Part 17

And assuredly this religion of human nature is still a strong citadel entrenched behind the formidable forces of pride, passion, prejudice, and ignorance. Yet the walls of the fortress have numerous weak places, which the wise missionary, armed with the still more powerful forces at his command, will endeavour to discover and quietly undermine. By patient and quiet working he must win the day.

With man, speed and rapidity of action are supposed to be the chief evidences of progress and the chief factors in success. The Evangelist, on the other hand, is a worker for God and a fellow-worker with God, and ought not to be discouraged by the tardy advance of the Truth which he advocates. He may have his moments of despondency, but he has only to look around and observe that God works everywhere throughout His own Universe by slow and almost imperceptible processes. The ripe fruit falls from the tree in a second, but its maturity is not effected without a whole year of gradual preparation.

LECTURE X. _Mystical Buddhism in its connexion with the Yoga philosophy._

The first idea implied by Buddhism is intellectual enlightenment. But Buddhism has its own theory of enlightenment—its own idea of true knowledge, which it calls Bodhi, not Veda. By true knowledge it means knowledge acquired by man through his own intellectual faculties and through his own inner consciousness, instincts, and intuitions, unaided by any external or supernatural revelation of any kind.

But it is important to observe that Buddhism, in the carrying out of its own theory of entire self-dependence in the search after truth, was compelled to be somewhat inconsistent with itself. It enjoined self-conquest, self-restraint, self-concentration, and separation from the world for the attainment of true knowledge and for the accomplishment of its own _summum bonum_—the bliss of Nirvāṇa—the bliss of deliverance from the fires of passion and the flames of concupiscence. Yet it encouraged association and combination for mutual help. It established a universal brotherhood of celibate monks, open to persons of all castes and ranks, to rich and poor, learned and unlearned alike—a community of men which might, in theory, be co-extensive with the whole world—all bound together by the common aim of self-conquest, all animated by the wish to aid each other in the battle with carnal desires, all penetrated by a desire to follow the example of the Buddha, and be guided by the doctrine or law which he promulgated.

Cœnobitic monasticism in fact, as we have already pointed out, became an essential part of true Buddhism and a necessary instrument for its propagation.

In all this the Buddha showed himself to be eminently practical in his methods and profoundly wise in his generation. Evidently, too, he was wise in abstaining at first from all mystical teaching. Originally Buddhism set its face against all solitary asceticism and all secret efforts to attain sublime heights of knowledge. It had no occult, no esoteric system of doctrine which it withheld from ordinary men.

Nor did true Buddhism at first concern itself with any form of philosophical or metaphysical teaching, which it did not consider helpful for the attainment of the only kind of true knowledge worth striving for—the knowledge of the origin of suffering and its remedy—the knowledge that suffering and pain arise from indulging lusts, and that life is inseparable from suffering, and is an evil to be got rid of by suppressing self and extinguishing desires.

In the Mahā-parinibbāna-sutta (Rhys Davids, II. 32) is recorded one of the Buddha’s remarks shortly before his decease:—

‘What, O Ānanda, does the Order desire of me? I have taught the law (desito dhammo) without making any distinction between esoteric and exoteric doctrine (anantaram abahiram karitvā). In the matter of the law, the Tathāgata (i.e. the Buddha) has never had the closed fist of a teacher (āćariya-muṭṭhi)—of a teacher who withholds some doctrines and communicates others.’ In short, he was opposed to mysticism.

Nevertheless, admitting, as we must, that early Buddhism had no mysteries reserved for a privileged circle, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that the great importance attached to abstract meditation in the Buddhist system could not fail in the end to encourage the growth of mystical ideas.

Furthermore, it is undeniable that such ideas were, in some countries, carried to the most extravagant extremes. Efforts to induce a trance-like or hypnotic condition, by abstracting the thoughts from all bodily influences, by recitation of mystical sentences, and by superstitious devices for the acquisition of supernatural faculties, were placed above good works and all the duties of the moral code.

