HEAVEN AND NIRVANA.
"Soles occidere et redire possunt.
Nobis, quum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda."
--CATULLUS.
Innumerable figures of speech have been brought into requisition
to convey to the imagination the import of the terms "Heaven" and
"Nirvana." None of these, taken either separately or collectively, can
be held to include all that is indicated by the above expressions.
To speak of reaching Heaven, or Nirvana, is somewhat misleading; no
measurement of space is applicable to them; no phenomenal expression in
itself will pass muster.
A later and more material aspect of heaven, known as the Western
Paradise, and only referred to, I think, in the Mahāyana, has been
provided, it would seem, for the satisfaction of those who require a
temporary halting-place for thought before moving on to more abstract
conceptions. This heaven is illustrated with all those inimitable
colours and touches which oriental inventiveness uses with such
alluring effect. It is naïvely located ten millions of miles to the
west.
There, in a light that never was on land or sea, where lotus flowers of
every imaginable hue vie with each other to cluster at his holy feet,
sits enthroned the Buddha of Infinite Light, the Compassionate, the
Perfect One.
The sweet radiance of his pitying smile pervades the heavens for
thousands of leagues. The beautiful expressions of his countenance
cannot be numbered, for they are as countless as the sands of Gunga's
sacred stream; nor can his compassion be measured--it is illimitable
as a shoreless ocean. The magical grace of his form is compared to
the "moon on high when she marches full-orbed" through the unclouded
expanse of the Empyrean. If ever so "gentle a zephyr blows amid
the trees," the atmosphere vibrates with all delicate and enticing
melodies. The voices of the Devas are heard chanting his praises. An
aerial choir, the birds of Paradise, answer back with antiphons of
rapturous song as they soar above in the gilded air which fills the
pavilions of the Blest. Such, and much more, is the "Pure Land," the
land of Amita, the Buddha of Infinite Light.
The introduction into the picture of pavements of gold, crystal
streams, precious stones, jewels, and many of the paraphernalia which
the pageantry of this nether world demands for its embellishment brings
to remembrance the splendours enshrined in that final revelation of
things to be, which was delivered to man in the person of St. John the
Divine.
Nirvana has been called "The Imperishable," "The Infinite," "The
Eternal," "The Everlasting," "The Transcendent," "The Serene," "The
Formless," "The Goal," "The Other Shore," "Rest," "The True," or
"The Truth." It has been compared to an "island which no flood can
overwhelm," to a "City of Peace," "The Jewelled Realm of Happiness,"
"An Escape from the Evil One."[AL] For the Christian Heaven, in like
manner, a great variety of metaphors abounds.
[AL] Taken from _Buddhism and its Christian Critics_, by Paul Carus.
But the mere gazing at, and admiration of, these pretty pictures will
not conduce to a comprehension of them--will not help us to discover
what formulated in the mind of the artist the design of the picture
he painted. For this needful purpose it may not prove unprofitable to
have recourse, in the first instance, to the metaphysics of the grand
old Oriental mystic, St. Paul. By his assistance we may find that these
conceptions, Heaven and Nirvana, on which so much wealth of imagery
has been lavished, and about which controversy has well-nigh exhausted
itself, will resolve themselves into something less indefinite, and
more thinkable, of one nature and of one significance.
In his Epistle to the Corinthians he tells us "God hath chosen the
things that are not to bring to nought the things that are." Now,
the "things that are not" must assuredly be taken to mean that
which is, figuratively speaking, beyond the threshold--something,
in this respect, more than the subliminal[AM] reveals; in fact, the
ultra-liminal, and, consequently, the immutable. They are the quality
Truth, residing in, but inseparable, as long as senses last, from,
the "things that are"--namely, in materiality as we perceive it;
materiality being here understood as "potential feeling, from which
develop ideas, or the soul of man."
[AM] "Subliminal" I use here in a strictly etymological sense--_sub
limen_, up to the lintel.
Ultimately perfected ideas, or soul, become this quality, Truth; they
become that which is within and outside all things--in short, what
Jesus calls "the kingdom of God within," as well as the Heaven around
us.
