The demand for a view of the world is not to be taken literally
as such. If a freezing man says, “I much need a coat,” it is not
the coat in itself of which he has need, but the warmth that the
coat will procure him. In the selfsame way, when an uninstructed
person says, “I much need a view of the world,” what he would fain
comprehend is not the world in itself, but that which furnishes
internal support, coherence, to the play of world-events. In reality,
every world-conception means nothing else but a comprehension of the
something that persists throughout the play of world-events, that
remains constant through all vicissitude,--hence, a satisfaction _of
the idea of conservation_.
This idea of conservation religious faith endeavours to satisfy with
its “force in itself,” God. Scientific faith endeavours to satisfy it
with “matter,” which is just as much a thing of faith as is “force.”
Actuality knows neither force by itself nor matter by itself; it only
knows the unity of both: processes. One is just “believing” when one
operates abstractly with either of these two opposites; and to operate
with them other than abstractly is quite impossible.
Out of itself does science provide satisfaction for the idea of
conservation in the cosmogony of energetics; this it does, however, by
furnishing not _actual_ energies but only the _reactions_ of energies.
An _actual_ conservation, and therewith an _actual_ world-view is
furnished by the Buddha alone when he points out that every living
being is a something self-sustaining; in other words, that there is no
such thing as an “_I_,” considered as identical with itself, as a unity
in itself.
The same, to be sure, is said by every school of criticism. Hume and
modern psychology say so with unequivocal clearness, but none of them
go beyond negation. They confine themselves to Socratic knowledge.
Alone the Buddha says, “I not only am aware that I am no true _I_,
as a unity in itself, but I also know what it is that I am. And that
this has really been comprehended by me,--this I prove _in my own
person_. For, from the moment that I comprehended myself as a process
sustaining itself from beginninglessness down to the present hour by
its own volitional activities, all volitional activities have wholly
ceased in me. A new up-welling of _in-force_, any further self-charging
of the _I_-process, has no more place in me. I know; this is my last
existence. When it breaks up, there is no more Kamma there to take
fresh hold in any new location, be it in heavenly, be it in earthly
worlds. The beginningless process of combustion is expiring, is coming
to an end of itself, like the flame that is fed by no more oil.”
This thought which finds expression in the four propositions concerning
suffering and the Nibbāna teaching, sums up the significance of
Buddhism for morality and religion, and its amplification, therefore,
belongs to the successor to this volume. Here it is only interesting
to us from the epistemological point of view, _i.e._ in so far as _it
makes ignorance as to oneself the antecedent condition of all life_.
For--
I sustain my own existence through the perpetually renewed up-welling
of volitional activities. It is possible for these to spring up
again and again only so long as an object for my willing is present,
_i.e._ so long as the delusion of identity is not put an end to. The
moment any being arrives at the insight that there are in truth no
identities--that there are nothing but flickering, flaring processes of
combustion, which are one thing when I crave for them, another when I
stretch forth my hand to seize them, and yet again another when I have
seized them and hold them fast, he stops short, begins to reflect; and
in reflection the blind impulse to live is sapped and weakened. The
knowledge is borne in upon him: “It is not worth the seizing.”
So long as I take a glittering object in the grass for a diamond, I
will clutch at it, scuffle for it--mayhap enter on a life-and-death
struggle to obtain it. But the moment I perceive, “It is a dewdrop in
which a sunbeam is reflected,” I trouble myself no more about it. I
know “A shake, a gust of wind--and all is over!”
So is it with the genuine thinker in face of the world and its values,
whether they be called wife or child, money or possessions, fame or
honour, family or home. One clear, piercing, scrutinizing glance is
more than they will bear. To the penetrating mind, the wretchedness of
transiency is everywhere manifest--he turns away--it is not worth while!
To Sakka, the king of the gods, the Buddha imparts the following
instruction:--
“Then, chief of the gods, a monk hears: ‘All that is, when clung to,
falls short.’ And when, chief of the gods, a monk has heard: ‘All that
is, when clung to, falls short,’ he closely observes each and every
thing. In the close observation of each and every thing he sees into
each and every thing. And seeing into each and every thing, whatsoever
sensation he experiences, whether pleasurable or unpleasurable, or
neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable, in all these sensations he
abides in the insight that they are transient, so that he cares naught
for them, ceases from them, renounces them. And abiding as respects
these sensations in such insight, he clings to nothing whatsoever in
all the world. Clinging to nothing in the world, he is free from fear.
Free from fear he attains to his own extinction of delusion.”[11]
This insight that ignorance as to one’s own self is the antecedent
condition of all existence, is formulated by the Buddha in the
so-called “Causal Chain.”[12]
It is not the intention of this book to furnish a fully rounded
statement of Buddhism, and so I am at liberty here to confine myself
to what is necessary for our immediate purpose. To attempt to deal in
detail with all the many mistakes that have here been made by western
expositors would require a whole book to itself.
The Causal Chain consists of twelve links, on which account it is also
alluded to under the name of the “Twelve Nidānas.”
The twelve links of the chain are: 1. Ignorance (Avijjā); 2.
Predispositions, Tendencies (Sankhāra); 3. Consciousness (Viññāṇa);
4. Individuality (Nāma-rūpa); 5. The seat of sense; 6. Contact; 7.
Sensation; 8. Thirst of life (Taṇhā); 9. Clinging (Upādāna); 10.
Becoming (Bhava); 11. Birth (Jāti); 12. A Complex consisting of the
essential ingredients of all existence--namely, old age, death, misery,
lamentation, sorrow, grief, and despair.
This “Chain” is translated by the great majority of occidental
expositors of Buddhism thus: “Out of Ignorance arise the
Predispositions. Out of the Predispositions arises Consciousness,” and
so forth.
