“The five forms of clinging (_upādānakkhandhā_) is the personality, the
Exalted One has said; these namely: the form of clinging that refers
to body, the form of clinging that refers to sensation, the form of
clinging that refers to perception, the form of clinging that refers to
discriminations, the form of clinging that refers to consciousness....”
“The arising of personality, the arising of personality, they say, O
venerable One. But what, O venerable One, does the Exalted One say is
the arising of personality?”
“This thirst for life (_taṇhā_) that leads to re-birth, bound up with
lust and craving, now here, now there, revelling in delight--namely,
the impulse towards sensuality, the impulse towards existence, the
impulse towards present well-being (without regard to any possible
future). This, friend, so the Exalted One has said, is the arising of
personality.”[4]
The distinction between faith and science on the one hand and the
Buddha on the other, may be formulated thus:--
According to faith, living beings all possess as adequate cause for
their existence a transcendent force, usually called “soul.” According
to science, living beings as well as all re-actual processes, have
their adequate cause entirely in what is perceptible to sense; which
means that science derives living beings simply and solely from their
begetters--mother and father--thus entangling herself in her insoluble
problem of heredity. The Buddha on his part teaches _that every being
is adequate cause to itself_. As a flame maintains itself by its own
heat, so every _I_-process maintains itself by its volitional movements.
Now it is an incontestable biological fact that man, and along with
him a considerable proportion of the animal world, originate in the
union of a maternal ovum-cell with a paternal sperm-cell. How can the
teaching of the Buddha that beings are their own adequate causes be
brought into line with this fact?
It is just here that the Buddha breaks with vulgar thinking in a manner
that at first sight seems out of all reason.
He teaches that that which mother and father furnish in the act of
union is only, so to speak, the material of the new living being, only
represents the _possibility_ of a new individuality; that this material
is developed into an individuality only through the advent of an
individual energy. “By the conjunction of three things, O monks, does
the formation of a germ of life come about. If mother and father come
together, but it is not the mother’s proper period, and the exciting
impulse does not present itself, a germ of life is not planted. If
mother and father come together and it is the mother’s proper period,
but the exciting impulse does not present itself, a germ of life is
not planted. If, however, O monks, mother and father come together and
it is the mother’s proper period, and the exciting impulse presents
itself, then a germ of life is there planted.”[5]
As the igniting spark catches, breaks in, and, taking the kindling wood
and the oxygen of the atmosphere which, but for its advent, would have
lain beside one another for long enough without any reaction, fuses
them together into the individuality, “flame,” so does the individual
energy joining up with the material of procreation, fuse ovum- and
sperm-cell together into the new personality.
This “in-breaking” energy that joins up with the raw material of
procreation,--this is the Kamma of some other existence which has been
unable any longer to maintain its form against the pressure of the
external world, an occurrence which we usually denominate “death.” The
Kamma of the disintegrating existence--so the Buddha teaches--at the
moment of death passes over into a new abode, plants itself, breaks in
here in new inflammable material, kindles a new _I_-process, fashions
a new _I_-sayer. And as the igniting spark _becomes_ the flame by
developing itself, growing, unfolding along with the material of which
it has taken hold, so does Kamma _become_ the new form of existence by
developing itself, growing, unfolding along with the material of which
it has taken hold. In other words, _I am the form of my Kamma. I am my
Kamma corporealised._
This Kamma series it is which constitutes the _actual_ genealogical
tree of a living being. As the genealogical tree of a fire does not
lead in the direction of the forest or the coal-mine whence its
material was derived, but back to the flame from out of which the
kindling spark took hold, so the genealogical tree of living beings
does not run back in the direction of progenitors but in the direction
of the Kamma, the direction of a disintegrating existence. “Heirs of
deeds,” therefore, the Buddha calls living beings, not heirs of mother
and father; and, “springing from the womb of Kamma (_kammayonī_).” The
Kamma, in virtue of which I now say “_I_,” derives from a previous
existence; the “_I_-sayer” of this previous existence, on his part
again, derives from a previous existence, and so on further and further
back in a series that never has had a beginning. _At every moment
of my existence I am the final member of a beginningless series of
“I-sayers.”_ The Kamma at this moment active in me--it has never not
existed, never not been active. This is what means a self-sustaining
process. Such a process can never have had a beginning; for then it
would be no self-sustaining thing, it would have been created, either
by a god, or by external circumstances and antecedent conditions. It
would be no actual process but a product. As soon as clear cognition
brings me the insight that I am a pure process of combustion, _i.e._
sustain myself, along with that insight is given as a logical necessity
beginninglessness.
