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$Unique_ID{bob00805}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter III: Part II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{life
buddha
existence
order
buddhist
soul
does
right
salvation
another}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of India
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter III: Part II

     After the end of the rains, Buddha went to Vesali, and thence by slow
stages toward Kusinara.  On various occasions, in conversation with
individuals, or in larger companies, as in the assembly of the monks at
Vesali, Buddha repeated the fundamentals of the faith.  At a meal to which he
was invited with his followers by Cunda, the son of a smith, Buddha ate some
dried boar's flesh, which in his enfeebled state brought on a fatal illness.
In his last hours he is said to have asked the monks whether there were any
doubts or difficulties in their minds about the teaching that he could clear
up.  His last words to the beloved disciple Ananda were: "Perhaps you may
think that the word has lost its master, we have no master any more.  You must
not think that, Ananda.  The doctrine and the discipline which I have taught
you and proclaimed, that is your master when I am gone." And to the disciples:
"Now, O disciples, I say to you, Dissolution is the nature of all composite
things.  With heedfulness work ye out!" (sc. all that ye have to do). ^1 Then
he passed through the successive stages of contemplation and ecstasy, and
entered into Nirvana. At sunrise the nobles of Kusinara, paying him such
honours as befit a universal ruler, burned his body before the gate of their
city.

[Footnote 1: So the commentator Buddhaghosa supplies the object.  The Western
reader is tempted to say "your salvation," nor would the meaning be
essentially different.  The really important thing is the "heedfulness," and
in that one word, Buddhaghosa adds, the Exalted One, lying on his bed of
death, sums up all his teachings of five-and-forty years.]

     Buddhism, like all the religions and religious philosophies which
flourished in that age, is a way of salvation, and it has in common with all
of them certain fundamental assumptions.  Foremost among these is the
conviction that salvation must be achieved by each man for himself.  No god
can deliver him.  The Vedic gods have no powers or functions beyond the sphere
of natural good; they are themselves not exempt from the cycle of rebirth, ^1
and themselves stand in need of salvation.  A second point of agreement is the
nature of the evil from which man is to be saved - the bondage to the ills of
corporeal existence and the endless repetition of these ills in the infinite
series of rebirths in which man enters every new existence laden with the
consequences of former deeds.

[Footnote 1: If sects were already in existence which hoped for salvation
through the grace of a supreme lord (Icvara), as seems probable, their
teachings made no impression in the regions or circles with which we are here
concerned.]

     There is, however, one fundamental difference between Buddha's conception
of the problem of salvation and that of the contemporary systems.  They all
assumed that there is a soul, an ego, which passes, with its load of deeds,
from one existence to another to receive its just recompense of rewards; their
starting-point was the common notion of transmigration.  The Upanishads might
deny that the soul was in reality an individual soul and declare individuality
a fatal illusion; but so long as the illusion lasted the soul went its
separate way from life to life.  To the Sankhya and the Jains individual,
imperishable souls were one-half of their dualistic universe.  Buddha,
however, denied that there is any such thing as either common opinion or the
technical speech of philosophers called soul.

     The ground of this denial is made abundantly plain: if there be an ego, a
personal soul, permanence must be its characteristic mark.  So his opponents
also conceived it, and found the true ego in the unchanging One or in the
unchanging psychic monads.  But these are alike figments of speculation; in
all our experience there is no simple unity, whether it be All or Atom, and no
permanence.  Our observation of the world reveals only a perpetual flux; our
consciousness attests only the stream of ever-shifting sensations, emotions,
conceptions.  We know only becoming; of unchanging being behind or beneath it
there is no sign.  The empirical individual is a transient combination of five
components (skandhas), viz., bodiliness, sensation, perception,
predispositions, consciousness.  At death this complex is resolved into its
elements.  But all composite things are impermanent, and "what is impermanent
is suffering, what is suffering is not I; what is not I is not mine, it is not
I, it is not myself." That there is no ego, no soul, we should say, is thus a
fundamental tenet of primitive Buddhism; it is equally an error to say that
the soul is an entity different from the body and to say that soul and body
are identical, and the error is not theoretical merely, it is a hindrance to
the religious life.

