Chapter IV

"Non-existence is only the entrance to the Great Vehicle." --_Daibon-Kyōi._

"And in which way is it, Siha, that one speaking truly could say of me: 'The Samana Gotama maintains annihilation;--he teaches the doctrine of annihilation'? I proclaim, Siha, the annihilation of lust, of ill-will, of delusion; I proclaim the annihilation of the manifold conditions (of heart) which are evil and not good."--_Mahavagga,_ vi. 31. 7.

_"Nin mité, hō tokê_" (see first the person, then preach the law) is a Japanese proverb signifying that Buddhism should be taught according to the capacity of the pupil. And the great systems of Buddhist doctrine are actually divided into progressive stages (five usually), to be studied in succession, or otherwise, according to the intellectual ability of the learner. Also there are many varieties of special doctrine held by the different sects and sub-sects,--so that, to make any satisfactory outline of Buddhist ontology, it is necessary to shape a synthesis of the more important and non-conflicting among these many tenets. I need scarcely say that popular Buddhism does not include concepts such as we have been examining. The people hold to the simpler creed of a veritable transmigration of simpler The people understand Karma only as the law that makes the punishment or reward of faults committed in previous lives. The people do not trouble themselves about _Nehan_ or Nirvana;[1] but they think much about heaven (_Gokuraku,_) which the members of many sects believe can be attained immediately after this life by the spirits of the good. The followers of the greatest and richest of the modern sects--the _Shinshū--_hold that, by the invocation of Amida, a righteous person can pass at once after death to the great Paradise of the West,--the Paradise of the Lotos-Flower-Birth. I am taking no account of popular beliefs in this little study, nor of doctrines peculiar to any one sect only.

But there are many differences in the higher teaching as to the attainment of Nirvana. Some authorities hold that the supreme happiness can be won, or at least seen, even on this earth; while others declare that the present world is too corrupt to allow of a perfect life, and that only by winning, through good deeds, the privilege of rebirth into a better world, can men hope for opportunity to practice that holiness which leads to the highest bliss. The latter opinion, which posits the superior conditions of being in other worlds, better expresses the general thought of contemporary Buddhism in Japan.

*

The conditions of human and of animal being belong to what are termed the Worlds of Desire (_Yoku-Kai_),--which are four in number. Below these are the states of torment or hells (_Jigoku,_) about which many curious things are written; but neither the Yoku-Kai nor the Jigoku need be considered in relation to the purpose of this little essay. We have only to do with the course of spiritual progress from the world of men up to Nirvana,--assuming, with modern Buddhism, that the pilgrimage through death and birth must continue, for the majority of mankind at least, even after the attainment of the highest conditions possible upon this globe. The way rises from terrestrial conditions to other and superior worlds,--passing first through the Six Heavens of Desire (_Yoku-Ten_);--thence through the Seventeen Heavens of Form (_Shiki-Kai_);--and lastly through the Four Heavens of Formlessness (_Mushiki-Kai_), beyond which lies Nirvana.

The requirements of physical life--the need of food, rest, and sexual relations--continue to be felt in the Heavens of Desire,--which would seem to be higher physical worlds rather than what we commonly understand by the expression "heavens." Indeed, the conditions in some of them are such as might be supposed to exist in planets more favored than our own,--in larger spheres warmed by a more genial sun. And some Buddhist texts actually place them in remote constellations,--declaring that the Path leads from star to star, from galaxy to galaxy, from universe to universe, up to the Limit of Existence.[2] In the first of the heavens of this zone, called the Heaven of the Four Kings (_Shi-Tennō-Ten_), life lasts five times longer than life on this earth according to number of years, and each year there is equal to fifty terrestrial years. But its inhabitants eat and drink, and marry and give in marriage, much after the fashion of mankind. In the succeeding heaven (_Sanjiu-san-Ten,_) the duration of life is doubled, while all other conditions are correspondingly improved; and the grosser forms of passion disappear. The union of the sexes persists, but in a manner curiously similar to that which a certain Father of the Christian Church wished might become possible,--a simple embrace producing a new being. In the third heaven (called _Emma-Ten_), where longevity is again doubled, the slightest touch may create life. In the fourth, or Heaven of Contentment (_Tochita-Ten,_) longevity is further increased. In the fifth, or Heaven of the Transmutation of Pleasure (_Keraku-Ten,_) strange new powers are gained. Subjective pleasures become changed at will into objective pleasures;--thoughts as well as wishes become creative forces;--and even the act of seeing may cause conception and birth. In the sixth heaven (_Také-jizai-Ten,_) the powers obtained in the fifth heaven are further developed; and the subjective pleasures trans-muted into objective can be presented to others, or shared with others,--like material gifts. But the look of an instant,--one glance of the eye,--may generate a new Karma.