_Individual beginninglessness is the key-word, the guiding clue
to the Buddha-thought._ In it is exhausted the teaching of Kamma.
The _I_-process has its _in-force_, its Kamma from out a previous
existence. Otherwise expressed: The _I_-process is not the result of
an impact, has not been set going, but burns on from beginninglessness
down to this present moment, itself ever and again _perpetuating
itself_. Whenever an existence disintegrates, the Kamma in virtue
of which it has been burning takes hold anew in a new location and
there sets alight a new _I_-process that unfolds itself into a new
personality. _The Buddha teaches re-births._
The self-perpetuation of the individual energies, the Kammas, in
the formation of ever new individualities, is by the Buddha called
“Samsāra.”
This word is most frequently translated, “the circling round of
re-births,”--a rendering that may easily lead to a false conception.
Where the entire universe is nothing but a huge summation of single
combustion processes, there no circling round can be; there each moment
of existence always and everywhere is something that never before has
been and never again will be. With the translation “circling round of
re-births,” one only works with physics and its reversible processes;
one is in danger of apprehending life mechanically. As a matter of
fact, “Samsāra” means nothing but the “together-wandering,” the ascent
and descent of the beings in the universe, that ever and again, now
here now there, come into manifestation anew, according as their Kamma
here or there takes hold.
“Without beginning, without end is this Samsāra. A beginning of beings
encompassed by nescience who, fettered by the thirst for life, pass on
to ever new births, verily is not to be perceived.”
The thinking man naturally asks, “Is there any proof of such a
teaching? or must it simply be believed?” In the latter case it were as
worthless to the genuine thinker as is every religion of faith. Whether
I call that on which I believe, force or energy, god or Kamma, makes no
essential difference.
But to this question there are two answers--an answer of a real, and an
answer of an abstract nature.
The answer of real nature is supplied by the Buddha when he
affirms of himself that simultaneously with the attainment of his
Buddha-knowledge, he acquired the faculty of remembering his previous
forms of existence back into eras of time the most stupendously remote.
He teaches, however, that every one who, like himself, has wrestled
his way to the same knowledge, obtains this same capacity of calling to
remembrance his previous states of existence.
Now the Buddha-knowledge is no supernatural illumination, but consists
simply of a clear insight into the nature of my own existence--or
rather, in the removal of a false conception as to myself, the
conception of the “_I_” as an identity. To attain to this insight,
all that is needed is reflection and instruction. This seemingly
supernatural character of the faculty of remembering previous
existences is thus “supernatural” only in the sense that the telephone
or the Röntgen ray or wireless telegraphy is supernatural to untutored
savages. We are merely lacking in the prerequisite conditions as
respects cognition, and in the intellectual technique.
This much safely may be said, that the biological possibility of memory
of the distant past can only be brought to bear upon the several
existences in so far as these themselves have run their course in
touch with the power of memory, in touch with consciousness. To try
to make this faculty extend over the embryonal periods also, would
be absurd, since here the organic possibilities of such memory--the
sense-organs, namely--are not developed, and so there is nothing there
for one to remember. Hence, when he speaks of his previous existences
the Buddha says, not, “I remember having left such and such a womb,”
but, “I remember having been of such a name, such a family, such a
rank, such a calling; having experienced such and such weal and woe,
and such a departure from life.” Here what is meant by the constantly
recurring phrase “_evam āyupariyanto_”--“thus was the term, the end
of my life”--is not physical death, but the ending of that section of
the individuality which runs its course self-illuminated, under the
designation of consciousness. This end may indeed synchronize with the
physical end, death, but it may also precede it by a longer or shorter
period of time.