We might point, too, to the strange doctrine which arose in Nepāl and Tibet—the doctrine of the Dhyāni-Buddhas (or ‘Buddhas of Meditation’)—certain abstract Essences existing in the formless worlds of thought, who were held to be ethereal and eternal representatives of the transitory earthly Buddhas. These have been adverted to in a previous Lecture (see p. 202).

Our present concern is rather with the growth and development of mystical Buddhism in India itself, through its connexion with the system of philosophy called Yoga and Yogāćāra.

The close relationship of Buddhism to that system is well known; but the various practices included under the name Yoga did not owe their origin to Buddhism. They were prevalent in India before Gautama Buddha’s time; and one of the most generally accepted facts in his biography is that, after abandoning his home and worldly associations, he resorted to certain Brāhman ascetics, who were practising Yoga.

What then was the object which these ascetics had in view?

The word Yoga literally means ‘union’ (as derived from the Sanskṛit root ‘yuj,’ to join; compare the English word ‘yoke’), and the proper aim of every man who practised Yoga was the mystic union (or rather re-union) of his own spirit with the one eternal Soul or Spirit of the Universe. A true Yogī, says the Bhagavad-gītā (VI. 13, 25), should be indifferent to all earthly things. To him a clod, a stone, and gold should be all alike.

Doubtless this was the Buddha’s first aim when he addressed himself to Yoga in the fifth century B.C., and even to this hour, earnest men in India resort to this system with the same object.

In the Indian Magazine for July, 1887 (as well as in my ‘Brāhmanism and Hindūism,’ p. 529), is a short biography of a quite recent religious reformer named Svāmī Dayānanda-Sarasvatī, whose acquaintance I made at Bombay in 1876 and 1877, and who only died in 1883. The story of his life reads almost like a repetition of the life of Buddha, though his teaching aimed at restoring the supposed monotheistic doctrine of the Veda.

It is recorded that his father, desiring to initiate him into the mysteries of Ṡaivism, took him to a shrine dedicated to the god Ṡiva; but the sight of some mice stealing the consecrated offerings, and of some rats playing on the heads of the idol, led him to disbelieve in Ṡiva-worship as a means of union with the Supreme Being. Longing, however, for such union and for emancipation from the burden of repeated births, he resolved to renounce marriage and abandon the world. Accordingly, at the age of twenty-two, he clandestinely quitted his home, the darkness of evening covering his flight. Taking a secret path, he travelled thirty miles during the night. Next day he was pursued by his father, who tried to force him to return, but in vain. After travelling farther and farther from his native province, he took a vow to devote himself to the investigation of truth. Then he wandered for many years all over India, trying to gain knowledge from sages and philosophers, but without any satisfactory result, till finally he settled at Ahmedābād. There, having mastered the higher Yoga system, he became the leader of a new sect called the Ārya-Samāj.

And here we may observe that the expression ‘higher Yoga’ implies that a lower form of that system had been introduced. In point of fact, the Yoga system grew, and became twofold—that is, it came in the end to have two objects.

The earlier was the higher Yoga. It aimed only at union with the Spirit of the Universe. The more developed system aimed at something more. It sought to acquire miraculous powers by bringing the body under control of the will, and by completely abstracting the soul from body and mind, and isolating it in its own essence. This condition is called Kaivalya.

In the fifth century B.C., when Gautama Buddha began his career, the later and lower form of Yoga seems to have been little known. Practically, in those days, earnest and devout men craved only for union with the Supreme Being, and absorption into his Essence. Many methods of effecting such union and absorption were contrived. And these may be classed under two chief heads—bodily mortification (tapas) and abstract meditation (dhyāna).

By either one of these two chief means, the devotee was supposed to be able to get rid of all bodily fetters—to be able to bring his bodily organs into such subjection to the spiritual that he became unconscious of possessing any body at all. It was in this way that his spirit became fit for blending with the Universal Spirit, of which it was originally a part.

We learn from the Lalita-vistara that various forms of bodily torture, self-maceration, and austerity were common in Gautama’s time.

