User:Akpvnsi/Concept of bondage in Buddhism

In the whole history of thought no one has pointed the misery of human existence in blacker colours and with more feeling than Buddha. The melancholy overshadowing the ideals of an increased exaltation of poverty, glorification of self-sacrifice, and an obsession with renunciation, cast a hypnotic spell over Buddha’s mind. To make people long for escape from this world, its blackness is a little overdrawn. We may try all we can to spread comfort and happiness and suppress all social injustice, yet man will not have satisfaction. Buddha concludes, existence is pain, the struggle to maintain individuality is painful, and the fluctuations of fortune are frightful. “The pilgrimage (saṁāra) of beings,” Buddha says; “has its beginning in eternity. No opeing can be discovered, from which proceeding, creatures, mazed in ignorance, fettered by a thirst for being, stray and wander what think ye, disciples, whether is more, the water which is in the four great oceans, or the tears which have flown from you and have been shed by you, which you strayed and wandered on this long pilgrimage and sorrowed and wept, because that was your portion which ye abhorred and that which ye loved was not your porition? A mother’s death, a brother’s death, the loss of relations, the loss of property, all this have ye experienced through long ages, and while ye experienced this through long ages, more tears have flowed from you and have been shed by you, which ye strayed and wandered on this pilgrimage and sorrowed and wept, because that was your portion, than all the water which is in the four great oceans.” The life of man is inevitably a mass of suffering. The entire chain of dependent origination throws into relief the Buddhist conviction that the whole world, including the life of man, is subject to the reign of law or dharma. Whatever is, is the process of a being. The world is the world’s process, the formula of causality is the expression of this process, at least of that part of it which concerns man. “Life according to Buddhism is neither a metaphysical thing nor a physical thing, but a metaphysical grasping itself, a mental self-contained process. It is not a self-identity, but an ignorance about itself.”

The Buddhist chain of pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination) begins with avidya (ignorance) which is considered as the root of the world process. From avidyā (ignorance) originates, saṁskāra (predispositions), from saṁskārs originates vijñāna (seed-consciousness), from vijñāna originates nāma-rūpa (mind and body), and similarly ṣadāyatana (the six organs), bhava (coming to be), jāti (birth) and jarāmaraṇa (old age and death) originate. This process of origination is beginningless and avidyā (ignorance) and tṛṣṇā (craving) are the parents of this process. Tṛṣṇā (craving) is the mother and avidyā (ignorance) is the father. Maitreyanath gives a very impressive idea of the functions of the twelve factors of avidyā, saṁskāra etc, when he says : “The world is afficted due to the observation (of the intention of truth by avidyā), implantation (of the vāsanā or will to live due to the saṁsakāras), transference (of the vāsanāseed to the place of birth by vijñāna), the consequent formation (of the nāma-rūpa or body or mind), development (of the ṣaḍāyatana), the threefold feeling (due to the mutual contact (sparśa of the senses, the object and the consciousness), enjoyment or suffering (due to vedanā), acquisition (of rebirth due to tṛṣṇā), tying down (of the vijñāna to desires by the upādānas), turning towards (fruition of the past action due to bhava), and sorrow (caused by jāti and jarāmaraṇa). Avidyā covers the capacity of intenting the truth. It is of the nature of adarśana (non-intuition). Avidyā is the cause of perversion (of truth). One, under the sway of avidyā, mistakes the impermanent for the permanent because of one’s delusion about truth. Saṁskāras (predispositions) can lead to rebirth only if there is avidyā. Otherwise they are unproductive. Saṁskāras implant the seed of rebirth in the vijñāna which then takes the seed to the place of rebirth. The mind and body (nāma-rūpa) form themselves. And so the process of origination goes on. The avidyā is also called delusion (moha). Nagarjuna says : “It is due to thinking the things which have no independent nature as eternal, possessed of self and pleasant (nityā’tmā-sukha-saṅjñā) that this ocean of existence (bhāva) appears to one who is enveloped by the darkness of attachment and delusion ΄(moha).”

