“The art of definition was something which the era of the Buddha did
not possess; that of demonstration was only evolved as far as the
first rudiments. An especially characteristic feature of this mode of
thinking ... is a decided antipathy to pursuing the consideration of
things back to their ultimate principles.”
Misericordia! What shall one say of the herd when the leading bull
points in such paths! A teaching whose greatness resides in the fact
that it shows how all definitions are only essays which owe their
existence to the faulty formulation of the question, is reproached with
its lack of definitions! A teaching which points out that the fact
“_I_” of necessity implies life and the beginninglessness of life,
is reproached that it does not involve itself in the blind alley of
contraries called in the language of logic, “principles.” The Buddha’s
one and only concern is to teach, to point out that there is nothing in
the world to be defined; hence, also, no instruments for this purpose:
principles. That herewith the whole of science goes by the board--what
matters that to the seeker for truth! Hearken, good people! Here goes
by the board a great deal more than science!
To see how the Buddha bore himself with reference to this question of
principles, one ought to read the magnificent Kevaddha Sutta--Sutta
XI. of the _Dīgha Nikāya_--where a monk craves information as to the
behaviour of the primal elements of matter. The Buddha meets the
question as the genuine thinker alone can, with the weapon of humour.
For absurdities cannot be dealt with at all otherwise, if one would not
drown in them past hope of help. The scene in the court of Mahā Brahmā,
the great Brahma, is perhaps the most gigantic that human humour has
ever conceived. Here music alone, the humour of Beethoven’s symphonies,
perhaps may risk comparison.
To the Buddha naught exists save actualities, eternally fermenting,
seething, simmering actualities that melt and dissolve all drosses of
definitions in their fiery glow or ever they are able to come to birth.
“The art of demonstration was only evolved as far as the first
rudiments.” I maintain that every single word in this sentence is
false or incorrect. The art of demonstration in the philosophical
systems that surged all about the Buddha, was developed to a height
it never can reach among us for the simple reason that our speech and
our brains have lost the necessary flexibility. One has only to read
those great Suttas that I might call the transcendental Suttas, such
as the Brahmajāla Sutta of the _Dīgha Nikāya_, in order to see that as
well speech as brain with us have become so stiff in mechanical views
as to be no longer capable of following up and thinking out all these
possibilities, all these species and sub-species of idealistic and
materialistic views. But it is just for this reason that the Buddha
is called the “Master-guide.” Like the guide in the catacombs, where
at every step the unacquainted are threatened with irretrievable
errors, calmly and surely he takes his way through this wild tangle
of method, through this rigid logic of the absurd. Serene and clear
he recognizes, perceives, “It is altogether conditioned; it is all of
the mind’s own devising.” Again we have the delicate irony that comes
of commanding insight, when in another discourse he says, “There are
wise men who call day night, and night day.” How could one hit off more
aptly certain tendencies of modern science--that astounding faculty it
displays for interpreting actuality in accordance with preconceived
ideas? All those imposing definitions that for our minds and for the
human mind in all ages, have possessed such an intoxicating quality,
are only possible where one fabricates artificial cores around which
dialectical processes can crystallize, and crystallize out all the more
splendidly the more carefully one protects them from the rude shocks of
actuality. The loftiness and subtlety of our conceptual constructions
is nothing but the water-mark that indicates the height of our
ignorance. There is certainly much that is confusing for our thought,
brought up as that has been under the sway of Aristotelian logic, to
see concepts merge and blend upon whose clear differentiation the
logical possibility of the entire system seems to rest--such concepts,
for example, as _kamma_ and _sankhāra_, _kamma_ and _viññāṇa_, _kamma_
and _taṇhā_, and so forth. It may easily happen that the seeker for
truth may suffer shipwreck on such apparent contradictions. But in
such case it is with him as with one who is stranded on the lighthouse
itself--blinded by its very light!
To be able to follow the Buddha here, one must have understood him.
What Jesus said of himself in terms of emotion, that, but in terms
of understanding, the Buddha also can say, “Blessed is he that is not
offended in me.”
So long as one continues to take the concepts with which he is
operating for positive, firmly established realities, so long is it
quite impossible to avoid all these violations of exact thinking. It
is said, “If Sankhāra is the process, it cannot be the energy itself,
and _vice versa_.” One insists, like the countryman, upon getting one’s
bill, and has the feeling of intellectual superiority into the bargain.
But there is this to be considered: When, for instance, I wish to
define a combustion process, I am at liberty to do so just as it
happens to occur to me, either as light, or as heat, or as chemical
action, and so forth. On each such occasion I include the whole
combustion process in its entirety, and yet none will say, “If the
combustion process is at any one time light, it cannot also be heat,
for in that case light and heat would be just the same thing. That
would be a violation of the law of contradictories,” “argal” ... as
the grave-digger in _Hamlet_ says. But such grave-digger’s logic is
followed out in every particular by exact thought when it deals with
actuality. It is the pure content of actuality in the Buddha’s teaching
that renders it irreconcilable with logic. That teaching is not
illogical, but simply a-logical. The model of the syllogism does not
apply to it at all. For even thus are things in actuality: What at one
moment one thinks to have grasped, comprehended, that, next moment, is
swept away in the never resting flow of Becoming. Actuality does not
play a game that complies with the established rules and regulations
called logic: one game only does it play--the grim game of necessity.