The expression "bring to nought" has its equivalents in the terms
"annihilation" and "extinction," so often used in connection with
Nirvana, for the desperate purpose of depreciating the Buddhist
conception of Heaven. The "things that are" are material objects as
we perceive them, which are mutable, and never the same one moment
together--never really are, but are for ever undergoing a process of
becoming ("God calleth those things which be not as though they were,"
Rom. iv. 17). Material objects are mutable, and Heaven and Nirvana are
immutability. Plotinus says: "The return to God, or The One (or Truth),
is the consummation of all things, and the goal indicated by Christian
teaching." This oneness, however, does not imply extinction. "He who
has entered upon Nirvana is not annihilated; on the contrary, he has
attained the deathless."
The identical idea is prevalent both in New Testament teaching and in
Buddhistic doctrine, that the realization of that state of blessedness
which is called "Heaven" in the one case, and "Nirvana" in the other,
could be brought about during the lifetime of the saint. "But I tell
you of a truth, there be some standing here which shall not taste of
death till they see the kingdom of God" (Luke ix. 27).
"The kingdom of heaven is within you" is also a sufficiently explicit
statement on the part of the Christian Scripture to substantiate the
possibility of such an experience.
In an article published in the _Monist_ of January, 1898, and bearing
on this subject, there occurs the following passage, accompanied with
extracts from the works of several Christian mystics:--
"The Buddhist idea, that salvation consists mainly in dropping our
own self, in becoming nothing, in self-annihilation for the sake
of becoming Buddha--viz., divinely incarnate--can be found in many
Christian writers. The highest religious aspirations are not the result
of an anxiety for the salvation of one's own soul, but a yearning for a
union with God."
Scotus Erigena writes: "In God all things will be put to rest and
remain One, Indivisible, and Immutable."...
"God does not perceive what is Himself."
According to St. Augustine: "If the soul is to comprehend God, it must
forget itself, for if the soul sees and comprehends itself it neither
sees nor comprehends God."
"If the soul loses itself through God and forsakes all things, it
finds itself again through God."...
"Whenever the soul comes to uniting itself with God it becomes
annihilated."...
"All perfection and all bliss consists in this, that man enters into
the ground that is groundless."...
"How shall I love God? Thou shalt love Him as He is--a not God, a
not spirit, a not person, a not image; but rather as He is--a true,
pure, clear One, separated from all two-hood; and in this One we shall
eternally disappear _from nothing into nothing_."[AN]...
[AN] I.
O Bhikshus, the uncreated, the invisible, the unmade, the elementary,
the unproduced, exists (as well as) the created, the visible, the
made, the conceivable, the compound, the produced; and there is an
uninterrupted connection between the two.
II.
O Bhikshus, if the uncreated, the invisible, the unmade, the
elementary, the unproduced was nonentity, I could not say that the
result of their connection from cause to effect with the created,
the visible, the made, the compound, the conceivable, was final
emancipation.
III.
O Bhikshus, it is because of the real existence of the uncreated,
the invisible, the elementary, the unproduced, that I say that the
result of their connection from cause to effect with the created,
the visible, the made, the compound, the conceivable, is final
emancipation.--(_Verses from the Buddhist Canon_, translated from the
Thibetan of the Bkah-hgyur, by W. Woodville Rockhill.)
Erckhart says: "How shall that man be who shall behold God? He shall be
dead. Our Lord says: 'No man shall see me and live.'"
According to Buddhistic teaching, "He who has conquered ignorance and
got rid of desire enjoys the supreme reward already in this life. His
outer man may still be detained in the world of suffering, but he knows
that it is not he himself whom the coming of the Sankharas[AO] affects."
[AO] "Sankhara is both the preparation and the prepared.... To the
Buddhist mind the made has existence only and solely in the process
of being made; whatever is is not so much a something which is as the
process rather of a being, self-generating, and self-again-consuming"
(Oldenberg).
Enlightenment and Nirvana are synonymous. "Buddha is said to have
entered upon Nirvana when he died. Yet at the same time we are told
that Buddha had attained Nirvana already during his life."[AP]
[AP] Paul Carus.