In another place he says ; “The aggregates do not arise from desire, nor from time, nor from nature (Prakṛiti), nor from themselves (svabhāvat) nor from Lord (Īśvara), nor yet are they without cause: know that they arise from ignorance (avidyā) and desire (tṛṣṇā).” Avidyā ceases when the knowledge of the reality (dhamma) dawns. “Even as a man born blind and unfamiliar (with the right path), sometimes treads upon the right path and sometimes upon the wrong, so does the fool, ignorant of the world (saṁsāra), sometimes commit punna (good act) and some times apunna (bad act) in the world. But when he knows the reality (dhamma) and attains the truth, his ingonrance ceases, and he roams unperturbed.” With the cessation of avidyā, tṛṣṇā (craving) naturally ceases. Desire for happiness disappears when the truth of universal suffering is realized. Avidyā consists in mistaking suffering for happiness, and has changing aggregate of vedanā (feeling), vijñāna (consciousness), sanjñā (coefficients of consciousness) and saṁskāras (predispositions) for an abiding ego, perpetual flow for unchanging staticity. But if this perverted outlook ceases. Tṛṣṇā (craving) naturally disappears. The Buddhists distinguish between the samvṛtti satya (empirical truth) and the parmārtha satya (transcendent truth). The function of saṁvṛtti is to cover the knowledge of the truth. Saṁvṛttti covers the real nature of truth and reveals it only as covered by itself, and is also called avidyā (ignorance), moha (delusion), and viparyay (perversion). The Buddhists further distinguish three characteristics (lakṣaṇa) or natures (svabhāva of a thing viz. 1.Parikaplita (imagined), 2.Partantra (dependent) and 3.Pariniṣpanna (real or true). Vasubandhu gives an apt illustration of these three. Suppose one creates an elephant by dint of ones’s spell.

Now, the elephant appears, but that is only a phantom of the elephant and in no way the elephant itself. Here the elephant is parikalpita (imaginary), the form of the elephant is partantra (dependent), and the absence of the elephant is parinispanna (real). An object, according to the Mādhyamikas and the yogāchāras, is śūnya, i.e., devoid of any intrinsic reality, yet we know it as an imagined one (parikalpita). Vasubandhu says: “Whatever thing is imagined by whatever imagination, all that is only parikalpita. That is not the real nature (svabhāva) of the real.” An imaginary (parikalpita) object, although in essence, it is non-existents, yet exists for practical purpose, and as such is said to have a characteristic (svabhāva) by way of concession to the practice of the common people who are ignorant of the truth. A dependent (paratantra) characteristic is so-called because it originates depending upon its cause and conditions. The pariniṣpanna (real) characteristic consists in the true nature of a thing, completely free from all imagined characteristics, and is comprehended by avikalpa-jñāna (non-constructive intuition).

