ENLIGHTENMENT AND IGNORANCE
I
STRANGE though it may seem, the fact is that Buddhist scholars are engrossed too much in the study of what they regard as the Buddha’s teaching and his disciples’ exposition of the Dharma, so called, while they neglect altogether the study of the Buddha’s spiritual experience itself. According to my view, however, the first thing we have to do in the elucidation of Buddhist thought is to inquire into the nature of this personal experience of the Buddha, which is recorded to have presented itself to his inmost consciousness at the time of Enlightenment (sambodhi). What the Buddha taught his disciples was the conscious outcome of his intellectual elaboration to make them see and realise what he himself had seen and realised. This intellectual outcome, however philosophically presented, does not necessarily enter into the inner essence of Enlightenment experienced by the Buddha. When we want, therefore, to grasp the spirit of Buddhism, which essentially develops from the content of Enlightenment, we have to get acquainted with the signification of the experience of the founder,—experience by virtue of which he is indeed the Buddha and the founder of the religious system which goes under his name. Let us see what record we have of this experience, and what were its antecedents and consequences.f48
There is a Sutra in the Dīgha-Nikāya known as the Mahāpadāna Suttanta, in which the Buddha is represented as enlightening his disciples concerning the six Buddhas anterior to him. The facts relating to their lives as Bodhisattvas and Buddhas are almost identical in each case except some incidental details; for the Buddhas are all supposed to have had one and the same career. When therefore Gautama, the Buddha of the present Kalpa, talks about his predecessors in this wise, including the story of Enlightenment, he is simply recapitulating his own earthly life, and everything he states here as having occurred to his predecessors, except such matters as parentage, social rank, birthplace, length of life, etc., must be regarded as also having happened to himself. This is especially true with his spiritual experience known as Enlightenment.f49
When the Bodhisattva, as the Buddha is so designated prior to his attainment of Buddhahood, was meditating in seclusion, the following consideration came upon him: “Verily this world has fallen upon trouble (kiccha), one is born, and grows old, and dies, and falls from one state, and springs up in another. And from this suffering, moreover, no one knows of any way of escape, even from decay and death. O when shall a way of escape from this suffering be made known, from decay and death?” Thus thinking, the Bodhisattva reasoned out that decay and death arose from birth, birth from becoming, becoming from grasping, grasping from craving, until he came to the mutual conditioning of name-and-form (namarūpa) and cognition (viññāna).f50 Then he reasoned back and forth from the coming-to-be of this entire body of evil to its final ceasing-to-be,—and at this thought there arose to the Bodhisattva an insight (cakkhu)f51 into things not heard of before, and knowledge arose, and reason arose, wisdom arose, light arose. (Bodhisattassa pubbe ananussutesu dhammesu cakkhuṁ udapādi, ñāṇaṁ udapādi, paññā udapādi, vijjā udapādi, āloka udapādi.)”
He then exclaimed: “I have penetrated this Dharma, deep, hard to perceive, hard to understand, calm, sublime, no mere dialectic, subtle, intelligible only to the wise. (Dhammo gambhīro duddaso duranubodho santo panito atakkāvacaro nipuṇo pandito vedanīyo.) But this is a race devoting itself to the things to which it clings, devoted thereto, delighting therein. And for a race devoting itself to the things to which it clings, devoted thereto, delighting therein, this were a matter hard to perceive, to wit, that this is conditioned by that, and all that happens is by way of cause. This too were a matter hard to discern:—the tranquillisation of all the activities of life, the renunciation of all substrata of rebirth, the destruction of craving, the death of passion, quietude of heart, Nirvana.”
The Buddha then uttered the following verse in which he expressed his reluctance to preach the Dharma to the world at large—the Dharma which was realised in him by ñāṇa,—which he saw visibly, face to face, without any traditional instruction:
According to this report transmitted by the compilers of the Nikayas, which is also confirmed by the other literature we have of the Buddha’s Enlightenment, what flashed through his mind must have been an experience most unusual and not taking place in our everyday consciousness, even in the consciousness of a wise, learned, and thoughtful man. Thus, he naturally wished to pass away into Nirvana without attempting to propagate the Dharma, but this idea was abandoned when Great Brahma spoke to the Buddha in verse thus:
There is no doubt that it was this spiritual experience that converted the Bodhisattva into the Buddha, the Perfectly Wise, the Bhagavat, the Arhat, the King of the Dharma, the Tathagata, the All-knowing One, and the Conqueror. In this, all the records we have, Hinayana and Mahayana, agree.
Here then arises the most significant question in the history of Buddhism. What was it in this experience that made the Buddha conquer Ignorance (avijjā, avidyā) and freed him from the Defilements (āsava, āśrava)? What was the insight or vision he had into things, which had never before been presented to his mind? Was it his doctrine of universal suffering due to Thirst (taṇhā, tṛishṇā) and Grasping (upādāna)? Was it his causation theory by which he traced the source of pain and suffering to Ignorance?
It is quite evident that his intellectual activity was not the efficient cause of Enlightenment. “Not to be grasped by mere logic” (atakkāvacara) is the phrase we constantly encounter in Buddhist literature, Pali and Sanskrit. The satisfaction the Buddha experienced in this case was altogether too deep, too penetrating, and too far-reaching in result to be a matter of mere logic. The intellectual solution of a problem is satisfying enough as far as the blockage has been removed, but it is not sufficiently fundamental to enter into the depths of our soul-life. All scholars are not saints and all saints are by no means scholarly. The Buddha’s intellectual survey of the Law of Origination (paṭicca-samuppāda), however perfect and thoroughgoing, could not make him so completely sure of his conquest over Ignorance, Pain, Birth, and Defilements. Tracing things to their origin or subjecting them to a scheme of concatenation is one thing, but to subdue them, to bring them to subjection in the actuality of life, is quite another thing. In the one, the intellect alone is active, but in the other there is the operation of the will,—and the will is the man. The Buddha was not the mere discoverer of the Twelvefold Chain of Causation, he took hold of the chain itself in his hands and broke it into pieces so that it would never again bind him to slavery.
His insight reached the bottom of his being and saw it really as it was, and the seeing was like the seeing of your own hand with your own eyes—there was no reflection, no inference, no judgment, no comparison, no moving either backward or forward step by step, the thing was seen and that was the end of it, there was nothing to talk about, nothing to argue, or to explain. The seeing was something complete in itself—it did not lead on to anything inside or outside, within or beyond. And it was this completeness, this finality that was so entirely satisfying to the Buddha, who now knew that the chain was found broken and that he was a liberated man. The Buddha’s experience of Enlightenment therefore could not be understood by referring it to the intellect which tantalises but fails to fulfill and satisfy.
The Buddha’s psychological experience of life as pain and suffering was intensely real and moved him to the very depths of his being, and in consequence the emotional reaction he experienced at the time of Enlightenment was in proportion to this intensity of feeling. All the more evident therefore it is that he could not rest satisfied with an intellectual glancing or surveying of the facts of life. In order to bring a perfect state of tranquillity over the waves of turmoil surging in his heart, he had to have recourse to something more deeply and vitally concerned with his inmost being. For all we can say of it, the intellect is after all a spectator, and when it does some work it is as a hireling for better or for worse. Alone it cannot bring about the state of mind designated as enlightenment. The feeling of perfect freedom, the feeling that “ahaṁ hi arahā loke, ahaṁ satthā anuttaro,” could not issue from the consciousness of an intellectual superiority alone. There must have been in the mind of the Buddha a consciousness far more fundamental which could only accompany one’s deepest spiritual experience.
To account for this spiritual experience the Buddhist writers exhaust their knowledge of words relating to the understanding, logical or otherwise. “Knowledge” (vijjā), “understanding” (pajānanā), “reason” (ñāṇa), “wisdom” (paññā), “penetration” (abhisameta), “realisation” (abhisambuddha), “perception” (sañjānanaṁ), and “insight” (dassana),f54 are some of the terms they use. In truth as long as we confine ourselves to intellection, however deep, subtle, sublime, and enlightening, we fail to see into the gist of the matter. This is the reason why even the so-called primitive Buddhists who are by some considered positivists, rationalists, and agnostics, were obliged to assume some faculty dealing with things far above relative knowledge, things that do not appeal to our empirical ego.