     But though Buddha does not admit the transmigration of souls in the
common understanding, for the reason that there is no permanent entity called
soul to migrate, he holds no less firmly to the belief in the round of
rebirths and the dependence of each existence on preceding existences. A
favourite illustration is that of one lamp kindled from another; neither the
second lamp nor its flame is the same as the first, but without the former the
latter would not be alight.  To the question, What passes from one life to
another?  the answer is, karma and nothing but karma.  This does not mean that
the deed of one man is saddled on another; it is a heresy to hold that he who
experiences the fruit of a deed is different from the one who performed the
deed, and equally heretical to assert that he is the same.  Where the
existence of an ego is denied, the question of identity has no meaning.

     The problem which obviously arises here is, How does a new existence
depend on a former one, and how is it determined by it?  This is, if I mistake
not, the question which the formula of "dependent origination" is proposed to
solve.  On (1) ignorance depends (2) the diathesis; on this (3) (potential)
intelligence and consciousness; on this (4) individuation; on this (5) the six
spheres of sense (including the intellectual sense); on these (6) contact
(with their respective stimuli in the sensible and intelligible world); hence
follow in order (7) feeling; (8) craving; (9) cleaving (to the world and
life); then the new series, (10) beginning of existence (the formation of the
embryo), (11) birth, (12) old age and death with all their train of sorrows -
the so-called Twelve Causes.  The formula has been very diversely interpreted
by Buddhists as well as by Occidental scholars.  The point that concerns us
here is that all that a man does in ignorance of the truth produces a certain
complex of predispositions - we might say, a form of character with its
accordant destiny - and this diathesis realises itself in another life which
is thus determined by that former life. ^1

[Footnote 1: Tradition makes this Buddha's great discovery, following
immediately on the recognition of the Four Certainties, and Buddhists of all
schools have so regarded it.  Some European scholars see in it an illogical
attempt to couple the genuine Buddhist doctrine that desire is the root of
misery with the common Indian philosophy which made nescience (avidya) the
origin of all evil.]

     However obscure this theory of the chain by which one existence is linked
to another, there is no question that there is but one way to break this
sequence, namely, to put an end of the production of karma.  It is not action
itself that does the mischief, the mere functioning of the physical and
psychical mechanism, but the motivation, the craving for what men in their
ignorance call the good things of this life, the blind clinging to life itself
as a good, the desire for another life, the will to be.  Stop that, and the
deeds done without self-regarding motive or purpose have no consequence in
them, their karma is barren.  The karma left over from a former existence or
accumulated in the present life before the attainment of this state must
exhaust itself before the complete deliverance comes, as a potter's wheel
keeps on revolving for a time by the force of the impulse given it, but if it
receive no new impulse gradually comes to rest, or as the lamp that is not
freshly fed with oil burns till the oil in it is consumed and then goes out.
For such there is no rebirth.

     The method by which this blessed end is achieved is the religious life as
outlined in the Eightfold Path.  The first step in this path is right belief;
that is, belief in the four fundamental principles as enunciated by Buddha;
then follow right resolution, the resolve to renounce all sensual pleasures,
to have malice toward none, and to harm no living creature; right speech,
abstaining from backbiting, harsh language, falsehood, and frivolous talk;
right conduct, not destroying life, not taking what is not given one, not
being guilty of unchastity; right means of subsistence, giving up a wrong
occupation and getting one's livelihood in a proper way; right effort, the
strenuous endeavour to overcome all faults and evil qualities, to attain,
preserve, and cultivate all good qualities.  These six paths are ways of moral
self-discipline, and might be comprehended under one head.  The next, right
reflection, might be called the intellectual discipline, a higher ascesis by
which man rids himself of lust and grief.  The highest stage is the mystical
discipline, right absorption, or concentration, a series of trances through
which man rises to the bliss which is as far beyond happiness as beyond
misery, reaches the intuition of higher and higher ranges of truth, and passes
into ecstasies that lie beyond consciousness.

