English
Dhyana is sometimes made a synonym for gamatha DHYANA, BUDDHIST MEDITATION 47 and samadhi and samipatti. Camatha is tranquillity and practically the same as dhyana, though the latter is much more frequently in use than the former. Samipatti literally is “put, together evenly” or “balanced,”’ and means the equilibrium of consciousness in which takes place neither wakefulness nor apathy, but in which the mind is calmly concentrated on the thought under consideration. Samadhi is a perfect absorption, voluntary or involuntary, of thought into the object of contemplation. A mind is sometimes said to be in a state of samadhi when it identifies itself with the ultimate reason of existence and is only conscious of the unification. In this case, dhyana is the method or process that brings us finally to samadhi. Now, the benefits arising from the exercise of dhyadna are more than one, and are not only practical but moral and spiritual. Nobody will deny the most practical ad- vantage gained through presence of mind, moderation of temper, control of feelings, and mastery of oneself. A passion may be so violent at the time of its agitation that it will fairly consume itself to utter destruction, but a cool-headed man knows how to give it the necessary psychological time of rest and deliberation and thus to save himself from plunging headlong into the Charybdis of emotion, And this cool-headedness, though in some measure due to heredity, is attainable through the exer- cise of dhyana. Intellectually, dhyana will keep the head clear and transparent and, whenever necessaty, make it concentrate 48 BUDDHISM IN ENGLISH itself on the subject at issue. Logical accuracy depends greatly on the dispassionateness of the arguing mind, and scentific investigation gains much from the steadiness of the observing eye. Whatever be a man’s intellectual de- velopment, he has surely nothing to lose, but a great deal to gain, by training himself in the habit of tranquillization. In these days of industrial and commercial civilization, the multitudes of people have very little time to devote themselves to spiritual culture. They are not altogether ignorant of the existence of things which are of permanent value, but their minds are so engrossed in details of every- day life that they find it extremely difficult to avoid their constant obtrution, Even when they retire from their routine work at night, they are bent on something exiting which will tax their already over-stretched nervous system to the utmost. If they do not die prematurely, they become nervous wrecks. They seem not to know the blessings of relaxation. They seem to be unable to live within themselves and find there the source of eternal cheerfulness. Life is for them more or less a heavy burden and their task consists in the carrying of the burden The gospel of dhyana, therefore, must prove to them a heaven-sent boon when they conscientiously practise it. — Soyen Shaku, “Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot”—— THERE IS NO SELF 49 CHAPTER XIll THERE IS NO SELF The denial of any entity —a soul—“which gives unity and permanence to what we call the individual,” is to be justified by intricate speculations, both in the East, with the Buddhists, and in the West, with our modern psychologists. But it is very simple in itself, and was made intelligible to any one by similes. The best known is the simile of the chariot; it is refer- red to in our oldest documents (Samyutta), and it is explained at length in the ‘Questions of King Milinda,’ a collection of dialogues between a Buddhist sage, Naga- sena, and the King Menander, one of the successors of Alexander in the Far East, sovereign of North West India in the second century p, c, There are some reasons to believe that this exfant perdu of Hellenism was converted to Buddhism; and his conversion began as follows: Milinda asks: “ What is your name?” “T am known as Nagasena; but Nazasena is only a term, appellation, designation, mere name, mere empty sound, for there an individual does not exist.’