Reading section 5

[Footnote 88: The Bhagavad-gita states quite clearly the doctrine of the deathbed prayer (VIII. ad init.). "He who leaves this body and departs remembering me in his last moments comes to my essence. Whatever form (of deity) he remembers when he finally leaves this body, to that he goes having been used to ponder on it."]

[Footnote 89: See art. Adi-Buddha in _E.R.E._ Asanga in the Sutralankara (IX. 77) condemns the doctrine of Adi-Buddha, showing that the term was known then, even if it had not the precise dogmatic sense which it acquired later. His argument is that no one can become a Buddha without an equipment (Sambhara) of merit and knowledge. Such an equipment can only be obtained from a previous Buddha and therefore the series of Buddhas must extend infinitely backwards.]

[Footnote 90: For the prevalence of the doctrine in mediaeval Bengal see B.K. Sarkar, _Folklore Element in Hindu Culture_, which is however sparing of precise references. The Dharma or Niranjana of the Sunya Purana seems to be equivalent to Adi-Buddha.

Sometimes the Adi-Buddha is identified with Vajrasattva or Samantabhadra, although these beings are otherwise classified as Bodhisattvas. This appears analogous to the procedure common in Hinduism by which a devotee declares that his special deity is all the gods and the supreme spirit.]

[Footnote 91: It would appear that some of the Tantras treat of five bodies, adding to the three here given others such as the Anandakaya, Vajrakaya and Svabhavakaya. For this doctrine see especially De la Vallee Poussin, _J.R.A.S._ 1906, pp. 943-997 and _Museon_, 1913, pp. 257 ff. Jigs-med nam-mka, the historian of Tibetan Buddhism, describes four. See Huth, _Ges. d. Bud. in d. Mongolei_, vol. II. pp. 83-89. Hinduism also assigns to living beings three bodies, the Karana-sarira, lingas. and sthulas.]

[Footnote 92: Translated into Chinese by Dharmaraksha between 397 and 439 A.D.]

[Footnote 93: The prototype of the Sambhoga-kaya is found in the Pali Canon, for the Buddha says (Mahaparinib. Sut. III. 22) that when he appears among the different classes of gods his form and voice are similar to theirs.]

[Footnote 94: Watters, vol. II. p. 38. "Spiritual essence" is Fa-shen in Chinese, _i.e._ Dharma-kaya. Another passage is quoted to the effect that "henceforth the observances of all my disciples constitute the Tathagata's Fa-shen, eternal and imperishable."]

[Footnote 95: Mahaparinib. Sut. VI. i.]

[Footnote 96: Something similar might happen in English if think and thing were pronounced in the same way and a thing were believed to be that which we can think.]

[Footnote 97: See Ashtasahasrika Prajna-paramita, chap. IV, near beginning.]

[Footnote 98: It is in this last point that no inferior intelligence can follow the thought of a Buddha.]

[Footnote 99: _The Awakening of Faith_, Teitaro Suzuki, p. 59.]