The Yoku-Kai are all heavens of sensuous life,--heavens such as might answer to the dreams of artists and lovers and poets. But those who are able to traverse them without falling--(and a fall, be it observed, is not difficult)--pass into the Supersensual Zone, first entering the Heavens of Luminous Observation of Existence and of Calm Meditation upon Existence (_Ujin-ushi-shōryo,_ or _Kak-kwan_). These are in number three,--each higher than the preceding,--and are named The Heaven of Sanctity, The Heaven of Higher Sanctity, and The Heaven of Great Sanctity. After these come the heavens called the Heavens of Luminous Observation of Non-Existence and of Calm Meditation upon Non-Existence (_Mūjin-mushi-shōryo_). These also are three; and the names of them in their order signify, Lesser Light, Light Unfathomable, and Light Making Sound, or, Light-Sonorous. Here there is attained the highest degree of supersensuous joy possible to temporary conditions. Above are the states named _Riki-shōryo,_ or the Heavens of the Meditation of the Abandonment of Joy. The names of these states in their ascending order are, Lesser Purity, Purity Unfathomable, and Purity Supreme. In them neither joy nor pain, nor forceful feeling of any sort exist: there is a mild negative pleasure only,--the pleasure of heavenly Equanimity.[3] Higher than these heavens are the eight spheres of Calm Meditation upon the Abandonment of all Joy and Pleasure (_Riki-raku-shōryo._) They are called The Cloudless, Holiness-Manifest, Vast Results, Empty of Name, Void of Heat, Fair-Appearing, Vision-Perfecting, and The Limit of Form. Herein pleasure and pain, and name and form, pass utterly away. But there remain ideas and thoughts.

He who can pass through these supersensual realms enters at once into the _Mushiki-Kai,--_the spheres of Formlessness. These are four. In the first state of the Mushiki-Kai, all sense of individuality is lost: even the thought of name and form becomes extinct, and there survives only the idea of Infinite Space, or Emptiness. In the second state of the Mushiki-Kai, this idea of space vanishes; and its place is filled by the Idea of Infinite Reason. But this idea of reason is anthropomorphic: it is an illusion; and it fades out in the third state of the Mushiki-Kai, which is called the "State-of-Nothing-to-take-hold-of," or _Mū-sho-ū-shō-jō._ Here is only the Idea of Infinite Nothingness. But even this condition has been reached by the aid of the action of the personal mind. This action ceases: then the fourth state of the Mushiki-Kai is reached,--the _Hisō-hihisō-shō_, or the state of "neither-namelessness-nor-not-namelessness." Something of personal mentality continues to float vaguely here,--the very uttermost expiring vibration of Karma,--the last vanishing haze of being. It melts;--and the immeasurable revelation comes. The dreaming Buddha, freed from the last ghostly bond of Self, rises at once into the "infinite bliss" of Nirvana.[4]