"If thou knowest the destruction of the Sankharas, thou knowest the
Uncreated" (Dhammapada); or, as Professor Oldenberg's translator
renders it, "Let others pursue the uncreated by their erroneous paths
which will never carry them beyond the realm of the created. As for
thee, let the attainment of the Uncreated consist in this, that thou
reachest the cessation of the created."
Gotama, in a conversation between himself and an unbeliever, said:
"Illustrious disciple, Nirvana may be compared to the nothingness
defined as the absence of something different to itself. We may justly
define Nirvana as that sort of non-existence which consists in the
absence of something essentially different."[AQ]
[AQ] Pari Nirvana Suttha, chap. xxxix., i.; as given in Oldenberg's
_Buddhism_.
There are to be found several passages in the New Testament which
seem to confirm the interpretation given to St. Paul's saying about
the "things that are not." Heaven is spoken of as an inheritance
that fadeth not away--that is, the "things that are" fade away, but
the things that are not do not fade away. The things that are not
seen (that are not) are eternal, and the things that are seen (that
seemingly are) are temporal.
This it hath not entered the heart of man to fully understand. We only
see through a glass darkly; through the web of illusion. "But if we
hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."
Jesus answering his interrogators, exclaims: "What _house_ will ye
build me, or what is the _place_ of my rest?" This was a rebuff to
those who endeavoured to localize the illocatable. "The Most High
dwelleth not in temples made with hands." "My kingdom is not of this
world." Jesus spoke to the people in parable because it was not given
to them to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.
Gotama said: "Whatsoever has not been revealed by me let that remain
unrevealed, and what has been revealed let it be revealed."
With reference to the saying of Jesus, "_Multa habeo vobis dicere, sed
nunc non potestis portare illa_," St. Augustine remarks: "_Manifestum
est non esse culpandum, aliquando verum tacere._"
Dr. Paul Carus, in a chapter headed "Hinâyâna, Mahâyâna, Mahâsâtu"
(p. 230, _Buddhism and its Christian Critics_), deals in a most
masterly and effective manner with the value of the symbolic in
contradistinction to the essential phases of Buddhism and Christianity.
In judging the Mahâyâna system (of Buddhism) and its fantastical
offshoots, he says: "We must consider the mental state of those nations
for whom it was adapted, and it may be that a purer religion would
have failed utterly where cruder allegories of what appears to us as
childish superstitions exercised a beneficent influence. The Mahâyâna
has changed the savage hordes of Central Asia, from whom proceeded the
most barbarous hordes, dreaded by all their neighbours, into a most
kind-hearted people, with a sacred passion for universal benevolence
and charity."
With reference to the Christian Church, he remarks: "What does it
matter that, during the development of the Church, the letter of
symbolically-expressed truth has crystallized into fixed dogmas?...
He who believes in a myth that contains, in the garb of a parable, a
religious truth, and accordingly regulates his moral conduct, is better
off than he who is void of any faith. The truth hidden in the myth
teaches him and serves him as a guide; it comforts him in affliction,
strengthens him in temptation, and shows him in an allegorical
reflection the bliss that rests upon righteousness."
The words "rest," "peace," and "sleep" are in the New Testament more
often associated with the conditions of a future life than such
expressions as "joy" or "happiness." The word "joy" is only to be
found once in direct connection with the word "heaven" in the New
Testament--_i.e._, when there was joy in heaven over the repentance of
a sinner.
The omission may have been intentional, so that the world might
understand that the joy of heaven would be something absolutely
different from what we conceive of joy; that there will be a kind of
joy, in which joy, as it is known here, is absent.
"There remaineth, therefore, a rest for the people of God."
"He that hath entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own
works as God did from his."
"Let us labour therefore to enter that rest."
"Ye shall find rest unto your souls."
Such texts seem to draw heaven and Nirvana very close together.
It is undoubtedly implied in some portions of the Christian Scriptures
that the souls of the departed are asleep, and will not be disturbed
till the coming of the Lord and the final judgment.
