faculty, will-power, which was
exercised to its fullest capacity in order to bring about all
these virtues which belonged to the entire being of Tathagatahood. And
naturally there was no need for him to face these metaphysical problems
that agitated the philosophers of his days; they were solved in him,
when he attained his spiritual freedom and serenity, in their entirety,
in their synthetic aspect, and not partially or fragmentarily—which
should be the case if they were presented to the Buddha’s cognition as
philosophical problems. In this light is to be read the _Mahāli Sutta_.
Some scholars wonder why two entirely disconnected ideas are treated
together in one body of the Sutra, which however shows scholarly
ignorance in regard to matters spiritual, as they fail to notice the
true import of Enlightenment in the system of Buddhist faith. To
understand this, we need imaginative intuition directly penetrating
the centre of life, and not always do mere literary and philological
talents succeed in unravelling its secrets.
The _Mahāli Sutta_ is a Pali Sutra in the Dīgha-Nikāya, in which Mahāli
asks the Buddha as to the object of the religious life practised by his
disciples, and the following is the gist of his answer: The Buddhists
do not practise self-concentration in order to acquire any miraculous
power such as hearing heavenly sounds or seeing heavenly sights.[f63]
There are things higher and sweeter than that, one of which is the
complete destruction of the Three Bonds (delusion of self, doubt, and
trust in the efficacy of good works and ceremonies) and the attainment
of such a state of mind as to lead to the insight of the higher things
in one’s spiritual life. When this insight is gained the heart grows
serene, is released from the taint of Ignorance, and there arises
the knowledge of emancipation. Such questions as are asked by you, O
Mahāli, regarding the identity of body and soul, are idle ones; for
when you attain to the supreme insight and see things as they really
are in themselves, that is, emancipated from the Bonds, Taints, and
Deadly Flows, those questions that are bothering you at the moment will
completely lose their value and no more be asked in the way you do.
Hence no need of my answering your questions.
This dialogue between the Buddha and Mahāli well illustrates the
relation between Enlightenment and the problem of the soul. There
is no need of wondering why the Buddha did not definitely solve the
ever-recurring question instead of ignoring it in the manner as he did
and talking about something apparently in no connection with the point
at issue. This is one of the instances by which we must try to see into
the meaning of Ignorance.