CHAPTER XIX

MAHAYANIST METAPHYSICS

Thus the theory of the three bodies, especially of the Dharma-kaya, is bound up with a theory of ontology. Metaphysics became a passion among the travellers of the Great Vehicle as psychology had been in earlier times. They may indeed be reproached with being bad Buddhists since they insisted on speculating on those questions which Gotama had declared to be unprofitable and incapable of an answer in human language. He refused to pronounce on the whence, the whither and the nature of things, but bade his disciples walk in the eightfold path and analyse the human mind, because such analysis conduces to spiritual progress. India was the last country in the world where such restrictions were likely to be observed. Much Mahayanist literature is not religious at all but simply metaphysics treated in an authoritative and ecclesiastical manner. The nature and origin of the world are discussed as freely as in the Vedanta and with similar results: the old ethics and psychology receive scant attention. Yet the difference is less than might be supposed. Anyone who reads these treatises and notices the number of apparently eternal beings and the talk about the universal mind is likely to think the old doctrine that nothing has an atman or soul, has been forgotten. But this impression is not correct; the doctrine of _Nairatmyam_ is asserted so uncompromisingly that from one point of view it may be said that even Buddhas do not exist. The meaning of this doctrine is that no being or object contains an unchangeable permanent self, which lives unaltered in the same or in different bodies. On the contrary individual existences consist of nothing but a collection of skandhas or a _santana_, a succession or series of mental phenomena. In the Pali books this doctrine is applied chiefly to the soul and psychological enquiries. The Mahayana applied it to the external world and proved by ingenious arguments that nothing at all exists. Similarly the doctrine of Karma is maintained, though it is seriously modified by the admission that merit can be transferred from one personality to another. The Mahayana continued to teach that an act once performed affects a particular series of mental states until its effect is exhausted, or in popular language that an individual enjoys or suffers through a series of births the consequences of previous acts. Even the instance of Amitabha's paradise, though it strains the doctrine of Karma to the utmost, does not repudiate it. For the believer performs an act--to wit, the invocation of Amitabha--to which has been attached the wonderful result that the performer is reborn in a blessed state. This is not essentially different from the idea found in the Pali Canon that attentions paid to a Buddha may be rewarded by a happy rebirth in heaven.[100]

Mahayanist metaphysics, like all other departments of this theology, are beset by the difficulty that the authorities who treat of them are not always in accord and do not pretend to be in accord. The idea that variety is permissible in belief and conduct is deeply rooted in later Buddhism: there are many vehicles, some better than others no doubt and some very ramshackle, but all are capable of conveying their passengers to salvation. Nominally the Mahayana was divided into only two schools of philosophy: practically every important treatise propounds a system with features of its own. The two schools are the Yogacaras and Madhyamikas.[101] Both are idealists and deny the reality of the external world, but whereas the Yogacaras (also called Vijnanavadins) admit that Vijnana or consciousness and the series of states of which it consists are real, the Madhyamikas refuse the title of reality to both the subjective and the objective world and hence gained a reputation of being complete nihilists. Probably the Madhyamikas are the older school.

Both schools attach importance to the distinction between relative and absolute knowledge. Relative knowledge is true for human beings living in the world: that is to say it is not more false than the world of appearance in which they live. The Hinayanist doctrines are true in this sense. Absolute knowledge rises above the world of appearance and is altogether true but difficult to express in words. The Yogacara makes three divisions, dividing the inferior knowledge into two. It distinguishes first illusory knowledge (_parikalpita_) such as mistaking a piece of rope for a snake or belief in the existence of individual souls. Secondly knowledge which depends on the relations of things (_paratantra_) and which though not absolutely wrong is necessarily limited, such as belief in the real existence of ropes and snakes. And thirdly absolute knowledge (_parinishpanna_), which understands all things as the manifestation of an underlying principle. The Madhyamikas more simply divide knowledge into _samvriti-satya_ and _paramartha-satya_, that is the truth of every-day life and transcendental truth. The world and ordinary religion with its doctrines and injunctions about good works are real and true as _samvriti_ but in absolute truth (_paramartham_) we attain Nirvana and then the world with its human Buddhas and its gods exists no more. The word _sunyam_ or _sunyata_, that is _void_, is often used as the equivalent of _paramartham_. Void must be understood as meaning not an abyss of nothingness but that which is found to be devoid of all the attributes which we try to ascribe to it. The world of ordinary experience is not void, for a great number of statements can be made about it, but absolute truth is void, because nothing whatever can be predicated of it. Yet even this colourless designation is not perfectly accurate,[102] because neither being nor not-being can be predicated of absolute truth. It is for this reason, namely that they admit neither being nor not-being but something between the two, that the followers of Nagarjuna are known as the Madhyamikas or school of the middle doctrine, though the European reader is tempted to say that their theories are extreme to the point of being a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the whole system. Yet though much of their logic seems late and useless sophistry, its affinity to early Buddhism cannot be denied. The fourfold proposition that the answer to certain questions cannot be any of the statements "is," "is not," "both is and is not," "neither is nor is not," is part of the earliest known stratum of Buddhism. The Buddha himself is represented as saying[103] that most people hold either to a belief in being or to a belief in not being. But neither belief is possible for one who considers the question with full knowledge. "That things have being is one extreme: that things have no being is the other extreme. These extremes have been avoided by the Tathagata and it is a middle doctrine that he teaches," namely, dependent origination as explained in the chain of twelve links. The Madhyamika theory that objects have no absolute and independent existence but appear to exist in virtue of their relations is a restatement of this ancient dictum.

