Chapter V: Part 5

When the Bodhisattva, as the Buddha is so designated prior to his attainment of Buddhahood, was meditating in seclusion, the following consideration came upon him: “Verily this world has fallen upon trouble (_kiccha_), one is born, and grows old, and dies, and falls from one state, and springs up in another. And from this suffering, moreover, no one knows of any way of escape, even from decay and death. O when shall a way of escape from this suffering be made known, from decay and death?” Thus thinking, the Bodhisattva reasoned out that decay and death arose from birth, birth from becoming, becoming from grasping, grasping from craving, until he came to the mutual conditioning of name-and-form (_namarūpa_) and cognition (_viññāna_).[f50] Then he reasoned back and forth from the coming-to-be of this entire body of evil to its final ceasing-to-be,—and at this thought there arose to the Bodhisattva an insight (_cakkhu_)[f51] into things not heard of before, and knowledge arose, and reason arose, wisdom arose, light arose. (_Bodhisattassa pubbe ananussutesu dhammesu cakkhuṁ udapādi, ñāṇaṁ udapādi, paññā udapādi, vijjā udapādi, āloka udapādi._)”

He then exclaimed: “I have penetrated this Dharma, deep, hard to perceive, hard to understand, calm, sublime, no mere dialectic, subtle, intelligible only to the wise. (_Dhammo gambhīro duddaso duranubodho santo panito atakkāvacaro nipuṇo pandito vedanīyo._) But this is a race devoting itself to the things to which it clings, devoted thereto, delighting therein. And for a race devoting itself to the things to which it clings, devoted thereto, delighting therein, this were a matter hard to perceive, to wit, that this is conditioned by that, and all that happens is by way of cause. This too were a matter hard to discern:—the tranquillisation of all the activities of life, the renunciation of all substrata of rebirth, the destruction of craving, the death of passion, quietude of heart, Nirvana.”

The Buddha then uttered the following verse in which he expressed his reluctance to preach the Dharma to the world at large—the Dharma which was realised in him by ñāṇa,—which he saw visibly, face to face, without any traditional instruction:

“This that through many toils I’ve won—
Enough! why should I make it known?
By folk with lust and hate consumed
Not this the Truth[f52] that can be grasped!
Against the stream of common thought.
Deep, subtle, difficult, delicate.
Unseen ’twill be by passion’s slaves
Cloaked in the murk of Ignorance.”[f53]

According to this report transmitted by the compilers of the Nikayas, which is also confirmed by the other literature we have of the Buddha’s Enlightenment, what flashed through his mind must have been an experience most unusual and not taking place in our everyday consciousness, even in the consciousness of a wise, learned, and thoughtful man. Thus, he naturally wished to pass away into Nirvana without attempting to propagate the Dharma, but this idea was abandoned when Great Brahma spoke to the Buddha in verse thus:

“As on a crag, on crest of mountain standing,
A man might watch the people far below,
E’en so do thou, O Widsom fair, ascending,
O Seer of all, the terraced heights of Truth,
Look down, from grief released, upon the nations
Sunken in grief, oppressed with birth and age.
Arise, thou Hero! Conqueror in the battle!
Thou freed from debt! Lord of the pilgrim band!
Walk the world o’er, and sublime and blessed Teacher!
Teach us the Truth; there are who’ll understand.”

There is no doubt that it was this spiritual experience that converted the Bodhisattva into the Buddha, the Perfectly Wise, the Bhagavat, the Arhat, the King of the Dharma, the Tathagata, the All-knowing One, and the Conqueror. In this, all the records we have, Hinayana and Mahayana, agree.

Here then arises the most significant question in the history of Buddhism. What was it in this experience that made the Buddha conquer Ignorance (_avijjā_, _avidyā_) and freed him from the Defilements (_āsava_, _āśrava_)? What was the insight or vision he had into things, which had never before been presented to his mind? Was it his doctrine of universal suffering due to Thirst (_taṇhā_, _tṛishṇā_) and Grasping (_upādāna_)? Was it his causation theory by which he traced the source of pain and suffering to Ignorance?

It is quite evident that his intellectual activity was not the efficient cause of Enlightenment. “Not to be grasped by mere logic” (_atakkāvacara_) is the phrase we constantly encounter in Buddhist literature, Pali and Sanskrit. The satisfaction the Buddha experienced in this case was altogether too deep, too penetrating, and too far-reaching in result to be a matter of mere logic. The intellectual solution of a problem is satisfying enough as far as the blockage has been removed, but it is not sufficiently fundamental to enter into the depths of our soul-life. All scholars are not saints and all saints are by no means scholarly. The Buddha’s intellectual survey of the Law of Origination (_paṭicca-samuppāda_), however perfect and thoroughgoing, could not make him so completely sure of his conquest over Ignorance, Pain, Birth, and Defilements. Tracing things to their origin or subjecting them to a scheme of concatenation is one thing, but to subdue them, to bring them to subjection in the actuality of life, is quite another thing. In the one, the intellect alone is active, but in the other there is the operation of the will,—and the will is the man. The Buddha was not the mere discoverer of the Twelvefold Chain of Causation, he took hold of the chain itself in his hands and broke it into pieces so that it would never again bind him to slavery.