Truth does not tolerate any kind of duality. The vijñānavādins denounce the duality of perceiver and perceived as false. The Laṅkāvatāra says; “All this is only consciousness (chitta). The consciousness functions in two ways as perceived and perceiver. There is neither the subject nor what belongs to the subject.” In another place it says : “Thers is consciousness alone, there is no external object (dṛśya). The consciousness itself is seen two-fold as perceived and perceiver, and is bereft of eternity and annihilation.” The creation of the external world is due to the influence of vāsanā (predisposition which is beginningless). The consciousness becomes two-fold, or rather appears as two-fold due to its vāsanā. The Laṅkāvatāra says : “There is no external object as the fools imagine. The consciousness functions as the appearance of objects, being influenced by vāsanā.” It is the consciousness that functions variously, it is again the consciousness that is emancipated. The consciousness, and none else, is born, and again it is the consciousness that ceases to be. For those who can see through reason, both the perception and the perceived cease. The consciousness moves round the object, as an iron rotates round a magnet, being ever rooted in and nourished by the vāsanās. The consciousness ideates, images and creates out of itself, and the creations follow definite laws. They are pratīya-samutpanna (casually determined). Parikalpanā (imagtination) lies at the root of creation. It is paratantrā (causally determined) and is the object of empirical perception. There is one common defect, a basic fault, that compels the consciousness to project this universe and keeps it tied to it. The process of projection begins with duality. What is that common defect, that basic fault? The vijñānavādin says that it is abhūtaparikalpa, the conjuring up of all imaginery unreal. In answer to Mahāmati’s question about the nature of the abhūtaparikalpa, the Lord said; “Due to the persistent predilection for the imaginery unreal objects, various and multiform, O Mahāmati! the imagination, being active, functions. It functions due to a strong predilection and bias for the perception of external multi from objects as also due to a strong inclination for the subject as well as what belongs to the subject, in the case of those who are strongly rooted in the belief in the reality of the perceived and the perceiver, O Māhāmati.” Maitreyanātha says : “The prius of constructive ideation or unreal imagination (abhūtaparikalpa) exists (in reality). Duality does not exist there (in the prius). The basis of the negation of duality (śūnyatā), however, exists (in reality). The unreal imagination (somehow) exists even in that (negation of duality).” Vasubandhu says that all afflictions (sankleśa) originate from the unreal imagination (abhūtaparikalpa). Sthirmati explains this abhūtaparikalpa as “the locus of or the instrument of the imagination of unreal duality.” He further says: “Abūtaparikalpa consists in pure consciousness and its concomitant associates (Chitta-chaitasikas) such as feeling and willing that are liable to metempsychosis; it exists from beginningless time and ends in final emancipation (nirvāna). Specially, it consists in the imagtination of the perceived and the perceiver. It is called śūnya (void) because it does not contain the duality. It is not śūnya (absolute negation) in-itself. The prius of unreal imagination is void (śūnya) of the perceived and the perceiver (grāhya-grāhaka) even as a rope is void of snakeness. But then the objection naturally arises; why should not this illusory awarencess (bhrānti-vijñāna) itself be condemned to be as unreal as the perceived and the perveiver ? Maitreyanath says that the abhūtaparikalpa quaunreal imagination cannot be absolutely non-existent because emancipation is held to be due to the destruction of it. If there were no illusion (Bhrānti) at all, there would be no affliction (saṅkleśa) and hence no bondage (bandha). Consequenctly there would be no emancipatin because emancipation presupposes bondage. And in that case the reality should be condemned as an absolute nothing. The postulation of illusion (Bhrānti), therefore, is necessary for the establishment of emancipation.

The world is only an appearance. There is, in reality, neither saṅkleśa (afflictions) nor vyavadāna (freedom from affictions), neither bandha (bondage) nor mokṣa (emancipation). Hence there is not the awareness of duality. It is as much an appearance as its product viz, the phenomenal universe. The Laṅkāvatāra says : “There is neither saṅkleśa (impurity) onr śuddhi (purification) because there is non-existence of all things (dharmas).” ‘There is neither emancipation nor bondage.” In connection with bondage or avidyā, Vijñānavādins admit twofold āvaraṇas (veils) viz. jñeyāvaraṇa and kleśāvaraṇa. The word jñeya means ‘knowledge’ i.e., the dharmas ‘elements of existence’ which are not substantial and thus have no reality. The āvaraṇa ‘cover’ in the form of jñeya, is called jñeyāvaraṇa. Sometimes the term jñeyāvaraṇa is also explained as ‘āvaraṇa regarding the knowable’. In this case the knowable (jñeya) is the reality or the things in their true nature. Similarly, kleśāvaraṇa means the āvaraṇa in the form of kleśas. On the question of the purification of these āvaraṇas, the Laṅkāvatāra says; “The jñeyāvaraṇa, O Mahāmati! is purified due to a special kind of intuition of dharma-nairātmya of unsubstantiality of things as they appear. The Kleśāvaraṇa, on the other hand, is destroyed due to the practice of intuition of pudgala-nairātmya-the unreality of the individual ego.” These āvaraṇas are also conceived to be as unreal and illusory as the abhūtaparikalpa (unreal imagination), because the consciousness is pure and luminous (prabhāsvara) by nature.

