Reading section 29

bow, and what were the animals and plants which supplied the feathers, leather, shaft and string. The man would never learn all that, because he would die first." "Therefore" is the conclusion, "hold what I have determined as determined and what I have not determined, as not determined."

This sutta may be taken in connection with passages asserting that the Buddha knows more than he tells his disciples. The result seems to be that there are certain questions which the human mind and human language had better leave alone because we are incapable of taking or expressing a view sufficiently large to be correct, but that the Buddha has a more than human knowledge which he does not impart because it is not profitable and overstrains the faculties, just as it is no part of a cure that the patient should make an exhaustive study of his disease.

With reference to the special question of the existence of the saint after death, the story of Yamaka[513] is important. He maintained that a monk in whom evil is destroyed (khînâsavo) is annihilated when he dies, and does not exist. This was considered a grave heresy and refuted by Sâriputta who argues that even in this life the nature of a saint passes understanding because he is neither all the skandhas taken together nor yet one or more of them.

Yet it would seem that according to the psychology of the Pitakas an ordinary human being is an aggregate of the skandhas and nothing more. When such a being dies and in popular language is born again, the skandhas reconstitute themselves but it is expressly stated that when the saint dies this does not happen. The Chain of Causation says that consciousness and the sankhâras are interdependent. If there is no rebirth, it is because (as it would seem) there are in the dying saint no sankhâras. His nature cannot be formulated in the same terms as the nature of an ordinary man. It may be noted that karma is not equivalent to the effect produced on the world by a man's words and deeds, for if that were so, no one would have died leaving more karma behind him than the Buddha himself, yet according to Hindu doctrine, whether Buddhist or Brahmanic, no karma attaches to the deeds of a saint. His acts may affect others but there is nothing in them which tends to create a new existence.

In another dialogue[514] the Buddha replies to a wandering monk called Vaccha who questioned him about the undetermined problems and in answer to every solution suggested says that he does not hold that view. Vaccha asks what objection he has to these theories that he has not adopted any of them?

"Vaccha, the theory that the saint exists (or does not exist and so on) after death is a jungle, a desert, a puppet show, a writhing, an entanglement and brings with it sorrow, anger, wrangling and agony. It does not conduce to distaste for the world, to the absence of passion, to the cessation of evil, to peace, to knowledge, to perfect enlightenment, to nirvana. Perceiving this objection, I have not adopted any of these theories." "Then has Gotama any theory of his own?" "Vaccha, the Tathâgata has nothing to do with theories, but this is what he knows: the nature of form, how form arises, how form perishes: the nature of perception, how it arises and how it perishes (and so on with the other skandhas). Therefore I say that the Tathâgata is emancipated because he has completely and entirely abandoned all imaginations, agitations and false notions about the Ego and anything pertaining to the Ego." But, asks Vaccha, when one who has attained this emancipation of mind dies where is he reborn? "Vaccha, the word 'reborn' does not fit the case." "Then, Gotama, he is not reborn." "To say he is not reborn does not fit the case, nor is it any better to say he is both reborn and not reborn or that he is neither reborn nor not reborn." "Really, Gotama, I am completely bewildered and my faith in you is gone."

"Never mind your bewilderment. This doctrine is profound and difficult. Suppose there was a fire in front of you. You would see it burning and know that its burning depended on fuel. And if it went out (nibbâyeyya) you would know that it had gone out. But if some one were to ask you, to which quarter has it gone, East, West, North or South, what would you say?"

"The expression does not fit the case, Gotama. For the fire depended on fuel and when the fuel is gone it is said to be extinguished, being without nourishment."

"In just the same way, all form by which one could predicate the existence of the saint is abandoned and uprooted like a fan palm[515], so that it will never grow up in future. The saint who is released from what is styled form is deep, immeasurable, hard to fathom, like the great ocean. It does not fit the case to say either that he is reborn, not reborn, both reborn and not reborn, or neither reborn nor not reborn." Exactly the same statement is then repeated four times the words sensation, perception, sankhâras and consciousness being substituted successively for the word form. Vaccha, we are told, was satisfied.