The Mahayanist doctors find an ethical meaning in their negations. If things possessed _svabhava_, real, absolute, self-determined existence, then the four truths and especially the cessation of suffering and attainment of sanctity would be impossible. For if things were due not to causation but to their own self-determining nature (and the Hindus always seem to understand real existence in this sense) cessation of evil and attainment of the good would be alike impossible: the four Noble Truths imply a world which is in a state of constant becoming, that is a world which is not really existent.

But for all that the doctrine of _sunyata_ as stated in the Madhyamika aphorisms ascribed to Nagarjuna leaves an impression of audacious and ingenious sophistry. After laying down that every object in the world exists only in relation to every other object and has no self-existence, the treatise proceeds to prove that rest and motion are alike impossible. We speak about the path along which we are passing but there is really no such thing, for if we divide the path accurately, it always proves separable into the part which has been passed over and the part which will be passed over. There is no part which is being passed over. This of course amounts to a denial of the existence of present time. Time consists of past and future separated by an indivisible and immeasurable instant. The minimum of time which has any meaning for us implies a change, and two elements, a former and a subsequent. The present minute or the present hour are fallacious expressions.[104]

Therefore no one ever _is passing_ along a path. Again you cannot logically say that the passer is passing, for the sentence is redundant: the verb adds nothing to the noun and _vice versa_: but on the other hand you clearly cannot say that the non-passer is passing. Again if you say that the passer and the passing are identical, you overlook the distinction between the agent and the act and both become unreal. But you cannot maintain that the passer is different from the passing, for a passer as distinct from passing and passing as distinct from a passer have no meaning. "But how can two entities exist at all, if they exist neither as identical with one another nor as different from one another?"

The above, though much abridged, gives an idea of the logic of these sutras. They proceed to show that all manner of things, such as the five skandhas, the elements, contact, attachment, fire and fuel, origination, continuation and extinction have no real existence. Similar reasoning is then applied to religious topics: the world of transmigration as well as bondage and liberation are declared non-existent. In reality no soul is in bondage and none is released.[105] Similarly Karma, the Buddha himself, the four truths, Nirvana and the twelve links in the chain of causation are all unreal. This is not a declaration of scepticism. It means that the Buddha as a human or celestial being and Nirvana as a state attainable in this world are conceivable only in connection with this world and therefore, like the world, unreal. No religious idea can enter into the unreal (that is the practical) life of the world unless it is itself unreal. This sounds a topsy turvy argument but it is really the same as the Advaita doctrine. The Vedanta is on the one hand a scheme of salvation for liberating souls which transmigrate unceasingly in a world ruled by a personal God. But when true knowledge is attained, the soul sees that it is identical with the Highest Brahman and that souls which are in bondage and God who rules the world are illusions like the world itself. But the Advaita has at least a verbal superiority over the Madhyamika philosophy, for in its terminology Brahman is the real and the existent contrasted with the world of illusion. The result of giving to what the Advaita calls the real and existent the name of sunyata or void is disconcerting. To say that everything without distinction is non-existent is much the same as saying that everything is existent. It only means that a wrong sense is habitually given to the word exist, as if it meant to be self-contained and without relation to other objects. Unless we can make a verbal contrast and assert that there is something which does exist, it seems futile to insist on the unreality of the world. Yet this mode of thought is not confined to text-books on logic. It invades the scriptures, and appears (for instance) in the Diamond Cutter[106] which is still one of the most venerated books of devotion in China and Japan. In this work the Buddha explains that a Bodhisattva must resolve to deliver all living beings and yet must understand that after he has thus delivered innumerable beings, no one has been delivered. And why? Because no one is to be called a Bodhisattva for whom there exists the idea of a being, or person. Similarly a saint does not think that he is a saint, for if he did so think, he would believe in a self, and a person. There occur continually in this work phrases cast in the following form: "what was preached as a store of merit, that was preached as no store of merit[107] by the Tathagata and therefore it is called a store of merit. If there existed a store of merit, the Tathagata would not have preached a store of merit." That is to say, if I understand this dark language rightly, accumulated merit is part of the world of illusion which we live in and by speaking of it as he did the Buddha implied that it, like everything else in the world, is really non-existent. Did it belong to the sphere of absolute truth, he would not have spoken of it as if it were one of the things commonly but erroneously supposed to exist. Finally we are told of the highest knowledge "Even the smallest