Some devotees, we read, seated themselves in one spot and kept perpetual silence, with their legs bent under them. Some ate only once a day or once on alternate days, or at intervals of four, six, or fourteen days. Some slept in wet clothes or on ashes, gravel, stones, boards, thorny grass, or spikes, or with the face downwards. Some went naked, making no distinction between fit or unfit places. Some smeared themselves with ashes, cinders, dust, or clay. Some inhaled smoke and fire. Some gazed at the sun, or sat surrounded by five fires, or rested on one foot, or kept one arm perpetually uplifted, or moved about on their knees instead of on their feet, or baked themselves on hot stones, or submerged themselves in water, or suspended themselves in air.

Then, again, a method of fasting called very painful (atikṛiććhra), described by Manu (XI. 213), was often practised. It consisted in eating only a single mouthful every day for nine days, and then abstaining from all food for the three following days.

Another method, called the lunar fast (VI. 20, XI. 216), consisted in beginning with fifteen mouthfuls at full moon, and reducing the quantity by one mouthful till new moon, and then increasing it again in the same way till full moon.

Passages without number might be quoted from ancient literature to prove that similar practices were resorted to throughout India, with the object of bringing the body into subjection to the spirit. And these practices have continued up to the present day.

A Muhammadan traveller, whose narrative is quoted by Mr. Mill (British India, i. 355), once saw a man standing motionless with his face towards the sun.

The same traveller, having occasion to revisit the same spot sixteen years afterwards, found the very same man in the very same attitude. He had gazed on the sun’s disk till all sense of external vision was extinguished.

A Yogī was seen not very long ago (Mill’s India, i. 353) seated between four fires on a quadrangular stage. He stood on one leg gazing at the sun, while these fires were lighted at the four corners. Then placing himself upright on his head, with his feet elevated in the air, he remained for three hours in that position. He then seated himself cross-legged, and continued bearing the raging heat of the sun above his head and the fires which surrounded him, till the end of the day, occasionally adding combustibles with his own hands to increase the flames.

I, myself, in the course of my travels, encountered Yogis who had kept their arms uplifted for years, or had wandered about from one place of pilgrimage to another under a perpetual vow of silence, or had no place to lie upon but a bed of spikes.

As to fasting, the idea that attenuation of the body by abstinence from food facilitates union of the human soul with the divine, or at any rate promotes a keener insight into spiritual things, is doubtless as common in Europe as in Asia; but the most austere observer of Lent in European countries would be hopelessly outdone by devotees whose extraordinary powers of abstinence may be witnessed in every part of India.

If we now turn to the second method of attaining mystic union with the Divine Essence, namely, by profound abstract thought, we may observe that it, too, was everywhere prevalent in Buddha’s time.

Indeed, one of the names given by Indian philosophers to the One Universal Spirit is Ćit, ‘Thought.’ By that name, of course, is meant pure abstract thought, or the faculty of thought separated from every concrete object. Hence, in its highest state the eternal infinite Spirit, by its very nature, thinks of nothing. It is the simple thought-faculty, wholly unconnected with any object about which it thinks. In point of fact, the moment it begins to exercise this faculty, it necessarily abandons for a time its condition of absolute oneness, abstraction, and isolation, to associate itself with something inferior, which is not itself.

It follows, therefore, that intense concentration of the mind on the One Universal Spirit amounts to fixing the thought on a mere abstract Essence, which reciprocates no thought in return, and is not conscious of being thought about by its worshipper.

In harmony with this theory, we find that the definition of Yoga, in the second aphorism of the Yoga-sūtra, is, ‘the suppression (nirodha) of the functions or modifications (vṛitti) of the thinking principle (ćitta).’ So that, in reality, the union of the human mind with the infinite Principle of thought amounts to such complete mental absorption, that thought itself becomes lost in pure thought.