To appreciate properly the Buddha's simile we must concentrate our attention on the fire. When we apply this metaphor to annihilation, we usually think of the fuel or receptacle and our mind dwells sadly on the heap of ashes or the extinguished lamp. But what has become of the fire? It is hardly correct to say that it has been destroyed. If a particular fire may be said to be annihilated in the sense that it is impossible to reconstitute it by repeating the same process of burning, the reason is not so much that we cannot get the same flames as that we cannot burn the same fuel twice. But so long as there is continuous combustion in the same fireplace or pile of fuel, we speak of the same fire although neither the flame nor the fuel remains the same. When combustion ceases, the fire goes out in popular language. To what quarter does it go? That question clearly does not "fit the case." But neither does it fit the case to say that the fire is annihilated[516].

Nirvana is the cessation of a process not the annihilation of an existence. If I take a walk, nothing is annihilated when the walk comes to an end: a particular form of action has ceased. Strictly speaking the case of a fire is the same: when it goes out a process ceases. For the ordinary man nirvana is annihilation in the sense that it is the absence of all the activities which he considers desirable. But for the arhat (who is the only person able to judge) nirvana after death, as compared with nirvana in life, may be quiescence and suspension of activity, only that such phrases seem to imply that activity is the right and normal condition, quiescence being negative and unnatural, whereas for an arhat these values are reversed.

We may use too the parallel metaphor of water. A wave cannot become an immortal personality. It may have an indefinitely long existence as it moves across the ocean, although both its shape and substance are constantly changing, and when it breaks against an obstacle the resultant motion may form new waves. And if a wave ceases to struggle for individual existence and differentiation from the surrounding sea, it cannot be said to exist any more as a wave. Yet neither the water which was its substance nor the motion which impelled it have been annihilated. It is not even quite correct to say that it has been merged in the sea. A drop of water added to a larger liquid mass is merged. The wave simply ceases to be active and differentiated.

In the Saṃyutta-Nikâya[517] the Buddha's statement that the saint after death is deep and immeasurable like the ocean is expanded by significant illustration of the mathematician's inability to number the sand or express the sea in terms of liquid measure. It is in fact implied that if we cannot say _he is_, this is only because that word cannot properly be applied to the infinite, innumerable and immeasurable.

The point which is clearest in the Buddha's treatment of this question is that whatever his disciples may have thought, he did not himself consider it of importance for true religion. Speculation on such points may be interesting to the intellect but is not edifying. It is a jungle where the traveller wanders without advancing, and a puppet-show, a vain worldly amusement which wears a false appearance of religion because it is diverting itself with quasi-religious problems. What is the state of the saint after death, is not as people vainly suppose a question parallel to, am I going to heaven or hell, what shall I do to be saved? To those questions the Buddha gives but one answer in terms of human language and human thought, namely, attain to nirvana and arhatship on this side of death, if possible in your present existence; if not now, then in the future good existences which you can fashion for yourself. What lies beyond is impracticable as a goal, unprofitable as a subject of speculation. We shall probably not be transgressing the limits of Gotama's thought if we add that those who are not arhats are bound to approach the question with misconception and it is a necessary part of an Arhat's training to get rid of the idea "I am[518]." The state of a Saint after death cannot be legitimately described in language which suggests that it is a fuller and deeper mode of life[519]. Yet it is clear that nearly all who dispute about it wish to make out that it is a state they could somehow regard with active satisfaction. In technical language they are infected with arûparâgo, or desire for life in a formless world, and this is the seventh of the ten fetters, all of which must be broken before arhatship is attained. I imagine that those modern sects, such as the Zen in Japan, which hold that the deepest mysteries of the faith cannot be communicated in words but somehow grow clear in meditation are not far from the master's teaching, though to the best of my belief no passage has been produced from the Pitakas stating that an arahat has special knowledge about the avyâkatâni or undetermined questions.

