“If, as said above, the uniquely appropriate energy is not always
ready for the material, if contact can be missed, must then a quota of
material always stand ready for the Kamma that is set free at every
death?”
To which the answer is: “That a faggot should miss the kindling spark;
this may very well happen, but that the kindling spark should find
nothing upon which to act, such is never the case.” Its very being is
just its taking hold, the actuity itself. The _I_-energy takes hold
there precisely where it can take hold.
But will it always take hold just there where legitimately it ought to
take hold? Will it take hold rightly?
To put such a question is the same as if one should ask: “Will the
sun indicate mid-day correctly and unfailingly every day? Or: Will
the ocean maintain itself unceasingly at sea-level?” Where the entire
universe _has_ not but _is_ law there, “to take hold” is as much as
to say “to take hold legitimately”: “to take hold legitimately” is
as much as to say “to take hold rightly.” All such questions were
justified only if we had to do with a reciprocal being attuned; but
all things are found to be a series of ever new self-attunings, each
after other--no working into one another like cog and groove, no
pre-established harmony, no psycho-physical parallelism. The whole
universe is a thing that finds itself in a state of perpetual nascency.
If a jest may be ventured in face of the monster, one might say that
the whole world is constantly in a state of bringing forth, yet never
is there born a “something” that stands ideally fast, so as to be
fitted to serve as a standard for true and untrue.
The fact that a chemical compound decomposes, that its constituent
elements are set free, always implies that from another direction
forces more powerful are coming into play. Decomposition is nothing
but the form of a new combination. In similar wise Kamma does not
become free just for the sake of becoming free, just in order to
be free. Not in any arbitrary fashion does it leap out of its old
location; it does so only because its material falls away from under
it. That it can take fresh hold and always can take hold, of this the
guarantee is the simple fact that there is a world at all, for the
latter is just the series of self-attunings each after other, itself.
Were the world obliged to _come_ to this self-attuning first, never by
any means could there be a world. What we find present is precisely
something given--actuality, and this stands for no mere set of
_possibilities_; it represents a _power_--its own power to exist; and
the expression of this power to exist is just this eternal ability to
take fresh hold.
To change the simile: For every falling stone there is always ready
the spot on which it can fall. For along with the fact “falling stone”
are also given all the prerequisite conditions in which such questions
as, “Where can it fall? Will it find its spot?” are already met and
answered. Its fall is nothing motiveless; it does not fall blindly, by
pure accident. Neither is its fall any previously determined affair;
it does not fall towards any given goal. Its fall is an attuning of
itself, an accommodating of itself to its goal. In the act of falling
it finds its goal. In the same way this my whole existence is simply my
finding my way, my accommodating of myself to the new goal. Kamma does
not _go_ to its new place as a spontaneous force, nor does it _fall_,
as a mere reaction, but it advances itself as a flame advances itself.
In the beginningless happenings of a world, living at every moment
accommodates itself to living. It is like a universal round dance, this
Samsāra. Kamma has seized his partner, and with her whirls through the
infinitudes until she collapses with fatigue, is worn out, or, become
clumsy and heavy, slips from him because she no longer suits him. She
no longer suits him, however, because there is another whom she suits
better. Thus does the material pass from hand to hand, because one
lender snatches it away from the other.
Indeed ’twas only borrowed--the lenders are so many!
And thus is disposed of that other question: “Once set alight, could
not an _I_-process burn for ever?”
Science, because it never can be actual science, makes an effort at
least not to be of the laity, and endeavours to make good this its
distinctive characteristic by the striking, one might almost say the
sensational, manner in which it formulates its problems. Thus it tries
to signalize the commanding nature of its standpoint with respect to
the problems of life by telling the dumbfounded layman of a death
that is purely a phenomenon of adaptation--yea more, of a death that
is nothing but a bad habit. Upon this point, Weismann in his _Dauer
des Lebens_ says: “From a purely physiological standpoint there is no
perceivable reason why it should not be possible for the fission of the
cells to proceed _ad infinitum_, _i.e._ for the organism to function
eternally. To me the necessity for death is intelligible only from
the standpoint of utility.... An individual that lived for ever would
always become infirm and useless to the species. Death is merely a
utilitarian arrangement; it is no necessity, grounded in the essential
nature of life.” This is about as sensible as if one said, relying upon
the facts of kitchen routine, “The going out of the fire is merely a
utilitarian arrangement: it is no necessity grounded in the essential
nature of fire.” To speak of death as a phenomenon of adaptation is
to juggle with death as with some empty concept. In truth it is not
as some think, death that accommodates itself to life, but simply
thinking to the facts. The crass absurdity only becomes evident when
out of this mere “reading” of the facts one seeks to evolve a truth of
practical application, as Metchnikoff does in his “daring” surmises.
I assert that science ought to be ashamed of herself for filling the
nursery room of mankind with such fabulous tales of the future, when
already the air is thick enough with the fables of the past. The old
Salernitanian school of medicine used to ask: “_Cur moritur homo, cui
crescit salvia in hortis?_” In much the same way the new--nay, the very
newest--school of medicine demands: “Why does man die, for whom in the
laboratory grows the Maya Yoghurt?” thereby showing that in the depths
below the surface she grows on the same stock as the so much contemned
“blind faith.”
Like a grown man among children stands the Buddha towards such
fictions. With him death is nothing but living in a new environment.