"Does not the testimony of the Bible lead us to this conclusion; from
the cry of the tired spirit of Samuel, awakened from its sleep by the
Witch of Endor, 'Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?' to the
saying of the spirit in the Revelation, 'Yea, they rest from their
labours.' In the case of Lazarus we have the words of Jesus to this
effect: 'Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out
of sleep'" (from _Light_).
Many are in love with the satisfying beauty of this sleep which has
lasted since death began to be, and desire that it might never be
disturbed. This is that yearning for the rest of Nirvana, for the peace
that passeth understanding. The true mission of religious symbolism, of
music, of poetry, and the plastic arts is, not to excite the physical
emotions of man, not to crystallize appearances, but to translate his
soul to this condition of delicious swooning, to turn his gaze inwards
to what Brahmanic philosophy calls the fontal essence of things.
From a poetical point of view, it is perhaps melancholy to reflect that
the seers of India are being rudely awakened from their reveries, to
be at last, as seems probable, completely absorbed into the relatively
sordid environment of Occidental progress--in fact, to dream no more.
The West has murdered dreams.
Apart from the physical influences of climate and country, the strange
yearning of the Indian for an ultimate heaven of unconsciousness may
be accounted for by tracing it to a vague remembrance in the human
organism of the happy condition from which it primarily emerged, before
even animal existence had entered upon the fairly peaceful life-history
of an amœba.
The process of transition from the condition of "are" to that of
"are not," from the phenomenal to the noumenal, has been conceived
by Buddhists and Christians alike to be gradual. As a parallel to
the "house of many mansions," so often taken to mean by Christians a
progressive ascent through a number of heavens to a heaven of heavens,
I give below, in abbreviated form, the "spheres of formlessness" as
described by Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, in his book entitled _Gleanings from
Buddha Fields_.
"These," he says, "are four. In the first state all sense of
individuality is lost, and there survives only the idea of
infinite space or emptiness. In the second state this idea of
space vanishes, and its place is filled by the idea of infinite
reason. But this idea of reason is anthropomorphic, it is an
illusion, and it fades out in the third state, which is called the
'state-of-nothing-to-take-hold-of.' Here is only the idea of infinite
nothingness. But even this condition has been reached by the aid of the
action of the personal mind. This action ceases; then the fourth state
is reached, the state of 'neither-namelessness-nor-notnamelessness.'
Something of personal mentality continues to float vaguely here--the
very uttermost expiring vibration of Karma--the last vanishing haze of
being. It melts, and the immeasurable revelation comes."
Professor Oldenberg says: "It is not enough to say that the final goal
to which the Buddhist strives to pass as an escape from the sorrow
of the world is Nirvana. It is also necessary to any delineation of
Buddhism to note, as a fact assured beyond all doubt, that internal
cheerfulness, infinitely surpassing all mere resignation with which the
Buddhist pursues his end....
"Does the path, then, lead into a new existence? Does it lead into the
nothing? The Buddhist creed rests in delicate equipoise between the
two. The longing of the heart that craves the eternal has not nothing,
and yet the thought has not a something, which it might firmly grasp.
Further off the idea of the endless, the eternal could not withdraw
itself from belief than it has done here, where, like a gentle flutter
on the point of merging in the nothing, it threatens to evade the gaze."
Nirvana, according to Mr. James Freeman Clarke, means to the Buddhist
the absolute eternal world beyond time and space; that which is
_nothing_ to us now, but will be _everything_ hereafter.
Students of Buddhism are often confronted with the question why sorrow
and pain should have held such prominent places in the mind of Gotama.
Explanations have been afforded that this was due, in a large measure,
to a pathetic nature, born of climate and environment. The _mind_ of
the inhabitants of Hindustan is still an unfathomable mystery; the
great heart of India beats slowly, and those waves of sprightly emotion
which are distinctive peculiarities of the natives of Europe are but
barely discernible ripples on the still surface of the Indian character.
To the poetic people of the Ganges the immense plains of India, their
broad and voiceless rivers, the magic beauty of an oasis, the distant
silence of the Himalayas, the brooding calm of the atmosphere, all
appear to labour in unison to the same end--to fashion the restless
heart of mortals after their own emotionless image, to expand it into
that fulness of peace which is theirs, and to guide the children of men
into the haven where they would be.