His insight reached the bottom of his being and saw it really as it was, and the seeing was like the seeing of your own hand with your own eyes—there was no reflection, no inference, no judgment, no comparison, no moving either backward or forward step by step, the thing was seen and that was the end of it, there was nothing to talk about, nothing to argue, or to explain. The seeing was something complete in itself—it did not lead on to anything inside or outside, within or beyond. And it was this completeness, this finality that was so entirely satisfying to the Buddha, who now knew that the chain was found broken and that he was a liberated man. The Buddha’s experience of Enlightenment therefore could not be understood by referring it to the intellect which tantalises but fails to fulfill and satisfy.

The Buddha’s psychological experience of life as pain and suffering was intensely real and moved him to the very depths of his being, and in consequence the emotional reaction he experienced at the time of Enlightenment was in proportion to this intensity of feeling. All the more evident therefore it is that he could not rest satisfied with an intellectual glancing or surveying of the facts of life. In order to bring a perfect state of tranquillity over the waves of turmoil surging in his heart, he had to have recourse to something more deeply and vitally concerned with his inmost being. For all we can say of it, the intellect is after all a spectator, and when it does some work it is as a hireling for better or for worse. Alone it cannot bring about the state of mind designated as enlightenment. The feeling of perfect freedom, the feeling that “ahaṁ hi arahā loke, ahaṁ satthā anuttaro,” could not issue from the consciousness of an intellectual superiority alone. There must have been in the mind of the Buddha a consciousness far more fundamental which could only accompany one’s deepest spiritual experience.

* * * * *

To account for this spiritual experience the Buddhist writers exhaust their knowledge of words relating to the understanding, logical or otherwise. “Knowledge” (_vijjā_), “understanding” (_pajānanā_), “reason” (_ñāṇa_), “wisdom” (_paññā_), “penetration” (_abhisameta_), “realisation” (_abhisambuddha_), “perception” (_sañjānanaṁ_), and “insight” (_dassana_),[f54] are some of the terms they use. In truth as long as we confine ourselves to intellection, however deep, subtle, sublime, and enlightening, we fail to see into the gist of the matter. This is the reason why even the so-called primitive Buddhists who are by some considered positivists, rationalists, and agnostics, were obliged to assume some faculty dealing with things far above relative knowledge, things that do not appeal to our empirical ego.

The Mahayana account of Enlightenment as is found in the _Lalita-vistara_ (Chapter on “Abhisambodhana”) is more explicit as to the kind of mental activity or wisdom which converted the Bodhisattva into the Buddha. For it was through “_ekacittekshaṇa-samyukta-prajñā_” that supreme perfect knowledge was realised (_abhisambodha_) by the Buddha. What is this Prajñā? It is the understanding of a higher order than that which is habitually exercised in acquiring relative knowledge. It is a faculty both intellectual and spiritual, through the operation of which the soul is enabled to break the fetters of intellection. The latter is always dualistic inasmuch as it is cognisant of subject and object, but in the Prajñā which is exercised “in unison with one-thought-viewing” there is no separation between knower and known, these are all viewed (_ikshaṇa_) in one thought (_ekacitta_), and enlightenment is the outcome of this. By thus specifying the operation of Prajñā, the Mahayanists have achieved an advance in making clearer the nature of sambodhi: for when the mind reverses its usual course of working and instead of dividing itself externally, goes back to its original inner abode of oneness, it begins to realise the state of “one-thought-viewing” where Ignorance ceases to scheme and the Defilements do not obtain.

Enlightenment we can thus see is an absolute state of mind in which no “discrimination” (_parikalpana_ or _vikalpa_), so called, takes place, and it requires a great mental effort to realise this state of viewing all things “in one thought.” In fact our logical as well as practical consciousness is too given up to analysis and ideation; that is to say, we cut up realities into elements in order to understand them; but when they are put together to make the original whole, its elements stand out too conspicuously defined, and we do not view the whole “in one thought.” And as it is only when “one thought” is reached that we have enlightenment, an effort is to be made to go beyond our relative empirical consciousness, which attaches itself to the multitudinosity and not to the unity of things. The most important fact that lies behind the experience of Enlightenment therefore is that the Buddha made the most strenuous attempt to solve the problem of Ignorance and his utmost will-power was brought forth to bear upon a successful issue of the struggle.

We read in the _Katha-Upanishad_: “As rain water that has fallen on a mountain ridge runs down on all sides, thus does he who sees a difference between qualities run after them on all sides. As pure water poured into pure water remains the same, thus, O Gautama, is the self of a thinker who knows.” This pouring pure water into pure water is, as we have it here, the “viewing all qualities in one thought” which finally cuts off the hopelessly entangling logical mesh by merging all differences and likenesses into the absolute oneness of the knower (_jñānin_) and the known (_jñeya_). This, however, in our practical dualistic life, is a reversion, a twisting, and a re-adjustment.

Eckhart, the great German mystic, is singularly one with the “one-thought-viewing” of things as done by Buddhists when he expresses his view thus: “Das Auge darin ich Gott sehe, ist dasselbe Auge, darin Gott mich sieht. Mein Auge und Gottes Auge ist ein Auge und ein Gesicht und ein Erkennen und eine Liebe.”[f55] The idea of reversion is more clearly expressed in Jacob Boehme’s simile of the “umgewandtes Auge” with which God is recognised.