Let us now turn our attention to study the conception of avidyā or bondage in the Tathatā philosophy of Aśvaghoṣa. Aśvaghoṣa held that in the soul two aspects may be distimguished-one described as ‘thatness’ (bhūtatathatā) and the other as the cycle of birth and death’ (saṁsāra). The soul as bhūtatathatā means the oneness of the totality of all things (dharmadhātu). Its essential nature is uncreated and eternal. The soul as birth and death (sṁsāra) comes forth from the tathāgata’ womb (tathāgatagarbha), the ultimate reality. But the immortal and mortal coincide with each other. Though they are not identical they are not duality either. Thus when the absolute soul assumes relative aspect by its self-affirmation it is called the all-conserving mind (ālaya-vijñāna). It embraces two principles ; 1.enlightenment, 2.non-enlightenment. When the mind of all creatures, which in its own nature is pure and clean, is stirred by the wind of ignorance (avidyā), the waves of mentality (vijñāna) make their appearance. These three (i.e. the mind, ignorance and mentality) however, have no existence and they are neither unity nor plurality. It is by the touch of ignorance (avidyā) that the truth assumes all the phenomenal forms of existence. In describing the relation of the interaction of avidyā (ignorance), karmavijñāna (activity consciouseness-the subjective mind), viṣaya (external world represented by the sences), and the tathāta (suchness). Aśvaghoṣa says that there is an inter-perfuming of these elements. Thus Aśvaghoṣa says : “By perfuming we mean that while our worldly clothes (viz. those which we wear) have no odour of their own, neither offensive nor agreeable, they can yet acquire one or the other odour according to the nature of the substance with which they are perfumed. Suchness (tathata) is likewise a pure dharma free from all defilements caused by the perfuming power of ignorance. On the other hand, ignorance has nothing to do with purity. Nevertheless we speak of its being able to do the work of purity because it in its turn is perfumed by suchness. Determined by suchness, ignorance becomes the raison de etre of all forms of defilement. And this ignorance perfumes suchness and produces smṛti. This smṛti in its turn perfumes ignorance. On account of this (reciprocal) perfuming, the truth is misunderstood. On account of its being misunderstood, an external world of subjectivity appears. Further, on account of the perfuming power of memory, various modes of individuation are produced. And by clinging to them various deeds are done, and we suffer miseries mentally as well as bodily.”

Suchness determines ignorance and this determined ignorance causes all forms of defilement. Then follow all sorts of mental and physical miseries, in one word, saṁsāra. But this saṁsāra has to be got rid of. Aśvaghoṣa describles the process leading to Nirvāṇa as follows : “Suchness perfumes ignorance, and in consequence of this perfuming the individual in subjectiveity is caused to loathe the missing of birth and death and to seek after the blessing of nirvāṇa. This longing and loathing on the part of the subjective mind in turn perfumes suchness. On account of this perfuming influence we are enabled to believe that we are in possession with in ourselves of suchness whose essential nature is pure and immaculate; and we also recognize that all phenomena in the world are nothing but illusory manifestations of the mind (ālaya-vijñāna) and have no reality of their own. Since we thus rightly understand the truth, we can practise the means of liberation, can perform those actions which are in accordance with the dharma. We should neither particularize, nor cling to objects of desire. By virtue of this discipline and habituation during the lapse of innumerable (asaṅkhyeya) kalpas we get ignorance annihilated. As ignorance is thus annihilated, the mind (ālayavijñāna) is no longer disturbed. As the mind is no longer disturbed, the particularization of the surrounding world is annihilated. When in this wise, the principle or the condition of defilement, their products, and the mental disturbances are all annihilated, it is said that we attain nirvāṇa and that various spontaneous displays of activity are accomplished.”

This is, in nutshell, Aśvaghoṣa’s conception of the nature, function and annihilation of avidyā. On the important difference of general outlook of the idealism of Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and the doctrines of Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna, Dr. Dasgupra says ; ‘The Laṅkāvatāra admitted a reality only as a makebelief to attract the Tairthikas (heretics) who had a prejudice in favour of an unchangeable self (Ātman). But Aśvaghoṣa plainly admitted an unspeakable reality as the ultimate truth. Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamika’s doctrine which eclipsed the profound philosophy of Aśvaghoṣa seem to be more faithful to the traditional Buddhist creed and to the Vijñānavāda creed of Buddhism as explained in the Laṅkāvatāra.”

The above illustrations, taken from different famous writers and saints, are more than enough to justify the concenpt of avidyā and its products which produce bondage. There are other views regarding avidyā or bondage, scattered in the vast literature of Buddhism which ought to be discussed hence forth, viz; “Just in a peaked house (kutagara) O Bretheren! Whatever rafters there are, all converge to the roof-peak, resort euqlly to the roof-peak, all go to junction there, even so, whatever wrong states there are, all have their root in ignorance, all may be feferred to ignorance, all are fixed together in ignorance, all go to junction there.”  “Whatever for times ther are here in this world, or in the next, they all have theire root in ignorance (avījjamūlaka), and are given rise to by longing and desire.”