The Mahayana account of Enlightenment as is found in the Lalita-vistara (Chapter on “Abhisambodhana”) is more explicit as to the kind of mental activity or wisdom which converted the Bodhisattva into the Buddha. For it was through “ekacittekshaṇa-samyukta-prajñā” that supreme perfect knowledge was realised (abhisambodha) by the Buddha. What is this Prajñā? It is the understanding of a higher order than that which is habitually exercised in acquiring relative knowledge. It is a faculty both intellectual and spiritual, through the operation of which the soul is enabled to break the fetters of intellection. The latter is always dualistic inasmuch as it is cognisant of subject and object, but in the Prajñā which is exercised “in unison with one-thought-viewing” there is no separation between knower and known, these are all viewed (ikshaṇa) in one thought (ekacitta), and enlightenment is the outcome of this. By thus specifying the operation of Prajñā, the Mahayanists have achieved an advance in making clearer the nature of sambodhi: for when the mind reverses its usual course of working and instead of dividing itself externally, goes back to its original inner abode of oneness, it begins to realise the state of “one-thought-viewing” where Ignorance ceases to scheme and the Defilements do not obtain.
Enlightenment we can thus see is an absolute state of mind in which no “discrimination” (parikalpana or vikalpa), so called, takes place, and it requires a great mental effort to realise this state of viewing all things “in one thought.” In fact our logical as well as practical consciousness is too given up to analysis and ideation; that is to say, we cut up realities into elements in order to understand them; but when they are put together to make the original whole, its elements stand out too conspicuously defined, and we do not view the whole “in one thought.” And as it is only when “one thought” is reached that we have enlightenment, an effort is to be made to go beyond our relative empirical consciousness, which attaches itself to the multitudinosity and not to the unity of things. The most important fact that lies behind the experience of Enlightenment therefore is that the Buddha made the most strenuous attempt to solve the problem of Ignorance and his utmost will-power was brought forth to bear upon a successful issue of the struggle.
We read in the Katha-Upanishad: “As rain water that has fallen on a mountain ridge runs down on all sides, thus does he who sees a difference between qualities run after them on all sides. As pure water poured into pure water remains the same, thus, O Gautama, is the self of a thinker who knows.” This pouring pure water into pure water is, as we have it here, the “viewing all qualities in one thought” which finally cuts off the hopelessly entangling logical mesh by merging all differences and likenesses into the absolute oneness of the knower (jñānin) and the known (jñeya). This, however, in our practical dualistic life, is a reversion, a twisting, and a re-adjustment.
Eckhart, the great German mystic, is singularly one with the “one-thought-viewing” of things as done by Buddhists when he expresses his view thus: “Das Auge darin ich Gott sehe, ist dasselbe Auge, darin Gott mich sieht. Mein Auge und Gottes Auge ist ein Auge und ein Gesicht und ein Erkennen und eine Liebe.”f55 The idea of reversion is more clearly expressed in Jacob Boehme’s simile of the “umgewandtes Auge” with which God is recognised.
Enlightenment therefore must involve the will as well as the intellect. It is an act of intuition born of the will. The will wants to know itself as it is in itself, yathābhūtam dassana, free from all its cognitive conditions. The Buddha attained this end when a new insight came upon him at the end of his ever-circulatory reasoning from decay and death to Ignorance and from Ignorance to decay and death, through the twelve links of the Paṭicca-samuppāda. The Buddha had to go over the same ground again and again, because he was in an intellectual impasse through which he could not move further on. He did not repeat the process, as is originally imagined, for his own philosophical edification. The fact was that he did not know how to escape this endless rotation of ideas; at this end there was birth, there was decay and death, and at the other end there was Ignorance. The objective facts could not be denied, they boldly and uncomfortably confronted him, while Ignorance balked the progress of his cognitive faculty moving farther onward or rather inward. He was hemmed in on both sides, he did not know how to find his way out, he went first this way and then that way, forever with the same result—the utter inutility of all his mental labour. But he had an indomitable will; he wanted, with the utmost efforts of his will, to get into the very truth of the matter; he knocked and knocked until the doors of Ignorance gave way: and they burst open to a new vista never before presented to his intellectual vision. Thus he was able to exclaim to Upaka, the naked ascetic, whom he happened to meet on his way to Benares after Enlightenment:
When we speak of enlightenment or illumination we are apt to think of its epistemological aspect and to forget the presence of a tremendous will-power behind it—the power in fact making up the entire being of an individual. Especially as in Buddhism the intellect stands forth prominently, perhaps more than it ought to, in the realisation of the ideal Buddhist life, scholars are tempted to ignore the significance of the will as the essentially determinate factor in the solution of the ultimate problem. Their attention has thus been directed too much towards the doctrine of the Paṭicca-samuppāda or the Ariya-sacca, which they considered constituted the final teaching of Buddhism. But in this they have been sadly at fault, nor have they been right in taking Buddhism for a sort of ethical culture, declaring that it is no more than a system of moral precepts (śīla), without a soul, without a God, and consequently without a promise of immortality. But the true Buddhist ideas of Ignorance, Causation, and Moral Conduct had a far deeper foundation in the soul-life of man. Ignorance was not a cognitive ignorance, but meant the darkness of spiritual outlook. If Ignorance were no more than cognitive, the clearing-up of it did not and could not result in enlightenment, in freedom from the Fetters and Defilements, or Intoxicants as some Pali scholars have them. The Buddha’s insight penetrated the depths of his being as the will, and he knew what this was, yathābhūtam, or in its tathābhāva (thatness or suchness), he rose above himself as a Buddha supreme and peerless. The expression, “Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi,” was thus used to designate this pre-eminently spiritual knowledge realised by him.
Ignorance which is the antithesis of Enlightenment, therefore, acquires a much deeper sense here than that which has hitherto been ascribed to it. Ignorance is not merely not knowing or not being acquainted with a theory, system or law; it is not directly grasping the ultimate facts of life as expressive of the will. In Ignorance knowing is separated from acting, and the knower from that which is to be known; in Ignorance the world is asserted as distinct from the self, that is, there are always two elements standing in opposition. This is, however, the fundamental condition of cognition, which means that as soon as cognition takes place there is Ignorance clinging to its every act. When we think we know something, there is something we do not know. The unknown is always behind the known, and we fail to get at this unknown knower, who is indeed the inevitable and necessary companion to every act of cognition. We want however to know this unknown knower, we cannot let this go unknown, ungrasped without actually seeing what it is, that is, Ignorance is to be enlightened. This involves a great contradiction, at least epistemologically. But until we transcend this condition, there is no peace of mind, life grows unbearable. In his search for the “builder” (gahākara), the Buddha was always accosted by Ignorance, an unknown knower behind knowing. He could not for a long time lay his hands on this one in a black mask until he transcended the dualism of knower and known. This transcending was not an act of cognition, it was self-realisation, it was a spiritual awakening and outside the ken of logical reasoning, and therefore not accompanied by Ignorance. The knowledge the knower has of himself, in himself, that is, as he is to himself, is unattainable by any proceedings of the intellect which is not permitted to transcend its own conditions. Ignorance is brought to subjection only by going beyond its own principle. This is an act of the will. Ignorance in itself is no evil, nor is it the source of evil, but when we are ignorant of Ignorance, of what it means in our life, then there takes place an unending concatenation of evils. Taṇhā (craving) regarded as the root of evil can be overcome only when Ignorance is understood in its deeper and proper signification.