Almost all who treat of nirvana after death try to make the Buddha say, is or is not. That is what he refused to do. We still want a plain answer to a plain question and insist that he really means either that the saint is annihilated or enters on an infinite existence. But the true analogues to this question are the other insoluble questions, for instance, is the world infinite or finite in space? This is in form a simple physical problem, yet it is impossible for the mind to conceive either an infinite world or a world stopping abruptly with not even space beyond. A common answer to this antinomy is that the mind is attempting to deal with a subject with which it is incompetent to deal, that the question is wrongly formulated and that every answer to it thus formulated must be wrong. The way of truth lies in first finding the true question. The real difficulty of the Buddha's teaching, though it does not stimulate curiosity so much as the question of life after death, is the nature and being of the saint in this life before death, raised in the argument with Yamaka[520].

Another reason for not pressing the Buddha's language in either direction is that, if he had wished to preach in the subtlest form either infinite life or annihilation, he would have found minds accustomed to the ideas and a vocabulary ready for his use. If he had wished to indicate any form of absorption into a universal soul, or the acquisition by the individual self of the knowledge that it is identical with the universal self, he could easily have done so. But he studiously avoided saying anything of the kind. He teaches that all existence involves suffering and he preaches escape from it. After that escape the words being and not being no longer apply, and the reason why some people adopt the false idea of annihilation is because they have commenced by adopting the false alternative of either annihilation or an eternal prolongation of this life. A man makes[521] himself miserable because he thinks he has lost something or that there is something which he cannot get. But if he does not think he has lost something or is deprived of something he might have, then he does not feel miserable. Similarly, a man holds the erroneous opinion, "This world is the self, or soul and I shall become it after death and be eternal, and unchanging." Then he hears the preaching of a Buddha and he thinks "I shall be annihilated, I shall not exist any more," and he feels miserable. But if a man does not hold this doctrine that the soul is identical with the universe and will exist eternally—which is just complete full-blown folly[522]--and then hears the preaching of a Buddha it does not occur to him to think that he will be annihilated and he is not miserable. Here the Buddha emphasizes the fact that his teaching is not a variety of the Brahmanic doctrine about the Âtman. Shortly afterwards in the same sutta he even more emphatically says that he does not teach annihilation. He teaches that the saint is already in this life inconceivable (_ananuvejjo_): "And when I teach and explain this some accuse me falsely and without the smallest ground[523] saying 'Gotama is an unbeliever; he preaches the annihilation, the destruction, the dying out of real being.' When they talk like this they accuse me of being what I am not, of saying what I do not say."

Though the Buddha seems to condemn by anticipation the form of the Vedanta known as the Advaita, this philosophy illustrates the difficulty of making any statement about the saint after his death. For it teaches that the saint knows that there is but one reality, namely Brahman, and that all individual existences are illusion: he is aware that he is Brahman and that he is not differentiated from the world around him. And when he dies, what happens? Metaphors about drops and rivers are not really to the point. It would be more correct to say that nothing at all has happened. His physical life, an illusion which did not exist for himself, has ceased to exist for others.

Perhaps he will be nearest to the Buddha's train of thought who attempts to consider, by reflection rather than by discussion in words, what is meant by annihilation. By thinking of the mystery of existence and realizing how difficult it is to explain how and why anything exists, we are apt to slip into thinking that it would be quite natural and intelligible if nothing existed or if existing things became nothing. Yet as a matter of fact our minds have no experience of this nothing of which we talk and it is inconceivable. When we try to think of nothingness we really think of space from which we try to remove all content, yet could we create an absolute vacuum within a vessel, the interior of the vessel would not be annihilated. The man who has attained nirvana cannot be adequately defined or grasped even in this life: what binds him to being is cut[524] but it is inappropriate and inadequate to say that he has become nothing[525].