And this game may be won, not by him who with abstract fences and walls
and dykes for a brief space fashions to himself a little world-garden
of his own, but only by him who dares to vibrate in unison with the
iron rhythm of a beginningless necessity.
It is the indispensable task of every earnest thinker who would
really follow the Buddha, experience him in himself, to make clear to
himself, and ever and again make clear, that our whole mental life,
our concept-world is based upon artificial premisses, in which, in
the strictest sense of the words, not life must serve truth but truth
life. As the spider itself flings forth its web over the abyss, so from
out ourselves we fling forth in the form of concepts an inextricable
network of airy roots. As the ape from bough to bough, so springs the
human mind from concept to concept, and has itself borne aloft by the
entire network, where any single thread would rend beneath him, each
individual bough snap under him and precipitate him into the bottomless
gulfs of an endless infinitude. All that circulates in daily life in
the way of mental values are pure concept-values, bills of exchange
upon actuality. But in the hurry and bustle of traffic no one has
time or inclination to go and get these bills turned into actual
currency. Just as they stand they are passed along “like a basket
from hand to hand.” Hence the terrible predominance of ideals, the
tyranny they exercise over our minds, and so over genuine education and
culture. Whoso has experienced in himself the collapse of ideals, the
taking up of the bills of current concept-values at the counter of
actuality,--he well understands why the Buddha calls his intuition an
“awakening.” It is the awakening out of the dream-world of concepts.
A Buddha, in short, is a man who dares to _live_ this his insight that
there are no concepts and accordingly nothing conceived, but only a
“conceiving.” Hence his attitude towards many questions, and above all
to that question as to how one ought to picture to oneself a Buddha, or
one who after this life is re-born no more.
The scheme of the questions runs thus: 1. Where is he re-born? 2. Is he
not re-born? 3. Is he re-born as well as not re-born? 4. Is he neither
re-born nor yet not re-born?
To all these sophistical questions the stereotyped answer of the Buddha
is, “That does not apply”--an answer, naturally, which gives plenty of
scope for the profoundest conjectures and hypotheses, but which only
means that the question is wrongly put and therefore renders impossible
any answer at all. A being that with this as his last existence, is
proceeding towards extinction, that will never again be re-born _is no
longer existent_, even in the form of concept; hence the whole question
is meaningless.
Here, again, it is impossible to do anything like justice to the
whole problem with the chess-moves of a profound play of thought:
only a witticism meets the case. All this ingenious logic that would
fain take the measure of actuality with the laws of identity and
contradictories as with some yard-stick, which advances against truth
with the apparently irresistible demonstrating force of its “aut ...
aut,” resembles nothing so much as those ingenious questions with
which the child is wont to tease the grown-up person as to the nature
and dwelling-place of Santa Claus. Another child would be able to
answer these questions with an equal ingenuity; the grown-up person
is powerless to meet them. In the same way the scholars of the west
would be perfectly capable of meeting and satisfying the questions of
a Vacchagotta with equal “acuteness of logic.” The Buddha cannot do
it. All he can do is to try to sweep away the accumulated rubbish of
misunderstood concepts, and on the thus cleared foundation, cause a new
clean structure of thought to arise, the essence whereof resides in
comprehending that such a thing as the foregoing question refers to has
no existence, neither abstractly nor actually; hence, that the question
is in itself devoid of meaning.
This is the whole secret here lying hidden. The interpretation given
by Oldenburg to the words of the nun Khemā, are based upon a complete
misunderstanding of the entire Buddha-thought, as is everything else he
says concerning the final goal of Buddhism. But that pertains properly
to the Nibbāna teaching.
Buddhism is the doctrine of actuality, and its value as a view of the
world from the standpoint of epistemology, lies in the fact that it
teaches us to accept actuality as actuality. To this idea it is itself
a martyr, inasmuch as its own teaching here is nothing ideally fixed
and fast, but only an incitation to experience it in one’s own self; it
is “a raft, designed for escape; not designed for retention.” Hence,
is it said in the powerful Dhātuvibhañga Sutta--Sutta CXL., _Majjhima
Nikāya_--“‘I am,’ monk, is a believing. ‘Such am I,’ is a believing. ‘I
shall be,’ is a believing. ‘I shall not be,’ is a believing. ‘I shall
have a form,’ is a believing. ‘I shall be formless,’ is a believing.
‘I shall have perception,’ is a believing. ‘I shall be devoid of
perception,’ is a believing. To entertain believings is to be ill. To
entertain believings is to be infirm. To entertain believings is to be
sick. When, however, all entertaining of believings is overcome, then
is one called a right thinker.”
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