*

But every being does not pass through all the states above enumerated: the power to rise swiftly or slowly depends upon the acquisition of merit as well as upon the character of the Karma to be overcome. Some beings pass to Nirvana immediately after the present life; some after a single new birth; some after two or three births; while many rise directly from this world into one of the Supersensuous Heavens. All such are called _Chō,--_the Leapers,--of whom the highest class reach Nirvana at once after their death as men or women. There are two great divisions of Chō,--the _Fu-Kwan,_ or Never-Returning-Ones,[5] and the _Kwan,_ Returning Ones, or _revenants._ Sometimes the return may be in the nature of a prolonged retrogression; and, according to a Buddhist legend of the origin of the world, the first men were beings who had fallen from the _Kwō-on-Ten,_ or Heaven of Sonorous Light. A remarkable fact about the whole theory of progression is that the progression is not conceived of (except in very rare cases) as an advance in straight lines, but as an advance by undulations,--a psychical rhythm of motion. This is exemplified by the curious Buddhist classification of the different short courses by which the Kwan or _revenants_ may hope to reach Nirvana. These short courses are divided into Even and Uneven;--the former includes an equal number of heavenly and of earthly rebirths; while in the latter class the heavenly and the earthly intermediate rebirths are not equal in number. There are four kinds of these intermediate stages. A Japanese friend has drawn for me the accompanying diagrams, which explain the subject clearly.

Fantastic this may be called; but it harmonizes with the truth that all progress is necessarily rhythmical.

NIRVANA REACHED FROM THE HEAVENS THROUGH 3 EVEN BIRTHS:--

THROUGH 3 UNEVEN BIRTHS:--

NIRVANA REACHED FROM THE STATE OF MAN THROUGH 3 EVEN BIRTHS:--

THROUGH 3 UNEVEN BIRTHS:--

NIRVANA REACHED FROM THE HEAVENS THROUGH 2 EVEN BIRTHS--

--THROUGH 2 UNEVEN BIRTHS:--

NIRVANA REACHED FROM THE--THROUGH 2 UNEVEN BIRTHS:--

STATE OF MAN THROUGH 2 EVEN BIRTHS:--

Though all beings do not pass through every stage of the great journey, all beings who attain to the highest enlightenment, by any course whatever, acquire certain faculties not belonging to particular conditions of birth, but only to particular conditions of psychical development. These are, the _Roku-Jindzū_ (Abhidjnâ), or Six Supernatural Powers:[6] (1) _Shin-Kyō-Tsu,_ the power of passing any-whither through any obstacles,--through solid walls, for example;--(2) _Tengen-Tsū,_ the power of infinite vision;--(3) _Tenni-Tsū,_ the power of infinite hearing;--(4) _Tashin-Tsū,_ the power of knowing the thoughts of all other beings;--(5) _Shuku-jū-Tsū,_ the power of remembering former births;--(6) _Rojin--Tsū,_ infinite wisdom with the power of entering at will into Nirvana. The Roku-jindzū first begin to develop in the state of _Shōmon_ (Sravaka), and expand in the higher conditions of _Engaku_ (Pratyeka-Buddha) and of Bosatsu (Bodhisattva or Mahâsattva). The powers of the Shōmon may be exerted over two thousand worlds; those of the Engaku or Bosatsu, over three thousand;--but the powers of Buddhahood extend over the total cosmos. In the first state of holiness, for example, comes the memory of a certain number of former births, together with the capacity to foresee a corresponding number of future births;--in the next higher state the number of births remembered increases;--and in the state of Bosatsu all former births are visible to memory. But the Buddha sees not only all of his own former births, but likewise all births that ever have been or can be,--and all the thoughts and acts, past, present, or future, of all past, present, or future beings.... Now these dreams of supernatural power merit attention because of the ethical teaching in regard to them,--the same which is woven through every Buddhist hypothesis, rational or unthinkable,--the teaching of self-abnegation. The Supernatural Powers must never be used for personal pleasure, but only for the highest beneficence,--the propagation of doctrine, the saving of men. Any exercise of them for lesser ends might result in their loss,--would certainly signify retrogression in the path.[7] To show them for the purpose of exciting admiration or wonder were to juggle wickedly with what is divine; and the Teacher himself is recorded to have once severely rebuked a needless display of them by a disciple.[8]

