Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon

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Clarendon Press, 1923 - 339 pages

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Page 63 - Here again we are confronted with bare possibilities ; it is quite legitimate to hold that the Buddha was a genuine agnostic, that he had studied the various systems of ideas prevalent in his day without deriving any. greater satisfaction from them than any of us to-day do from the study of modern systems, and that he had no reasoned or other conviction on the matter.
Page 9 - JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JASB Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal JBBRAS Journal of the Bombay Branch...
Page 64 - ... in any sense, that is the existence of the Absolute One. I cannot here explain the reasons why, to my way of thinking, philosophy is forced to accept the metaphysical conception of the Absolute One, although, if this idea be realized in perfect sharpness, we are as unable to think as to deny that the Absolute One is either identical with, or different from, the world.1 I only state that the Absolute One in its very sense, as also, for instance, in the sense of...
Page 55 - Verily, I declare to you, my friend, that within this very body, mortal as it is and only a fathom high, but conscious and endowed with mind...
Page 170 - Just so, O king, is the continuity of a person or thing maintained. One comes into being, another passes away; and the rebirth is, as it were, simultaneous. Thus neither as the same nor as another does a man go on to the last phase of his self-consciousness.
Page 40 - Thus fearing and abhorring the being wrong in an expressed opinion, he will neither declare anything to be good, nor to be bad ; but on a question being put to him on this or that, he resorts to eel-wriggling, to equivocation, and says : " I don't take it thus. I don't take it the other way. But I advance no different opinion. And I don't deny your position. And I don't say it is neither the one, nor the other V
Page 130 - The higher life has been fulfilled. What had to be done has been accomplished. After this present life there will be no beyond.
Page 29 - ... was due to the fact that he either had claims to divinity, or his followers attributed it to him and won general acceptance for the view. It is conceivable that divinity was thrust upon him against his will, but every ground of probability supports the plain evidence of the texts that he himself hud claims which necessarily conferred upon him a place as high as the rank of the greatest of gods.
Page 78 - ... on, so fundamental to the right understanding of primitive Buddhism, that it is essential there should be no mistake about it. Yet the position is also so original, so fundamentally opposed to what is usually understood as religious belief, both in India and elsewhere, that there is great temptation to attempt to find a loophole through which at least a covert or esoteric belief in the soul and in future life (that is of course of a soul), can be recognised, in some sort of way, as part of so...

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