This mode of thought, or no thought; this complete abandonment of self,
culminating in the ascetic, to the desire of union with the Infinite,
can be differentiated from the meditative pose of the Christian by the
absence in it of anything approaching to emotion or affection. These
are weaknesses to be set aside. There can be no calm where sensations
enter--not even a breath of divine love must stir the ocean of their
pictured rest. Gotama fully recognized that true joy was only to
be found when the notion of self-hood was in abeyance, as it most
certainly is found invariably in those cases in which we lose, as it
were, the sense of objective being in an absorbing subject, or in the
presence of a fascinating personality.
There is an indescribable pleasure realizable in engrossing
occupations of mind and body which distract attention from ourselves
as selves. Hence the apotheosis of love as the ultimate possible
bliss, whether it be manifested in the adoration of the human or in
the ecstasy of the saint. Charles Beaudelaire declares the whole aim
of life is to dispel _ennui_--the _ennui_ of sitting still by walking,
of lying down by change to an erect posture, and so on. Virtue,
vice, love, etc., are all efforts to attain a state of oblivion of
our individuality, to _s'enivrer_ with distractions of some sort or
another. Sorrow is the realization of ourselves as separate entities.
The Buddhists declare that, when we rid ourselves of the idea of this
separateness, then, and then only, will true joy be found. The same
truth is expressed in the New Testament: "He that loseth his life shall
gain it."
The drooping head upon the cross, the livid corpse of the Saviour--such
pictures are strikingly emblematic of the sacrifice of self-hood, which
is ever the cause of pain. Self-hood crucified--that is the Great
Deliverance, that is Heaven, that is Nirvana! We must do more than take
up the cross and follow; we must hang upon it, be nailed to it, if we
would be saved.
It has been urged that the foundations of Buddhism rest upon the
assumption that life is not worth living; everything leads to pain and
sorrow; the joys of life are ignored. Hence, if it were proved that the
enjoyments of life out-weighed the sorrows, would it not be clearly
shown that Buddhism is _de trop_? For it is clear that life, in that
case, would be worth living. This view of life is not only supported
by a general consensus of opinion, but seems to be additionally
strengthened by the universal desire to live. That this desire would
not exist if the pessimistic idea of Buddhism regarding existence were
well founded is evident.
In opposition to this view, my conception of Buddhism, as represented
in its literature, is that its foundations rest upon the assumption
that there is a life more worth living, in which all sorrow is
eradicated; that only ignorance leads to pain and sorrow; that
knowledge leads to their extinction. I am not aware that the joys of
life are wholly ignored by Buddhists.
If it is granted that happiness predominates over unhappiness, and
that life must consequently be worth living, this need not exclude the
desire for a life more worth living, in which there is no unhappiness.
If Buddhism is the wretched, pessimistic system it is declared by some
to be, why should it not be allowed to hypothecate a heaven, when even
the joyous, optimistic Christian, who finds life so worth living,
speaks of being "delivered from the misery of this sinful world," and
hopes for a life worth living?
Quite three-quarters of the population of this planet, as represented
by its religious beliefs, which is supposed to find life worth living,
looks through the spectacles of faith towards a life more worth living,
after the dissolution of the body. In short, there are two distinct
lives recognized by Buddhists--the _living_ life and the _non-living_
life; and it goes without saying that the latter is by far the more
desirable of the two.
"Not the life of men's veins,
Not of flesh that conceives;
But the grace that remains,
The fair beauty that cleaves
To the life of the rains in the grasses, the life of the dews on the
leaves."
Dr. Paul Carus says: "The good tidings of Buddha's religion are not so
much the recognition of the existence of pain and care as the conquest
of evil and the escape from suffering. The following verses from the
Dhammapada have no pessimistic ring:--
"'Let us live happily, then, not hating those who hate us!
"'Among men who hate us, let us dwell free from hatred!
"'Let us live happily, then, free from ailments among the ailing!