This giving up not only of one life, but of countless lives,--not only of one world, but of innumerable worlds,--not only of natural but also of supernatural pleasures,--not only of selfhood but of godhood,--is certainly not for the miserable privilege of ceasing to be, but for a privilege infinitely outweighing all that even paradise can give. Nirvana is no cessation, but an emancipation. It means only the passing of conditioned being into unconditioned being,--the fading of all mental and physical phantoms into the light of Formless Omnipotence and Omniscience. But the Buddhist hypothesis holds some suggestion of the persistence of that which has once been able to remember all births and states of limited being,--the persistence of the identity of the Buddhas even in Nirvana notwithstanding the teaching that all Buddhas are one. How reconcile this doctrine of monism with the assurance of various texts that the being who enters Nirvana can, when so desirous, reassume an earthly personality? There are some very remarkable texts on this subject in the Sutra of the Lotos of the Good Law: those for instance in which the Tathâgata Prabhûtarâtna is pictured as sitting _"perfectly extinct upon his throne"_ and speaking before a vast assembly to which he has been introduced as "the great Seer who, _although perfectly extinct for many kôtis of æons,_ now comes to hear the Law." These texts themselves offer us the riddle of multiplicity in unity; for the Tathâgata Prabhûtarâtna and the myriads of other extinct Buddhas who appear simultaneously, are said to have been all incarnations of but a single Buddha.

A reconciliation is offered by the hypothesis of what might be called a _pluristic monism,_--a sole reality composed of groups of consciousness, at once independent and yet interdependent,--or, to speak of pure mind in terms of matter, _an atomic spiritual ultimate._ This hypothesis, though not doctrinably enunciated in Buddhist texts, is distinctly implied both by text and commentary. The Absolute of Buddhism is one as ether is one. Ether is conceivable only as a composition of units.[9] The Absolute is conceivable only (according to any attempt at a synthesis of the Japanese doctrines) as composed of Buddhas. But here the student finds himself voyaging farther, perhaps, beyond the bar of the thinkable than Western philosophers have ever ventured. All are One;--each by union becomes equal with All! We are not only bidden to imagine the ultimate reality as composed of units of conscious being,--but to believe each unit permanently equal to every other _and infinite in potentiality_.[10] The central reality of every living creature is a pure Buddha: the visible form and thinking self, which encell it, being but Karma. With some degree of truth it might be said that Buddhism substitutes for our theory of a universe of physical atoms the hypothesis of a universe of psychical units. Not that it necessarily denies our theory of physical atoms, but that it assumes a position which might be thus expressed in words: "What you call atoms are really combinations, unstable aggregates, essentially impermanent, and therefore essentially unreal. Atoms are but Karma." And this position is suggestive. We know nothing whatever of the ultimate nature of substance and motion: but we have scientific evidence that the known has been evolved from the unknown; that the atoms of our elements _are_ combinations; and that what we call matter and force are but different manifestations of a single and infinite Unknown Reality.

There are wonderful Buddhist pictures which at first sight appear to have been made, like other Japanese pictures, with bold free sweeps of a skilled brush, but which, when closely examined, prove to have been executed in a much more marvelous manner. The figures, the features, the robes, the aureoles,--also the scenery, the colors, the effects of mist or cloud,--all, even to the tiniest detail of tone or line, have been produced by groupings of microscopic Chinese characters,--tinted according to position, and more or less thickly massed according to need of light or shade. In brief, these pictures are composed entirely out of texts of Sutras: they are mosaics of minute ideographs,--each ideograph a combination of strokes, and the symbol at once of a sound and of an idea.

Is our universe so composed?--an endless phantasmagory made only by combinations of combinations of combinations of combinations of units finding quality and form through unimaginable affinities;--now thickly massed in solid glooms; now palpitating in tremulosities of light and color; always and everywhere grouped by some stupendous art into one vast mosaic of polarities;--yet each unit in itself a complexity inconceivable, and each in itself also a symbol only, a character, a single ideograph of the undecipherable text of the Infinite Riddle?... Ask the chemists and the mathematicians.

[Footnote 1: Scarcely a day passes that I do not hear such words uttered as ingwa, gokuraku, gōshō,--or other words referring to Karma, heaven, future life, past life, etc. But I have never heard a man or woman of the people use the word "Nehan;" and whenever I have ventured to question such about Nirvana, I found that its philosophical meaning was unknown. On the other hand, the Japanese scholar speaks of Nehan as the reality,--of heaven, either as a temporary condition or as a parable.]