Enlightenment therefore must involve the will as well as the intellect. It is an act of intuition born of the will. The will wants to know itself as it is in itself, _yathābhūtam dassana_, free from all its cognitive conditions. The Buddha attained this end when a new insight came upon him at the end of his ever-circulatory reasoning from decay and death to Ignorance and from Ignorance to decay and death, through the twelve links of the Paṭicca-samuppāda. The Buddha had to go over the same ground again and again, because he was in an intellectual _impasse_ through which he could not move further on. He did not repeat the process, as is originally imagined, for his own philosophical edification. The fact was that he did not know how to escape this endless rotation of ideas; at this end there was birth, there was decay and death, and at the other end there was Ignorance. The objective facts could not be denied, they boldly and uncomfortably confronted him, while Ignorance balked the progress of his cognitive faculty moving farther onward or rather inward. He was hemmed in on both sides, he did not know how to find his way out, he went first this way and then that way, forever with the same result—the utter inutility of all his mental labour. But he had an indomitable will; he wanted, with the utmost efforts of his will, to get into the very truth of the matter; he knocked and knocked until the doors of Ignorance gave way: and they burst open to a new vista never before presented to his intellectual vision. Thus he was able to exclaim to Upaka, the naked ascetic, whom he happened to meet on his way to Benares after Enlightenment:

“All-conqueror I, knower of all.
From every soil and stain released,
Renouncing all, from craving ceased,
Self-taught; whom should I Master call?

That which I know I learned of none,
My fellow is not on the earth.
Of human or of heavenly birth
To equal me there is not one.

I truly have attained release,
The world’s unequalled teacher I,
Alone, enlightened perfectly,
I dwell in everlasting peace.”[f56]

When we speak of enlightenment or illumination we are apt to think of its epistemological aspect and to forget the presence of a tremendous will-power behind it—the power in fact making up the entire being of an individual. Especially as in Buddhism the intellect stands forth prominently, perhaps more than it ought to, in the realisation of the ideal Buddhist life, scholars are tempted to ignore the significance of the will as the essentially determinate factor in the solution of the ultimate problem. Their attention has thus been directed too much towards the doctrine of the Paṭicca-samuppāda or the Ariya-sacca, which they considered constituted the final teaching of Buddhism. But in this they have been sadly at fault, nor have they been right in taking Buddhism for a sort of ethical culture, declaring that it is no more than a system of moral precepts (_śīla_), without a soul, without a God, and consequently without a promise of immortality. But the true Buddhist ideas of Ignorance, Causation, and Moral Conduct had a far deeper foundation in the soul-life of man. Ignorance was not a cognitive ignorance, but meant the darkness of spiritual outlook. If Ignorance were no more than cognitive, the clearing-up of it did not and could not result in enlightenment, in freedom from the Fetters and Defilements, or Intoxicants as some Pali scholars have them. The Buddha’s insight penetrated the depths of his being as the will, and he knew what this was, yathābhūtam, or in its tathābhāva (thatness or suchness), he rose above himself as a Buddha supreme and peerless. The expression, “Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi,” was thus used to designate this pre-eminently spiritual knowledge realised by him.

Ignorance which is the antithesis of Enlightenment, therefore, acquires a much deeper sense here than that which has hitherto been ascribed to it. Ignorance is not merely not knowing or not being acquainted with a theory, system or law; it is not directly grasping the ultimate facts of life as expressive of the will. In Ignorance knowing is separated from acting, and the knower from that which is to be known; in Ignorance the world is asserted as distinct from the self, that is, there are always two elements standing in opposition. This is, however, the fundamental condition of cognition, which means that as soon as cognition takes place there is Ignorance clinging to its every act. When we think we know something, there is something we do not know. The unknown is always behind the known, and we fail to get at this unknown knower, who is indeed the inevitable and necessary companion to every act of cognition. We want however to know this unknown knower, we cannot let this go unknown, ungrasped without actually seeing what it is, that is, Ignorance is to be enlightened. This involves a great contradiction, at least epistemologically. But until we transcend this condition, there is no peace of mind, life grows unbearable. In his search for the “builder” (_gahākara_), the Buddha was always accosted by Ignorance, an unknown knower behind knowing. He could not for a long time lay his hands on this one in a black mask until he transcended the dualism of knower and known. This transcending was not an act of cognition, it was self-realisation, it was a spiritual awakening and outside the ken of logical reasoning, and therefore not accompanied by Ignorance. The knowledge the knower has of himself, in himself, that is, as he is to himself, is unattainable by any proceedings of the intellect which is not permitted to transcend its own conditions. Ignorance is brought to subjection only by going beyond its own principle. This is an act of the will. Ignorance in itself is no evil, nor is it the source of evil, but when we are ignorant of Ignorance, of what it means in our life, then there takes place an unending concatenation of evils. Taṇhā (craving) regarded as the root of evil can be overcome only when Ignorance is understood in its deeper and proper signification.