"'Among men who are ailing, let us dwell free from ailments!
"'Let us live happily, then, free from greed among the greedy!
"'Among men who are greedy, let us dwell free from greed!'"
There are many passages to be found in the New Testament, in our
Christian Liturgy, and especially in the Hymnology of the Churches,
which emphasize "suffering" as the normal and inevitable condition of
humanity, almost leading one to suppose that it is the predominant
factor in human life.
In the Burial Service we thank God that our brother has been
delivered from the miseries of a sinful world, and Job is brought
into requisition to show that "man that is born of woman is _full_ of
sorrows."
In a beautiful hymn we have the following verse:--
"If I find Him, if I follow,
What His guerdon _here_?
Many a sorrow, many a labour,
Many a tear."
For an assembly of young men and maidens in the first rapturous dawn of
maturing youth to sing--
"O Paradise, O Paradise,
'Tis weary waiting here,"
though delightfully pessimistic, does not seem quite up to the standard
of absolute truth.
These sorrows, these labours, these tears, this weary waiting,
represent the experiences in store for the initiate, and the conditions
under which the Christian must progress who would reach the goal of his
dearest aspirations.
"Death is self-surrender; all loss is a kind of death; the
only-begotten Son is the summing up of what is dearest, most _one's
own_--_i.e._, God can only be _at one_ with his work, can only make it
to be truly his work by eternally dying--sacrificing what is dearest
to him. God does not, therefore, _cease to be_; he does not annihilate
himself; he lives eternally in the very process of sacrificing
his dearest work. Hence God is said to be love; for love is the
consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender.... Such would
be the _atone_ment of the world-god eternally living in his own death,
eternally losing, and eternally returning to, himself" (Nettleship).
It cannot be denied that "suffering" was the burden of Gotama's song,
the refrain of his passionless, yet beautiful, utterances.
Jesus has been described "as a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief."
Jesus wept.
The whole creation weeps.
"What think ye, my disciples (the Perfect One said), whether is more,
the water which is in the four great oceans, or the tears which have
flown from you, and have been shed by you, while ye strayed and
wandered in this long pilgrimage, and sorrowed and wept because that
was your portion which ye abhorred, and that which ye loved was not
your portion? And while ye experienced this through long ages more
tears have flown from you, and have been shed by you, while ye strayed
and wandered on this long pilgrimage, and sorrowed and wept because
that was your portion which ye abhorred, and that which ye loved was
not your portion, than all the water which is in the four great oceans"
(Oldenberg's _Buddhism_).
St. Paul conjures up a vision of the immense figure of creation,
prostrate, groaning beneath the silent heavens. "The true Buddhist
certainly sees in this world a state of continuous sorrow; but this
sorrow only awakes in him a feeling of compassion for those who are yet
in the world. For himself he feels no sorrow or compassion.... He seeks
Nirvana with the same joyous sense of victory in prospect with which
the Christian looks forward to his goal, everlasting life" (Oldenberg).
The doctrine of an irrevocable doom for the unbeliever and obdurate
sinner is not easy to follow, because it would seem to imply "a failure
of the redemptive work of the Saviour unless all for whom he died
ultimately partake of salvation." If many are called and but few are
chosen; if the gate is narrow, and only a microscopic minority enter
thereby, the supreme sacrifice of the only-begotten Son of God is
liable to lose significance in the eyes of an _exigeant_ public.
Jesus "treated popular religious terms such as Hell and Heaven as
symbols." "He employed the familiar images of Heaven and Hell to
impress on men's consciousness the supreme bliss of righteousness and
the awful misery of sin."
"When our Lord came, he found the doctrines of last things presented
in forms already fixed, and the terms Gehenna, Paradise, etc.,
in familiar, even proverbial, use" (Eschatology, _Encyclopædia
Britannica_).
Every being, according to Buddhistic teaching, attains Nirvana in the
end; so may it not be in "the times of the restitution of _all things_,
which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the
world began"?