In the Ṡakuntalā (VII. 175) there is a description of an ascetic engaged in this form of Yoga, whose condition of fixed meditation and immovable impassiveness had lasted so long that ants had thrown up a mound as high as his waist, and birds had built their nests in the long clotted tresses of his tangled hair.

Not many years ago, I, myself, saw at Allahābād near the fort a devotee who had maintained a sitting, contemplative posture, with his feet folded under his body, in one place for twenty years. During the Mutiny cannon thundered over his head, and bullets hissed around him, but nothing apparently disturbed his attitude of profound meditation. Even Muhammadans practise the same. The Russian correspondent of the _Times_ states (Sept. 18, 1888) that he saw in a mosque at Samarkand men who voluntarily remained mute and motionless for forty days. On a curtain being pulled aside he beheld a motionless figure seated in profound meditation like a squatting mummy. The guide said that a cannon fired off in front of his face would have left him equally unmoved.

It is clear, then, that, supposing Gautama to have made up his mind to devote himself to a religious life, his adoption of a course of profound meditation was a most usual proceeding.

A large number of the images of Buddha represent him sitting on a raised seat or throne (called the Bodhi-maṇḍa), with his legs folded under his body, and his eyes half-closed, in a condition of abstraction (samādhi)—sometimes called Yoga-nidrā; that is, a trance-like state, resembling profound sleep. (Compare frontispiece.)

He is said to have seated himself in this way under four trees in succession (see p. 39 of these Lectures), namely, under the Bodhi-tree or sacred fig-tree, under the Banyan-tree, under the Mućalinda-tree (protected by the serpent), and under the Rājāyatana-tree.

And those four successive seats probably symbolized the four recognized stages of meditation[105] (dhyāna) rising one above the other, till thought itself was converted into non-thought (see p. 209).

We know, too, that the Buddha went through still higher progressive stages of meditation at the moment of his death or final decease (Pari-nirvāṇa), thus described in the Mahā-parinibbāna-sutta (Davids, VI. 11):

‘Then the Venerable One entered into the first stage of meditation (pathamajjhānam); and rising out of the first stage, he passed into the second; and rising out of the second, he passed into the third; and rising out of the third, he passed into the fourth; and rising out of the fourth stage, he attained the conception of the infinity of space (ākāṡānañćāyatanam, see p. 214); and rising out of the conception of the infinity of space, he attained the conception of the infinity of intelligence (viññāṇañćāyatanam); and rising out of the idea of the infinity of intelligence, he attained the conception of absolute nonentity (ākiñćaññāyatanam); and rising out of the idea of nonentity, he entered the region where there is neither consciousness nor unconsciousness; and rising out of that region, he entered the state in which all sensation and perception of ideas had wholly ceased.’ (See p. 213 of these Lectures.)

Clearly, even four progressive stages of abstraction did not satisfy the requirements of later Buddhism in regard to the intense sublimation of the thinking faculty needed for the complete effacement of all sense of individuality. Higher and higher altitudes had to be reached, insomuch that the fourth stage of abstract meditation is sometimes divided and subdivided into what are called eight Vimokhas and eight Samāpattis—all of them forms and stages of ecstatic meditation[106].

A general name, however, for all the higher trance-like states is _Samādhi_, and by the practice of Samādhi the six transcendent faculties (Abhiññā) might ultimately be obtained, viz. the inner ear, or power of hearing words and sounds, however distant (clair-audience, as it might be called); the inner eye, or power of seeing all that happens in every part of the world (clair-voyance); knowledge of the thoughts of others; recollection of former existences; the knowledge of the mode of destroying the corrupting influences of passion; and, finally, the supernatural powers called Iddhi, to be subsequently explained.

But to return to the Buddha’s first course of meditation at the time when he first attained Buddhahood. This happened during one particular night, which was followed by the birthday of Buddhism.

And what was the first grand outcome of that first profound mental abstraction? One legend relates that in the first watch of the night all his previous existences flashed across his mind; in the second he understood all present states of being; in the third he traced out the chain of causes and effects, and at the dawn of day he knew all things.

