CHAPTER III

THE FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTER OF BEING

Idealism, Negativism, or Realism

It is a natural tendency to read the past in the light of later developments, and to seek to find in the later stages of a doctrine nothing that was not, at least implicitly, contained in it from the first.

1

To this temptation, often fatal to historical accuracy, Professor Franke has fallen a victim in his able and fascinating attempt to prove that the early Buddhist view was, like that of the Mahāyāna, negativist, though his argument rather establishes, even taken on itsown claims, that the view was idealistic, with a tendency, not wholly conscious or articulate, to negativism. But the issue is vital, and there is the authority also of Kern' for the view that from the outset Buddhism was an idealistic nihilism; there is nothing internal nor external for him with true discernment, and a realization of non-existence is the means to secure a safe crossing of the tumult of life.

All the world of appearance, and this is the only world recognized by the Buddha, the argument runs, is summed up by him in the phrase the five groups of assumption (upādānakkhandha), that is, our coming into relation with the apparent things of this world; this very phrase shows conclusively that only psychical value was attributed to the world, and this conclusion is confirmed by the use of the world of the term Samkhāras, denoting ideas or presentations. Had the Buddha believed that there was anything real behind the presentations, he could never have committed himself to the doctrine of the Kevaddha Sutta that all the great elements and name and form

3

1 KF., pp. 336 ff.; cf. ZDMG. Ixix. 467 ff.; DN., pp. 307 ff.

2 Ind. Buddh., p. 50, following Waddell, Buddh. of Tib., p. 384; cf. JRAS. 1908, p. 886, n. 1; Suttanipāta, pp. 203, 194.

3 DN. i. 222 f.

1

are comprehended in the intellect of the Arahant, dying out when it does. Name and form again, denoting the whole of the apparent world, are made in the formula of causation to be dependent on intellect, from which they are produced, and the same formula asserts that existence depends on assumption, while the body elsewhere is expressly declared to be nothing but the groups of assumption. But the case is even stronger; if any. thing is to exist, it must exist for a subject, and the Buddha, by denying the existence of any self, deprives the appearance of any possibility of reality; the self is a mere idle name, and one of the modes of furthering liberation is the consciousness that no self exists (an-atta-saññā); nay more, we have the assertion that even in pain, the most real of all things for the Buddha, there is no self, and more generally all objects of our perception are declared to be without a self (sabbe dhammā anattā),3 The belief, 'I am ', is a delusion which must be laid aside, and he who has entered on the path to salvation is already freed from the false belief in the existence of a real body (sakkaya-diṭṭhi). Form is nothing but bounded space. The Buddhist is bidden to be guarded as to the doors of sense; when he sees a colour with the eye, hears a sound with the ear, smells an odour with the nose, he is not to assume an object corresponding to the sensation (na nimittaggāhi hoti).* The changing, painful character of existence is correctly held by the Buddhists to be inconsistent with true reality, and it is significant that the Buddha declines to discuss the question, from the nihilistic point of view absurd, of the continued existence after death of the soul, or the eternity of the world. An essential part of the discipline to attain Nirvana consists in the overcoming of the delusion of the existence of forms; in the Jhanas the expert attains the conviction of utter non-existence (ākiñcañña).

Even more clearly the idea of negativism is claimed to exist in the Majjhima Nikaya; the every day man, we are told, who knows nothing of the law, takes earth for earth (samjānāti) and believes in it as earth (maññati), and so on with a wide range of terms, including the four Buddhist Jhanas, unity, plurality, and, 1 Below, ch. v. 2 MN. i. 299. DN. iii. 248; MN. i. 228, 435.

• DN. i. 70.

last but not least, Nirvāņa itself. But the man with true enlightenment thinks very differently; he accepts (abhi jānāti) earth as earth, Nirvāņa as Nirvāṇa, but in them and in all else he does not believe (sa nibbānaṁ na maññati).1 Or again, the Buddha declares that though he first appreciated the earth as earth, yet when he recognized that it was without the essence of earth it ceased to exist for him; and the essential condition of release is freedom from the delusion 'I am', 'I shall be', or 'I shall not be' and ideas regarding the eternity of the world. Belief in the existence of ideas is merely a raft to enable men to cross the ocean of existence; this accomplished, it should be cast away for the useless thing it is. It is significant that the desires are called empty, hinting at the non-existence of the objects of desire, and the Majjhima freely contains the idea of voidness; 3 more important still, the Sangiti Suttanta of the Digha recognizes concentration described by three epithets, recognized in the Mahayana, which may be rendered as concentration which interprets things as void (suññato), which recognizes no objects of perception (animitto), and which is without desire for such objects (appanihito); the suggestion that these three significant termini have been interpolated from the Mahayana in the Digha may safely be dismissed as wholly implausible.