thing is not known or perceived there; therefore it is called the highest perfect knowledge." That is to say perfect knowledge transcends all distinctions; it recognises the illusory nature of all individuality and the truth of sameness, the never-changing one behind the ever-changing many. In this sense it is said to perceive nothing and know nothing.

One might expect that a philosophy thus prone to use the language of extreme nihilism would slip into a destructive, or at least negative system. But Mahayanism was pulled equally strongly in the opposite direction by the popular and mythological elements which it contained and was on the whole inclined to theism and even polytheism quite as much as to atheism and acosmism. A modern Japanese writer[108] says that Dharma-kaya "may be considered to be equivalent to the Christian conception of the Godhead." This is excessive as a historical statement of the view current in India during the early centuries of our era, but it does seem true that Dharma-kaya was made the equivalent of the Hindu conception of Param Brahma and also that it is very nearly equivalent to the Chinese Tao.[109]

The work called _Awakening of Faith_[110] and ascribed to Asvaghosha is not extant in Sanskrit but was translated into Chinese in 553 A.D. Its doctrine is practically that of the Yogacara school and this makes the ascription doubtful, but it is a most important treatise. It is regarded as authoritative in China and Japan at the present day and it illustrates the triple tendency of the Mahayana towards metaphysics, mythology, and devotional piety. It declares that faith has four aspects. Three of these are the three Jewels, or Buddha, the Law and the Church, and cover between them the whole field of religion and morality as generally understood. The exposition is tinged with a fine unselfish emotion and tells the believer that though he should strive not for his own emancipation but for the salvation of others yet he himself receives unselfish and supernatural assistance. He is remembered and guarded by Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in all quarters of the Universe who are eternally trying to liberate mankind by various expedients (upaya). By expedient is meant a modified presentment of the truth, which is easier of comprehension and, if not the goal, at least on the road to it, such as the Paradise of Amitabha.[111]