According to another legend, there was an actual outburst of the divine light before hidden within him.

We read in the Lalita-vistara (chap. i) that at the supreme moment of his intellectual illumination brilliant flames of light issued from the crown of his head, through the interstices of his cropped hair. These rays are sometimes represented in his images, emerging from his skull in a form resembling the five fingers of an extended hand (see the frontispiece).

Mark, however, that Gautama’s meditation never led him to the highest result of the true Yoga of Indian philosophy—union with the Supreme Spirit. On the contrary, his self-enlightenment led to entire disbelief in the separate existence of any eternal, infinite Spirit at all—any Spirit, in fact, with which a spirit existing in his own body could blend, or into which it could be absorbed.

If the Buddha was not a materialist, in the sense of believing in the eternal existence of material atoms, neither could he in any sense be called a ‘spiritualist,’ or believer in the eternal existence of abstract spirit.

With him Creation did not proceed from an Omnipotent Spirit or Mind evolving phenomena out of itself by the exercise of will, nor from an eternal self-existing, self-evolving germ of any kind. As to the existence in the Universe of any spiritual substance which was not matter and was imperceptible by the senses, it could not be proved.

Nor did he believe in the eternal existence of an invisible Self or Ego, called Soul, distinct from a material body. The only eternity of true Buddhism was an eternity of ‘becoming,’ not of ‘being’—an eternity of existences, all succeeding each other, and all lapsing into nothingness. If there were any personal gods they were all inferior to the perfect man, and all liable to change and dissolution.

In brief, the Buddha’s enlightenment consisted, first, in the discovery of the origin and remedy of suffering, and, next, in the knowledge of the existence of an eternal Force—a force generated by what in Sanskṛit is called Karman, ‘Act.’ The accumulated force of the acts of one Universe produced another.

Every man, therefore, was created by the force of his own acts in former bodies, combined with a force generated by intense attachment to existence (upādāna). Who or what started the first act, the Buddha never pretended to be able to explain. He confessed himself in regard to this point a downright Agnostic. The Buddha himself had been created by his own acts, and had been created and re-created through countless bodily forms; but he had no spirit or soul existing separately between the intervals of each creation. By his protracted meditation he attained to no higher knowledge than this, and although he himself rose to loftier heights of knowledge than any other man of his day, he never aspired to other faculties than were within the reach of any human being capable of rising to the same sublime abstraction of mind.

He was even careful to lay down a precept that the acquisition of transcendent human faculties was restricted to the perfected saints called Arhats; and so important did he consider it to guard such faculties from being claimed by mere impostors, that one of the four prohibitions communicated to all monks on first admission to his monastic Order was that they were not to pretend to such powers (see p. 81).

Nor is there any proof that even Arhats in Gautama’s time were allowed to claim _superhuman_ faculties and the power of working physical miracles.

By degrees, no doubt, powers of this kind were ascribed to them as well as to the Buddha. Even in the Yinaya, one of the oldest portions of the Tri-piṭaka, we find it stated (Mahā-vagga I. 20, 24) that Gautama Buddha gained adherents by performing three thousand five hundred supernatural wonders (Pāli, pāṭi-hāriya; see p. 46). These were thought to be evidences of his mission as a great teacher and saviour of mankind; but the part of the narrative recording these, although very ancient, is probably a legendary addition.

It is interesting, however, to trace in portions of the early literature, the development of the doctrine that Buddhahood meant first transcendent knowledge, and then supernatural faculties and the power of working miracles.

In the Ākaṅkheyya-sutta (said to have been composed in the fourth century B.C.) occurs a remarkable passage, translated by Prof. Rhys Davids (S.B.E., p. 214):—

‘If a monk should desire through the destruction of the corrupting influences (āsavas), by himself, and even in this very world, to know and realise and attain to Arhatship, to emancipation of heart, and emancipation of mind, let him devote himself to that quietude of heart which springs from within, let him not drive back the ecstasy of contemplation, let him look through things, let him be much alone.