“By ignorance the being fails to view the true impermanent and substanceless nature of existence. He relishes the things of the world, taking them to be real and lasting and creates a craving for them. Due to his cravings, he graps to attain one and avoid the other. This leads to the continuity of his life-process, a chain of struggle for living. His cravings and grasping do not end with the destruction of his physical frame, but they keep the struggle on in another birth,” “It is only through putting a stop to these two roots (avījja and Tanhā) that the round of birth and death can be ended.” In the Buddhist concept of rebirth, each rebirth following upon the other, it is this grasping attitude maintained during the previous life which calls the new individual into being. Tanhā also has this cosmic dimension. The four Noble Truths also convey the same indispensable key to suffering: ‘the basis of craving, craving, the cessation of craving, and the means for the cessation of craving. Driven behavior-constrained, unconscious, without alternative course of action-is the central concept in the Buddhist analysis of suffering. The five aggregates, or skhandhas, which make up human personality, depend upon this grasping or craving (tanhā) for their special character and form. The chief root, and perhaps the greatest trend of suffering, is this forced dominance over every thought, desire and action, this compulsive control that is exercised from beyond the scope of consicious awareness and behind the lack of the performer. “Craving is the seamstress; for craving sews a man just to this ever-becoming birth.”

It is clear that in this dictum the Buddha wishes to say that the productions are the outcome of the ignorance of something, and would not come about, if this something were known. What now may this something be, with respect to which this unknowingness, this ignorance exists ? The Buddha tells us in the following words: “To be ignorant as regards suffering: to be ignorant as regards the ceasing of suffering, to be ignorant as regards the path leading to the ceasing of suffering-this; friends, is what is called ignorance.”

All existence is conditioned existence; conditioned existence is impermanent: and impermanent existence is discontented existence. Only the blind and the foolish are deceived by the apparent stability of reality. The wise man sees through the disguise, to the real character of life; he becomes dissatisfied with it, and rejects the whole ‘business of life’. According to the Tripitakas, the real insight of the Buddha does not consist so much in his understanding the transient nature of Reality as in his realisation that this process of bhava is conditioned by causes. The Buddha’s englishtenment consists of an appreciation of the principle of Dependent Origination (Pattichcha-sammuppāda). The Venerable Assaji summarises the substance of the Buddha’s doctrine in these words, “The Buddha hath the causes told, Of all things springing from a cause, And also how things cease to be, “T’ is this the mighty monk proclaims.”

The principle of Pattichcha-samuppāda declares that the Buddhist belief is the reign of law in the universe. Life, maintains the Buddhist, is a rational one. When man has dispelled Avidyā, then he realises that only tanha (desire, grasping), keeps him enchanted to bhava-existence, and that tahnā has to be eradicated, before the process can be arrested “The existence of everything depends on a cause, hence if the cause of evil or suffering can be detected and removed, evil itself will be removed. The cause is thirst (tanhā) and craving for pleasure. In Hinduism, man is saved from final despair about historical life, because of the continual affirmation of the reality of the Brahman which transcends the weariness of temporal existence. But for the Buddhist there is no such relief. Consequently there is a deeper and more emphatic negation of the whole of history. Not only is Reality annichchā (impermanent), but history is duḥkha (sorrowful). The Four Nobel Truths stress the sorrow of life. We see ourselves in some inexplicable manner involved in it, so that it is to us in all its details an inscrutable riddle, saving only the suffering it makes for us, which is the only thing we cannot doubt: “Mysterious is everything, Only one thing is not, and that our pain.”