? “But,” says Milinda, “if the individual does not exist, who is it then who furnishes you monks with robes, food and so on? Who is it who keeps the precepts of Buddha ? Who is it who abandons these precepts and commits sin ? In that case, if there is no individual, there is no merit, no de- merit; neither is he a‘*murderer who kills a monk, nor 50 BUDDHISM IN ENGLISH can you, monks, have any teacher or preceptor or ordina- tion. Do answer me, are not your nails, teeth, skin, flesh Nagasena? Are not your body, feelings, sensations, volitions, cognitions Nagasena ?” Nagasena answers in the negative and Milinda concludes: “You speak’ a falsehood, a lie”; for, when one speaks of Nacasena one has in view the body of Nagasena: ‘‘ Nagasena is fat or tall,” and the ‘soul’ of Nagasena: ‘ Nagasena is wise, Nagasena strives for Nirvana.” Milinda is now to be questioned in his turn: “ You are of noble birth, prince, and if you walk in the middle of the day on hot sandy ground, it is very bad for your feet, your body and your mind. Pray, did you come on foot or in a chariot ?” — “TI came in a chariot.” — “If you came in a chariot, explain to me what a chariot is. Is the pole the chariot ?” Milinda confesses that neither the pole, nor the axle, nor the wheels, nor the frame, nor the yoke, nor any part of the chariot is the chariot ; and Nagasena concludes: “When you said: ‘I came in a chariot,’ you spoke a falsehood, a lie; there is no chariot.” For, as it is said elsewhere? Just as the word ‘chariot’ is but a mode of expression for axle, wheels, and other constituent members, placed in a certain relation to each other; but, when we come to examine the members one by one, we discover that, in an absolute sense, there is no chariot; just as the words ‘house,’ ‘fist,’ ‘lute,’ ‘army,’ ‘city,’ ‘tree,’ are only modes of expression for collections of certain things disposed in a certain manner, in exactly the same way, the words ‘living being’ and ‘ego’ are only modes of expression for a complex of bodily and non-bodily constituents. . The problem of the whole and the parts has been, in India, the topic of long and abstruse discussion. The Buddhists maintain that the whole is only an ézre de raisom, their opponents are as clever as they are. That this problem is a real one, not a mere logomachy, is made THERE IS NO SELF 51 clear by the following remark which well summarizes Nagasena’s® thought: “If you infer an entity behind an individual man, you must also logically infer it behind every individual thing, such as a chariot. Buddhists re- ject both entities, and Plato equally logically accepts both,” when he recognizes in a bed “the existence of some one Form, which includes the numerous particular things to which we apply the same name. ” But it may be urged that, among the constituents of the Self, there is a constituent which is likely to be the very Self: the mind or thought or consciousness, the thing that exerts itself, that keeps the memory of its feelings and exertions. Cakyamuni was well aware of this objection, and he scornfully rejects it. Men, in genera!, even the non-Buddhists, willingly agree that this body, composed of the four elements, earth, water, air and fire, is not the Self; they easily divest themselves of passion for it: the increase and the wasting away of the body are manifest enough. “But that, O monks, which is called mind, thought, consciousness, here the non-Buddhist sees his own Self, and he is incapable of divesting himself of passion for it. Why do I sayso? Because, from time im- memorial, from the beginning of transmigration which is without beginning, the non-Buddhist has held, cherished and loved this notion: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my Self.’ But it is less foolish to consider the body composed of the four elements as a Self, rather thanthe mind. Why do | say so? Because it is evident, O monks, that this body la-ts for one year, for two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, lasts for a hundred years and even inore. But that, O monks, which is called mind, thought, consciousness, keeps up an incessant round, by day and by night, of perishing as 52 BUDDHISM IN ENGLISH one thing and springing up as another.” —L. de la Vallee Poussin, “The Way to Nirvana’?— CHAPTER XIV *‘NO-THING’ BUT NOT ‘NOTHING’ Let us first examine the fundamental conceptions of the Buddhist system of philosophy. In the first place a re- ference to many of the English books upon Buddhism will give the student the impression that Gautama taught ~ an atheistic philosophy, which closely approached material- ism, denying any Reality back of phenomenal life, and refusing to admit the existence of Brahman; and that also he denied the existence of the ‘“soul,’’ although he ex- plained Reincarnation under the “ desperate expedient” of Karma, which afforded a connecting link between the lives of the successive beings in the Chain of Rebirth or Samsara. On both of these points Western discussion has raged fier- cely, some holding to the above ideas, while others attempt- ed to combat them. We think that when the Fundamental Principles of the Inner Teachings of the Hindu Philoso- phies are applied to the teachings of Buddha order may be brought out of chaos. Such is the opinion of the advanced “Hindu teachars ( non-Buddhists, remember ) ‘NO-THING’ BUT NOT ‘NOTHING’ 53 who would protect Gautama from the attacks of his or- thodox Hindu opponents, and the Western Writers on Buddhism.