But the remaining aspect of faith, which is the one that the author puts first in his enumeration, and treats at great length, is "to believe in the fundamental truth, that is to think joyfully of suchness." By suchness (in Sanskrit _bhuta-tathata_, in Chinese _Chen ju_) is meant absolute truth as contrasted with the relative truth of ordinary experience.[112] The word is not illuminating nor likely to excite religious emotion and the most that can be said for it is that it is less dreary than the void of Nagarjuna. Another and more positive synonym is _dharma-dhatu_, the all-embracing totality of things. It is only through our ignorance and subjectivity that things appear distinct and individuate. Could we transcend this subjectivity, isolated objects would cease to exist. Things in their fundamental nature cannot be named or explained: they are beyond the range of language and perception: they have no signs of distinction but possess absolute sameness (samata). From this totality of things nothing can be excluded and to it nothing can be added. Yet it is also sunyata, negation or the void, because it cannot be said to possess any of the attributes of the world we live in: neither existence nor non-existence, nor unity nor plurality can be predicted of it. According to the celebrated formula of Nagarjuna known as the eight Nos there is in it "neither production (_utpada_) nor destruction (_uccheda_) nor annihilation (_nirodha_) nor persistence (_sasvata_) nor unity (_ekartha_) nor plurality (_nanartha_) nor coming in (_agamana_) nor going out (_nirgama_)." But when we perceive that both subject and object are unreal we also see that suchness is the one reality and from that point of view it may be regarded as the Dharma-kaya of all Buddhas. It is also called Tathagatagarbha, the womb or store-house of the Buddha, from which all individual existences are evolved under the law of causation, but this aspect of it is already affected by ignorance, for in Bhuta-tathata as known in the light of the highest truth there is neither causation nor production. The Yogacara employs the word _sunyata_ (void), though not so much as its sister school, but it makes special use of the term _alaya-vijnana_, the receptacle or store of consciousness. This in so far as it is superindividual is an aspect of suchness, but when it affirms and particularises itself it becomes _citta_, that is the human mind, or to be more accurate the substratum of the human mind from which is developed _manas_, or the principle of will, self-consciousness and self-affirmation. Similarly the Vedanta philosophy, though it has no term corresponding to _alaya-vijnana_, is familiar with the idea that Brahman is in one aspect immeasurable and all-embracing but in another is infinitesimal and dwells in the human heart: or that Brahman after creating the world entered into it. Again another aspect of suchness is enlightenment (_bodhi_), that is absolute knowledge free from the limitations of subject and object. This "is the universal Dharma-kaya of the Tathagatas" and on account of this all Tathagatas are spoken of as abiding in enlightenment _a priori_. This enlightenment may be negative (as _sunyata_) in the sense that it transcends all relations but it may also be affirmative and then "it transforms and unfolds itself, whenever conditions are favourable, in the form of a Tathagata or some other form in order that all beings may be induced to bring their store of merit

to maturity."[113]

It will be seen from the above that the absolute truth of the Mahayanists varies from a severely metaphysical conception, the indescribable thing in itself, to something very like an all-pervading benevolent essence which from time to time takes shape in a Buddha. And here we see how easy is the transition from the old Buddhism to a form of pantheism. For if we admit that the Buddha is a superhuman intelligence appearing from time to time according to a certain law, we add little to this statement by saying that the essence or spirit of the cosmos manifests itself from time to time as a Buddha. Only, such words as essence or spirit are not really correct. The world of individuals is the same as the highest truth, the same as the Dharma-kaya, the same as Nirvana. It is only through ignorance that it appears to be different and particularized. Ignorance, the essence of which consists in believing in the distinction between subject and object, is also called defilement and the highest truth passes through various stages of defilement ending with that where under the influence of egoism and passion the external world of particulars is believed to be everything. But the various stages may influence one another[114] so that under a higher influence the mind which is involved in subjectivity begins to long for Nirvana. Yet Nirvana is not something different from or beyond the world of experience; it does not really involve annihilation of the skandhas. Just as in the Advaita he who has the true knowledge sees that he himself and everything else is Brahman, so for the Mahayanist all things are seen _to be_ Nirvana, _to be_ the Dharma-kaya. It is sometimes[115] said that there are four kinds of Nirvana (_a_) absolute Nirvana, which is a synonym of the Dharma-kaya and in that sense universally present in all beings, (_b_) upadhisesha-nirvana, the state of enlightenment which can be attained during life, while the body with its limitations still remains, (_c_) anupadhisesha-nirvana, a higher degree of the same state attained after death when the hindrances of the body are removed, (_d_) Nirvana without abode or apratishthita-nirvana. Those who attain to this understand that there is no real antithesis between Samsara and Nirvana:[116] they do not seek for rest or emancipation but devote themselves to beneficent activity and to leading their fellows to salvation. Although these statements that Nirvana and Samsara are the same are not at all in the manner of the older Buddhism, yet this ideal of disinterested activity combined with Nirvana is not inconsistent with the portrait of Gotama preserved in the Pali Canon.