II
Therefore, it betrays an utter ignorance on the part of Buddhist scholars when they relegate Ignorance to the past in trying to explain the rationale of the Twelvefold Chain of Causation (paṭicca-samuppāda)f57 from the temporal point of view. According to them, the first two factors (angāni) of the Paṭicca-samuppāda belong to the past while the following eight belong to the present and the last two to the future. Ignorance from which starts the series of the Nidānas has no time-limits, for it is not of time, but of the will, as is enlightenment. When time-conception enters, enlightenment which is negatively the dispelling of Ignorance loses all its character of finality, and we begin to look around for something going beyond it. The Fetters would ever be tightening around us, and the Defilements would be our eternal condition. No gods would sing of the Awakened One as “a lotus unsoiled by the dust of passion, sprung from the lake of knowledge; a sun that destroys the darkness of delusion; a moon that takes away the scorching heat of the inherent sins of existence.”f58 If Enlightenment made the whole universe tremble in six different ways as is recorded in the Sutras, Ignorance over which it finally prevailed must have as much power, though diametrically opposed to it in value and virtue, as Enlightenment. To take Ignorance for an intellectual term and then to interpret it in terms of time-relation, altogether destroys its fundamental character as the first in the series of the Twelve Nidānas. The extraordinary power wielded by the Buddha over his contemporaries as well as posterity was not entirely due to his wonderful analytical acumen though we have to admit this in him; it was essentially due to his spiritual greatness and profound personality, which came from his will-power penetrating down into the very basis of creation. The vanquishing of Ignorance was an exhibition of this power which therefore was invincible and against which Mara with all his hosts was utterly powerless either to overwhelm or to entice. The failure to see into the true meaning of Ignorance in the system of the Paṭicca-samuppāda or in the Ariya-sacca will end unavoidably in misconstruing the essential nature of Enlightenment and consequently of Buddhism.
In the beginning which is really no beginning and which has no spiritual meaning except in our finite life, the will wants to know itself, and consciousness is awakened, and with the awakening of consciousness the will is split into two. The one will, whole and complete in itself, is now at once actor and observer. Conflict is inevitable; for the actor now wants to be free from the limitations under which he has been obliged to put himself in his desire for consciousness. He has in one sense been enabled to see, but at the same time there is something which he as observer cannot see. In the trail of knowledge, Ignorance follows with the inevitability of fate, the one accompanies the other as shadow accompanies object, no separation can be effected between the two companions. But the will as actor is bent on going back to his own original abode where there was yet no dualism, and therefore peace prevailed. This longing for the home, however, cannot be satisfied without a long hard trying experience. For the thing, once divided into two, cannot be restored to its former unity until some struggle is gone through with. And the restoration is more than a mere going back, the original content is enriched by the division, struggle, and re-settlement.
When first the division takes place in the will, consciousness is so enamoured of its novelty and its apparent efficiency in solving the practical problems of life that it forgets its own mission which is to enlighten the will. Instead of turning its illuminating rays within itself, that is, towards the will from which it has its principle of existence, consciousness is kept busy with the objective world of realities and ideas; and when it tries to look into itself, there is a world of absolute unity where the object of which it wishes to know is the subject itself. The sword cannot cut itself. The darkness of Ignorance cannot be dispelled because it is its own self. At this point the will has to make a heroic effort to enlighten itself, to redeem itself, without destroying the once-awakened consciousness or rather by working out the principle lying at the basis of consciousness. This was accomplished as we see in the case of the Buddha, and he became more than mere Gautama, he was the Awakened One and the Exalted and supremely Enlightened. In willing there is really something more than mere willing, there is thinking and seeing. By this seeing, the will sees itself and is thereby made free and its own master. This is knowing in the most fundamental sense of the term and herein consists the Buddhist redemption.
Ignorance prevails as long as the will remains cheated by its own offspring or its own image, consciousness, in which the knower always stands distinguished from the known. The cheating, however, cannot last, the will wishes to be enlightened, to be free, to be by itself. Ignorance always presupposes the existence of something outside and unknown. This unknown outsider is generally termed ego or soul, which is in reality the will itself in the state of Ignorance. Therefore, when the Buddha experienced Enlightenment, he at once realised that there was no Atman, no soul-entity as an unknown and unknowable quantity. Enlightenment dispelled Ignorance and with it all the bogies conjured up from the dark cave of ego disappeared. Ignorance in its general use is opposed to knowledge, but from the Buddhist point of view in which it stands contrasted to Enlightenment, it means the ego (ātman), which is so emphatically denied by the Buddha. This is not to be wondered at, seeing that the Buddha’s teaching centred in the doctrine of Enlightenment, the dispelling of Ignorance.
Those who only see the doctrine of non-atman in Buddhism and fail to inquire into the meaning of Enlightenment are incapable of appreciating the full significance of the Buddha’s message to the world. If he simply denied the existence of an ego-entity from the psychological point of view after reducing it into its component factors, scientifically he may be called great as his analytical faculties stood far above those of his contemporaries in this respect; but his influence as a spiritual leader would not have reached so far and endured so long. His theory of non-atman was not only established by a modern scientific method, but essentially was the outcome of his inner experience. When Ignorance is understood in the deeper sense, its dispelling unavoidably results in the negation of an ego-entity as the basis of all our life-activities. Enlightenment is a positive conception, and for ordinary minds it is quite hard to comprehend it in its true bearings. But when we know what it means in the general system of Buddhism, and concentrate our efforts in the realisation of it, all the rest will take care of themselves, such as the notion of Ego, attachment to it, Ignorance, Fetters, Defilements, etc. Moral Conduct, Contemplation, and Higher Understanding—all these are meant to bring about the desired end of Buddhism, that is, Enlightenment. The Buddha’s constant reiteration of the theory of causation, telling his disciples how when this is cause that is effect and how when cause disappears, effect also disappears, is not primarily to get them acquainted with a kind of formal logic, but to let them see how Enlightenment is causally related to all human happiness and spiritual freedom and tranquillity.
As long as Ignorance is understood as logical inability to know, its disappearance can never bring out the spiritual freedom to which even the earliest known literature of Buddhism makes so frequent and so emphatic allusions. See how the Arhat’s declaration of spiritual independence reads in the Nikayas: “There arose in me insight, the emancipation of my heart became unshakeable, this is my last birth, there is now no rebirth for me.”f59 This is quite a strong statement showing how intensely and convincingly one has seized the central facts of life. The passage is indeed one of the characterisations of Arhatship, and when a fuller delineation of it is made, we have something like the following: “To him, thus knowing, thus seeing,f60 the heart is set free from the defilement of lust, is set free from the defilement of becoming, is set free from the defilement of Ignorance. In him, thus set free, there arises the knowledge of his emancipation, and he knows that rebirth has been destroyed, that the Higher Life has been fulfilled, that what had to be done has been accomplished, and after this present life there will be no beyond.”f61 In essence the Arhat is the Buddha and even the Tathagata, and in the beginning of the history of Buddhism the distinction between these terms did not seem quite sharply marked. Thus to a great extent they may be qualified in the same terms.
When the Buddha was talking with his disciples concerning various speculations prevalent in his days, he made the following remarks about the knowledge of things in command by the Tathagata:
“That does he know, and he knows also other things far beyond, far better than those speculations; and having that knowledge he is not puffed up; and thus untarnished he has, in his own heart, realised the way of escape from them, has understood, as really they are, the rising up and passing away of sensations, their sweet taste, their danger, how they cannot be relied on, and not grasping after any of those things men are eager for, he the Tathagata is quite set free. These are those other things, profound, difficult to realise, and hard to understand, tranquillising, sweet, not to be grasped by logic, subtle, comprehensible only by the wise, which the Tathagata, having himself realised and seen face to face, hath set forth; and it is concerning these that they who would rightly praise the Tathagata in accordance with the truth, should speak.”f62
These virtues for which the Tathagata was to be praised were manifestly not derived from speculation and analytical reasoning. His intellectual sight was just as keen and far-reaching as any of his contemporaries, but he was endowed with a higher faculty, will-power, which was exercised to its fullest capacity in order to bring about all these virtues which belonged to the entire being of Tathagatahood. And naturally there was no need for him to face these metaphysical problems that agitated the philosophers of his days; they were solved in him, when he attained his spiritual freedom and serenity, in their entirety, in their synthetic aspect, and not partially or fragmentarily—which should be the case if they were presented to the Buddha’s cognition as philosophical problems. In this light is to be read the Mahāli Sutta. Some scholars wonder why two entirely disconnected ideas are treated together in one body of the Sutra, which however shows scholarly ignorance in regard to matters spiritual, as they fail to notice the true import of Enlightenment in the system of Buddhist faith. To understand this, we need imaginative intuition directly penetrating the centre of life, and not always do mere literary and philological talents succeed in unravelling its secrets.
