Reading section 39

[Footnote 36: This seems to be the view of the Chândogya Up. VI. 12. As the whole world is a manifestation ol Brahman, so is the great banyan tree a manifestation of the subtle essence which is also present in its minute seeds.]

[Footnote 37: The Brihad Ar. Up. knows of samsâra and karma but as matters of deep philosophy and not for the vulgar: but in the Buddhist Pitakas they are assumed as universally accepted. The doctrine must therefore have been popularized after the composition of the Upanishad. But some allowance must be made for the fact that the Upanishads and the earliest versions of the Buddhist Suttas were produced in different parts of India.]

[Footnote 38: Yet many instances are quoted from Celtic and Teutonic folklore to the effect that birds and butterflies are human souls, and Caesar's remarks about the Druids may not be wholly wrong.]

[Footnote 39: Several other Europeans of eminence have let their minds play with the ideas of metempsychosis, pre-existence and karma, as for instance Giordano Bruno, Swedenborg, Goethe, Lessing, Lavater, Herder, Schopenhauer, Ibsen, von Helmont, Lichtenberg and in England such different spirits as Hume and Wordsworth. It would appear that towards the end of the eighteenth century these ideas were popular in some literary circles on the continent. See Bertholet, _The Transmigration of Souls_, pp. 111 ff. Recently Professor McTaggart has argued in favour of the doctrine with great lucidity and persuasiveness. Huxley too did not think it absurd. See his _Romanes Lecture, Evolution and Ethics, Collected Essays_, vol. IX. p. 61. As Deussen observes, Kant's argument which bases immortality on the realization of the moral law, attainable only by an infinite process of approximation, points to transmigration rather than immortality in the usual sense.]

[Footnote 40: The chemical elements are hardly an exception. Apparently they have no beginning and no end but there is reason to suspect that they have both.]

[Footnote 41: I know well-authenticated cases of Burmese and Indians thinking that the soul of a dead child had passed into an animal.]

[Footnote 42: Or again, when I wake up in the morning I am conscious of my identity because innumerable circumstances remind me of the previous day. But if I wake up suddenly in the night with a toothache which leaves room for no thought or feeling except the feeling of pain, is the fact that I experience the pain in any way lessened if for the moment I do not know who or where I am?]

[Footnote 43: I believe that a French savant, Colonel Rochas, has investigated in a scientific spirit cases in which hypnotized subjects profess to remember their former births and found that these recollections are as clear and coherent as any revelations about another world which have been made by Mrs Piper or other mediums. But I have not been able to obtain any of Col. Rochas's writings.]

[Footnote 44: I use the word _soul_ merely for simplicity, but Buddhists and others might demur to this phraseology.]

[Footnote 45: But for a contrary view see _Reincarnation, the Hope of the World_ by Irving S. Cooper. Even the Brihad Aran. Upan. (IV. 4. 3. 4) speaks of new births as new and more beautiful shapes which the soul fashions for itself as a goldsmith works a piece of gold.]

[Footnote 46: The increase of the human population of this planet does not seem to me a serious argument against the doctrine of rebirth for animals, and the denizens of other worlds may be supplying an increasing number of souls competent to live as human beings.]

[Footnote 47: Perhaps Russians in this as in many other matters think somewhat differently from other Europeans.]

[Footnote 48: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 427. The chapter contains many striking instances of these experiences, collected mostly in the west.]

[Footnote 49: Compare _St Teresa's Orison of Union_, W. James, _l.c._ p. 408.]

[Footnote 50: Indian devotees understand how either Śiva or Krishna is all in all, and thus too St Teresa understood the mystery of the Trinity. See W. James, _l.c._ p. 411.]

[Footnote 51: Turîya or caturtha.]

[Footnote 52: Indians were well aware even in early times that such a state might be regarded as equivalent to annihilation. Br. Ar. Up. II. 4. 13; Chând. Up. VIII. ii. 1.]

[Footnote 53: The idea is not wholly strange to European philosophy. See the passage from the _Phaedo_ quoted by Sir Alfred Lyall. "Thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her—neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure—when she has as little as possible to do with the body and has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after being."]

[Footnote 54: Mr Bradley _(Appearance and Reality_, p. 498) says "Spirit is a unity of the manifold in which the externality of the manifold has utterly ceased." This seems to me one of the cases in which Mr Bradley's thought shows an interesting affinity to Indian thought.]