3

The negativism of the Buddha, therefore, appears in effect as the belief that all that exists is unabiding presentation, deprived of any true reality through the absence of any self, so that the Buddha decidedly casts Berkeley in the shade by the fervour of his scepticism. . We cannot deny a priori the possibility of so advanced a view, but we are equally not compelled to accept it because it is that of the Mahāyāna; the evidence must be scrutinized impartially and without prejudice for or against.

Here at once we meet with difficulties in the way of the suggested interpretation; the five Upādānakkhandha may more easily be rendered as referring to the five physical and mental

' MN. i. 4 f.; cf. APP., p. 9; KV. ix. 2; trs., p. 233, n. 1.

2 MN. i. 329; iii. 246; i. 134 (Vajracchedikā, 6).

3 ii. 261; i. 297: suññam idam attena.

DN. iii. 219; cf. Walleser, PP., p. 12; Dhammapada, 92 has suññato animitto ca.

constituents, which make up the individual such as Buddhism recognizes it, and which arise from grasping, from desire of life; nothing is thus determined as to the nature of the objects grasped; or in a slightly different sense it may be rendered as groups (of objects) after which there is grasping, equally in conflict with the suggested rendering; grasping, in fact, is not the subjective creation of ideas, but the effort of the individual to seize what he foolishly desires. This is the precise sense of the doctrine that becoming depends on grasping; there is nothing here to suggest that becoming is a mere fiction of the mind.'

As little can we accept the doctrine that Samkhāras denote ideas or perceptions, which is supported by the remarkable doctrine that in the first member of the formula of causation we have an assertion that our ideas all rest upon ignorance, interpreted as ignorance of the illusory nature of the world; the last view is wholly without authority in the Canon; ignorance which produces the Samkhāras is ignorance of the four noble truths of pain or misery, its origin, its destruction, and the path for that end.' Samkhāra, like the Sanskrit Samiskāra, is a term of varying, but consistent and intelligible meaning; it denotes the making ready or complete something for an end—an idea emphasized in the compound Abhisaṁkhāra, and also the result of the activity when achieved. Hence it has no exclusive application to the psychical sphere; the movement given to a potter's wheel is styled an Abhisaṁkhāra; the wheel rolls on so long as the impression thus communicated lasts. Hence Saṁkhāras may be divided, as often, between those of the body, speech, or thought; expiration and inspiration are Saṁkhāras; when the Buddha decides to enter Nirvāņa he lets go his Ayusaṁkhāra," his disposition to live, the motive force which but for his decision would have continued to keep alive his mortal frame; it is inconceivable that nothing more is meant than that the Buddha laid aside

1 Cf. Rhys Davids, SBB. iii. 24; Oldenberg, Buddha', p. 271 n.; GGA. 1917, p. 153; below, ch. v., § 3.

2 SN. ii. 4; MN. iii. 17 in no wise support Franke. Nor is ignorance cosmic as Beckh (Buddhismus, ii. 105) contends.

AN. i. 112; cf. ch. iv., § 3.

MN. i. 301; SN. iv. 293; Vibh. 135.

DN. ii. 106; cf. MN. i. 295 f.; SN. ii. 266; J. iv. 215; SBB. iii. 113;

Beckh, Buddhismus, i. 70, n. 2.

merely a subjective process. The same point arises regarding the Samkhāras which affect the form of rebirth of the dead; a monk who forms a resolve to be reborn in a noble family achieves this result from the Samkhara thus framed; here again we cannot believe that the rebirth is a pure figment of the creative imagination, just as little as it is credible that a man who has the disposition to pay a visit (gamikābhisaṁkhāro) has merely the idea of himself as on a journey. Such a conception is clearly far from the texts, which frankly tell us that a man forms the Saṁkhāra of the body when a body exists, and it is incredible that the body, which is described as the ancient deed made ready (abhisamkhatam) and made real by mental activity (abhisamcetayitam), is really to be understood as merely the ancient act conceived or presented to consciousness as existing. The difficulty of Franke's view appears still more clearly when it is remembered that the Samkhāras are one of the five Khandas which constitute the individual of Buddhism; they rank alongside of material form (rūpa) or body, feeling (vedana), perception (saññā), and intellect or consciousness riññāna), and there is clearly no room here for the concept of ideas; rather they are the dispositions which lead to rebirth, precisely parallel to the Samskaras, which in the Samkhya system represent the predispositions of the individual resulting from the impressions left by former thoughts and deeds. In the chain of causation the Samkhāras play the same rôle; they are not the creation of ignorance of the illusory character of the world; something much simpler is meant; by reason of his ignorance of the doctrine of misery as taught by the Buddha, the unfortunate man commits actions and so produces dispositions which lead on to fresh birth.

Nor is there any possibility of giving an idealistic interpretation to the derivation in the chain of causality of name and form from intellect or consciousness. Here again we are confronted with the excessive desire to read idealist tendencies into our sources. Taken in themselves, the words might be interpreted as an objective idealism; the intellect as absolute might create the whole universe; such an interpretation is impossible for 1 MN. iii. 100; DN., p. 310. SN. ii, 64 f.

2 MV. vi. 31. 2.