The Mahāli Sutta is a Pali Sutra in the Dīgha-Nikāya, in which Mahāli asks the Buddha as to the object of the religious life practised by his disciples, and the following is the gist of his answer: The Buddhists do not practise self-concentration in order to acquire any miraculous power such as hearing heavenly sounds or seeing heavenly sights.f63 There are things higher and sweeter than that, one of which is the complete destruction of the Three Bonds (delusion of self, doubt, and trust in the efficacy of good works and ceremonies) and the attainment of such a state of mind as to lead to the insight of the higher things in one’s spiritual life. When this insight is gained the heart grows serene, is released from the taint of Ignorance, and there arises the knowledge of emancipation. Such questions as are asked by you, O Mahāli, regarding the identity of body and soul, are idle ones; for when you attain to the supreme insight and see things as they really are in themselves, that is, emancipated from the Bonds, Taints, and Deadly Flows, those questions that are bothering you at the moment will completely lose their value and no more be asked in the way you do. Hence no need of my answering your questions.
This dialogue between the Buddha and Mahāli well illustrates the relation between Enlightenment and the problem of the soul. There is no need of wondering why the Buddha did not definitely solve the ever-recurring question instead of ignoring it in the manner as he did and talking about something apparently in no connection with the point at issue. This is one of the instances by which we must try to see into the meaning of Ignorance.
III
One of the reasons, however, why the Buddha left some metaphysical questions unanswered or indeterminate (avyākata) was due to the fact that Buddhism is a practical system of spiritual discipline and not a metaphysical discourse. The Buddha naturally had his theory of cognition, but this was secondary inasmuch as the chief aim of Buddhist life was to attain Enlightenment from which spiritual freedom ensues. Enlightenment vanquishes Ignorance lying at the root of birth-and-death and laying fetters of every description, intellectual as well as affective. And this vanquishing of Ignorance cannot be achieved except by the exercise of one’s will-power; all the other attempts, especially merely intellectual, are utterly futile. Hence the Buddha’s conclusion: “These questionsf64 are not calculated to profit, they are not concerned with the Dharma, they do not redound to the elements of right conduct, nor to detachment, nor to purification from lusts, nor to quietude, nor to tranquillisation of heart, nor to real knowledge, nor to the insight of the higher stages of the Path, nor to Nirvana. Therefore is it that I express no opinion upon them.” What the Buddha on the other hand expounded was: “What pain is, what the origin of pain is, what the cessation of pain is, and the method by which one may reach the cessation of pain.” For these are all practical matters to be not only fully understood and realised but actively mastered by any one who really desires to accomplish the great deed of emancipation.
That the Buddha was very much against mere knowledge and most emphatically insisted on actually seeing and personally experiencing the Dharma, face to face, is in evidence everywhere in the Nikāyas as well as in the Mahayana texts. This has been indeed the strongest point in the teaching of Buddhism. When a Brahman philosopher was referring to his knowledge of the Three Vedas and a union with that which he has not seen, the Buddha ridiculed him in one of his strong phrases: “So you say that the Brahmans are not able to point the way to union with that which they have seen, and you further say that neither any one of them, nor of their pupils, nor of their predecessors even to the seventh generation, has ever seen Brahma. And you further say that even the Rishis of old, whose words they hold in such deep respect, did not pretend to know, or to have seen where, or whence, or whither Brahma is. Yet these Brahmans versed in the Three Vedas say, forsooth, that they can point out the way to union with that which they know not, neither have seen.... They are like a string of blind men clinging one to the other, neither can the foremost see, nor can the middle one see, nor can the hindmost see. The talk of those Brahmans versed in the Three Vedas is but blind talk: the first sees not, the middle one sees not, nor can the last see.”
Enlightenment or the dispelling of Ignorance which is the ideal of the Buddhist life, we can see now most clearly, is not an act of the intellect, but the transforming or re-modelling of one’s whole being through the exercise of the most fundamental faculty innate in every one of us. Mere understanding has something foreign in it and does not seem to come so intimately into life. If Enlightenment had really such a tremendous effect on our spiritual outlook as we read in the Sutras, it could not be the outcome of just getting acquainted with the doctrine of Causation. Enlightenment is the work of Paññā which is born of the will which wants to see itself and to be in itself. Hence the Buddha’s emphasis on the importance of personal experience; hence his insistence on meditation in solitude as the means of leading to the experience. Meditation, through which the will endeavours to transcend the condition it has put on itself in the awakening of consciousness, is therefore by no means the simple act of cogitating on the theory of Origination or Causation, which forever moves in a circle starting from Ignorance and ending in Ignorance. This is the one thing that is most needed in Buddhism. All the other metaphysical problems involve us in a tangled skein, in a matted mass of thread.
Ignorance is thus not to be got rid of by metaphysical means but by the struggle of the will. When this is done, we are also freed from the notion of an ego-entity which is the product or rather the basis of Ignorance, on which it depends and thrives. The ego is the dark spot where the rays of the intellect fail to penetrate, it is the last hiding lair of Ignorance, where the latter serenely keeps itself from the light. When this lair is laid bare and turned inside out, Ignorance vanishes like frost in the sun. In fact, these two are one and the same thing, Ignorance and the idea of ego. We are apt to think that when Ignorance is driven out and the ego loses its hold on us, we have nothing to lean against and are left to the fate of a dead leaf blown away hither and thither as the wind listeth. But this is not so; for Enlightenment is not a negative idea meaning simply the absence of Ignorance. Indeed, Ignorance is the negation of Enlightenment and not the reverse. Enlightenment is affirmation in the truest sense of the word, and therefore it was stated by the Buddha that he who sees the Dharma sees the Buddha and he who sees the Buddha sees the Dharma, and again that he who wants to see the Buddha ought not to seek him in form, nor in voice, etc. When Ignorance ruled supreme, the ego was conceived to be a positive idea, and its denial was nihilistic. It was quite natural for Ignorance to uphold the ego where it found its original home. But with the realisation of Enlightenment, the whole affair changes its aspect, and the order instituted by Ignorance is reversed from top to bottom. What was negative is now positive, and what was positive now negative. Buddhist scholars ought not to forget this revaluation of ideas that comes along with Enlightenment. Since Buddhism asserts Enlightenment to be the ultimate fact of Buddhist life, there is in it nothing negativistic, nothing pessimistic.
IV
As philosophy tends to emphasise unduly the importance of abstract ideas and logical inferences and forgets to keep itself constantly in touch with the actual world of experience, the Buddha, as I have repeatedly stated, flatly refused to subscribe to theorisation (takka or vitakka) at the expense of practical discipline. Enlightenment was the fruit of such discipline, and the dispelling of Ignorance could not be effected by any other means. If the Buddha could be said to have had any system of thought governing the whole trend of his teaching, it was what we may call radical empiricism. By this I mean that he took life and the world as they were and did not try to read them according to his own interpretation. Theorists may say this is impossible, for we put our subjectivity into every act of perception and what we call an objective world is really a reconstruction of our innate ideas. Epistemologically this may be so, but spiritually a state of perfect freedom is obtained only when all our egoistic thoughts are not read into life and the world is accepted as it is as a mirror reflects a flower as flower and the moon as moon. When therefore I say Buddhism is radical empiricism, this is not to be understood epistemologically but spiritually. This is really the meaning of “yathābhūtam” or “yathātatham”—the term quite frequently used in the Buddhist canon and in fact forming a most important refrain of Buddhist thought.