This entire inversion of the manner of the saint of looking at the world, as compared with that of the average man, is hinted at by the Master himself, when he says : “What in the world is regarded as true, ye monks, that by the saints is regarded as false, as it really is, rightly, in accordance with perfect wisdom. What in the world is regarded as false, ye monks, that by the saints is regarded as true, as it really is, rightly, in accordance with perfect wisdom.” Buddha declares rūpa, vedanā, etc, to be illusory, men bubbles. In the Majjhima Nikāya it is stated : “Depending on the oil and the wick does the light of the lamp burn, nor anything in-itself; phenomena are, likewise, nothing in-themselves. All things are unreal; they are deceptions; Nibbāna is the only truth.” Basing himseif on this text Nāgārjuna says : “In declaring that it is deceptive and illusing, the Lord means Sūnyatā-dependence on things.” Existence depends on ‘Upādāna’. This word means literally ‘grasping or clinging to’ are should be so translated here, but it also means ‘fuel’ so that its use is coloured by this meaning, since Buddhist metaphor is found of describing life as a flame. Existence cannot continue without the clinging to life, just as fire cannot continue without fuel. The clinging in its turn depends on Tanha, the thirst or craving for existence. The distinction between tanhā and Upādāna is not always observed, and it is often strictly speaking, upādāna is the grasping at life or pleasure : tanhā is the incessant, unsatisfied craving which causes it.

The mind of man is the only cause for bondage or release, when it is attracted by objects of pleasure it is bound; when it is not attracted by objects it is released. “Long is the night to him who is awake, long is the path of life to him who is weary; long is the chain of existence to the foolish who do not know the true law.” “The fool is tormented by thinking ‘these sons belong to me’, ‘this wealth belongs to me’, He himself does not belong to himself. How then can sons be his? How can wealth be his?” The root of all evil, accoriding to the Buddha, is belief in the permanence of the individual. “Satkāyadṛṣṭi-prabhavaḥ sarve kleśaḥ,” ‘when we take anything as permanent, we become attached to it’. There is not fire like passion, nor ill like hatred, there is no sorrow like this physical existence (individuality), there is no happiness higher than tranquility. There is no fire like passion, no capturer like hatred, there is no net (snare) like delusion, no torrent like hatred, there is no net (snare) like delution, no torrent like craving.

The term ‘Saṁsāra’ is a case in point; for this ‘Wandering’ is not for Gautama the wandering of anything. Buddhism nowhere teaches the transmigration of souls, but only the transmigration of character, of personality without a person. Wherever there is individuality, there must be limitation; wherever there is limitation, there must be ignorance; wherever there is ignorance there must be error; wherever there is error there must sorrow come. The real, ultimate criterion of suffering is transitoriness. “Whatever is transitory, is painful.”

Indeed this well-known dictum forms the basis of granite upon which the whole doctrine of Buddha about suffering is built : “That there are three kinds of sensation, I have taught : Pleasure, pain, and that which is neither pleasure nor pain…And again I have taught : whatever is felt, belongs to suffering. Thus alone in regard to the impermanence of things I have said that whatever is felt belongs to suffering, having regard to the fact that things are subject to annihilation, to destruction : that pleasure is in them ceases, that they are subject ot cessation, to changeableness.” Not only does he perceive that the wish to avoid Duhkha is in-itself a desire, and as such a hindrance but still less does he see that the fear of pleasure-even as it may come unsought is a still more subtle bondage. Thus the highest state must be without desire, because desire implies a lack, and in this sense the superman, the Arahat, is by definition passionless, Now this is a state which we may best conceive in the manner of Chuang Tzu : “By a man without passion I mean one who does not permit good and evil to disturb his internal economy, but rather falls in with whatever happens, as a matter of course, and does not add to the sum of his mortality.” But the Buddhist is very much disturbed by good and evil-he fears pleasure, and he would avoid pain, and the whole of the Dhamma is designed to achieve the latter end. It is true that saving knowledge must at last release the individual from the possibility of pain. “But Buddhism was the first to transform that which was a mere consequence into a motive, and by conceiving emancipation as an escape from the sufferings of existence to make selfishness the mainspring of existence.” In the first of the four most excellent truths we saw what this suffering is the great misery of the world’s transitoriness, to which everything is subject, and the whole world is only one great world of suffering. In answering the second question of the causes of suffering, Buddhism has recourse to psychological analysis and metaphysical speculations. Now this is the Noble Truth of the origin of suffering. Verily it is the craving for thirst that causes the renewal fo becomings, that is accompanied by sensual delights, and seeks satisfaction, now here, now there-that is to say, the craving for the gratification of the senses, or the craving for prosperity.” With this result, the root of suffering is fully laid bare; we have penetrated to the unwearied builder of our corporal organism itself, through which, as through the machine of suffering, all suffering bocomes primarily possible for us. Now we are ready to understand the second of the four holy truths in all its depth: “This, ye monks, is the most excellent truth of the origination of suffering. It is thirst generating rebirth, thirst accompanied by pleasure and lust, now here and there taking delight, thirst for sensual pleasure, thirst for Becoming (for existence), thirst for annihilation.”

