Lord." "Well said, monks. Neither do I know of any such I-doctrine.” * 429 Thus the Buddha has not become untrue to Indian thinking; rather is his doctrine the flower of Indian thought. He is "the true Brahmin," who has completely realized the ideal of the Upanishads. And precisely because this is so, India will again greet him as her greatest son, as soon as she again shall have recognized this. Yea and more, hail to the age that philosophizes in the direction of the Anattā-vāda! Hail in every case to the man who follows the Buddha on this way, first by turning his thoughts in the direction shown by the Buddha, and then, in time, also by practically moulding his life more and more in accordance therewith. He is no longer in need of religion and philosophy, no longer in need of theosophy or "mystics;" he is also no longer in need of natural science. He is in need of nothing more at all. For very soon dawn will break within him. Just because he has the right method, very soon and very easily he will raise the veil that enfolds the primary problem of the human heart, the primary secret of all religion:-the great riddle of deathless and tranquil eternity will be solved for him. For very soon he himself "will mark, * From this explanation it will probably become clear without further ado that our modern form of saying "the I is transcendent" is not the mode of expression used by the Atta-vada, for whom the I is not absolutely transcendent, in as much as it is ultimately found in pure cognition; but it is really the language of the Anattā-vāda, since the statement "the I is transcendent" means: "the I is beyond all cognition, it absolutely cannot be found out." How stupid, how incredibly stupid it is to accuse him who teaches the transcendence of the I, of adhering to the Atta-vada, will certainly become clear to the greatest simpleton, when he learns that the Buddha even verbally teaches about the I, what is involved in the conception of transcendency: "I am not anywhere whatsoever, to any one whatsoever, in anything whatsoever." 430 "But since the I and anything belonging to the I is not to be found (anupalabhamane)..."431 "Even in this present life is the Accomplished One not to be found out (ananvejjo)." 432 Because no kind of cognition penetrates to the I, nothing whatsoever, absolutely nothing, can be told about it; the rest is-silence! And it is only this silence about the I, no more, that the Buddha teaches. he himself will see: This is the sick, the painful, the diseased; there the sick, the painful, the diseased is done away without any remainder over." 2. THE METAPHYSICS OF THE BUDDHA The "The supreme blasphemy is the denial of the indestructible essence within us." Schopenhauer. he primary and fundamental question of all philosophy and religion is this: "What am I?" not: "What is the world?" What the world is, ultimately interests man only in so far as it is related to himself and must therefore be taken into account in any attempted solution of the first, fundamental question. But the question, "What am I?" has always been answered by the immense majority of men thus: "I am body and soul"-under the latter concept being understood the willing and cognizing principle within us, which, in contrast to the body, is supposed to be immortal. This view of the average man has been left behind by the great leaders in religion and philosophy, inasmuch as they have held the essence of man to consist exclusively in the faculties of willing and cognizing, holding, therefore, the soul to consist of these functions, and declaring the body to be only an inessential addition to this same soul. A higher definition of our essence will nowhere in the world be found outside the realm of the Buddha. Even in the Upanishads, which in their grandeur come nearest to the doctrine of the Buddha, our essence is defined as "being, bliss, and thought." Such definitions were reached through the idea that the essence of man ought to consist at all events in one of his cognizable qualities, more especially in his most noble and exalted qualities. Of course this presupposition has especially been made their starting-point by all the smaller minds, particularly by those in whom is lost even that primary consciousness proclaimed also by Spinoza, the Jew, when he says: "We feel and experience that we are eternal." But to these small minds the uniform definition of what constitutes the essence of a human being, formed a mighty weapon against those greater ones who, being such, without exception teach that our essence, in one form or another, is indestructible. This weapon enabled them, in spite of their smallness, to take up fight against those great ones, that is, against their doctrine that our essence is indestructible, and thus to establish the opposition between science and religion in the human domain This opposition, in particular, is also a typical peculiarity of our time. For small but talented minds are very well able to track out the defects and weak points of great systems, but they cannot as easily put reality in the place of the discovered defects and the blanks caused thereby. Again it is only the true genius who is capable of this. And so the small minds very soon succeeded in proving that all the mental functions of man, especially thinking, were essentially bound up with his corporeal organism, thus, were organic functions. As such they form part of the corporeal organism, and must therefore perish along with the organism when this breaks up in death. Accordingly, in consequence of the common assumption that the essence of man consisted in these mental functions, annihilation of the essence of man at the moment of death seemed a settled fact. The gulf was opened between religion culminating in all its forms in the doctrine of the immortality of our essence, and science, demonstrating beyond denial that what religion, together with science itself, declared to be the essence of man, fell prey to annihilation at the moment of death. Are there any who can bridge this gulf? Certainly, there are very many who labour incessantly to bridge it. The zeal developed by the representatives of modern religions in this direction, is admirable. Many a time, the proud work really seemed to have been accomplished, until another bomb of scientific acumen burst in, and again brought about the crashing collapse of the proud arch bridging the gulf. So religion and science, now as before, stand opposed to each other as irreconcilable enemies. In particular, the fact remains, that neither of the two adversaries is able to vanquish the other. Religion is unable seriously to contest the scientific standpoint that even the highest mental functions are of a material kind, and therewith the doctrine that the essence of man, supposed to consist in these functions, is, along with the bodily organism, annihilated in death. On the other hand, no science can weaken the overwhelming supporting grounds in favour of that fundamental dogma of every religion, the doctrine of the indestructibility of our essence. makes it quite clear, that on both sides error and truth must be closely interwoven, the strength, nay, the invincibility of each party, consisting in the truth it maintains, its weakness, however, in the error it has associated with the truth. This But if thus there is error also on both sides, why do not the contending parties succeed in discovering the error of the opponent, a thing possible, after what has just been said, even to merely talented minds? They do not succeed in this, because it is the same error which dominates both parties, so that in discovering it, they would disavow themselves. This error consists precisely in the basis common to both contending parties, that the essence of man must be sought for in his mental qualities. Because this common basis is intangible for both sides, and because it is false, therefore there is no hope of filling up the gulf between science and religion as long as this common basis is not proved, and generally acknowledged, to be false. But thereby also an immense difficulty arises. For if it is declared to be an error to seek for the essence of man in his mental or even in his corporeal qualities, in what, then, is man to consist? What remains of him, if he is stripped of all his mental and corporeal qualities, above all, of his will, and of his consciousness? Surely, nothing more is left. Consequently, for all that, since he is still there, he must be understood to consist in his qualities, or in some, or at least, in one of them. Indeed, upon this consideration is founded the seemingly unshakeable security of the common basis of religious and materialistic thinkers; but, at the same time also, the incompatibility of both their standpoints. Only if we could succeed in proving this common basis to be false, only then would there be a prospect of bringing to an end the conflict between science and religion. But how might this be possible? Who would venture merely to make the statement that man consists neither in his corporeal nor in his mental qualities, and therefore is nothing at all? Would not such a man declare himself to be a madman, in declaring something not to exist which quite evidently does exist, namely, himself? Would he not be turning upside down all words and conceptions, and converting them to their contrary? What reasonable man would dare do such a thing? Nevertheless, there is one who has ventured to do this, who has really inverted all words and conceptions and converted them to their contrary. For example, he declares to be unwholesome what has always been thought to be wholesome and salutary; he designates as ugly what has always been looked upon as beautiful; he defines as woe what from all time has been called happiness. He even calls that the non-existing which, ever since man existed has been called the existing; and that which all men have always called nothing he decides to be the highest reality, not merely in appearance, and by sophistical casuistry, but in perfect earnest, |