In corresponding terms the Buddha goes on to say, “Departing thence,
elsewhere I appeared anew. There now I was, bore such a name,” and so
on. The memories of the past adhere only to those phases of existence
that are illumined by consciousness.
It may be asked, “By what means is it possible to acquire such a
faculty of remembering the distant past?”
I reply, “I do not know.” I can only suggest an analogy. One must
extinguish one’s own light in order to see the light that shines
through the chink in a neighbouring room. In somewhat the same
fashion, a man must have extinguished his own light--the notion of an
_I_-identity--and won to the Buddha-knowledge, in order to see himself
emerge recurrently as a something luminous in consciousness further and
yet further away in the “dark backward and abysm of time,”--one lucent
phase, ever and again revealing itself, anterior to the other, until
the last faint glimmer is lost in the dim dusk teeming with life, of
the beginningless infinitudes.
The Buddha himself instances a definite limit to the capacity to recall
to memory past existences, up to which limit he himself attained.
Here we have the best possible proof that we have to do, not with
a supernatural enlightenment, a species of omniscience, but simply
with an intellectual technique which as being purely intellectual,
presupposes a certain grade of cognition. If we may put any confidence
in the texts, there were in the days of the Buddha, and in those days
of which the “Chants of the monks and nuns” tell us, quite a large
number of persons who had acquired this faculty. If some one here
interjects, “Such a thing is impossible!” he resembles a man at the
foot of a hill to whom another standing on the top has described what
he sees from that point of vantage, and who retorts, “It is quite
impossible that you should see all this. I have eyes in my head as well
as you. I look upon the same world as you do and I perceive nothing
whatever of all this. Consequently your imagination must be playing
tricks with you.”
So much for the real answer. The abstract answer presents itself in the
light of an intellectual necessity.
Kamma is that which gives continuity to the _I_-process. As such it
presents itself to me the individual immediately as consciousness.
Consciousness, rightly comprehended, tells me that the _I_-process
gives to itself its own coherence; which means that it is self-acting;
which in turn means that it is beginningless. I experience the
self-perpetuation, the burning of the _I_-process in consciousness. But
just as Kamma conducts from one moment of existence to the next, so
does it conduct from one existence to the next.
Should one wish to render this procedure in comprehensible language,
one can come at it no otherwise than simply by saying, “Consciousness
passes over from existence to existence.” “Kamma” in itself conveys
no more meaning than, for example, the word _I_, which indicates
anybody and everybody without distinction, and only acquires _actual_
significance with reference to myself. In exactly the same way “Kamma,”
the force in virtue of which every single living creature has being,
acquires _actual_ significance only as my own consciousness. Kamma _as
such_ has being only as consciousness.
It is in this sense that those passages are to be understood, so
obscure to our scholars, in which the Buddha speaks of _viññāṇa_
(consciousness) as that which plants itself in the new womb. Addressing
his disciple Ānanda, he says, “If, Ānanda, consciousness did not pass
into the womb, would it then be possible for the (new) individuality to
differentiate itself?”[6]
Among the Theras of Ceylon the established expression for the Kamma
that passes over from one existence to the next is _paṭisandhiviññāṇa_,
a word which means “the again-linking-up consciousness,” the
consciousness that ever and again supplies the bond between existence
and existence.
That there is here no thought of consciousness as “something in
itself,” as soul, as an identity, is made abundantly clear in the
following passage:--
A monk named Sati, as the outcome of his own cogitations, arrives at
the conclusion that “consciousness” is something that in the progress
of re-births passes over as _anaññaŋ_, as “not-other”--that is,
as an identity, as a spiritual substance. He is reprimanded by the
Buddha in these words: “Have not I in many and diverse ways expounded
consciousness as something arising always in dependence upon somewhat?
Without adequate cause there is no coming to be of consciousness.”[7]