3. This evening we proceed
with the literature and philosophy of Buddhism:
(a) The form of Buddhism
prevailing in Nepal, Tibet, China and Japan is called northern Buddhism, while
the form prevailing in Ceylon and Burma is called Southern Buddhism. The
Northern Buddhists furnished us with scanty material directly illustrating the
religion in its earliest form in India. The sacred books of the Northern
Buddhists are not included in any comprehensive common name and as far as is
known none of then can be referred to the period immediately following on
Gautam 's death. Kanishka, The king of Kashmir, convened a great. Kanishka,
the king of Kashmir, convened a great council of the northern Buddhists in the
first century after Christ, but the council instead of collecting together the
sacred books of the Northern Buddhists wrote three great commentaries.3
The Lalitavistata, a most important work of the Northern Buddhists, is only a
gorgeous poem; it is no more a biography of Gautama than the Paradise Lost a
biography of Jesus. It was composed probably in Nepal in the second, third or
fourth century, and the works on Buddhism which were then carried by Chinese
pilgrims from India from century to century and translated into the Chinese
language do not illustrate the earliest phase of Buddhism in India. And
lastly, Tibet his drifted still further away from primitive Buddhism in India
and has adopted forms and ceremonies, which were unknown to Gautama and his
followers in the sixth century before Christ.
(b) On the other hand, the
southern Buddhists furnish us with the most valuable materials. The sacred
books of the Southern Buddhists are known by the inclusive name of the three
Pitakas and there is evidence to show that these Pitakas now
extant in Ceylon are substantially identical with the canon as settled in the
council of Patna about 242 B.C.
(c) The three Pitakas are
known as the Suttee Pitakas, the Vinaya Pitakas and the
Abhidhamma Pitakas. The works comprised in the suttee Pitakas
profess to record the sayings and doings of Gautama Buddha himself. Gautama
himself is the actor and the speaker in the earliest worker of this Pitakas
and his doctrines are conveyed in his own words. Occasionally one of his
disciples is the instructor and there are short introductions to indicate
where or when Gautama or his disciple spoke. But all through the Suttee
Pitakas Gautam's doctrines and moral precepts are preserved
professedly, in Gautam's own words.
The Vinaya Pitakas
contains very minute rules for the conduct of monks and nuns who had embraced
the holy order. Gautama respected the lay disciple Upasak but he held
that to embrace the order was a quicker path to salvation. As the number of
monks and nuns multiplied it was necessary to fix elaborate rules for their
proper conduct and behaviour in the Vihar or monastery. As Gautama
lived for nearly half a century after he had proclaimed his religion, there
can be no doubt that he himself settled many of these rules.
The Abhidhamma Pitakas
contains disquisition, on various subjects, like the conditions of life in
different worlds, on the explanation of personal qualities, on the elements,
the causes of existence etc. They have been miscalled metaphysics for early
Buddhism knew little of metaphysics.4
(d ‑e) Last time I said that
the doctrine of four noble truths is the central point of Buddhist teaching.
The substance of the teaching is, that life is suffering, the thirst for life
and its pleasures is the cause of suffering the extinction or the thirst for
life and its pleasure is the cause of suffering, the extinction of the thirst
is the cessation of suffering, and that such extinction can be brought about
by a holy life. We will discuss these four truths one after another.
(d) The first truth is the
truth of suffering. As Gautama said: " Birth is suffering, decay is suffering,
illness is suffering, death is suffering. Presence of objects we hate is
suffering, not to obtain [objects] we desire is suffering. Briefly, the
fivefold clinging to existence, i.e. clinging to the five aggregates, is
suffering." What are those five aggregates? In Buddhist philosophy man is a
compound of five aggregates. These are Roop or the material aggregates‑
The first of the five. They include the four elements, earth, water, fire and
air, five organs of sense, eye, ear, nose, tongue and body, five attributes of
matter, form, sound, smell, taste and touch, two distinctions of sex, male and
female, three essential condition, thought, vitality and space, two means of
communication, gesture and speech, seven qualities of living bodies, buoyancy,
elasticity, power of adaptation, power of aggregation, duration, decay chage.5
The second class of aggregates is Vaidna or sensations‑ the sensation
of pleasure or pain. The third is Sangya or name. The fourth is
Sanskar or the potentialities, which lead to good or bad results, and the
fifth is Vigyan or knowledge. These five aggregates include all bodily
and mental parts and powers of man and neither any one of them nor any group
of them is permanent. It is repeatedly laid down in the Pitakas that
none of these skandhas is soul. The body itself is constantly changing
and so also each of the other aggregates. Man is never the same for two
consecutive moments and there is within him no abiding principle whatever.