[Footnote 2: This astronomical localization of higher conditions of being, or of other "Buddha-fields," may provoke a smile; but it suggests undeniable possibilities. There is no absurdity in supposing that potentialities of life and growth and development really pass, with nebular diffusion and concentration, from expired systems to new systems. Indeed, not to suppose this, in our present state of knowledge, is scarcely possible for the rational mind.]

[Footnote 3: One is reminded by this conception of Mr. Spencer's beautiful definition of Equanimity:--"Equanimity may be compared to white light, which, though composed of numerous colors, is colorless; while pleasurable and painful moods of mind may be compared to the modifications of light that result from increasing the proportions of some rays, and decreasing the proportions of others."--_Principles of Psychology._]

[Footnote 4: The expression "infinite bliss" as synonymous with Nirvana is taken from the _Questions of King Milinda._]

[Footnote 5: In the Sutra of the Great Decease we find the instance of a woman reaching this condition:--"The Sister Nanda, O Ananda, by the destruction of the five bonds that bind people to this world, has become an inhabitant of the highest heaven,--there to pass entirely away,--thence never to return."]

[Footnote 6: Different Buddhist systems give different enumerations of these mysterious powers whereof the Chinese names literally signify:--(1) Calm--Meditation-outward-pouring-no-obstacle-wisdom (2) Heaven-Eye-no-obstacle-wisdom; (3) Heaven Ear-no-obstacle-wisdom;--(4) Other-minds-no-obstacle-wisdom;--(5) Fornier-States-no-obstacle-wisdom;--(6) Leak-Extinction-no-obstacle-wisdom.]

[Footnote 7: Beings who have reached the state of Engaku or of Sosatsu are not supposed capable of retrogression, or of any serious error; but it is otherwise in lower spiritual states.]

[Footnote 8: See a curious legend in the Vinaya texts,--_Kullavagga,_ V. 8, 2.]

[Footnote 9: This position, it will be observed, is very dissimilar from that of Hartmann, who holds that "all plurality of individuation belongs to the sphere of phenomenality." (vol. ii. page 233 of English translation.) One is rather reminded of the thought of Galton that human beings "may contribute more or less unconsciously to the manifestation of a far higher life than our own,--somewhat as the individual cells of one of the more complex animals contribute to the manifestation of its higher order of personality." (_Hereditary Genius,_ p. 361.) Another thought of Galton's, expressed on the same page of the work just quoted from, is still more strongly suggestive of the Buddhist concept:--"We must not permit ourselves to consider each human or other personality as something supernaturally added to the stock of nature, but rather as a segregation of what already existed, under a new shape, and as a regular consequence of previous conditions.... Neither must we be misled by the word 'individuality.' ... We may look upon each individual as something not wholly detached from its parent-source,--as a wave that has been lifted and shaped by normal conditions in an unknown and illimitable ocean."

The reader should remember that the Buddhist hypothesis does not imply either individuality or personality in Nirvana, but simple entity,--not a spiritual _body,_ in our meaning of the term, but only a divine consciousness. "Heart," in the sense of divine mind, is a term used in some Japanese texts to describe such entity. In the _Dai-Nichi Kyō_ Sō (Commentary on the Dai-Nichi Sutra), for example, is the statement "When all seeds of Karma-life are entirely burnt out and annihilated, then the _vacuum-pure_ Bodhi-heart is reached." (I may observe that Buddhist metaphysicians use the term "vacuum-bodies" to describe one of the high conditions of entity.) The following, from the fifty-first volume of the work called _Daizō-hō-sū_ will also be found interesting "By experience the Tathâgata possesses all forms,--forms for multitude numberless as the dust-grains of the universe.... The Tathâgata gets himself born in such places as he desires, or in accord with the desire of others, and there saves [lit., 'carries over'--that is, over the Sea of Birth and Death] all sentient beings. Wheresoever his will finds an abiding-point, there is he embodied: this is called Will-Birth Body.... The Buddha makes Law his body, and remains pure as empty space: this is called Law-Body."]

[Footnote 10: Half of this Buddhist thought is really embodied in Tennyson's line,--"Boundless inward, in the atom; boundless outward, in the Whole."]