Ignorance is departure from home and Enlightenment is returning. While
wandering we lead a life full of pain and suffering and the world
wherein we find ourselves is not a very desirable habitat. This is
however put a stop to by Enlightenment as thus we are enabled once
more to get settled at home where reign freedom and peace. The will
negates itself in its attempt to get an insight into its own life, and
dualism follows. Consciousness cannot transcend its own principle.
The will struggles and grows despondent over its work. “Why?”—the
intellect asks, but it is the question no human intellect can
ever hope to solve; for it is a mystery deeply inherent in the will.
Why did the Heavenly Father have to send his only child to redeem the
creation which was his own handiwork and yet went further astray from
its home? Why had Christ to be so dejected over the destiny of the
erring children of God? This is an eternal mystery, and no relative
understanding is made to grapple with these questions. But the very
fact that such questions are raised and constantly threaten one’s
spiritual peace shows that they are not idle metaphysical problems to
be solved by professional philosophers, but that they are addressed
directly to one’s inmost soul, which must struggle and make effort to
subdue them by a higher and deeper power native to itself—far higher
and deeper than mere dialectic of cognition.
The story of the prodigal son[f72] is such a favourite theme both for
Buddhists and Christians, and in this do we not discover something
eternally true, though tragic and unfathomable, which lies so deep in
every human heart? Whatever this may be, the will finally succeeds in
recognising itself, in getting back to its original abode. The sense of
peace one finds in Enlightenment is indeed that of a wanderer getting
safely home. The wandering seems to have altogether been unnecessary
from the logical point of view. What is the use of losing oneself if
one has to find oneself again? What boots it after all—this going
over from one to ten and from ten to one? Mathematically, all this
is nonsensical. But the spiritual mystery is that returning is not
merely counting backwards so many figures that were counted before in
a reverse way. There is an immense difference here between physics and
psychology. After returning one is no longer the same person as before.
The will, back from his excursion through time-consciousness, is God
himself.
In the _Vajrasamādhi Sūtra_,[3.4] Bodhisattva Apratisthita[3.5] asks
the Buddha why the father was so unkind as not to recall his wandering
son before fifty years expired, to which the Buddha answers,
“Fifty years is not to be understood as indicating time-relation here;
it means the awakening of a thought.” As I would interpret, this means
the awakening of consciousness—a split in the will, which now, besides
being actor, is knower. The knower, however, gradually grows to be the
spectator and critic, and even aspires to be the director and ruler.
With this arises the tragedy of life, which the Buddha makes the basis
of the Fourfold Noble Truth. That pain (_duḥkha_) is life itself as it
is lived by most of us, is the plain, undisguised statement of facts.
This all comes from Ignorance, from our consciousness not being fully
enlightened as to its nature, mission, and function in relation to the
will. Consciousness must first be reduced to the will when it begins
to work out its “original vows” (_pūrvapraṇidhāna_) in obedience to
its true master. “The awakening of a thought” marks the beginning of
Ignorance and is its condition. When this is vanquished, “a thought” is
reduced to the will, which is Enlightenment. Enlightenment is therefore
returning.
In this respect Christianity is more symbolic than Buddhism. The
story of Creation, the Fall from the Garden of Eden, God’s sending
Christ to compensate for the ancestral sins, his Crucifixion, and
Resurrection—they are all symbolic. To be more explicit, Creation
is the awakening of consciousness, or the “awakening of a thought”;
the Fall is consciousness going astray from the original path; God’s
idea of sending his own son among us is the desire of the will to
see itself through its own offspring, consciousness; Crucifixion is
transcending the dualism of acting and knowing, which comes from the
awakening of the intellect; and finally Resurrection means the will’s
triumph over the intellect, in other words, the will seeing itself
in and through consciousness. After Resurrection the will is no more
blind striving, nor is the intellect mere observing the dancer dance.
In real Buddhist life these two are not separated, seeing and acting,
they are synthesised in one whole spiritual life, and this synthesis
is called by Buddhists Enlightenment, the dispelling of Ignorance, the
loosening of the Fetters, the wiping-off of the Defilements, etc.
Buddhism is thus free from the historical symbolism of Christianity;
transcending the category of time. Buddhism attempts to achieve
salvation in one act of the will; for returning effaces all the traces
of time.
* * * * *
The Buddha himself gave utterance to the feeling of return when his
eye first opened to the Dharma unheard of before at the realisation
of Enlightenment. He said: “I am like a wanderer who, after going
astray in a desolate wilderness, finally discovers an old highway,
an old track beaten by his predecessors, and who finds, as he goes
along the road, the villages, palaces, gardens, woods, lotus-ponds,
walls, and many other things where his predecessors used to have
their dwellings.”[f73] Superficially, this feeling of returning to an
old familiar abode seems to contradict the statement made concerning
“an insight to things never before presented to one’s mind”; but the
contradiction is logical and not spiritual. As long as the Buddha was
going over the Chain of Origination from the epistemological point
of view, that is, as long as he attempted to get back to his
native will through the channel of empirical consciousness, he could
not accomplish his end. It was only when he broke through the wall
of Ignorance by the sheer force of his will that he could tread the
ancient path. The path was altogether unrecognisable by his intelligent
eye which was one of the best of the kind; even the Buddha could not
ignore the law governing its usage; the Chain was not to be cut asunder
by merely reckoning its links of cause and effect backward and forward.
Knowledge, that is, Ignorance drove Adam from the Garden of Eden to the
world of pain and patience (_sahaloka_), but it was not knowledge that
would reconcile him to his Father, it was the Will dispelling Ignorance
and ushering Enlightenment.
The sense of return or that of recognising old acquaintances one
experiences at the time of Enlightenment is a familiar fact to students
of Zen Buddhism. To cite one instance, Chih-I (530–597)[3.6] who is
generally known by his honorary title as Chih-chê Tai-shih,[3.7]
was the founder of the T‘ien-tai school of Buddhist philosophy in
China. He was also trained in meditation by his teacher Hui-szŭ
(513–577)[3.8] and though not belonging to the orthodox lineage of
the Zen masters, he is reckoned as one. When he came to the master,
he was set to exercise himself in a Samadhi known as “Fa-hua San-mei”
(_saddharma-puṇḍarkīa-samādhi_).[3.9] While exercising himself in
it, he came across a certain passage in the Sutra, and his mind was
opened, and he at once realised the statement referred to by his
master, which was this—that he with the master personally attended the
Buddha’s congregation at the Vulture Peak where the Buddha discoursed
on the Sutra. Then said the master, “If not for you no one could see
the truth: and if not for me no one could testify it.” It is often
remarked by Zen masters that the holy congregation at the Vulture
Peak is still in session. This however ought not to be confounded
with the remembering of the past which is one of the miraculous
gifts of the Buddhist saints. It has nothing to do with such memory,
for in Enlightenment there are more things than are implied in mere
time-relations. Even when the _Prajñāpāramitā-sūtras_ expressly refer
to one’s previous presence at the discourse on the subject,
this is not a form of mere recollection; the understanding is not a
psychological phenomenon, the prajñā goes much penetratingly into the
depths of one’s personality. The sense of return to something familiar,
to the one thoroughly acquainted with, really means the will getting
settled once more in its old abode, after many a venturesome wandering,
with an immense treasure of experience now and full of wisdom that will
light up its unending career.