In Sanyut Nikkei, a
Buddhist work, Buddha says: " mendicants, in whatever way the different
teachers regard the soul, they think it is the five skandhas or one of
the five. Thus mendicants, the unlearned, unconverted man who does not
associate either with the converted or with the holy or understand their law
or live according to it, such a man regards the soul either as identical with
or as possessing or as containing or as residing in the material properties or
sensations or in the other three skandhas. By regarding soul in one of
these ways he gets the idea `I am'. Then there are the five organs of sense
and mind and qualities and ignorance. From sensation produced by contact and
ignorance the sensual, unlearned man derives the notions `I am' `This I
exists', `I shall be' `I shall not be' etc. But now, mendicant, the learned
disciple of the converted, having the same five organs of sense, has got rid
of ignorance and acquired wisdom, and therefore the ideas `I am' etc. do not
occur to him." This belief in self or soul is regarded in Buddhism so
distinctly as a heresy those two well‑known words in Buddhist terminology have
been coined on purpose to stigmatize it. The first of these is skayedithi‑
the heresy of individuality‑ one of the three primary delicious which mush be
abandoned at the very first stage of the Buddhist path of freedom. The other
is Atvad, the doctrine of soul or self; it is classed with sensuality,
heresy and belief in the efficacy of rites‑ as one of the four upadans6,
which are the immediate cause of birth, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain,
grief and despair.
There is another Buddhist work
called Brahmjalsut, in which Gautama discusses 62 different kinds of
wrong belief; among them are those held by men who believe that the soul and
the world are eternal, that there is no newly existing substance but these
remain as a mountain peak unshaken, immovable, that living beings pass away,
they transmigrate, they die and are born but these continue as being eternal.
With regard to these Gautama says: " Upon what principle do these mendicants
and Brahmins hold and doctrine of future existence? They teach that the soul
is material or immaterial or is both or neither, that it is finite, or
infinite or is both or neither, that it will have one or many modes or
consciousness, that its perceptions will be few or boundless, that it will be
in a state of joy, or of misery, or of both or of neither. These are the
sixteen heresies teaching a conscious existence after death. Then there are
eight heresies teaching that the soul material or immaterial or both or
neither, finite or infinite or both or neither has an unconscious existence
after death. And finally eight others which teach that the soul in the same
eight ways exists after death in a state of being neither conscious nor
unconscious." Lastly, he says: " Mendicants, that which binds the teacher to
existence, Tnha or thirst, is cut off but his body still remains. While
his body shall remain he will be seen by Gods and men, but after the
termination of life, upon the dissolution of the body neither gods nor men
will see him."
(e) So the first noble truth
of Buddhism is that clinging to existence is misery. The second noble truth is
the cause of misery. In Gautam's' words, "Thirst leads to rebirth accompanied
by pleasure and lust‑ thirst for pleasure, thirst for existence, thirst for
prosperity", And the third noble truth is, the cessation of suffering. It
ceases with the complete cessation of thirst- a cessation, which consists in
the absence of every passion - with the complete destruction of desire. The
fourth truth is the noble truth of path, which leads to cessation of
suffering. The holy eight-fold path is right belief, right meditation. The
substance of the teaching is that without entering into any discussion into
the origin and destiny of men one should lead a holy moral life and that will
lead him to the summum bonum.
(f) On the eve of his death
Gautama called together his brethren and appears to have recapitulated the
entire system of morality under seven heads and these are known as the seven
jewels of the Buddhist Law.
"Which then, O Brethren, are
the truths which, when I had perceived, I made known to you, which, when you
have mastered, it behooves you to practice meditate upon and spread, in order
that pure religion may last long and be perpetuated, in order that it may
continue to be for the good and happiness of the great multitudes, out of pity
for the world, to the good and the gain and the weal of Gods and men? They are
these:
1. The four earnest
meditations.
2. The fourfold great struggle
against sin.
3. The four roads to
saint-ship.
4. The five moral powers.
5. The five organs of
spiritual sense.
6. The seven kinds of wisdom.
7. The noble eight-fold path."
The four earnest meditations
alluded to are: meditations on the body, the sensations, the ideas and the
reason. The fourfold struggle against sin is the struggle to prevent
sinfulness, the struggle to increase goodness. The fourfold struggle
comprehends in fact a life‑long, earnest, unceasing endeavor on the part of
man towards more and more of goodness and virtue. The fourfold roads to
saint-ship are the four means the will, the exertion, the preparation, and the
investigation by which Idhi is acquired. In later Buddhism Idhi
means occult powers but what Gautama meant was probably the influence and
power which the mind, by long training and exercise, can acquire over body.
The five moral powers and five organs of spiritual sense are faith, energy,
thought, contemplation, investigation, joy, repose, and serenity. The
eight-fold path we have referred to.7