II

Therefore, it betrays an utter ignorance on the part of Buddhist scholars when they relegate Ignorance to the past in trying to explain the rationale of the Twelvefold Chain of Causation (_paṭicca-samuppāda_)[f57] from the temporal point of view. According to them, the first two factors (_angāni_) of the Paṭicca-samuppāda belong to the past while the following eight belong to the present and the last two to the future. Ignorance from which starts the series of the Nidānas has no time-limits, for it is not of time, but of the will, as is enlightenment. When time-conception enters, enlightenment which is negatively the dispelling of Ignorance loses all its character of finality, and we begin to look around for something going beyond it. The Fetters would ever be tightening around us, and the Defilements would be our eternal condition. No gods would sing of the Awakened One as “a lotus unsoiled by the dust of passion, sprung from the lake of knowledge; a sun that destroys the darkness of delusion; a moon that takes away the scorching heat of the inherent sins of existence.”[f58] If Enlightenment made the whole universe tremble in six different ways as is recorded in the Sutras, Ignorance over which it finally prevailed must have as much power, though diametrically opposed to it in value and virtue, as Enlightenment. To take Ignorance for an intellectual term and then to interpret it in terms of time-relation, altogether destroys its fundamental character as the first in the series of the Twelve Nidānas. The extraordinary power wielded by the Buddha over his contemporaries as well as posterity was not entirely due to his wonderful analytical acumen though we have to admit this in him; it was essentially due to his spiritual greatness and profound personality, which came from his will-power penetrating down into the very basis of creation. The vanquishing of Ignorance was an exhibition of this power which therefore was invincible and against which Mara with all his hosts was utterly powerless either to overwhelm or to entice. The failure to see into the true meaning of Ignorance in the system of the Paṭicca-samuppāda or in the Ariya-sacca will end unavoidably in misconstruing the essential nature of Enlightenment and consequently of Buddhism.

In the beginning which is really no beginning and which has no spiritual meaning except in our finite life, the will wants to know itself, and consciousness is awakened, and with the awakening of consciousness the will is split into two. The one will, whole and complete in itself, is now at once actor and observer. Conflict is inevitable; for the actor now wants to be free from the limitations under which he has been obliged to put himself in his desire for consciousness. He has in one sense been enabled to see, but at the same time there is something which he as observer cannot see. In the trail of knowledge, Ignorance follows with the inevitability of fate, the one accompanies the other as shadow accompanies object, no separation can be effected between the two companions. But the will as actor is bent on going back to his own original abode where there was yet no dualism, and therefore peace prevailed. This longing for the home, however, cannot be satisfied without a long hard trying experience. For the thing, once divided into two, cannot be restored to its former unity until some struggle is gone through with. And the restoration is more than a mere going back, the original content is enriched by the division, struggle, and re-settlement.

When first the division takes place in the will, consciousness is so enamoured of its novelty and its apparent efficiency in solving the practical problems of life that it forgets its own mission which is to enlighten the will. Instead of turning its illuminating rays within itself, that is, towards the will from which it has its principle of existence, consciousness is kept busy with the objective world of realities and ideas; and when it tries to look into itself, there is a world of absolute unity where the object of which it wishes to know is the subject itself. The sword cannot cut itself. The darkness of Ignorance cannot be dispelled because it is its own self. At this point the will has to make a heroic effort to enlighten itself, to redeem itself, without destroying the once-awakened consciousness or rather by working out the principle lying at the basis of consciousness. This was accomplished as we see in the case of the Buddha, and he became more than mere Gautama, he was the Awakened One and the Exalted and supremely Enlightened. In willing there is really something more than mere willing, there is thinking and seeing. By this seeing, the will sees itself and is thereby made free and its own master. This is knowing in the most fundamental sense of the term and herein consists the Buddhist redemption.

* * * * *

Ignorance prevails as long as the will remains cheated by its own offspring or its own image, consciousness, in which the knower always stands distinguished from the known. The cheating, however, cannot last, the will wishes to be enlightened, to be free, to be by itself. Ignorance always presupposes the existence of something outside and unknown. This unknown outsider is generally termed ego or soul, which is in reality the will itself in the state of Ignorance. Therefore, when the Buddha experienced Enlightenment, he at once realised that there was no Atman, no soul-entity as an unknown and unknowable quantity. Enlightenment dispelled Ignorance and with it all the bogies conjured up from the dark cave of ego disappeared. Ignorance in its general use is opposed to knowledge, but from the Buddhist point of view in which it stands contrasted to Enlightenment, it means the ego (_ātman_), which is so emphatically denied by the Buddha. This is not to be wondered at, seeing that the Buddha’s teaching centred in the doctrine of Enlightenment, the dispelling of Ignorance.

Those who only see the doctrine of non-atman in Buddhism and fail to inquire into the meaning of Enlightenment are incapable of appreciating the full significance of the Buddha’s message to the world. If he simply denied the existence of an ego-entity from the psychological point of view after reducing it into its component factors, scientifically he may be called great as his analytical faculties stood far above those of his contemporaries in this respect; but his influence as a spiritual leader would not have reached so far and endured so long. His theory of non-atman was not only established by a modern scientific method, but essentially was the outcome of his inner experience. When Ignorance is understood in the deeper sense, its dispelling unavoidably results in the negation of an ego-entity as the basis of all our life-activities. Enlightenment is a positive conception, and for ordinary minds it is quite hard to comprehend it in its true bearings. But when we know what it means in the general system of Buddhism, and concentrate our efforts in the realisation of it, all the rest will take care of themselves, such as the notion of Ego, attachment to it, Ignorance, Fetters, Defilements, etc. Moral Conduct, Contemplation, and Higher Understanding—all these are meant to bring about the desired end of Buddhism, that is, Enlightenment. The Buddha’s constant reiteration of the theory of causation, telling his disciples how when this is cause that is effect and how when cause disappears, effect also disappears, is not primarily to get them acquainted with a kind of formal logic, but to let them see how Enlightenment is causally related to all human happiness and spiritual freedom and tranquillity.