[Footnote 55: But also sometimes _purusha_.]

[Footnote 56: Even when low class yogis display the tortures which they inflict on their bodies, their object I think is not to show what penances they undergo but simply that pleasure and pain are alike to them.]

[Footnote 57: The sense of human dignity was strongest among the early Buddhists. They (or some sects of them) held that an arhat is superior to a god (or as we should say to an angel) and that a god cannot enter the path of salvation and become an arhat.]

[Footnote 58: Cf. Bosanquet, _Gifford Lectures_, 1912, p. 78. "History is a hybrid form of experience incapable of any considerable degree of being or trueness. The doubtful story of successive events cannot amalgamate with the complete interpretation of the social mind, of art, or of religion. The great things which are necessary in themselves, become within the narrative contingent or ascribed by most doubtful assumptions of insight to this actor or that on the historical stage. The study of Christianity is the study of a great world experience: the assignment to individuals of a share in its development is a problem for scholars whose conclusions, though of considerable human interest, can never be of supreme importance."]

[Footnote 59: The Chinese critic Hsieh Ho who lived in the sixth century of our era said: "In Art the terms ancient and modern have no place." This is exactly the Indian view of religion.]

[Footnote 60: _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp. 525-527 and _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 310.]

[Footnote 61: And in Russia there are sects which prescribe castration and suicide.]

[Footnote 62: This, of course, does not apply to Buddhism in China, Japan and Tibet.]

[Footnote 63: This is not true of the more modern Upanishads which are often short treatises specially written to extol a particular deity or doctrine.]

[Footnote 64: Mahâparinibbâna sutta. See the table of parallel passages prefixed to Rhys Davids's translation, _Dialogues of the Buddha_, II. 72.]

[Footnote 65: Much the same is true of the various editions of the Vinaya and the Mahâvastu. These texts were produced by a process first of collection and then of amplification.]

[Footnote 66: The latter part of Mahâbhârata XII.]

[Footnote 67: Though European religions emphasize man's duty to God, they do not exclude the pursuit of happiness: e.g. Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647). Question 1, "What is the chief end of man? _A._ Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever."]

[Footnote 68: Mrs Rhys Davids has brought out the importance of the will for Buddhist ethics in several works. See _J.R.A.S._ 1898, p. 47 and _Buddhism_, pp. 221 ff. See also Maj. Nik. 19 for a good example of Buddhist views as to the necessity and method of cultivating the will.]

[Footnote 69: Kaush. Up. III. 8.]

[Footnote 70: The words are kâmacâra and akâmacâra. Chand. Up. 8. 1-6.]

[Footnote 71: Mahâvag. I. 6. _E.g._ Ajâtasattu (Dig. Nik. 2, _ad fin._) would have obtained the eye of truth, had he not been a parricide. The consequent distortion of mind made higher states impossible.]

[Footnote 72: But all general statements about Hinduism are liable to exceptions. The evil spirit Duḥsaha described in the Mârkandeya Purâna (chaps. L and LI) comes very near the Devil.]

[Footnote 73: I can understand that the immediate reality is a duality or plurality and that the one spirit may appear in many shapes.]

[Footnote 74: _E.g._ Chand. Up. V. 1. 2. Bri. Ar. Up. I. 3. In the Pâñcarâtra we do hear of a jñânabhraṃsa or a fall from knowledge analogous to the fall of man in Christian theology. Souls have naturally unlimited knowledge but this from some reason becomes limited and obscured, so that religion is necessary to show the soul the right way. Here the ground idea seems to be not that any devil has spoilt the world but that ignorance is necessary for the world process, for otherwise mankind would be one with God and there would be no world. See Schrader, _Introd. to the Pâncarâtra_, pp. 78 and 83.]

[Footnote 75: The Śatapatha Brâhmana has a curious legend (XI. 1. 6. 8 ff.) in which the Creator admits that he made evil spirits by mistake and smites them. In the Kârikâ of Gauḍapâda, 2. 19 it is actually said: Mayaishâ tasya devasya yayâ sammohitaḥ svayam.]