CHAPTER XI

MONKS AND LAYMEN

1

The great practical achievement of the Buddha was to found a religious order which has lasted to the present day. It is known as the Sangha and its members are called Bhikkhus[526]. It is chiefly to this institution that the permanence of his religion is due.

Corporations or confraternities formed for the purpose of leading a particular form of life are among the most widespread manifestations, if not of primitive worship, at any rate of that stage in which it passes into something which can be called personal religion and at least three causes contribute to their formation. First, early institutions were narrower and more personal than those of to-day. In politics as well as religion such relatively broad designations as Englishman or Frenchman, Buddhist or Christian, imply a slowly widening horizon gained by centuries of cooperation and thought. In the time of the Buddha such national and religious names did not exist. People belonged to a clan or served some local prince. Similarly in religious matters they followed some teacher or worshipped some god, and in either case if they were in earnest they tended to become members of a society. Societies such as the Pythagorean and Orphic brotherhoods were also common in Greece from the sixth century B.C. onwards but the result was small, for the genius of the Greeks turned towards politics and philosophy. But in India, where politics had strangely little attraction for the cultured classes, energy and intelligence found an outlet in the religious life and created a multitude of religious societies. Even to-day Hinduism has no one creed or code and those who take a serious interest in religion are not merely Hindus but follow some sect which, without damning what it does not adopt, selects its own dogmas and observances. This is not sectarianism in the sense of schism. It is merely the desire to have for oneself some personal, intimate religious life. Even in so uncompromising and levelling a creed as Islam the devout often follow special _tariqs_, that is, roads or methods of the devotional life, and these _tariqs_, though differing more than the various orders of the Roman Catholic Church, are not regarded as sects distinct from ordinary orthodoxy. When Christ died, Christianity was not much more than such a _tariq_. It was an incipient religious order which had not yet broken with Judaism.

This idea of the private, even secret religious body is closely allied to another, namely, that family life and worldly business are incompatible with the quest for higher things. In early ages only priests and consecrated persons are expected to fast and practise chastity but when once the impression prevails that such observances not only achieve particular ends but produce wiser, happier, or more powerful lives, then they are likely to be followed by considerable numbers of the more intelligent, emotional and credulous sections of the population. The early Christian Church was influenced by the idea that the world is given over to Satan and that he who would save himself must disown it. The gentler Hindus were actuated by two motives. First, more than other races, they felt the worry and futility of worldly life. Secondly, they had a deep-rooted belief that miraculous powers could be acquired by self-mortification and the sensations experienced by those who practised fasting and trances confirmed this belief.

The third cause for the foundation and increase of religious orders is a perception of the influence which they can exercise. The disciples of a master or the priests of a god, if numerous and organized, clearly possess a power analogous to that of an army. To use such institutions for the service and protection of the true faith is an obvious expedient of the zealot: ecclesiastical statecraft and ambition soon make their appearance in most orders founded for the assistance of the Church militant. But of this spirit Buddhism has little to show; except in Tibet and Japan it is almost absent. The ideal of the Buddha lay within his order and was to be realized in the life of the members. They had no need to strive after any extraneous goal.

The Sangha, as this order was called, arose naturally out of the social conditions of India in the time of Gotama. It was considered proper that an earnest-minded man should renounce the world and become a wanderer. In doing this and in collecting round him a band of disciples who had a common mode of life Gotama created nothing new. He merely did with conspicuous success what every contemporary teacher was doing. The confraternity which he founded differed from others chiefly in being broader and more human, less prone to extravagances and better organized. As we read the accounts in the Pitakas, its growth seems so simple and spontaneous that no explanation is necessary. Disciples gather round the master and as their numbers increase he makes a few salutary regulations. It is almost with surprise that we find the result to be an organization which became one of the great forces of the world.