As long as Ignorance is understood as logical inability to know, its disappearance can never bring out the spiritual freedom to which even the earliest known literature of Buddhism makes so frequent and so emphatic allusions. See how the Arhat’s declaration of spiritual independence reads in the Nikayas: “There arose in me insight, the emancipation of my heart became unshakeable, this is my last birth, there is now no rebirth for me.”[f59] This is quite a strong statement showing how intensely and convincingly one has seized the central facts of life. The passage is indeed one of the characterisations of Arhatship, and when a fuller delineation of it is made, we have something like the following: “To him, thus knowing, thus seeing,[f60] the heart is set free from the defilement of lust, is set free from the defilement of becoming, is set free from the defilement of Ignorance. In him, thus set free, there arises the knowledge of his emancipation, and he knows that rebirth has been destroyed, that the Higher Life has been fulfilled, that what had to be done has been accomplished, and after this present life there will be no beyond.”[f61] In essence the Arhat is the Buddha and even the Tathagata, and in the beginning of the history of Buddhism the distinction between these terms did not seem quite sharply marked. Thus to a great extent they may be qualified in the same terms.

* * * * *

When the Buddha was talking with his disciples concerning various speculations prevalent in his days, he made the following remarks about the knowledge of things in command by the Tathagata:

“That does he know, and he knows also other things far beyond, far better than those speculations; and having that knowledge he is not puffed up; and thus untarnished he has, in his own heart, realised the way of escape from them, has understood, as really they are, the rising up and passing away of sensations, their sweet taste, their danger, how they cannot be relied on, and not grasping after any of those things men are eager for, he the Tathagata is quite set free. These are those other things, profound, difficult to realise, and hard to understand, tranquillising, sweet, not to be grasped by logic, subtle, comprehensible only by the wise, which the Tathagata, having himself realised and seen face to face, hath set forth; and it is concerning these that they who would rightly praise the Tathagata in accordance with the truth, should speak.”[f62]

These virtues for which the Tathagata was to be praised were manifestly not derived from speculation and analytical reasoning. His intellectual sight was just as keen and far-reaching as any of his contemporaries, but he was endowed with a higher faculty, will-power, which was exercised to its fullest capacity in order to bring about all these virtues which belonged to the entire being of Tathagatahood. And naturally there was no need for him to face these metaphysical problems that agitated the philosophers of his days; they were solved in him, when he attained his spiritual freedom and serenity, in their entirety, in their synthetic aspect, and not partially or fragmentarily—which should be the case if they were presented to the Buddha’s cognition as philosophical problems. In this light is to be read the _Mahāli Sutta_. Some scholars wonder why two entirely disconnected ideas are treated together in one body of the Sutra, which however shows scholarly ignorance in regard to matters spiritual, as they fail to notice the true import of Enlightenment in the system of Buddhist faith. To understand this, we need imaginative intuition directly penetrating the centre of life, and not always do mere literary and philological talents succeed in unravelling its secrets.

The _Mahāli Sutta_ is a Pali Sutra in the Dīgha-Nikāya, in which Mahāli asks the Buddha as to the object of the religious life practised by his disciples, and the following is the gist of his answer: The Buddhists do not practise self-concentration in order to acquire any miraculous power such as hearing heavenly sounds or seeing heavenly sights.[f63] There are things higher and sweeter than that, one of which is the complete destruction of the Three Bonds (delusion of self, doubt, and trust in the efficacy of good works and ceremonies) and the attainment of such a state of mind as to lead to the insight of the higher things in one’s spiritual life. When this insight is gained the heart grows serene, is released from the taint of Ignorance, and there arises the knowledge of emancipation. Such questions as are asked by you, O Mahāli, regarding the identity of body and soul, are idle ones; for when you attain to the supreme insight and see things as they really are in themselves, that is, emancipated from the Bonds, Taints, and Deadly Flows, those questions that are bothering you at the moment will completely lose their value and no more be asked in the way you do. Hence no need of my answering your questions.

This dialogue between the Buddha and Mahāli well illustrates the relation between Enlightenment and the problem of the soul. There is no need of wondering why the Buddha did not definitely solve the ever-recurring question instead of ignoring it in the manner as he did and talking about something apparently in no connection with the point at issue. This is one of the instances by which we must try to see into the meaning of Ignorance.

III

One of the reasons, however, why the Buddha left some metaphysical questions unanswered or indeterminate (_avyākata_) was due to the fact that Buddhism is a practical system of spiritual discipline and not a metaphysical discourse. The Buddha naturally had his theory of cognition, but this was secondary inasmuch as the chief aim of Buddhist life was to attain Enlightenment from which spiritual freedom ensues. Enlightenment vanquishes Ignorance lying at the root of birth-and-death and laying fetters of every description, intellectual as well as affective. And this vanquishing of Ignorance cannot be achieved except by the exercise of one’s will-power; all the other attempts, especially merely intellectual, are utterly futile. Hence the Buddha’s conclusion: “These questions[f64] are not calculated to profit, they are not concerned with the Dharma, they do not redound to the elements of right conduct, nor to detachment, nor to purification from lusts, nor to quietude, nor to tranquillisation of heart, nor to real knowledge, nor to the insight of the higher stages of the Path, nor to Nirvana. Therefore is it that I express no opinion upon them.” What the Buddha on the other hand expounded was: “What pain is, what the origin of pain is, what the cessation of pain is, and the method by which one may reach the cessation of pain.” For these are all practical matters to be not only fully understood and realised but actively mastered by any one who really desires to accomplish the great deed of emancipation.