If symbolism were only taken for what it represents, every Buddhist
could join with the Christian in many of the exquisite invocations of
the Psalms. There is no rest to be found in the impermanent. To find
the peace which passeth understanding, we must ultimately have recourse
to the unconditioned, the permanent, Nirvana, God. The prayer of the
Christian as well as the aspiration of the pure Buddhist is to be,
whether living or dead, one with the Uncreate.
Professor Oldenberg says that "the devotion of abstraction is
to Buddhism what prayer is to other religions." There is here a
distinction without a difference. Abstraction is nothing more nor less
than true, perfect, sublimated prayer. Real, unadulterated prayer is
only possible when the mind is totally relieved of distractions.
Jesus went apart to pray; so the Buddhist monk seeks the silence of the
forest or the seclusion of the cave to commune with the unconditioned,
with "Our Father which art in Heaven," with the Uncreate of the
Athanasian Creed. He who abstracts himself from the "plurality of the
phenomenal world" anticipates the cessation of the impermanent.
"Come, then! Into solitude will I go, into the forest which Buddha
praises; therein it is good for the solitary monk to dwell who seeks
perfection. In the _sîta_ forest rich in blossoms, in the cool mountain
cave, will I wash my body and walk alone."
The counting of inhalations and exhalations of the breath, and other
practices of a like nature, are used as so many short cuts to this
state of abstraction or prayer. For this purpose they are as valuable
as ceremonial magic professes to be for the ready acquisition of power
over unknown laws and qualities of nature.[AR]
[AR] "Our prayer is to Him to preserve us in future, to assist us in
our troubles, to give us our daily food, not to be too severe upon
us, not to punish us as we deserve; but to be merciful and kind. But
the Buddhist has far other thoughts than these. He believes that the
world is ruled by everlasting, unchangeable laws of righteousness. The
Great God lives far behind His laws, and they are for ever and ever.
You cannot change the laws of righteousness by praising them, or by
crying against them, any more than you can change the revolution of
the earth. Sin begets sorrow, sorrow is the only purifier from sin;
these are eternal sequences; they cannot be altered; it would not
be good that they should be altered. The Buddhist believes that the
sequences are founded on righteousness, are the path to righteousness;
and he does not believe he could alter them for the better, even if he
had the power by prayer to do so.... This has been called a pessimism.
Surely it is the greatest optimism the world has known--this certainty
that the world is ruled by righteousness; that the world has been,
that the world will always be, ruled by perfect righteousness....
The God who lies far beyond our ken has delegated his authority to
no one. He works through everlasting laws. His will is manifested by
unchangeable sequences. There is nothing hidden about His law that
requires exposition by his agents, nor any ceremonies necessary for
acceptance into his faith. Buddhism is a free religion. No one holds
the keys of salvation but himself. Buddhism never dreams that anyone
can save or damn you except yourself, and so a Buddhist monk is so
far away from our ideas of a priest as can be. Nothing could be more
abhorrent to Buddhism than any claim of authority of power from above,
of holiness acquired, except by the earnest effort of a man's own
soul" (_The Soul of a People_, by H. Fielding).
Christianity and Buddhism cannot be differentiated in this matter of
abstraction. Gibbon writes: "The fakirs of India and the monks of the
Oriental Church were alike persuaded that, in total abstraction of the
faculties of the mind and body, the purer spirit may ascend to the
enjoyment and vision of the Deity." The opinion and practice of the
monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an
Abbot who flourished in the eleventh century. "When thou art alone in
thy cell," says the ascetic teacher, "shut thy door, and seat thyself
in a corner; raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory;
recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thy eyes and thy
thoughts towards the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel, and
search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will
be dark and comfortless; but, if you persevere day and night, you will
feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place
of the heart than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light."
Here, in these practices attributed to Christian saints, we have an
exact parallel to those in use by Hindu ascetics even of the present
day. It must be clearly understood, however, that the Buddhist attaches
no merit to such practices, unless they conduce to the banishment of
ignorance. Asceticism, as a thing in itself, is useless.