The distaff keeps ceaselessly turning; it is only that a new clump
of wool has been placed on it. The discernment that life is of the
nature of a process involves of necessity the discernment that life
can persist only so long as the active affinities concerned are not
overmastered by other affinities. Here again, to be sure, I can
interpret death as a phenomenon of accommodation, but equally as
well can I so interpret life, for here I am just the beginningless
self-accommodating, self-attuning itself. However varied the length of
time during which the attuning may last, however it may be prolonged by
the use of specific contrivances, to speak of a potential immortality
is to do away with the process-like nature of life, to make the
never-resting actuality stiffen into a childish counterfeit. With the
fact that I am born, the fact of dying is _guaranteed_ me. For beings
can only be born if previously they have died; they must buy themselves
their birth with their own death. Were we not born, then, to be sure,
we need not die either. But to be born and yet not to see in death
a necessity grounded in the very nature of life, this demands place
alongside that passage in the book of Joshua: “Sun, stand thou still
upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.” What a different
ring has this word of the Master: “That that which has life should not
meet with death--such a thing is not!” And yet it is so! We demand
life-values at any cost; and, are the udders milked dry, then must
death itself make good the lack!
If science and the Buddha-thought be placed alongside one another
for mutual and unbiassed comparison, perforce the superiority of the
latter must be acknowledged, since by it is neatly resolved in one
single conception that which science with two distinct concepts makes
an inextricable tangle of. From the point of view of science, dying is
every whit as much of a miracle as being born, since in birth a new
identity appears on the scene all entire, and in death all as entire
vanishes; in the same way that to a child’s idea a thunderstorm as
such, _i.e._ taken purely as a symptom, is something that arises all
entire, and all entire passes away again. The simple fact is: despite
all the technical skill with which she handles the problem of heredity,
and notwithstanding all the suggestions made to the understanding to
recognize as uninterrupted the passage from life to life, science
has her abode in the realm of the miraculous. The technique of her
descriptions, to which she gives the misleading title, “doctrine of
evolution,” leave the actual problem of evolution entirely untouched.
In face of the miracles of birth and death, science strongly resembles
a boy making his first observations in natural history. Finding in
his glass-case the caterpillar dead and the butterfly born, he will
say, “Two miracles! The old has died and something new has made its
appearance.” Instead of both facts merging into one another in a true
conception of what has taken place, to his mistaken notion they fall
apart from one another, and become problems defying solution. Even so
is it with science. Through her failure to recognize that the facts of
birth here and death there are forms of one and the same experience
instead of a single comprehension of both under the one aspect, two
miracles are found by her to be present. The noose of life has become
a knot, and every attempt to undo it by continued pulling only makes
worse the tangle. On this point the physicist has already left the
stage of childhood behind. To-day he no longer says, “Two miracles!
Heat is gone and motion is present.” He has found the clue, albeit,
it is true, only in form of reaction. The biologist, however, still
remains incapable of replacing two miracles with a true and genuine
conception. He is still unaware that it is with dying that being born
must be purchased. Hence he treats birth as a fact by itself, and
death as a fact by itself, and so remains confronting both problems
internally insoluble.
So much for that point. A further question that suggests itself is:
“Could not a Kamma be simultaneously attuned in two or more places?”
To this the answer would be: “Theoretically, so long as one
confronts the problem from the mechanistic standpoint, that is,
from the standpoint that deals only with reactions, it is attuned
in places innumerable.” In exactly the same way a drop of water, as
it trickles downward, theoretically can have innumerable points as
its resting-place; practically, however, it will have one single
resting-place, and this latter will prove itself the resting-place and
the one single resting-place among countless possibilities simply and
solely by the fact that the drop comes to a halt just at this spot.
Actuality is simple as singly determined. It only becomes complex in
the mechanistic mode of apprehending it; that is, where reactions alone
are dealt with.
Again, it may be asked: “Could not two Kammas attune themselves to one
and the same body of material?”
But this question has just as much meaning as if one asked, “Could not
two men appropriate to themselves, assimilate, and be nourished by,
the same loaf of bread?” So long as one treats of “bread” in purely
theoretical fashion, eats concepts, well and good! But if one eats in
actuality, the absurdity becomes obvious.
Again: “Might it not happen for once that the ovum should conduct the
lightning without the assistance of the sperm-cell?”
So far as mankind is concerned, the only reply is that here both
factors are required. It simply is so! Why are certain reactions
brought about only when certain catalytic agents or ferments are
introduced? How weighty the above objection has always been to the mind
of mankind is shown by the important rôle which “immaculate conception”
has played from the earliest times. That in itself it is not impossible
the animal kingdom sufficiently attests. With man, however, the
conditions are so disposed that both, ovum- and sperm-cell, are
required in order to conduct the Kamma and cause it to take hold.
If one asks: “But could not this also happen outside a maternal womb?”
I reply: “I do not know.” It certainly does not happen with man. It
happens with cold-blooded creatures, with dogs, and so forth. In the
botanical gardens at Peradeniya, Ceylon, in the climate the most
perfect in the world for vegetation, there are several trees--the
_Bertholetia excelsa_ of Brazil, for example--which, despite the
similarity of the climate to that of their native haunts, as yet have
resisted all attempts to propagate them. It simply is so! Actuality
lays down its own laws because it is itself law. Science can do nothing
but hobble along as best she may in the wake of all these facts, and
endeavour to accommodate herself to them. But what bears witness in
favour of the Buddha-thought is precisely the impossibility of getting
fecundation to take place outside a womb, or of bringing it about by
introducing sperm into the uterus by artificial means, of which latter
proceeding a single, not altogether unequivocal instance is reported
by an American gynæcologist. What is needed is the living energy which
for a limited period vibrates in the material like the energy in the
plucked string of a lute. It is just this vibrating energy in it which
first makes the material to be material, _i.e._ the thing that is
capable of a unique attunement.