CHAP. I.] THE BUDDHIST WAY OF SALVATION. 29 the perfectly enlightened mind of a Buddha can fully fathom it. As I have observed, it is closely connected with the Four Noble Truths. The cause of demerit is tanha, which appears to present some analogy to concupiscence, as Catholic theologians define it: "a certain motion and power of the mind whereby men are driven to desire pleasant things that they do not possess." That is the cause of sin, of sorrow, and of suffering. To root out this thirst is the only way to obtain salvation, release from the evil which is of the essence of existence: and, as the fourth of the Noble Truths teaches, "the means of obtaining the individual annihilation of desire" is supplied by the eightfold Path of Holiness.1 Abolition of self, living for others, is the substance of the Buddhist plan of salvation. "Scrupulously avoiding all wicked actions, reverently performing all virtuous ones, purifying our intentions from all selfish ends-this is the doctrine of all the Buddhas." Thus does man conquer himself: and, "having conquered himself, there will be no further ground for birth." And so the Chinese poet commenting upon the Pratimoksha : 2 The heart, scrupulously avoiding all idle dissipation, 1 As to which see p. 152. 2 Beal's Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, p. 156. 3 Ibid. p. 159. This is the blissful state which results from the extinction of desire: this is the highest conquest of self; it is the fulness Of deep and liquid rest forgetful of all ill. 2 Those who have attained to this "peace which passeth understanding,' even the gods envy, we are told. "Their old Karma is being exhausted; no new Karma is being produced; their hearts are free from the longing after future life; the cause of their existence being destroyed, and no new yearnings springing up within them, they, the wise, are extinguished like this lamp."3 Such are the leading features of the doctrine contained in Buddhist canonical books, and, whether it proceeded to a greater or less extent in this form from the Master's lips, it may safely be regarded as a correct representation of his mind. When not "When Buddha had arrived at complete enlightenment, he thought within himself, the perfect Rest which results from the extinction of desire-this is the highest conquest of self."-Beal's Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, p. 190. 2 "Most difficult for the people to understand will be the extinction of all Samkhâras (tendencies or potentialities), the getting rid of the substrata (of existence), the destruction of desire (tanhâ), the absence of passion, quietude of heart, Nirvana." Mahâvagga, I. 5. 2. Sacred Books of the East, vol. xiii. p. 85. 3 Rattana Sutta, quoted by Mr. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 111. CHAP. I.] THE BUDDHA'S REFORMATION. 31 directly referrable to him, it is a legitimate explication of his teaching. The possession of a power of development is necessary to the vitality of any religious system; here, as elsewhere, growth, assimilation, change, are the condition and the evidence of life. Nor if we once know the essential idea or type of doctrine- and in the case of Buddhism we undoubtedly do possess that knowledge-is there much difficulty in distinguishing between its true developments and the corruptions by which it is sure to be overlaid when it is received into the popular mind. It must be remembered, too, that the Buddha's reformation was chiefly moral and social, that his message to the world was for the most part no new thing. His mission was not to destroy the old belief but to develop and quicken what in it was real, spiritual, and earnest. I do not know that there is any portion of his teaching which may not be more or less clearly traced in the older systems. Even his dogma of Karma-the fount of the moral purity, the humility, the self-conquest, the universal charity, which are stamped upon his system, and which have won for him the praise of being the first of Indian sages to give a universal character to morality-is but a modification of a doctrine which he found "deeply rooted in the popular conscience." 1 In the view of the authors of the Upanishads the separated condition of the soul, which is the cause of mental error, is also the cause of moral evil. Ignorant of its true nature, the soul attaches And now it is time to return to Schopenhauer. I have said enough to show how much his doctrine has in common with that of Gotama. What the founder of modern "reasoned pessimism". leaves out in his new edition of Buddhism for the use of itself to objects unworthy of it. Every act which it performs to gratify this attachment entangles it deeper in the perishable world; and as it is itself imperishable it is condemned to a perpetual series of changes. Once dragged into the samsara, into the vortex of life, it passes from one existence into another, without respite and without rest. This is the twofold doctrine of the karman, i.e. the act by which the soul determines its own destiny, and of the punarbhava, ie. the successive re-births in which it undergoes it. This doctrine, which is henceforth the fundamental hypothesis common to all the religions and sects of India, is found formulated in the Upanishads for the first time. In the most ancient portions of the Brahmanas it appears of small account, and with less range of application. The faith we find there seems simply to be that the man who has led an immoral life may be condemned to return into this world to undergo here an existence of misery. Re-birth is only a form of punishment: it is the opposite of the celestial life, and tantamount to the infernal. It is not yet what it is here, and what it will continue to be eventually, the state of personal being, a state which may be realised in endlessly diverse forms of being, from that of the insect up to that of the god, but all of equal instability and subject to relapse. It is impossible to fix the period at which this old belief found in the new metaphysical ideas the medium favourable to its expansion; but it is certain that from the end of the sixth century before our era, when Çâkyamuni was meditating his work of salvation, the doctrine, such as it appears in the Upanishads, was almost complete, and already deeply rooted in the popular conscience. Without this point d'appui the spread of Buddhism would hardly be intelligible. Barth, The Religions of India, p. 78, Authorised Translation by the Rev. J. Wood in Trübner's Oriental Series, p. 78. CHAP. I.] THE TRUEST PARTS OF BUDDHISM. 33 the nineteenth century are its poetry and its metaphysics, and these are precisely the two elements which are the source of its greatness and of its stupendous triumphs, and which, therefore, we may take to be its truest parts; for it is by what is true in it that a religion, a philosophy, lives in the world, and subdues the minds of men. "Man consists in truth," as Novalis finely remarks. And more than this, it is only when truth is "embodied in a tale;" that it enters in "at lowly doors," only when it is "linked to flesh and blood," that it wins. its way among the vast majority of our race, who busy, sensual, dull as they are, yet by a true instinct confess and worship the something more than human which shines forth in the teachers and patterns of holiness, and truth, and self-denial. The life of the Buddha has given vitality to his precepts: to imitate him has been the higher law which has transformed the lives of his disciples. The poetry of Buddhism-and is not religion the sublimest expression of poetry ?-centres round his noble figure, instinct with the supernatural, revelatory of the unseen, appealing not to men's lower natures but to that which, according to the wisdom of the ancients,' marks us off from the beasts; the power of looking up for something higher than 1 άνθρωπος was explained to mean ὁ ἄνω ἀθρῶν, the looker up; the other animals being, in Sallust's phrase, "prona atque ventri obedientia." D |