The History of Hinduism and Buddhism. Charles Eliot
is compound, relative and transitory. The obvious fact that infancy, youth and age form a series is not denied: the series may be called a personality and death need not end it. The error to be avoided is the doctrine of the Brahmans that through this series there runs a changeless self, which assumes new phases like one who puts on new garments.
The co-ordination and apparent unity observable in our mental constitution is due to mano which is commonly translated mind but is really for Buddhism, as for the Upanishads, a sensus communis. Whereas the five senses have different spheres or fields which are independent and do not overlap, mano has a share in all these spheres. It receives and cognizes all sense impressions.
The philosophy of early Buddhism deals with psychology rather than with metaphysics. It holds it profitable to analyze and discuss man's mental constitution, because such knowledge leads to the destruction of false ideals and the pursuit of peace and insight. Enquiry into the origin and nature of the external world is not equally profitable: in fact it is a vain intellectual pastime. Still in treating of such matters as sensation, perception and consciousness, it is impossible to ignore the question of external objects or to avoid propounding, at least by implication, some theory about them. In this connection we often come upon the important word Dhamma (Sanskrit, Dharma). It means a law, and more especially the law of the Buddha, or, in a wider sense, justice, righteousness or religion[420]. But outside the moral and religious sphere it is commonly used in the plural as equivalent to phenomena, considered as involving states of consciousness. The Dhamma-sangaṇi[421] divides phenomena into those which exist for the subject and those which exist for other individuals and ignores the possibility of things existing apart from a knowing subject. This hints at idealism and other statements seem more precise. Thus the Saṃyutta-Nikâya declares: "Verily, within this mortal body, some six feet high, but conscious and endowed with mind, is the world, and its origin, and its passing away[422]." And similarly[423] the problem is posed, "Where do the four elements pass away and leave no trace behind." Neither gods nor men can answer it, and when it is referred to the Buddha, his decision is that the question is wrongly put and therefore admits of no solution. "Instead of asking where the four elements pass away without trace, you should have asked:
Where do earth, water, fire and wind,
And long and short and fine and coarse,
Pure and impure no footing find?
Where is it that both name and form[424] Die out and leave no trace behind?"
To that the answer is: In the mind of the Saint.
Yet it is certain that such passages should not be interpreted as equivalent to the later Yogâcâra doctrine that only thought really exists or to any form of the doctrine that the world is Mâyâ or illusion. The Pitakas leave no doubt on this point, for they elaborate with clearness and consistency the theory that sensation and consciousness depend on contact, that is contact between sense organs and sense objects. "Man is conceived as a compound of instruments, receptive and reacting[425]" and the Saṃyutta-Nikâya puts into the Buddha's mouth the following dogmatic statement[426]. "Consciousness arises because of duality. What is that duality? Visual[427] consciousness arises because of sight and because of visible objects. Sight is transitory and mutable: it is its very nature to change. Visible objects are the same. So this duality is both in movement and transitory."
The question of the reality of the external world did not present itself to the early Buddhists. Had it been posed we may surmise that the Buddha would have replied, as in similar cases, that the question was not properly put. He would not, we may imagine, have admitted that the human mind has the creative power which idealism postulates, for such power seems to imply the existence of something like a self or âtman. But still though the Pitakas emphasize the empirical duality of sense-organs and sense-objects, they also supply a basis for the doctrines of Nâgârjuna and Asanga, which like much late Buddhist metaphysics insist on using logic in regions where the master would not use it. When it is said that the genesis of the world and its passing away are within this mortal frame, the meaning probably is that the world as we experience it with its pains and pleasures depends on the senses and that with the modification or cessation of the senses it is changed or comes to an end. In other words (for this doctrine like most of the Buddha's doctrines is at bottom ethical rather than metaphysical) the saint can make or unmake his own world and triumph over pain. But the theory of sensation may be treated not ethically but metaphysically. Sensation implies a duality and on the one side the Buddha's teaching argues that there is no permanent sentient self but merely different kinds of consciousness arising in response to different stimuli. It is admitted too that visible objects are changing and transitory like sight itself and thus there is no reason to regard the external world, which is one half of the duality, as more permanent, self-existent and continuous than the other half. When we apply to it the destructive analysis which the Buddha applied only to mental states, we easily arrive at the nihilism or idealism of the later Buddhists. Of this I will treat later. For the present we have only to note that early Buddhism holds that sensation depends on contact, that is on a duality. It does not investigate the external part of this duality and it is clear that such investigation leads to the very speculations which the Buddha declared to be unprofitable, such as arguments about the eternity and infinity of the universe.
The doctrine of Anattâ is counterbalanced by the doctrine of causation. Without this latter the Buddha might seem to teach that life is a chaos of shadows. But on the contrary he teaches the universality of law, in this life and in all lives. For Hindus of most schools of thought, metempsychosis means the doctrine that the immortal soul passes from one bodily tenement to another, and is reborn again and again: karma is the law which determines the occurrence and the character of these births. In Buddhism, though the Pitakas speak continually of rebirth, metempsychosis is an incorrect expression since there is no soul to transmigrate and there is strictly speaking nothing but karma. This word, signifying literally action or act, is the name of the force which finds expression in the fact that every event is the result of causes and also is itself a cause which produces effects; further in the fact (for Indians regard it as one) that when a life, whether of a god, man or lower creature, comes to an end, the sum of its actions (which is in many connections equivalent to personal character) takes effect as a whole and determines the character of another aggregation of skandhas—in popular language, another being—representing the net result of the life which has come to an end. Karma is also used in the more concrete sense of the merit or demerit acquired by various acts. Thus we hear of karma which manifests itself in this life, and of karma which only manifests itself in another. No explanation whatever is given of the origin of karma, of its reason, method or aims and it would not be consistent with the principles of the Buddha to give such an explanation. Indeed, though it is justifiable to speak of karma as a force which calls into being the world as we know it, such a phrase goes beyond the habitual language of early Buddhism which merely states that everything has a cause and that every one's nature and circumstances are the result of previous actions in this or other existences. Karma is not so much invoked as a metaphysical explanation of the universe as accorded the consideration which it merits as an ultimate moral fact.
It has often been pointed out that the Buddha did not originate or even first popularize the ideas of reincarnation and karma: they are Indian, not specifically Buddhist. In fact, of all Indian systems of thought, Buddhism is the one which has the greatest difficulty in expressing these ideas in intelligible and consistent language, because it denies the existence of the ego. Some writers have gone so far as to suggest that the whole doctrine formed no part of the Buddha's original teaching and was an accretion, or at most a concession of the master to the beliefs of his time. But I cannot think this view is correct. The idea is woven into the texture of the Buddha's discourses. When in words which have as strong a claim as any in the Pitakas to be regarded as old and genuine he describes the stages by which he acquired enlightenment and promises the same experiences to those who observe his discipline[428], he says that he first followed the thread of his own previous existences through past æons, plumbing the unfathomed depths of time: next, the whole of existence was spread out before him, like a view-seen from above, and he saw beings passing away from one body and taking shape in another, according to their deeds. Only when he understood both the perpetual transformation of the universe and also the line and sequence in which that transformation