The Buddha said that he taught a middle path equally distant from luxury and from self-mortification, but Europeans are apt to be struck by his condemnation of pleasure and to be repelled by a system which suppresses so many harmless activities. But contemporary opinion in India criticized his discipline as easy-going and lax. We frequently hear in the Vinaya that the people murmured and said his disciples behaved like those who still enjoy the good things of the world. Some, we are told, tried to enter the order merely to secure a comfortable existence[527]. It is clear that he went to the extreme limits which public opinion allowed in dispensing with the rigours considered necessary to the religious life, and we shall best understand his spirit if we fix our attention not so much on the regime, to our way of thinking austere, which he prescribed—the single meal a day and so on—as on his insistence that what is necessary is emancipation of heart and mind and the cultivation of love and knowledge, all else being a matter of indifference. Thus he says to the ascetic Kassapa[528] that though a man perform all manner of penances, yet if he has not attained the bliss which comes of good conduct, a good heart and good mind, he is far from being a true monk. But when he has the heart of love that knows no anger nor ill-will, when he has destroyed lust and become emancipated even before death, then he deserves the name of monk. It is a common thing to say, he goes on, that it is hard to lead the life of a monk. But asceticism is comparatively easy; what is really hard is the conversion and emancipation of the heart.

In India, where the proclivity to asceticism and self-torture is endemic, it was only natural that penance should in very truth seem easier and more satisfactory than this spiritual discipline. It won more respect and doubtless seemed more tangible and definite, more like what the world expected from a holy man. Accordingly we find that efforts were made by Devadatta and others to induce the Buddha to increase the severity of his discipline. But he refused[529]. The more ascetic form of life, which he declined to make obligatory, is described in the rules known as Dhutângas, of which twelve or thirteen are enumerated. They are partly a stricter form of the ordinary rules about food and dress and partly refer to the life of a hermit who lives in the woods or in a cemetery.

In the Pitakas[530] Kassapa's disciples are described as _dhutavâdâ_ and the advantages arising from the observance of the Dhutângas are enumerated in the Questions of Milinda. It is probable that the Buddha himself had little sympathy with them. He was at any rate anxious that they should not degenerate into excesses. Thus he forbade[531] his disciples to spend the season of the rains in a hollow tree, or in a place where dead bodies are kept, or to use an alms bowl made out of a skull. Now Kassapa had been a Brahman ascetic and it is probable that in tolerating the Dhutângas the Buddha merely intended to allow him and his followers to continue the practices to which they were accustomed. They were an influential body and he doubtless desired their adhesion, for he was sensitive to public opinion[532] and anxious to conform to it when conformity involved no sacrifice of principle. We hear repeatedly that the laity complained of some practice of his Bhikkhus and that when the complaint was brought to his ears he ordered the objectionable practice to cease. Once the king of Magadha asked the congregation to postpone the period of retreat during the rains until the next full moon day. They referred the matter to the Buddha: "I prescribe that you obey kings," was his reply.

One obvious distinction between the Buddha's disciples and other confraternities was that they were completely clad, whereas the Âjîvikas, Jains and others went about naked. The motive for this rule was no doubt decency and a similar thought made Gotama insist on the use of a begging bowl, whereas some sectaries collected scraps of food in their hands. Such extravagances led to abuses resembling the degradation of some modern fakirs. Even the Jain scriptures admit that pious householders were disgusted by the ascetics who asked for a lodging in their houses—naked, unwashed men, foul to smell and loathsome to behold[533]. This was the sort of life which the Buddha called anariyam, ignoble or barbaric. With such degradation of humanity he would have nothing to do. He forbade nakedness, as well as garments of hair and other uncomfortable costumes. The raiment which he prescribed consisted of three pieces of cloth of the colour called kâsâva. This was probably dull orange, selected as being unornamental. It would appear that in mediæval India the colour in use was reddish: at present a rather bright and not unpleasing yellow is worn in Burma, Ceylon, Siam and Camboja. Originally the robes were made of rags collected and sewed together but it soon became the practice for pious laymen to supply the Order with raiment.