That the Buddha was very much against mere knowledge and most emphatically insisted on actually seeing and personally experiencing the Dharma, face to face, is in evidence everywhere in the Nikāyas as well as in the Mahayana texts. This has been indeed the strongest point in the teaching of Buddhism. When a Brahman philosopher was referring to his knowledge of the Three Vedas and a union with that which he has not seen, the Buddha ridiculed him in one of his strong phrases: “So you say that the Brahmans are not able to point the way to union with that which they have seen, and you further say that neither any one of them, nor of their pupils, nor of their predecessors even to the seventh generation, has ever seen Brahma. And you further say that even the Rishis of old, whose words they hold in such deep respect, did not pretend to know, or to have seen where, or whence, or whither Brahma is. Yet these Brahmans versed in the Three Vedas say, forsooth, that they can point out the way to union with that which they know not, neither have seen.... They are like a string of blind men clinging one to the other, neither can the foremost see, nor can the middle one see, nor can the hindmost see. The talk of those Brahmans versed in the Three Vedas is but blind talk: the first sees not, the middle one sees not, nor can the last see.”

Enlightenment or the dispelling of Ignorance which is the ideal of the Buddhist life, we can see now most clearly, is not an act of the intellect, but the transforming or re-modelling of one’s whole being through the exercise of the most fundamental faculty innate in every one of us. Mere understanding has something foreign in it and does not seem to come so intimately into life. If Enlightenment had really such a tremendous effect on our spiritual outlook as we read in the Sutras, it could not be the outcome of just getting acquainted with the doctrine of Causation. Enlightenment is the work of Paññā which is born of the will which wants to see itself and to be in itself. Hence the Buddha’s emphasis on the importance of personal experience; hence his insistence on meditation in solitude as the means of leading to the experience. Meditation, through which the will endeavours to transcend the condition it has put on itself in the awakening of consciousness, is therefore by no means the simple act of cogitating on the theory of Origination or Causation, which forever moves in a circle starting from Ignorance and ending in Ignorance. This is the one thing that is most needed in Buddhism. All the other metaphysical problems involve us in a tangled skein, in a matted mass of thread.

* * * * *

Ignorance is thus not to be got rid of by metaphysical means but by the struggle of the will. When this is done, we are also freed from the notion of an ego-entity which is the product or rather the basis of Ignorance, on which it depends and thrives. The ego is the dark spot where the rays of the intellect fail to penetrate, it is the last hiding lair of Ignorance, where the latter serenely keeps itself from the light. When this lair is laid bare and turned inside out, Ignorance vanishes like frost in the sun. In fact, these two are one and the same thing, Ignorance and the idea of ego. We are apt to think that when Ignorance is driven out and the ego loses its hold on us, we have nothing to lean against and are left to the fate of a dead leaf blown away hither and thither as the wind listeth. But this is not so; for Enlightenment is not a negative idea meaning simply the absence of Ignorance. Indeed, Ignorance is the negation of Enlightenment and not the reverse. Enlightenment is affirmation in the truest sense of the word, and therefore it was stated by the Buddha that he who sees the Dharma sees the Buddha and he who sees the Buddha sees the Dharma, and again that he who wants to see the Buddha ought not to seek him in form, nor in voice, etc. When Ignorance ruled supreme, the ego was conceived to be a positive idea, and its denial was nihilistic. It was quite natural for Ignorance to uphold the ego where it found its original home. But with the realisation of Enlightenment, the whole affair changes its aspect, and the order instituted by Ignorance is reversed from top to bottom. What was negative is now positive, and what was positive now negative. Buddhist scholars ought not to forget this revaluation of ideas that comes along with Enlightenment. Since Buddhism asserts Enlightenment to be the ultimate fact of Buddhist life, there is in it nothing negativistic, nothing pessimistic.

IV

As philosophy tends to emphasise unduly the importance of abstract ideas and logical inferences and forgets to keep itself constantly in touch with the actual world of experience, the Buddha, as I have repeatedly stated, flatly refused to subscribe to theorisation (_takka_ or _vitakka_) at the expense of practical discipline. Enlightenment was the fruit of such discipline, and the dispelling of Ignorance could not be effected by any other means. If the Buddha could be said to have had any system of thought governing the whole trend of his teaching, it was what we may call radical empiricism. By this I mean that he took life and the world as they were and did not try to read them according to his own interpretation. Theorists may say this is impossible, for we put our subjectivity into every act of perception and what we call an objective world is really a reconstruction of our innate ideas. Epistemologically this may be so, but spiritually a state of perfect freedom is obtained only when all our egoistic thoughts are not read into life and the world is accepted as it is as a mirror reflects a flower as flower and the moon as moon. When therefore I say Buddhism is radical empiricism, this is not to be understood epistemologically but spiritually. This is really the meaning of “yathābhūtam” or “yathātatham”—the term quite frequently used in the Buddhist canon and in fact forming a most important refrain of Buddhist thought.