     These trances are self-induced hypnotic states, for the attainment of
which common Indian methods are employed, attentive management of breathing,
staring at a reflecting surface, and the like.  It is only the content of the
experience, determined by suggestion, that is specifically Buddhist.  For
right reflection, or contemplation, also, there are certain defined exercises
which are followed under corresponding physical conditions.  The higher
attainments in this sphere bring with them various supernatural powers: their
possessors transcend the limitations of material bodies and of mortal mind;
they can pass at will through walls, fly through the air cross-legged like a
winged bird, and perform similar magical feats; they are able to recall their
experiences in previous states of existence, and have unbounded insight and
wisdom.  It is the common belief that saints and ascetics, who are beings of a
higher order than every-day humanity, must be endowed with superhuman
knowledge and miraculous - that is, magical - powers.  Such powers are
constantly attributed to Buddha, not only decoratively in the later poetical
biographies, but quite as a matter of course in very prosaic Suttas.  It
belongs, indeed, to the very definition of a Buddha to be omniscient, and when
he knows by his omniscience that something is going wrong in a distant place,
he transports himself thither on the wings of the wind.

     The progress toward perfection has several stages, and may extend through
more than one lifetime.  The highest is that of the saint (Arhat), in whom all
causes of moral infection are exhausted, all evil propensities rejected; he
has fulfilled his task, laid down his burden, removed all bonds, obtained the
four kinds of transcendent faculties; he is no more subject to rebirth.  The
supreme goal is Nirvana.  The word means, literally, "blowing out," as of a
lamp, extinction.  There is a sense in which it may be reached in this life.
To a Brahman ascetic who asked what Nirvana is, Sariputta answers: "The
cessation of desire, hate, mental confusion, O friend, is called Nirvana." As
in the Brahmanic philosophy a man who has attained the saving knowledge is
"delivered in this life" (jivanmukta), so the Buddhist saint may be said to
have gained Nirvana. "They who by steadfast mind have become exempt from evil
desire, and well-trained in the teachings of Gautama, are in the enjoyment of
Nirvana. Their old karma is exhausted, no new karma is being produced; their
hearts are free from the longing after a future life; the cause of their
existence being destroyed, and no new longing springing up within them, they,
the wise, are extinguished like this lamp." But the full fruition is entered
on only at death.

     Does the saint continue to exist after death or does he not exist? This
question Buddha declined to answer.  Like the question whether the world is
infinite and eternal or the opposite, it is of no concern to man to know; for
whether the world is eternal or not, whether the saint exists after death or
does not exist, or both or neither, the evils of life and the necessity of
salvation remain the same.  His mission is not to gratify men's curiosity
about irrelevant matters, but to show the way by which man, in the present
life, extinguishes birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief,
and despair, and from this calling he will not let himself be diverted.

     The logical implication of his teaching is perfectly clear: there is no
soul; the empirical individual, a composite of the five skandhas, ceases to be
when this combination is dissolved at death; all that goes over from one life
to another is the karma, the predispositions which originate another
existence.  But when the saint attains Nirvana, the residuum of karma has been
consumed, and there is nothing left to continue existence in any form. ^1 Men
do not always go to the end of their own logic, and annihilationists, or at
least men who craved annihilation, passed for heretics.  All that we can say
with entire certainty about the early Buddhist conception of Nirvana is that
it meant a peaceful end unhaunted by the fear of rebirth.  This blessed
assurance fills the saints with the joy of salvation; the strife is over, the
victory won; henceforth there remains peace, perfect peace, endless peace.

[Footnote 1: Cf. the Maha-parinibbana-Sutta, V, 21: "The utter passing away
which leaves nothing whatever to remain behind."]

     The only way to become a saint is to follow to the end the Eightfold
Path, and this is possible only for such as, severing all the ties which bind
men to this world, live the religious life according to the Buddhist rule.
From the beginning the confession of faith ran: "I take refuge in the Buddha,
I take refuge in the Doctrine, I take refuge in the Order." The order was open
to all men, without distinction of rank or caste; excluded a limine were only
criminals such as murderers and robbers, persons afflicted with certain bodily
defects or diseases, and persons who were not sui juris - slaves, soldiers,
minors.  The candidate, by a formal renunciation of the world, entered upon a
novitiate, a period of instruction in which also the constancy of his
resolution was tested.  For converts from other sects a term of probation was
appointed.  Admission to membership in the order was by the act of a chapter
consisting ordinarily of at least ten monks.  The Senior, who presided,
satisfied himself by inquiry that there was no impediment to the ordination
and that the candidate had been properly instructed and was provided with the
requisite garments and alms-bowl.  If the chapter consented to the ordination,
the Senior exhorted the new monk to avoid the four deadly sins and to restrict
his belongings to the four necessities.

