desire by yielding to them, with the result that the disease only grows worse *-the latter by the Buddha is removed at its root by way of intuitive insight. We become entirely will-less. But along with the disease also disappears its symptom, the wound of the six senses. At first it remains as a scar, for the saint also, up to the time of his death, is bound to his body. With this death, however, the body is cast away entirely and for ever: the wound closes up completely. We are cured for ever. We are free, absolutely free,-free, namely, from all willing, free from our long sickness.** This single change only will deliverance from the world bring about in us. We ourselves will remain entirely untouched. Only this eternal and unwholesome willing, this ever-tormenting sickness will be taken away, and thereby at last peace arise within us, so that we shall be able to say with the Master: "Once there was Craving, and that was of evil; now that exists no more, and so it is well. Once there was Hatred, and that was of evil; now that exists no more, and so it is well. Once there was Delusion, and that was of evil; now that exists no more, and so it is well." 422 Whether we ever shall be able to say this, will depend above all upon whether the Doctrine of the Buddha, as we now have learned to know it, has aroused in us the will to be able to say it. Everything else is then self-evident. * In the same way that the wounds of a leper only become worse through the rubbing by which he seeks to relieve the annoyance of the itching. Cf. the great 75th Discourse in the Majj. Nik. ** Cf. Shakespeare, Timon of Athens: "My long sickness now begins to mend; and nothing brings me all things." I. THE DOCTRINE OF THE BUDDHA "I, O Disciples, am the Brahmin in holy poverty, whose hands are always pure, the bearer of his last body, an incomparable Saviour and physician." Itivuttaka 100. he Buddha calls his doctrine "timeless." This means: The It is an absolute truth, which was valid for his time as well as it also is for ours, and as it was valid for eternities past, and will be valid for eternities to come. And because this is so, it can also be understood, even if it is entirely severed from the conditions and relations under which it came into the world. But it will be easier to understand it, if we know at the same time the whole environment out of which it sprang, and which alone made it possible for the Buddha and his doctrine to appear. Therefore we wish here briefly to expound the kernel of striving for religious insight current in Ancient India before the appearance of the Buddha, as to its contents, its form, and its relations to the doctrine of the Buddha. Our data may be partly based upon the expositions given by Deussen in his General History of Philosophy, since Deussen was a pioneer precisely in this direction. The striving of Ancient India for insight had, in gradually progressive development, concentrated itself upon finding out the fundamental principle which underlies everything existing. This fundamental principle is accessible only within ourselves. For it is only within himself that each may plumb the deepest depths; of everything outside himself he only cognizes the external garb in which it presents itself to his five external senses. Thus, men in Ancient India, in searching for the fundamental principle within themselves, at the culminating point of development, got so far as to proclaim as this fundamental principle, themselves, their own I, the Atman. For this I, this Ātman, every one has to search who desires to find the ultimate. But that this Atman must be sought for, involves this, that everything that offers itself to us without being searched for, thus, our body with all its organs of sense, cannot be the Atman, our true essence: and that it is a delusion, if we think it to be this latter. Accordingly, the conception of Atman from the outset was generally connected with the interpretation of the Self "as opposed to what is not the Self." This fundamental meaning pervades all the more usual applications of the word Atman, in so far as by the same is indicated: I. our own person, as distinguished from the outer world; 2. the trunk of the body, as distinguished from the external members; 3. the soul, as distinguished from the body; 4. the essence, as distinguished from the inessential. Here, to begin with, we only want to lay it down, that Atman essentially and originally is a relative conception, inasmuch as, in regard to it, we always think of something that is not the Atman; and it is a negative conception, inasmuch as its positive content does not consist in itself, but in what is thereby excluded. Such relatively negative, or, as we might also say, limiting conceptions have often been used by philosophers with great advantage, to designate the incognizable principle of things by excluding from it the whole content of the cognized world. Of such a kind is the "essentially existing" of Plato, as opposed to the |