English
Thus the whole inquiry in its most generalized expression comes practically to this: Given man as a moral being, what do we find to be the content of his consciousness ? Now this term d h a m m o is, as readers are already aware, susceptible of more than one interpretation. Even when used for the body of ethical doctrine it was applied with varying extension, i.e., either to the whole doctrine, or to the Suttantas as opposed to Vinaya and Abhidhamma, or to the doctrine of the Four Truths only. But whatever in this connexion is the denotation, the connotation is easy to fix. That this is not the case where the term has, so to speak, a secular or * profane ' meaning is seen in the various renderings and discussions of it.^ The late H. C. Warren in particular has described the difficulties, first of deter- mining what the word, in this or that connexion, was intended to convey, and then of discovering any word or words adequate to serve as equivalent to it. One step towards a solution may be made if we can get at a Buddhist survey of the meanings of d h a m m o from the Buddhists' own philosophical point of view. And this we are now enabled to do in consequence of the editing of the Attha- salini. In it we read Buddhaghosa's analysis of the term, the various meanings it conveyed to Buddhists of the fifth century a.d., and his judgment, which would be held as authoritative, of the special significance it possessed in the questions of the Dhamma - sangani. * The word dhammo,' runs the passage (p. 38), *is met with [as meaning] doctrine (pariyatti), condition or cause (hetu), virtue or good quality Cguno), absence of essence or of living soul (nissatta-nijjivat a),' etc. Illustra- tive texts are then given of each meaning, those referring to the last being the beginning of the answer in our Manual 1 C/., e.g., Oldenberg, ^Buddha,' etc., 3rd ed., p. 290; Warren, 'Buddhism in Translations,' pp. 116, 364; Kern, 'Indian Buddhism,' p. 51, n. 3; Neumann, 'Eeden des Gotamo,' pp. 13, 23, 91; Gogerly, 'Ceylon Friend,' 1874, p. 21. c XXXIV numbered [121] : ' Now at that time there are states ' ; and, further, the passage from the Satipatthanasutta^ : * Con- cerning dhammas he abides watchful over dhammas.' And it is with the fourth and last-named meaning of d h a m m o that the term is said to be used in the questions of the Manual. Again, a little later (p. 40), he gives a more positive expression to this particular meaning by saying that d h a m m 0, so employed, signifies * that which has the mark of bearing its nature ' (or character or condition — ■ sabhavadharano). This to us somewhat obscure characterization may very likely, in view of the context, mean that dhammo as phenomenon is without sub- stratum, is not a quality cohering in a substance. 'Pheno- menon' is certainly our nearest equivalent to the negative definition of nissatta-nijjivam, and this is actually the rendering given to dhammo (when employed in this sense in the Sutta just quoted) by Dr. Neumann: 'Da wacht ein Monch bei den Erscheinungen. . . .' If I have used states, or states of consciousness, instead of phenomena, it is merely because, in the modern tradition of British psychology, ' states of consciousness ' is exactly equivalent to such phenomena as are mental, or at least conscious. And, further, because this use of ' states ' has been taken up into that psychological tradition on the very same grounds as prompted this Buddhist interpretation of d h a m m a — the ground of non-committal, not to say negation, with respect to any psychical substance or entity. That we have, in this country pre-eminently, gone to work after the manner of electrical science with respect to its subject-matter, and psychologized without a psyche, is of course due to the influence of Hume. In selecting a term so characteristic of the British tradition as * states ' of mind or consciousness, I am not concerned to justify its use in the face of a tendency to substitute terms more expressive of a dynamic conception of mental operations, or of otherwise altered standpoints. The Buddhists seem 1 D. (suttanta 22) ; M. i. 61. XXXV to have held, as our psychology has held, that for purposes of analysis it was justifiable to break up the mental con- tinuum of the moral individuality into this or that congeries of states or mental phenomena. In and through these they sought to trace the working of moral causation. To look beneath or behind them for a ' thing in itself ' they held to be a dangerous superstition. With Goethe they said : * Suche nichts hinter den Phanomenen ; sie selbst sind die Lehre !' And in view of this coincidence of impli- cation and emphasis, ' states of mind ' or ' of conscious- ness ' seemed best to fit d h a m m a when the reply was made in terms of mental phenomena. In the book on Form, the standpoint is no doubt shifted to a relatively more objective consideration of the moral being and his contact with a world considered as external. But then the word d h a m m a (and my rendering of it) is also superseded by r Ci p a m . It is only when we come to the more synthetic matter of Book III. that d h a m m a strains the scope of the term I have selected if ' states ' be taken as strictly states of mind or of consciousness. It is true that the Buddhist view of things so far resembles the Berkeleian that all phenomena, or things or sequences or elements, or however else we may render d h a m m a , may be regarded as in the last resort * states of mind.' This in its turn may seem a straining of the significance which the term possessed for early Bud- dhists in a more general inquiry such as that of Book III. Yet consider the definitions of d h a m m a , worthy of Berkeley himself, on p. 272 [1044-45]. The difficulty lay in the choice of another term, and none being satisfactory, I retained, for want of a better, the same rendering, which is, after all, indefinite enough to admit of its connoting other congeries of things or aspects beside consciousness. The fundamental importance in Buddhist philosophy of this Phenomenalism or Non-substantialism as a protest against the prevailing Animism, which, beginning with pro- jecting the self into objects, elaborated that projected self c 2 XXXVl into noumenal substance, has by this time been more or less admitted. The testimony of the canonical books leaves no doubt on the matter, from Gotama's first sermon to his first converts/ and his first Dialogue in the ' Long Collec- tion,' to the first book of the Katha Vatthu.^ There are other episodes in the books where the belief in a permanent spiritual essence is, together with a number of other specu- lations, waived aside as subjects calculated to waste time and energy. But in the portions referred to the doctrine of repudiation is more positive, and may be summed up in one of the refrains of the Majjhima Nikaya : S u n n a m idain attena va attaniyena va t i — Void is this of soul or of aught of the nature of soul !^ The force of the often repeated * This is not mine, this is not I, this is not my Self,' is not intended to make directly for goodness but for truth and insight. ' And since neither self nor aught belonging to self, brethren, can really and truly be accepted, is not the heretical position which holds : — This is the world and this is the self, and I shall continue to be in the future, permanent, immutable, eternal, of a nature that knows no change, yea, I shall abide to eternity ! — is not this simply and entirely a doctrine of fools ?'* And now that the later or scholastic doctrine, as shown in the writings of the greatest of the Buddhist scholastics, becomes accessible, it is seen how carefully and conscien- tiously this anti-substantialist position had been cherished and upheld. Half-way to the age of the Commentators, the Milinda-paiiho places the question of soul-theory at the head of the problems discussed. Then turning to Buddhaghosa we find the emphatic negation of the Suman- gala Vilasini (p. 194) : — * Of aught within called self which looks forward or looks around, &c., there is none !' matched • 1 S. ii. 66-8 ; also in Maha Vagga, i. 6, 38-47. 2 Cf. Ehys Davids' 'American Lectures,' pp. 39, 40. 3 Or *self ' (attena). M. i. 297; ii. 263 (Icffe suiinam); cf. S. iv. 54 ; and K. V. 67, 579. Cf. the ' Emptiness-con- cept,' below, p. 33. * M. i. 138.