     At the beginning converts were brought to Buddha himself, subsequently
they were admitted by his disciples on their missionary journeys; the rule and
form of ordination by a chapter is a later regulation.  The ritual was further
elaborated in the course of time, and somewhat differently in different
branches of the church, but its essential features remain the same.  So also
in early days the renunciation and ordination were frequently continuous
without the interposition of a protracted novitiate. The monk was free to
leave the order if he chose.

     Buddha originally founded an order for men only, and, according to the
tradition it was only after long hesitation and with grave apprehension that
he established a sisterhood.  But, pressed with the question whether women
were incapable of attaining salvation in his way, he yielded to the
importunity of a noble lady of his own clan and her spokesman Ananda that
women might be permitted to exchange the shelter of the home for the houseless
life.  The order of nuns is subject to certain special regulations, and is in
all things dependent on the brotherhood.  Even so, Buddha is reported to have
warned Ananda that the admission of women would have disastrous consequences
for religion - the good doctrine will not endure more than half as long as it
would otherwise have done; he compares the mischief they will do to mildew in
a rice field or rust on sugarcane. Early Buddhist texts abound in reflections
and stories about the falseness of women - a favourite subject of monkish
jibes in all lands.  "How shall we behave toward a woman?" Ananda asks.
"Avoid the sight of her, Ananda!" is Buddha's reply.  "But if we do see her,
Sir, what shall we do then?" "Not speak to her, Ananda." "And if she speaks to
us, Sir, what then?" "Then be wary, Ananda."

     The Ten Commandments, the fundamental law for Buddhist monks, prohibit:
(1) the destruction of life, (2) theft, (3) unchastity, (4) falsehood, (5) the
use of intoxicating drinks, (6) eating at forbidden hours, (7) frequenting
worldly amusements or spectacles, (8) using perfumes and ornaments, (9)
sleeping on a raised couch, (10) receiving gifts of money.  The first five of
these are binding on lay adherents also, but for them the definition of the
offences is less strict.  These commandments are not materially different from
the corresponding precepts of the Brahmans and of other heretical sects like
the Jains.

     A much more detailed code of discipline is contained in the Patimokkha,
the form of fortnightly self-examination and confession for monks.  At the
head stand the four deadly sins which signify defeat in the war of the spirit,
namely, unchastity, theft, destruction of life, pretence of supernatural
powers; these ipso facto cut the sinner off from the brotherhood.  Then follow
in long catalogue offences which require formal action by the order: the
illegitimate acquisition of various objects, punished by forfeiture; actions
which require penance; such as should be spontaneously confessed; and breaches
of decorum in alms-getting, teaching, and so on.  Many of these regulations
have to do with the dwellings of the monks, their rugs, beds, vestments;
others concern the peace and order of the community and the intercourse of its
members with others, especially conduct toward women, whether nuns or
outsiders.  In addition to these there is a body of rules, part of which are
in theory for all members of the order, though not all generally observed,
while others are specifically for those who live, not like the most as
coenobites in communities, but as eremites after the fashion of the Brahman
recluses; namely, living solitary in the forest, lodging at the foot of a
great tree, under the open sky, in a burning-ground, spreading a mat where one
happens to be, never lying down.

     The order was a democratic brotherhood; there was no central authority
and no local organisation.  In the stated or occasional assemblies of the
monks it was customary for the senior in date of ordination to preside, but
this precedence carried no authority.

     It is plain that in primitive Buddhism there was no place for any form of
worship, whether in outward act or spiritual adoration; for there was no being
to whom man owed homage for benefits bestowed, none whose help he could invoke
to save him from his sad estate.  The only liturgical acts are the recitation
(later, reading) of the words of Buddha, which corresponds in a fashion to
preaching, and the self-examination and confession, the fortnightly assembly
for which was undoubtedly instituted by Buddha himself.  On the fourteenth or
fifteenth day of each half-month (full moon and new moon) the monks in a
neighbourhood gathered at some central point for this service.  In time the
boundaries of the parishes were fixed and halls designated for the meeting.
The senior, or in case he be ignorant, a learned and competent monk of later
ordination, after exhorting the brethren not to dissemble their shortcomings,
recites the several categories of offences; at the end of each he thrice bids
every monk who is conscious of having transgressed one of these precepts to
confess his fault.  Silence is taken to signify a clean conscience.  When the
recitation has been concluded in this manner, the assembly dissolves. These
gatherings also brought laymen together to hear the doctrine, and gave
occasion for sermons.  Other sects had the custom of reciting their doctrine
weekly before congregations of the people, and Buddha is said to have been led
by their example to establish the ceremony just described.