Heaven and Nirvana are unpainted pictures, undescribed actualizations;
they are realities, not materialities. There is a never-ending,
unsatisfied, restless craving, conscious or unconscious, throughout
the Kosmos to enter upon reality. The suns and their satellites whirl
about aimlessly in search of it. The whole universe is in sore trouble
because, through ignorance, it is not. "The vulture's eye hath not seen
it; the lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed
by it. The depth saith, It is not in me; and the sea saith, It is not
with me." And yet it is there!
The use of such exaggerated terms as "immense," "infinite,"
"illimitable," etc., is to be accounted for by referring the habit to
unconscious efforts by the conditioned to express the unconditioned.
The sea, mountains, the heavens, owe their fascination to a suggestion
of the unconditioned possessed by them.
In moments of attempted aspiration we are prone to look upwards into
space--a symbol of the boundless. On the other hand, when the mind is
engaged in working out details and calculations, there is the habit
of looking downwards. Not only men, but beasts of the field, look
upwards for help in their dying moments; upwards into space, where the
conditioned seemingly vanishes into the unconditioned.
I have often witnessed the pleading expression of dying antelopes and
other wild animals, their eyes being almost invariably directed to the
sky above in their last moments of life.
I was on one occasion more than usually struck with this beautiful
expression--appealing, as it were, to the skies for mercy--in the case
of a wounded bear when in its death throes amid the snowy solitudes of
the Himalayas.
Let us draw the curtains apart, and behold for a moment the scene of
the enacted tragedy. Out of the violet mists spread by the viewless
hands of a yet unrisen sun, black crags uplifted their glacier breasts
to receive the first ravishing kiss of dawn; and the forests, obedient
to the silence imposed by the kingly peaks, stood austere and unstirred
by the affectionate airs of heaven. The staining blood, the furry mass,
the clutching claws of the wild monster in his struggle with life and
death, presented to the imagination some weird sacrifice consummated
upon an altar, built of immaculate snow.
It was then that this remarkable pleading expression of the eyes
arrested the attention of my Himalayan huntsman, who, turning round to
me, exclaimed: "He is seeing God." The Psalmist says: "I will lift up
mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help."
Human beings, as well as all animal nature, seem to make their final
appeal for help or pity to something above or beyond this conditioned
world. The enhancement of the beauties of landscape and architecture by
the effects of mist and twilight is due to the obliteration of detail
by these atmospheric conditions. Detail is fatiguing to the eye and
brain. These organs unconsciously demand the repose which the absence
of detail confers. Hence the charm of impressionism in Art.
In the countenances of the blind, who possess one sensation the less
to distract and weary them, there is not infrequently to be noticed a
peculiar scintillation of peace which seems to speak to one of the time
when all sensations will cease to be, and to herald the approach of
that eternal beatitude which is so highly uplifted above the joys of
this transitory world.
There is also a strong Nirvanic suggestion in the appearance of some
of the eminent ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic faith, in those
instances where the flesh shows traces of the consuming fire of
asceticism. Benevolence, compassion, love, genius, joy--all these are
presented, but with a minimum of the earthy adhering to them. In this
aspect they create an impression very different to that communicated
to us by the comfortable placidity of those who have only experienced
happiness of a less exalted description.[AS]
[AS] The extraordinary veneration in which the Cowley Fathers and
Roman Catholic priests are held in India has often been attributed,
and rightly so, I think, to the unassuming asceticism which
characterizes these lowly followers of the Great Master. Celibacy,
self-denial, poverty, meekness--these never fail to win the admiration
and respect of the people of Hindustan who cherish their ideals more
fondly than is apparently the case in many other countries.
In "stillness," another attribute of the unconditioned, there abides
an enchantment that cannot be surpassed by other conditions. Yet even
the rapture engendered by the sight of a furious and incontinent sea
can be explained by the fact that the pleasure derived therefrom is
solely due and in proportion to the magnitude of the display, and
magnitude suggests the "illimitable."
The ambition to scale the highest summits, in whatever position
or capacity, the idea of resurrection, the fascination of the word
"eternal," the hope of everlasting rest--all these tend in the same
direction, all point to the Empyrean, where detail seems to fade into a
vacuum, into Nirvana, into Heaven, into God.