In the Sāmañña-phala Sutta, in the Dīgha-Nikāya, we are told in an ascending scale what the ultimate fruits of Buddhist life are, and the scale terminates in the “yathābhūtam” acceptance of the world:
“With his heart thus serene, made pure, translucent, cultured, devoid of evil, supple, ready to act, firm, and imperturbable, he directs and bends down to the knowledge of the destruction of the Defilements (āsavā). He knows as it really is: ‘This is pain.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the origin of pain.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the cessation of pain.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the path that leads to the cessation of pain.’ He knows as they really are: ‘These are the Defilements.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the origin of the Defilements.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the cessation of the Defilements.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the path that leads to the cessation of the Defilements.’ To him, thus knowing, thus seeing, the heart is set free from the Defilement of Lusts (kāma), is set free from the Defilement of Existence (bhāva), is set free from the Defilement of Ignorance (avijjā). In him, thus set free, there arises the knowledge of his emancipation, and he knows: ‘Rebirth has been destroyed. The higher life has been fulfilled. What had to be done has been accomplished. After this present life there will be no beyond!’”
How shall we understand this? As in the case of the Twelve Nidanas, the Fourfold Noble Truth will surely fail to yield up its deepest signification when we approach it intellectually. For it is no more than a restatement of the dogma of dependent origination, however different in form, the same principle is asserted both in the Paṭicca-samuppāda and in the Ariya-sacca. The latter points out the practical method of escape from the fetters of karma while the former draws out in view the plans of its modus operandi. As concepts, both formulas remain just what they are, that is, effectless and inefficient to produce a spiritual revolution. The Buddha’s idea of formulating the Fourfold Truth was to see it practically applied to the realisation of an ideal. The elaborate mental discipline which is explained in the previous parts of the Sāmañña-phala is but preparatory to this final catastrophe. Without a serene, pure, and firm heart, the truth can never be grasped as it really is. A keen, penetrating intellect may know of the truth and discourse about it, but as to its realisation in life a disciplined mind is required.
The passages above quoted are intelligible only when they are seen in the light of spiritual life. Buddhism may be logical, but if we fail to perceive anything further than that we sorely distort it. The logicality of Buddhist teaching is just one aspect of it and not a very important one. We may even regard this logicalness as incidental to Buddhism, and those who are entranced by it, remain quite ignorant of the true import of Buddhism. “He knows as it really is,” ti yathābhūtaṁ pajānāti,—we must come to this; for Yathābhūta-ñāṇa-dassana is the insight that destroys the Defilements (āsavānaṁ khaya-ñāna) and produces the consciousness of spiritual emancipation (cetovimutti). Without this N̄aṇa or N̄aṇa-dassana (insight or intuition), no detachment, no freedom would be possible to a Buddhist, nor would he ever be assured of his ultimate deliverance from the bondage of existence as well as of the attainment of the higher life (brahmacarya). The “knowing thus, seeing thus,” does not mean an intellectual comprehension of facts or truths which fall outside the pale of one’s own experience, but it is the perception of events that have actually taken place within oneself. Even an intellectual comprehension will be impossible when there is no experience that goes to support its validity. For those who have no spiritual training along the line of the Hindu dhyana exercises, the mental state culminating in the yathābhūtam contemplation of the world will be a very difficult subject to be in sympathy with. But in this light only the Buddha’s discourse on the fruits of the Sāmañña life is to be understood.
The Defilements (āsavā), or Oozings (lou)[3.2] as the Chinese translators have them, are three, sometimes four, in number. They are the Defilements of Desire (kāma), Existence (bhāva), Ignorance (avijjā), and Intellection (diṭṭhi). What kind of insight is it that destroys all these Defilements? And what is it that will be left in us after such a destruction? The answers may be anticipated to be thoroughly nihilistic, because nothing but absolute void will be seemingly the result of such destruction. Especially when we read a verse like the following (Sutta-nipāta, vv. 949 and 1099), we may reasonably be tempted to regard the teaching of the Buddha as absolutely negativistic:
But the fact is, from the spiritual point of view, that it is only after the destruction of the Defilements and a release from every form of attachment that one’s inmost being gets purified and sees itself as it really is, not indeed as an ego standing in contrast to the not-ego, but as something transcending opposites and yet synthesising them in itself. What is destroyed is the dualism of things and not their oneness. And the release means going back to one’s original abode. The insight therefore is to see unity in multiplicity and to understand the opposition of the two ideas as not conditioning each other but as both issuing from a higher principle; and this is where perfect freedom abides. When the mind is trained enough, it sees that neither negation (niratta) nor affirmation (atta) applies to reality but that the truth lies in knowing things as they are or rather as they become. A mind really sincere and thoroughly purified is the necessary preliminary to the understanding of reality in its suchness. As the result we have “ti yathābhūtaṁ pajānāti,” and this came later to be formulated by the Mahayanists into the doctrine of Thatness or Suchness (bhūtatathatā). The trained mind that has gone through the four dhyana exercises as prescribed in the Nikāyas further develops into what is known among the Mahayanists as the Ādarśa-jñānam (mirror-insight), which corresponds to the Bhūta-ñāṇa in the Anguttara Nikāya. The last simile in the Buddha’s discourse on the fruits of the Sāmañña life, which sums up the spiritual attainment of the Buddhists, becomes now quite intelligible. It runs thus:
“Just, O king, as if in a mountain fastness there were a pool of water, clear, translucent, and serene; and a man, standing on the bank and with eyes to see, should perceive the oysters and the shells, the gravel and the pebbles and the shoals of fish, as they move about or lie within it: he would know: This pool is clear, transparent, and serene, and there within it are the oysters and the shells, and the sand and gravel, and the shoals of fish are moving about or lying still.”
The radical empiricism of the “Yathābhūtam” teaching of the Buddha is here graphically presented, which reminds us of the Buddha in the Itivuttaka, v. 109, describing himself as the spectator standing on the shore (cakkhumā puriso tīre ṭhito). To understand this simile intellectually will be sheer nonsense. The writer describes his mental attitude from a higher plane of thought which has been realised by him after a long training. Sambodhi or Enlightenment is the Buddhist term given to this realisation. The destruction of the four Defilements is the negative phase of the experience which is the insight to which the Buddha’s serene and translucent mind was directed and bent down. When the destructive activity alone is considered, Enlightenment is annihilating and negativistic, but when the insight opens to the suchness of truth, it is most emphatically affirmative. This is where lies that “matchless island possessing nothing and grasping after nothing, called Nirvana, the destruction of decay and death.” (Sutta-nipāta, v. 1094). Remember that what is here destroyed is decay and death and not life; for it is through Enlightenment that life is for the first time restored to its native freedom and creativeness.
The simile of mirror (ādarśa) may however suggest that the Buddhist attitude towards the world is merely passive and lacking in energising inspirations. This however betrays the ignorance on the part of the critic of the Buddha’s own life which was so unselfishly devoted for forty-nine long and peaceful years to the promotion of the general spiritual welfare of his people; not only this, but the critic has also forgotten to notice the extraordinary missionary enterprises of the Buddha’s disciples as well as their intellectual activities which developed into the Mahayanist school of Buddhism. Whatever this be, the charge of passivity against Buddhist weltanschauung is wrong even when it is considered apart from the historical facts of Buddhism. Passivity we notice in Enlightenment is merely apparent. As a general statement, a thing absolutely passive is unthinkable, unless it is a state of absolute nothingness without any kind of content in it. As long as Enlightenment is the outcome of a most strenuous spiritual effort, it is a positive state of mind in which lies hidden an inexhaustible reservoir of possibilities; it is a unity in which a world of multitudinosity is lodged. “Noisy go the small waters, silent goes the vast ocean.”f66 In the vast ocean of Enlightenment there is the silence of unity. The Avataṁsaka philosophers too compare it to the immense expanse of an ocean, calm and translucent, which reflects all the shining bodies of heaven, but where at the same time possibilities of roaring and all-devouring waves lie innocently embosomed.
