One of the reasons, however, why the Buddha left some metaphysical
questions unanswered or indeterminate (_avyākata_) was due to the
fact that Buddhism is a practical system of spiritual discipline and
not a metaphysical discourse. The Buddha naturally had his theory of
cognition, but this was secondary inasmuch as the chief aim of Buddhist
life was to attain Enlightenment from which spiritual freedom ensues.
Enlightenment vanquishes Ignorance lying at the root of birth-and-death
and laying fetters of every description, intellectual as well as
affective. And this vanquishing of Ignorance cannot be achieved except
by the exercise of one’s will-power; all the other attempts, especially
merely intellectual, are utterly futile. Hence the Buddha’s conclusion:
“These questions[f64] are not calculated to profit, they are not
concerned with the Dharma, they do not redound to the elements of
right conduct, nor to detachment, nor to purification from lusts, nor
to quietude, nor to tranquillisation of heart, nor to real knowledge,
nor to the insight of the higher stages of the Path, nor to Nirvana.
Therefore is it that I express no opinion upon them.” What the Buddha
on the other hand expounded was: “What pain is, what the origin of pain
is, what the cessation of pain is, and the method by which one may
reach the cessation of pain.” For these are all practical matters to be
not only fully understood and realised but actively mastered by any one
who really desires to accomplish the great deed of emancipation.
That the Buddha was very much against mere knowledge and most
emphatically insisted on actually seeing and personally experiencing
the Dharma, face to face, is in evidence everywhere in the Nikāyas as
well as in the Mahayana texts. This has been indeed the strongest point
in the teaching of Buddhism. When a Brahman philosopher was referring
to his knowledge of the Three Vedas and a union with that which he has
not seen, the Buddha ridiculed him in one of his strong phrases: “So
you say that the Brahmans are not able to point the way to union with
that which they have seen, and you further say that neither any one
of them, nor of their pupils, nor of their predecessors even to the
seventh generation, has ever seen Brahma. And you further say that even
the Rishis of old, whose words they hold in such deep respect, did not
pretend to know, or to have seen where, or whence, or whither Brahma
is. Yet these Brahmans versed in the Three Vedas say, forsooth, that
they can point out the way to union with that which they know not,
neither have seen.... They are like a string of blind men clinging
one to the other, neither can the foremost see, nor can the middle
one see, nor can the hindmost see. The talk of those Brahmans versed in
the Three Vedas is but blind talk: the first sees not, the middle one
sees not, nor can the last see.”
Enlightenment or the dispelling of Ignorance which is the ideal of
the Buddhist life, we can see now most clearly, is not an act of the
intellect, but the transforming or re-modelling of one’s whole being
through the exercise of the most fundamental faculty innate in every
one of us. Mere understanding has something foreign in it and does
not seem to come so intimately into life. If Enlightenment had really
such a tremendous effect on our spiritual outlook as we read in the
Sutras, it could not be the outcome of just getting acquainted with
the doctrine of Causation. Enlightenment is the work of Paññā which is
born of the will which wants to see itself and to be in itself. Hence
the Buddha’s emphasis on the importance of personal experience; hence
his insistence on meditation in solitude as the means of leading to the
experience. Meditation, through which the will endeavours to transcend
the condition it has put on itself in the awakening of consciousness,
is therefore by no means the simple act of cogitating on the theory of
Origination or Causation, which forever moves in a circle starting from
Ignorance and ending in Ignorance. This is the one thing that is most
needed in Buddhism. All the other metaphysical problems involve us in a
tangled skein, in a matted mass of thread.
* * * * *
Ignorance is thus not to be got rid of by metaphysical means but by
the struggle of the will. When this is done, we are also freed from
the notion of an ego-entity which is the product or rather the basis
of Ignorance, on which it depends and thrives. The ego is the dark
spot where the rays of the intellect fail to penetrate, it is the last
hiding lair of Ignorance, where the latter serenely keeps itself from
the light. When this lair is laid bare and turned inside out, Ignorance
vanishes like frost in the sun. In fact, these two are one and the
same thing, Ignorance and the idea of ego. We are apt to think that
when Ignorance is driven out and the ego loses its hold on us, we
have nothing to lean against and are left to the fate of a dead leaf
blown away hither and thither as the wind listeth. But this is not so;
for Enlightenment is not a negative idea meaning simply the absence
of Ignorance. Indeed, Ignorance is the negation of Enlightenment and
not the reverse. Enlightenment is affirmation in the truest sense of
the word, and therefore it was stated by the Buddha that he who sees
the Dharma sees the Buddha and he who sees the Buddha sees the Dharma,
and again that he who wants to see the Buddha ought not to seek him
in form, nor in voice, etc. When Ignorance ruled supreme, the ego was
conceived to be a positive idea, and its denial was nihilistic. It
was quite natural for Ignorance to uphold the ego where it found its
original home. But with the realisation of Enlightenment, the whole
affair changes its aspect, and the order instituted by Ignorance is
reversed from top to bottom. What was negative is now positive, and
what was positive now negative. Buddhist scholars ought not to forget
this revaluation of ideas that comes along with Enlightenment. Since
Buddhism asserts Enlightenment to be the ultimate fact of Buddhist
life, there is in it nothing negativistic, nothing pessimistic.