In the _Sāmañña-phala Sutta_, in the Dīgha-Nikāya, we are told in an ascending scale what the ultimate fruits of Buddhist life are, and the scale terminates in the “yathābhūtam” acceptance of the world:

“With his heart thus serene, made pure, translucent, cultured, devoid of evil, supple, ready to act, firm, and imperturbable, he directs and bends down to the knowledge of the destruction of the Defilements (_āsavā_). He knows as it really is: ‘This is pain.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the origin of pain.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the cessation of pain.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the path that leads to the cessation of pain.’ He knows as they really are: ‘These are the Defilements.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the origin of the Defilements.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the cessation of the Defilements.’ He knows as it really is: ‘This is the path that leads to the cessation of the Defilements.’ To him, thus knowing, thus seeing, the heart is set free from the Defilement of Lusts (_kāma_), is set free from the Defilement of Existence (_bhāva_), is set free from the Defilement of Ignorance (_avijjā_). In him, thus set free, there arises the knowledge of his emancipation, and he knows: ‘Rebirth has been destroyed. The higher life has been fulfilled. What had to be done has been accomplished. After this present life there will be no beyond!’”

How shall we understand this? As in the case of the Twelve Nidanas, the Fourfold Noble Truth will surely fail to yield up its deepest signification when we approach it intellectually. For it is no more than a restatement of the dogma of dependent origination, however different in form, the same principle is asserted both in the Paṭicca-samuppāda and in the Ariya-sacca. The latter points out the practical method of escape from the fetters of karma while the former draws out in view the plans of its _modus operandi_. As concepts, both formulas remain just what they are, that is, effectless and inefficient to produce a spiritual revolution. The Buddha’s idea of formulating the Fourfold Truth was to see it practically applied to the realisation of an ideal. The elaborate mental discipline which is explained in the previous parts of the _Sāmañña-phala_ is but preparatory to this final catastrophe. Without a serene, pure, and firm heart, the truth can never be grasped as it really is. A keen, penetrating intellect may know of the truth and discourse about it, but as to its realisation in life a disciplined mind is required.

The passages above quoted are intelligible only when they are seen in the light of spiritual life. Buddhism may be logical, but if we fail to perceive anything further than that we sorely distort it. The logicality of Buddhist teaching is just one aspect of it and not a very important one. We may even regard this logicalness as incidental to Buddhism, and those who are entranced by it, remain quite ignorant of the true import of Buddhism. “He knows as it really is,” ti yathābhūtaṁ pajānāti,—we must come to this; for Yathābhūta-ñāṇa-dassana is the insight that destroys the Defilements (_āsavānaṁ khaya-ñāna_) and produces the consciousness of spiritual emancipation (_cetovimutti_). Without this N̄aṇa or N̄aṇa-dassana (insight or intuition), no detachment, no freedom would be possible to a Buddhist, nor would he ever be assured of his ultimate deliverance from the bondage of existence as well as of the attainment of the higher life (_brahmacarya_). The “knowing thus, seeing thus,” does not mean an intellectual comprehension of facts or truths which fall outside the pale of one’s own experience, but it is the perception of events that have actually taken place within oneself. Even an intellectual comprehension will be impossible when there is no experience that goes to support its validity. For those who have no spiritual training along the line of the Hindu dhyana exercises, the mental state culminating in the yathābhūtam contemplation of the world will be a very difficult subject to be in sympathy with. But in this light only the Buddha’s discourse on the fruits of the Sāmañña life is to be understood.

The Defilements (_āsavā_), or Oozings (_lou_)[3.2] as the Chinese translators have them, are three, sometimes four, in number. They are the Defilements of Desire (_kāma_), Existence (_bhāva_), Ignorance (_avijjā_), and Intellection (_diṭṭhi_). What kind of insight is it that destroys all these Defilements? And what is it that will be left in us after such a destruction? The answers may be anticipated to be thoroughly nihilistic, because nothing but absolute void will be seemingly the result of such destruction. Especially when we read a verse like the following (_Sutta-nipāta_, vv. 949 and 1099), we may reasonably be tempted to regard the teaching of the Buddha as absolutely negativistic:

“What is before thee, lay it aside;
Let there be nothing behind thee;
If thou wilt not grasp after what is in the middle,
Thou wilt wander calm.”[f65]

But the fact is, from the spiritual point of view, that it is only after the destruction of the Defilements and a release from every form of attachment that one’s inmost being gets purified and sees itself as it really is, not indeed as an ego standing in contrast to the not-ego, but as something transcending opposites and yet synthesising them in itself. What is destroyed is the dualism of things and not their oneness. And the release means going back to one’s original abode. The insight therefore is to see unity in multiplicity and to understand the opposition of the two ideas as not conditioning each other but as both issuing from a higher principle; and this is where perfect freedom abides. When the mind is trained enough, it sees that neither negation (_niratta_) nor affirmation (_atta_) applies to reality but that the truth lies in knowing things as they are or rather as they become. A mind really sincere and thoroughly purified is the necessary preliminary to the understanding of reality in its suchness. As the result we have “ti yathābhūtaṁ pajānāti,” and this came later to be formulated by the Mahayanists into the doctrine of Thatness or Suchness (_bhūtatathatā_). The trained mind that has gone through the four dhyana exercises as prescribed in the Nikāyas further develops into what is known among the Mahayanists as the Ādarśa-jñānam (mirror-insight), which corresponds to the Bhūta-ñāṇa in the Anguttara Nikāya. The last simile in the Buddha’s discourse on the fruits of the Sāmañña life, which sums up the spiritual attainment of the Buddhists, becomes now quite intelligible. It runs thus:

“Just, O king, as if in a mountain fastness there were a pool of water, clear, translucent, and serene; and a man, standing on the bank and with eyes to see, should perceive the oysters and the shells, the gravel and the pebbles and the shoals of fish, as they move about or lie within it: he would know: This pool is clear, transparent, and serene, and there within it are the oysters and the shells, and the sand and gravel, and the shoals of fish are moving about or lying still.”