So asks the Buddha in the Mahāli Sutta: “When a monk knows thus and sees thus, would that make him ready to take up the question: Is the soul the same as the body, or is the soul one thing and the body another?” It is thus evident that the Buddha’s teaching always centered in the practical realisation of Enlightenment as “āsavem khata-ñāṇa,” insight that destroys the Defilements and releases one from every attachment (upādāna). He did not shun the discussion of the metaphysical problems merely because they were metaphysical, but because they were not conducive to the attainment of the ultimate end of Buddhist life which is the purification of spirit and not the display of epistemological subtlety. Ignorance was to be dispelled in our inner experience, and not by intellectually understanding the principle of dependent origination whether expressed as the Paṭicca-samuppāda or as the Ariya-sacca.
V
Viewing things “yathābhūtam” is, so to speak, the intellectual or noetic aspect of Enlightenment though not in the sense of discursive understanding; there is another aspect of Enlightenment which will be the subject of consideration here. I mean its relation to samadhi or dhyana. This is preliminary, as I said before, to the realisation, but it also shows that the realisation thus attained is something more than merely seeing into truth. If Enlightenment were just this seeing or having insight, it would not be so spiritually enlightening as to bring about a complete riddance of evil passions and the sense of perfect freedom. Intuitions could not go so penetratingly into the source of life and set all doubts at rest and sever all bonds of attachment, unless one’s consciousness were thoroughly prepared to take in the All in its wholeness as well as its suchness. Our senses and ordinary consciousness are only too apt to be disturbed and to turn away from the realisation of truth. Mental discipline thus becomes indispensable.
We must remember that the Buddha had this discipline under his two Samkhya teachers and that even after his Enlightenment he made it a rule for his disciples to train themselves in the dhyana exercises. He himself retired into solitude whenever he had opportunities for it. This was not of course merely indulging in contemplation or in making the world reflect in the mirror of consciousness. It was a kind of spiritual training even for himself and even after Enlightenment. In this respect the Buddha was simply following the practise of all other Indian sages and philosophers. This however was not all with him, he saw some deeper meaning in the discipline which was to awaken the highest spiritual sense for comprehending the Dharma. Indeed, without this ultimate awakening, dhyana however exalting, was of no import to the perfection of Buddhist life. So we have in the Dhammapada, v. 372: “Without knowledge (paññā, prajñā) there is no meditation (jhāna, dhyāna), without meditation there is no knowledge: he who has knowledge and meditation is near unto Nirvana.” This mutual dependence of jhāna and paññā is what distinguished Buddhism from the rest of the Indian teachings at the time. Jhāna or dhyāna must issue in paññā, must develop into seeing the world as it really is (yathābhūtaṁ); for there is no Buddhism in meditation merely as such. And this was the reason why the Buddha got dissatisfied with the teaching of his teachers; it, to use his own words, did “not lead to perfect insight, to supreme awakening, to Nirvana” (na abhiññāya na sambhodāya na nibbānāya saṁvattati). To be abiding in the serenity of nothingness was enjoyable enough, but it was falling into a deep slumber, and the Buddha had no desire to sleep away his earthly life in a daydream. There must be a seeing into the life and soul of things. To him paññā or prajñā was the most essential part of his doctrine, and it had to grow out of dhyana, and the dhyana that did not terminate in paññā was not at all Buddhistic. The boat was to be emptied indeed, but staying in an “empty house” (suññāgāraṁ) and doing nothing is blankness and annihilation; an eye must open and see the truth fully and clearly, the truth (paramaṁ ariyasaccaṁ) that liberates life from its many bondages and encumbrances. (Majjhima Nikāya, 140.) Sings the Dhammapada again (v. 373):
As thus the aim of the dhyana exercises is to prepare the mind for the realisation of the paramasacca which destroys and liberates, and as the truth is realisable only by the awakening of the parama-paññā which is the knowledge (ñāṇa) that puts an end to all misery (sabbadukkha), the Buddha never fails to duly impress the importance of paññā on the minds of his disciples, for instance, in his general disciplinary scheme given to them under the three headings: śīla (morality), jhāna (meditation), and paññā (intuitive knowledge). Whatever supersensual pleasures one may experience in the jhāna exercises, the Buddha considered them to be far short of the ultimate goal of Buddhist life, every one of such pleasures had to be abandoned as it would entangle the mind and interrupt its ascending course to the awakening of paññā. It was through this awakening alone that the consciousness of emancipation or going back to one’s original spiritual abode could be attained. And by emancipation the Buddha meant to be free from all forms of attachment, both sensual (rūpaṁ) and intellectual (viññānaṁ). So says he in the Majjhima Nikāya, 138: Let not thy mind be disturbed by external objects, nor let it go astray among thy own ideas. Be free from attachments, and fear not. This is the way to overcome the sufferings of birth and death.
As long as there is the slightest trace of attachment anywhere, outwardly or inwardly, there remains the substratum of selfhood, and this is sure to create a new force of karma and involve us in the eternal cycle of birth-and-death. This attachment is a form of obsession or illusion or imagination. Nine of such self-conceited illusions are mentioned in the Nikāyas, all of which come out of the wrong speculations of selfhood and naturally lead to attachment in one way or another. They are the ideas that “I am,” “I am that,” “I shall be,” “I shall not be,” “I shall have form,” “I shall be without form,” “I shall have thought,” “I shall be without thought,” “I shall neither have thought nor be without thought.”f67 We have to get rid of all these maññitams, arrogant, self-asserting conceptions, in order to reach the final goal of Buddhist life. For when they are eliminated, we cease to worry, to harbour hatred, to be belabouring, and to be seized with fears,—which is tranquillisation (santi), and Nirvana, and the seeing into the reality and truth of things. When paññā is awakened in us, morality is abandoned, meditation left behind, and there remains only an enlightened state of consciousness in which spirit moveth as it listeth.
The well-known simile of the raft (kullūpamaṁ)f68 which may seem somewhat unintelligible to some of the Buddhist critics who are used to an altogether different “intellectual landscape,” is a good illustration of the Buddhist teaching of non-attachment. The teaching, “Kullūpamaṁ vo bhikkhave ājānantehi dhammā pi vo pahātabbā, pageva adhammā,” (Like unto a raft all dharmas indeed must be abandoned, much more un-dharmas!), is really the most fundamental keynote running through the whole course of the history of Buddhist dogmatics. The philosophy of Prajñāpāramitā which is considered by some quite deviating from the spirit of primitive Buddhism is in no way behind in upholding this doctrine of non-attachment, for instance, as we see in the Vajracchedikā Sūtra. In fact, the theory of Śūnyatā as expounded in all the Prajñā-sūtras is no more than philosophising on the doctrine of non-attachment.f69 The Vajracchedikā has:
“Tasmad iyaṁ thathāgatena sandhāya vāg bhāshi kolopamaṁ dharmaparyāyam ājānadbhir dharmā eva tā prahātavyāḥ prāgeva adharmā.”
The simile itself runs as follows (Majjhima Nikāya, 22):
“In the simile of a raft do I teach my doctrine to you, O monks, which is designed for escape, not for retention. Listen attentively and remember well what I am going to say. Suppose that a man coming upon a long journey finds in his way a great broad water, the hither side beset with fears and dangers, but the further side secure and free from fears, and no boat wherewith to cross the flood nor any bridge leading from this to the other shore. And suppose this man to say to himself: Verily this is a great and wide water, and the hither side is full of fears and dangers, but the further side secure and free from fears; and there is neither boat nor bridge to take me from this to that further shore. How if I gather some reeds and twigs and leaves and bind them together into a raft; and then, supported on that raft, and labouring with hands and feet, cross in safety to that other shore! Accordingly, O monks, suppose this man to gather together reeds and twigs and leaves and branches and bind them all together into a raft, and launching forth upon it and labouring with hands and feet, attain in safety the other shore. And now, the flood crossed, the further shore attained, suppose the man should say: Very serviceable indeed has this my raft been to me. Supported by this raft and working with hands and feet, I am safely crossed to this other shore; how now if I lift the raft up on my head or lay it upon my shoulder, and so proceed whithersoever I wish! What think ye, O monks? So doing, would this man be acting rightly as regards his raft?