Such a translation is at one and the same time incorrect as regards
the wording and misleading as regards the meaning. For here the
separate links of the chain are placed with regard to each other in
the relationship of cause and effect, in the purely physical sense in
which the two represent a following after one another. But in order
to have a pure following after one another of cause and effect, there
are needed artificial preconditions such as physics puts for herself
when she works with “bodies,”--that is, with fixed magnitudes complete
in themselves. Actuality, however, knows nothing of any such things.
Actuality knows only processes which at every moment of their existence
represent a new biological value.
Only where “bodies” in this purely physical sense are presumed to
exist, can one speak of a following after one another of cause and
effect;--a mode of representing matters that is ridiculed by men of
insight among physicists themselves. E. Mach, for example, makes fun of
it in the humorous phrase: “Upon a dose of cause there follows a dose
of effect”; whereby, to be sure, himself, and with him the whole of
modern positivism whose mouthpiece he is,[13] falls into the opposite
extreme, inasmuch as he seeks to substitute for the conception of
causality of scholasticism--the following after one another of cause
and effect--dependence outside of time, as represented by the concept
of mathematical function.
In sooth, one position is as far removed from actuality as the other.
Every causal relation existing in actuality runs its course on the
lines--to take an example--of seed and tree, where the causal relation
is neither a pure, unmixed following after one another, nor yet a lying
alongside one another outside of time, but a combination of following
after and lying alongside one another.
This combination of succession and juxtaposition is implied, moreover,
in the Pāḷi word, _paccayā_, used to express the connecting together
of the separate links. Verbally correct and true to the meaning, the
Causal Chain would be translated as follows:--
“Ignorance must be present in order that Tendencies may come to
pass. Tendencies must be present in order that Viññāṇa may come to
pass;--which latter here signifies Consciousness as passing-over Kamma;
for this passing-over Kamma does not admit being spoken of otherwise
than in the form of consciousness. This passing-over Kamma must be
present in order that the fashioning of a new Individuality may come
to pass. This latter must be present in order that a referring back
of all the Six Kinds of Sense-Impressions to myself may come to pass.
This must be present in order that Contact, an approaching on my part
to things whether physical or mental, may come to pass. Contact must
be present in order that Sensation, this in order that Craving, this
in order that Clinging, this in order that the perpetually repeated,
new upspringing of the _I_-process may come about which here is
disintegrated in the stage of Passing-over (Bhava) and the final result
(Jāti),[14] the Coming-into-manifestation of a new Kammic impulsion
_within_ this my personality; whereupon the last link follows as a
natural consequence.”
The Causal Chain is the best touchstone by which to test whether a
person is really capable of following the Buddha-thought or not. If he
is incapable of doing so, he comes by a sad fall at the “violation” of
the law of contradictories which follows from _Jāti_ being taken as
_Birth_ in the grossly vulgar acceptation of the word; and cannot make
out how an individual who has long since been active as such, should
only subsequently be “born.”
The other absurdity which necessarily arises when one interprets the
links in the vulgar sense as a following after one another of cause and
effect, is this: that in this case Ignorance is installed as a sort of
blind end, and so the way is opened for the introduction of all sorts
of cosmological speculations to which our men of learning are only the
more inclined that they generally come from Sanskrit to Pāḷi, or, what
in substance amounts to the same thing, from the Upanishads to the
Suttas.
In the Vedanta, “Ignorance” is a given thing in itself, an
incomprehensible; it is the point on which, for the genuine thinker,
the whole system comes to grief. In Buddhism Ignorance is not anything
that is given in itself. Its presence in everything that lives has
no other basis than that all that lives, by the mere fact of its
existence shows that it must have been compounded with Ignorance,
since otherwise the _I_-process concerned would have been bound to
have collapsed, just in the same way that everything that has being,
by its very existence shows that up to now it must have been fertile,
capable of propagation, since otherwise it could not be here. As little
as on that account “fertility” is a given in itself, just as little is
Ignorance a given in itself.
When the Buddha in the formula of causality places “Ignorance” at the
head of his world-system, makes it the antecedent condition of all
individual existence, he does nothing but formulate _abstractly_ what
in the Kamma-teaching he gives _actually_--the beginninglessness of the
_I_-process. To the question, “What is the adequate cause of living
beings? How is it ever possible for the _I_ to come about?” he gives in
the Kamma-teaching, the answer, “through willing,” and in the Causal
Chain the answer, “through ignorance as to one’s self.” Both answers
bear the one import,--this, namely, that anterior to the present _I_
ever and again stands the _I_, running backward in a series that knows
no beginning, and never has known a beginning. Whether I say, “A being
is here in virtue of his volitional activities, of his Kamma,” or, “He
is here in virtue of his Ignorance,” there exists no other distinction
between these two expressions than between the two phrases: “light is
present,” and, “shadow is present.” Shadow in itself means nothing
save only that light is present. Shadow is light itself, but in empty
abstract form. In the selfsame way Ignorance of itself means nothing
save only that will is present. Ignorance is will itself, but in empty
abstract form.
In the intuition of the beginninglessness of the individual, both
series--the actual as the Kamma-teaching, and the abstract as the
teaching concerning ignorance--merge into one.
Buddhism is the teaching of actuality. The actual is only what I myself
experience--I, the _I_-process.
The Buddha teaches me to comprehend myself, and only as a function
of this self-comprehension does there follow a comprehension of the
external world.
A view of the world based solely upon a comprehension of one’s self
perforce lies beyond reach of any inductive procedure; the question,
therefore, arises:--
By what means and method is such a doctrine to be brought within reach
of others?