The radical empiricism of the “Yathābhūtam” teaching of the Buddha is here graphically presented, which reminds us of the Buddha in the _Itivuttaka_, v. 109, describing himself as the spectator standing on the shore (_cakkhumā puriso tīre ṭhito_). To understand this simile intellectually will be sheer nonsense. The writer describes his mental attitude from a higher plane of thought which has been realised by him after a long training. Sambodhi or Enlightenment is the Buddhist term given to this realisation. The destruction of the four Defilements is the negative phase of the experience which is the insight to which the Buddha’s serene and translucent mind was directed and bent down. When the destructive activity alone is considered, Enlightenment is annihilating and negativistic, but when the insight opens to the suchness of truth, it is most emphatically affirmative. This is where lies that “matchless island possessing nothing and grasping after nothing, called Nirvana, the destruction of decay and death.” (_Sutta-nipāta_, v. 1094). Remember that what is here destroyed is decay and death and not life; for it is through Enlightenment that life is for the first time restored to its native freedom and creativeness.

The simile of mirror (_ādarśa_) may however suggest that the Buddhist attitude towards the world is merely passive and lacking in energising inspirations. This however betrays the ignorance on the part of the critic of the Buddha’s own life which was so unselfishly devoted for forty-nine long and peaceful years to the promotion of the general spiritual welfare of his people; not only this, but the critic has also forgotten to notice the extraordinary missionary enterprises of the Buddha’s disciples as well as their intellectual activities which developed into the Mahayanist school of Buddhism. Whatever this be, the charge of passivity against Buddhist _weltanschauung_ is wrong even when it is considered apart from the historical facts of Buddhism. Passivity we notice in Enlightenment is merely apparent. As a general statement, a thing absolutely passive is unthinkable, unless it is a state of absolute nothingness without any kind of content in it. As long as Enlightenment is the outcome of a most strenuous spiritual effort, it is a positive state of mind in which lies hidden an inexhaustible reservoir of possibilities; it is a unity in which a world of multitudinosity is lodged. “Noisy go the small waters, silent goes the vast ocean.”[f66] In the vast ocean of Enlightenment there is the silence of unity. The Avataṁsaka philosophers too compare it to the immense expanse of an ocean, calm and translucent, which reflects all the shining bodies of heaven, but where at the same time possibilities of roaring and all-devouring waves lie innocently embosomed.

So asks the Buddha in the _Mahāli Sutta_: “When a monk knows thus and sees thus, would that make him ready to take up the question: Is the soul the same as the body, or is the soul one thing and the body another?” It is thus evident that the Buddha’s teaching always centered in the practical realisation of Enlightenment as “āsavem khata-ñāṇa,” insight that destroys the Defilements and releases one from every attachment (_upādāna_). He did not shun the discussion of the metaphysical problems merely because they were metaphysical, but because they were not conducive to the attainment of the ultimate end of Buddhist life which is the purification of spirit and not the display of epistemological subtlety. Ignorance was to be dispelled in our inner experience, and not by intellectually understanding the principle of dependent origination whether expressed as the Paṭicca-samuppāda or as the Ariya-sacca.

Further, that Enlightenment consists in seeing into things “yathābhūtam” or “yathātatham,” free from doubt, not disturbed by intellection or theorisation, may be gleaned from the last gāthā in the _Itivuttaka_, where the Buddha is praised for his various virtues. I quote the first three stanzas:

“Having insight into all the world,
In all the world as it really is,
He is detached from all the world,
And without compare in all the world.

All surpassing in everything, steadfast.
Freed from all ties,
The highest repose belongs to him,
Who has attained Nirvana, with no fear from any side.

This Enlightened One, with Defilements destroyed,
Undisturbed, and free from doubt,
Has attained destruction of all karma,
And is released in the destruction of the substratum.”

V

Viewing things “yathābhūtam” is, so to speak, the intellectual or noetic aspect of Enlightenment though not in the sense of discursive understanding; there is another aspect of Enlightenment which will be the subject of consideration here. I mean its relation to samadhi or dhyana. This is preliminary, as I said before, to the realisation, but it also shows that the realisation thus attained is something more than merely seeing into truth. If Enlightenment were just this seeing or having insight, it would not be so spiritually enlightening as to bring about a complete riddance of evil passions and the sense of perfect freedom. Intuitions could not go so penetratingly into the source of life and set all doubts at rest and sever all bonds of attachment, unless one’s consciousness were thoroughly prepared to take in the All in its wholeness as well as its suchness. Our senses and ordinary consciousness are only too apt to be disturbed and to turn away from the realisation of truth. Mental discipline thus becomes indispensable.