“Nay, verily, O Lord!
“And what then ought this man to do if he would act rightly as regards the raft? Thus, O monks, ought the man to consider: Truly this raft has been serviceable to me! Supported by this raft and exerting hands and feet, I am crossed in safety to this further shore. How now if I lay this raft up on the bank or leave it to sink in the water and so proceed upon my journey? So doing, O monks, the man would be acting rightly as regards his raft.
“In like manner also do I teach my doctrine to you in the simile of a raft, which is meant, O monks, for escape and not for retention. Understanding the simile of the raft, O monks, you must leave dharmas behind, how much more un-dharmas!”f70
The teaching of the Buddha may now be summed up as follows: Seeing things thus or “yathābhūtam” is the same as the attainment of perfect spiritual freedom; or we may say that when we are detached from evil passions based upon the wrong idea of selfhood and when the heart grows conscious of its own emancipation, we are then for the first time fully awakened to the truth as it really is. These two events, seeing and being freed, are mutually dependent, so intimately that the one without the other is unthinkable, is impossible; in fact they are two aspects of one identical experience, separated only in our limited cognition. Paññā without jhāna is no paññā, and jhāna without paññā is no jhāna. Enlightenment is the term designating the identification-experience of paññā and jhāna, of seeing “yathābhūtam” and abandoning the dharma-raft of every denomination. In this light should the following be understood:
“Therefore, O monks, whatever of matter (or body, rūpaṁ) there is, whether of the past, of the future, or of the present time, whether internal or external, whether coarse or fine, mean or exalted, far or near, all matter (or body) is to be regarded as it really is, in the light of perfect knowledge (sammāpaññā), thus: ‘This is not of me,’ ‘This am I not,’ ‘This is not my Self.’ So with the rest of the five aggregates (khaṇḍa): vedanā (sensations), saññā (concepts), sankhāra (formative principle), and viññānaṁ (consciousness). One who thus seeing the world turns away from the world is truly freed from evil passions and has the consciousness of freedom. Such is called one who has the obstacles removed, trenches filled, one who has destroyed, is free, one whose fight is over, who has laid down his burden, and is detached.”f71
In short, he has every quality of the Enlightened, in whom the will and the intellect are harmoniously blended.
VI
Ignorance is departure from home and Enlightenment is returning. While wandering we lead a life full of pain and suffering and the world wherein we find ourselves is not a very desirable habitat. This is however put a stop to by Enlightenment as thus we are enabled once more to get settled at home where reign freedom and peace. The will negates itself in its attempt to get an insight into its own life, and dualism follows. Consciousness cannot transcend its own principle. The will struggles and grows despondent over its work. “Why?”—the intellect asks, but it is the question no human intellect can ever hope to solve; for it is a mystery deeply inherent in the will. Why did the Heavenly Father have to send his only child to redeem the creation which was his own handiwork and yet went further astray from its home? Why had Christ to be so dejected over the destiny of the erring children of God? This is an eternal mystery, and no relative understanding is made to grapple with these questions. But the very fact that such questions are raised and constantly threaten one’s spiritual peace shows that they are not idle metaphysical problems to be solved by professional philosophers, but that they are addressed directly to one’s inmost soul, which must struggle and make effort to subdue them by a higher and deeper power native to itself—far higher and deeper than mere dialectic of cognition.
The story of the prodigal sonf72 is such a favourite theme both for Buddhists and Christians, and in this do we not discover something eternally true, though tragic and unfathomable, which lies so deep in every human heart? Whatever this may be, the will finally succeeds in recognising itself, in getting back to its original abode. The sense of peace one finds in Enlightenment is indeed that of a wanderer getting safely home. The wandering seems to have altogether been unnecessary from the logical point of view. What is the use of losing oneself if one has to find oneself again? What boots it after all—this going over from one to ten and from ten to one? Mathematically, all this is nonsensical. But the spiritual mystery is that returning is not merely counting backwards so many figures that were counted before in a reverse way. There is an immense difference here between physics and psychology. After returning one is no longer the same person as before. The will, back from his excursion through time-consciousness, is God himself.
In the Vajrasamādhi Sūtra,[3.4] Bodhisattva Apratisthita[3.5] asks the Buddha why the father was so unkind as not to recall his wandering son before fifty years expired, to which the Buddha answers, “Fifty years is not to be understood as indicating time-relation here; it means the awakening of a thought.” As I would interpret, this means the awakening of consciousness—a split in the will, which now, besides being actor, is knower. The knower, however, gradually grows to be the spectator and critic, and even aspires to be the director and ruler. With this arises the tragedy of life, which the Buddha makes the basis of the Fourfold Noble Truth. That pain (duḥkha) is life itself as it is lived by most of us, is the plain, undisguised statement of facts. This all comes from Ignorance, from our consciousness not being fully enlightened as to its nature, mission, and function in relation to the will. Consciousness must first be reduced to the will when it begins to work out its “original vows” (pūrvapraṇidhāna) in obedience to its true master. “The awakening of a thought” marks the beginning of Ignorance and is its condition. When this is vanquished, “a thought” is reduced to the will, which is Enlightenment. Enlightenment is therefore returning.
In this respect Christianity is more symbolic than Buddhism. The story of Creation, the Fall from the Garden of Eden, God’s sending Christ to compensate for the ancestral sins, his Crucifixion, and Resurrection—they are all symbolic. To be more explicit, Creation is the awakening of consciousness, or the “awakening of a thought”; the Fall is consciousness going astray from the original path; God’s idea of sending his own son among us is the desire of the will to see itself through its own offspring, consciousness; Crucifixion is transcending the dualism of acting and knowing, which comes from the awakening of the intellect; and finally Resurrection means the will’s triumph over the intellect, in other words, the will seeing itself in and through consciousness. After Resurrection the will is no more blind striving, nor is the intellect mere observing the dancer dance. In real Buddhist life these two are not separated, seeing and acting, they are synthesised in one whole spiritual life, and this synthesis is called by Buddhists Enlightenment, the dispelling of Ignorance, the loosening of the Fetters, the wiping-off of the Defilements, etc. Buddhism is thus free from the historical symbolism of Christianity; transcending the category of time. Buddhism attempts to achieve salvation in one act of the will; for returning effaces all the traces of time.
The Buddha himself gave utterance to the feeling of return when his eye first opened to the Dharma unheard of before at the realisation of Enlightenment. He said: “I am like a wanderer who, after going astray in a desolate wilderness, finally discovers an old highway, an old track beaten by his predecessors, and who finds, as he goes along the road, the villages, palaces, gardens, woods, lotus-ponds, walls, and many other things where his predecessors used to have their dwellings.”f73 Superficially, this feeling of returning to an old familiar abode seems to contradict the statement made concerning “an insight to things never before presented to one’s mind”; but the contradiction is logical and not spiritual. As long as the Buddha was going over the Chain of Origination from the epistemological point of view, that is, as long as he attempted to get back to his native will through the channel of empirical consciousness, he could not accomplish his end. It was only when he broke through the wall of Ignorance by the sheer force of his will that he could tread the ancient path. The path was altogether unrecognisable by his intelligent eye which was one of the best of the kind; even the Buddha could not ignore the law governing its usage; the Chain was not to be cut asunder by merely reckoning its links of cause and effect backward and forward. Knowledge, that is, Ignorance drove Adam from the Garden of Eden to the world of pain and patience (sahaloka), but it was not knowledge that would reconcile him to his Father, it was the Will dispelling Ignorance and ushering Enlightenment.