     The general character of Buddhist morals has been already indicated. They
are, it is to be remembered, primarily the morals of an ascetic order,
precepts and counsels of perfection for men who have renounced the world. But
they represent in this form the Buddhist ideal, and could not fail to exert a
great influence on householders also.  There is little specifically Buddhist
in them; many of the principles and precepts recur in Brahmanic sources and
among the other anti-Brahmanic sects.  Yet the Buddhist teaching has a
distinctive note; nowhere else is gentleness in act and speech so exalted.
Noteworthy, too, is the condemnation of soothsaying, sorcery, magic, and
practising on popular superstitions.

     Of the history of Buddhism in its first two centuries very little is
known.  It is clear that in that time it had grown strong in the region of
northeastern India where it had its origin, but it does not seem to have
spread much beyond those limits.  The period of rapid expansion began after
the middle of the third century B. C.  The Maurya Dynasty, founded by
Candragupta (321 B. C.), had built up an empire which took in all northern
India as far as Kabul and extended over a considerable part of the Deccan. The
third king of this line, Acoka, became a convert to Buddhism, and under his
patronage it made progress in all parts of his wide dominion. ^1 The new
missionary impulse carried it even beyond these boundaries to Ceylon, where it
is said to have been preached by a son of the king himself; in the same age it
reached Cashmere.

[Footnote 1: In the inscriptions from the earlier part of Acoka's reign he
does not figure as the patron of Buddhism exclusively, though he showed
especial favour to it - the more as years went on.  But in his latest
monuments he boasts of an increase of zeal which showed itself in doing away
with the gods who had till then been worshipped in India.]

     The two centuries and more between the death of Buddha and the conversion
of Acoka had not left the order wholly unchanged.  Apart from dissensions,
chiefly about points of discipline, to which we shall return later, the order
had been endowed with many monasteries, in which its members chiefly resided.
Reverence for the master made his birthplace, the tree under which he attained
enlightenment, the scene of his first preaching, the place where he died, holy
spots to which pilgrims resorted; an early Sutta promises that those who die
on such a pilgrimage shall be reborn in the happy realms of heaven.  Relics of
Buddha, also, were held in veneration; the same Sutta tells how, after the
burning of his body, the bones were divided among eight clans or individuals
who claimed a right in them, and mounds were erected over them.  Princes
reared monuments (stupas) over relics of the Blessed One, and flowers were
laid before them or lights kept burning.  This modest beginning of a cult
originated with lay adherents; the monks at first took no part in it.  Their
reverence was not, however, less real or profound.  Legend surrounded Buddha's
birth and enlightenment with miracles significant of the fact that the whole
universe, gods, devils, and inanimate nature, were not merely spectators, but
impassioned actors in the drama of salvation; he descended from the Tusita
heaven to become incarnate in the womb of Maya; his knowledge was omniscience,
his word was infallible; and already in the transcendentalist school it was
held that he was, not alone in supreme moments of insight but at all times,
superior to the conditions and limitations of human existence; a docetic
theory of his humanity was developed.  If he was not conceived as a god, it
was not that he was less than a god, but more.

     Under the Greek-Indian kings, the greatest of whom was Menander (ca. 100
B. C.), Buddhism gained ground in the northwest.  Their empire was succeeded
by that of Indo-Scythian kings, of whom Kanishka, ^1 in the early second
century after Christ, became a Buddhist, and did perhaps as much in his time
for the expansion of Buddhism to the north beyond the confines of India as
Acoka had done three centuries earlier for its success in India. Its great
conquests in Bactria date from this time; its first introduction into China
falls somewhat earlier in the same century.

[Footnote 1: It seems to be well established that the rulers of this dynasty
were Tartars.]