[Footnote 76: He does not say this expressly and it requires careful statement in India where it is held strongly that God being perfect cannot add to his bliss or perfection by creating anything. Compare Dante, _Paradiso_, xxix. 13-18:

Non per aver a sè di bene acquisto, ch' esser non può, ma perchè suo splendore potesse risplendendo dir: subsisto. In sua eternità di tempo fuore, fuor d' ogni altro comprender, come i piacque, s'aperse in nuovi amor l' eterno amore.]

[Footnote 77: The history of Japan and Tibet offers some exceptions.]

[Footnote 78: There are some exceptions, _e.g._ ancient Camboja, the Sikhs and the Marathas.]

[Footnote 79: But there are other kinds of worship, such as the old Vedic sacrifices which are still occasionally performed, and the burnt offerings (homa) still made in some temples. There are also tantric ceremonies and in Assam the public worship of the Vishnuites has probably been influenced by the ritual of Lamas in neighbouring Buddhist countries.]

[Footnote 80: This position is of great importance as tending to produce a similar arrangement of religious paraphernalia. The similarity disappears when Buddhist ceremonies are performed round Stûpas out of doors.]

[Footnote 81: As explained elsewhere, I draw a distinction between Tantrism and Śâktism.]

[Footnote 82: It does not seem to me to have given much inspiration to Rossetti in his _Aatarte Syriaca_.]

[Footnote 83: But in justice to the Tantras it should be mentioned that the Mahâ-nirvâṇa Tantra, x. 79, prohibits the burning of widows.]

[Footnote 84: See _Asiatic Review_, July, 1916, p. 33.]

[Footnote 85: _E.g._ Vijayanagar, the Marathas and the states of Rajputana.]

[Footnote 86: According to the census of 1911 no less than 72 per cent. of the population live by agriculture.]

[Footnote 87: The chief exceptions are: (_a_) the Tibetan church has acquired and holds power by political methods. It is an exact parallel to the Papacy, but it has never burnt people. (_b_) In mediæval Japan the great monasteries became fortified castles with lands and troops of their own. They fought one another and were a menace to the state. Later the Tokugawa sovereigns had the assistance of the Buddhist clergy in driving out Christianity but I do not think that their action can be compared either in extent or cruelty with the Inquisition. (_c_) In China Buddhism was in many reigns associated with a dissolute court and palace intrigues. This led to many scandals and great waste of money.]

[Footnote 88: See for instance Huxley's striking definition of Buddhism in his _Romanes Lecture_, 1893. "A system which knows no God in the western sense; which denies a soul to man: which counts the belief in immortality a blunder and the hope of it a sin: which refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice: which bids men look to nothing but their own efforts for salvation: which in its original purity knew nothing of vows of obedience and never sought the aid of the secular arm: yet spread over a considerable moiety of the old world with marvellous rapidity and is still with whatever base admixture of foreign superstitions the dominant creed of a large fraction of mankind." But some of this is too strongly phrased. Early Buddhism counted the desire for heaven as a hindrance to the highest spiritual life, but if a man had not attained to that plane and was bound to be reborn somewhere, it did not question that his natural desire to be reborn in heaven was right and proper.]

[Footnote 89: It may of course be denied that Buddhism is a religion. In this connection some remarks of Mr Bradley are interesting. "The doctrine that there cannot be a religion without a personal God is to my mind entirely false" (_Essays on Truth and Reality_, p. 432). "I cannot accept a personal God as the ultimate truth" (ib. 449). "There are few greater responsibilities which a man can take on himself than to have proclaimed or even hinted that without immortality all religion is a cheat, all morality a self-deception" (_Appearance and Reality_, p. 510).]

[Footnote 90: Mahâvaṃsa, xii. 29, xiv. 58 and 64. Dîpavaṃsa, xn. 84 and 85, xiii. 7 and 8.]

[Footnote 91: _Essays in Criticism_, Second Series, Amiel.]

[Footnote 92: This definition of orthodoxy is due to St Vincent of Lerins. _Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est._]

[Footnote 93: I know that this statement may encounter objections, but I believe that few Indians would be surprised at the proposition that God is all things. Some might deny it, but as a familiar error.]

[Footnote 94: But orthodox Christianity really falls into the same difficulty. For if God planned the redemption of the world and we are saved by the death of Christ, then the Chief Priests, Judas, Pilate and the soldiers who crucified Christ are at least the instruments of salvation.]