The sense of return or that of recognising old acquaintances one experiences at the time of Enlightenment is a familiar fact to students of Zen Buddhism. To cite one instance, Chih-I (530–597)[3.6] who is generally known by his honorary title as Chih-chê Tai-shih,[3.7] was the founder of the T‘ien-tai school of Buddhist philosophy in China. He was also trained in meditation by his teacher Hui-szŭ (513–577)[3.8] and though not belonging to the orthodox lineage of the Zen masters, he is reckoned as one. When he came to the master, he was set to exercise himself in a Samadhi known as “Fa-hua San-mei” (saddharma-puṇḍarkīa-samādhi).[3.9] While exercising himself in it, he came across a certain passage in the Sutra, and his mind was opened, and he at once realised the statement referred to by his master, which was this—that he with the master personally attended the Buddha’s congregation at the Vulture Peak where the Buddha discoursed on the Sutra. Then said the master, “If not for you no one could see the truth: and if not for me no one could testify it.” It is often remarked by Zen masters that the holy congregation at the Vulture Peak is still in session. This however ought not to be confounded with the remembering of the past which is one of the miraculous gifts of the Buddhist saints. It has nothing to do with such memory, for in Enlightenment there are more things than are implied in mere time-relations. Even when the Prajñāpāramitā-sūtras expressly refer to one’s previous presence at the discourse on the subject, this is not a form of mere recollection; the understanding is not a psychological phenomenon, the prajñā goes much penetratingly into the depths of one’s personality. The sense of return to something familiar, to the one thoroughly acquainted with, really means the will getting settled once more in its old abode, after many a venturesome wandering, with an immense treasure of experience now and full of wisdom that will light up its unending career.
VII
It may not be altogether out of place here to make a few remarks concerning the popular view which identifies the philosophy of Schopenhauer with Buddhism. According to this view, the Buddha is supposed to have taught the negation of the will to live, which was insisted upon by the German pessimist, but nothing is further from the correct understanding of Buddhism than this negativism. The Buddha does not consider the will blind, irrational, and therefore to be denied; what he really denies is the notion of ego-entity due to Ignorance, from which notion come craving, attachment to things impermanent, and the giving way to the egotistic impulses. The object the Buddha always has in view and never forgets to set forth whenever he thinks opportune, is the Enlightenment of the will and not its negation. His teaching is based upon affirmative propositions. The reason why he does not countenance life as it is lived by most of us is because it is the product of Ignorance and egoism, which never fail to throw us into the abyss of pain and misery. The Buddha pointed the way to escape this by Enlightenment and not by annihilation.
The will as it is in itself is pure act, and no taint of egotism is there; this is awakened only when the intellect through its own error grows blind as to the true working of the will and falsely recognises here the principle of individuation. The Buddha thus wants an illumined will and not the negation of it. When the will is illumined, and thereby when the intellect is properly directed to follow its original course, we are liberated from the fetters which are put upon us by wrong understanding, and purified of all the defilements which ooze from the will not being correctly interpreted. Enlightenment and emancipation are the two central ideas of Buddhism.
The argument Aśvaghosha puts into the mouth of the Buddha against Arada (or Ālāra Kālāma), the Samkhya philosopher, is illuminating in this respect. When Arada told the Buddha to liberate the soul from the body as when the bird flies from the cage or the reed’s stalk is loosened from its sheath, which will result in the abandonment of egoism, the Buddha reasons in the following way: “As long as the soul continues there is no abandonment of egoism. The soul does not become free from qualities as long as it is not released from number and the rest; therefore, as long as there is no freedom from qualities, there is no liberation declared for it. There is no real separation of the qualities and their subject; for fire cannot be conceived apart from its form and heat. Before the body there will be nothing embodied, so before the qualities there will be no subject; how, if it was originally free, could the soul ever become bound? The body-knower (the soul) which is unembodied, must be either knowing or unknowing; if it is knowing, there must be some object to be known, and if there is this object, it is not liberated. Or if the soul be declared to be unknowing, then what use to you is this imagined soul? Even without such a soul, the existence of the absence of knowledge is notorious as, for instance, in a log of wood or a wall. And since each successive abandonment is held to be still accompanied by qualities, I maintain that the absolute attainment of our end can only be found in the abandonment of everything.”f74
As long as the dualistic conception is maintained in regard to the liberation of the soul, there will be no real freedom as is truly declared by the Buddha. “The abandonment of everything” means the transcending of the dualism of soul and body, of subject and object, of that which knows and that which is known, of “it is” and “it is not,” of soul and soul-lessness; and this transcending is not attained by merely negating the soul or the will, but by throwing light upon its nature, by realising it as it is in itself. This is the act of the will. An intellectual contemplation which is advocated by the Samkhya philosophers does not lead one to spiritual freedom, but to the realm of passivity which is their “realm of nothingness.” Buddhism teaches freedom and not annihilation, it advocates spiritual discipline and not mental torpor or emptiness. There must be a certain turning away in one’s ordinary course of life, there must be a certain opening up of a new vista in one’s spiritual outlook if one wants to be the true follower of the Buddha. His aversion to asceticism and nihilism as well as to hedonism becomes intelligible when seen in this light.
The Majjhima-Nikāya’s account of the Buddha’s interview with the Samkhya thinkers somewhat differs from the Mahayana poet’s, but in a way gives a better support to my argument as regards the Buddha’s Enlightenment. The reason why he was not satisfied with the teaching and discipline of Ālāra Kālāma and Uddaka is stated to be this: “This doctrine does not lead to turning away, to dispassion, to cessation, to quietude, to perfect penetration, to supreme awakening, to Nirvana, but only to attainment to the Realm of Nothingness.” What did then the Buddha understand by Nirvana which literally means annihilation or cessation, but which is grouped here with such terms as awakening, turning away (that is, revaluation), and penetration, and contrasted to nothingness? There is no doubt, as far as we can judge from these qualifications, that Nirvana is a positive conception pointing to a certain determinable experience. When he came up to the bank of the Nairañjanā and took his seat of soft grass on a shady, peaceful spot, he made up his mind not to leave the place until he realised in himself what he had been after ever since his wandering away from home. According to the Lalita-vistara, he at that moment made this vow (praṇidhāna):
Thus resolved, the Buddha finally came to realise Supreme Enlightenment for which he had belaboured for ever so many lives. How does this vary from his former attainments under Uddaka and Ālāra Kālāma? Let him express himself:
“Then, disciples, myself subject to birth, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to birth and seeking after the incomparable security of Nirvana which is birthless, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is birthless.
“Myself subject to growth and decay, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to growth and decay and seeking after the incomparable security of Nirvana which is free from growth and decay, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is free from growth and decay.
“Myself subject to disease, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to disease and seeking after the incomparable security of Nirvana which is free from disease, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is free from disease.
“Myself subject to death, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to death and seeking after the incomparable security of Nirvana which is deathless, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is deathless.
“Myself subject to sorrow, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to sorrow and seeking after the incomparable security of Nirvana which is sorrowless, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is sorrowless.
“Myself subject to stain, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to stain and seeking the incomparable security of Nirvana which is stainless, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is stainless.
“Then I saw and knew: ‘Assured am I of deliverance; this is my final birth; never more shall I return to this life!’”f76
When Nirvana is qualified as birthless, deathless, stainless, sorrowless, and free from growth and decay and disease, it looks negativistic enough. But if there were nothing affirmed even in these negations, the Buddha could not rest in “the incomparable security” (anuttaraṁ yogakkhemaṁ) of Nirvana and been assured of final emancipation. What thus the Buddha denied, we can see, was Ignorance as to the true cause of birth and death, and this Ignorance was dispelled by the supreme effort of the will and not by mere dialectic reasoning and contemplation. The will was asserted and the intellect was awakened to its true significance. All the desires, feelings, thoughts, and strivings thus illuminated cease to be egotistic and are no more the cause of defilements and fetters and many other hindrances, of which so many are referred to in all Buddhist literature, Mahayana and Hinayana. In this sense the Buddha is the Jina, Conqueror, not an empty conqueror over nothingness, but the conqueror of confusion, darkness, and Ignorance.