Deep-rooted gloom lies in our fluctuating consciousness but not in the things outside. Buddha holds that only consciousness is momentary and not things, for he says : “It is evident that the body lasts one year…. A hundred years and even more. But that which is called mind, intellect, consciousness, keeps up an incessant round by day and by night, of perishimg as one thing and springing up as another.” Buddha does not say so definitely as Bergson does that the difference between the two-consciousness and matter, is only a difference of tension, or rhythm, or rate, of moving; but on the other hand, there is a permanent element underlying all changes. Mr. Sogen says : “The substratum of everything is eternal and permanent. What changes every moment is merely the phase of a thing. so that it is erroneous to affirm that according to Buddhism the thing of the first moment ceases to exist when the second moment arrives.”

The above illustrations are enough to justify the theory of avidyā or nescience advocated by the Buddhists. Bondage only connotes the presence of nescience (avidyā) in the subjective centre with all its logical outcomes, birth, decay and death. These different stages of phenomenal life are all governed by the law of causality and so if there is avidyā in the bottom, decay and death will follow as inevitable consequences at the top. Bondage is, therefore nothing but the presence of avidyā in the chain of consciousness from an undatable, beginningless time and contrariwise mokṣa or nirvāṇa is the absolute cessation of avidyā with all its paraphernalia. Śantarakṣita in reply to the criticism of Kumārila declares that mokṣa (liberation) is nothing but the purified existence of absolute consciousness, freed from all taints of ignorance. According to Śāntaraksita and Kamalaśīla bondage and liberation, saṁsāra and nirvāṇa, are positive entities, being the distinctive landmarks in the career of consciousness, the former being represented by consciousness in the grip of ignorance and defiling passions and the latter being free consciousness, purged and purified from the contamination of these masterful passions.

It is important to remember that it is only the empirical-self or the ego which is declared to be unreal by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu. Pure consciousness or the Universal-self is not only admitted but is declared to be the only Reality. By its very nature it is self-luminous; all impurities are adventitious. The ego is neither real nor unreal nor anything other than real or unreal. It is only an illusion (bhrama). Liberation, therefore, is only the destruction of illusion or ignorance. Truly speaking, there is no difference between Bondage and Liberation. Still, from the phenomenal point of view, we say that by good deeds and true knowledge the cycle of birth and death is stopped and liberation is achieved.

The Means to Nirvāṇa or the Ethical Life

The light which the seeker after deliverance is advised to seek amidst the encircling gloom of sorrow and suffering is embodied in the eight-fold path. The eight factors of ideals constituting the path are right views (samyak dṛṣṭi), right aspirations (samyak saṁkalpa), right speech (samyak vāchā), right conduct (samyak karma), right livelihood (samyak ājīva), right effort (samyak vyāyāma), right mindfulness (samyak smṛti) and right contemplation (samyak Samādhi). In the tremendous literature of Pāli canon there is no scope for Divine Greace. The aspirant has to be ātmaśaraṇa, atmadīpa, self-reliant and self-guided. Dhammapada openly declares “Not even a god can change into defeat the victory of a man who has vanquished himself. Buddhism has conviction in the method of yoga to secure the highest insight. In Buddhism the devotee realises through Samādhi and with prajñā the utter emptiness or anattā of the world, including himself. The supreme spiritual realisation of Buddha is expressed in the Dhammpada as follows : “I have been through a course of many births looking for the maker of this dwelling and finding him not; painful is birth, again and again. Now are you sure O ! builder of the house, you will not build the house again. All your rafters are broken. Your ridge-pole is destroyed; your mind, set on the attainment of Nirvāṇa, has attained the extinction of desires. What is perceived in the light of prajñā is the real nature of desire, tanhā, the co-worker with avidyā, which together, fashions this tabernacle of flesh. To perceive them truly is to destroy them forever. “Delusion fashioned it, safe pass I then deliverance to obtain.” The knowledge and the insight sprang up within the Buddha : “My deliverance is unshakable; this is my last existence; no more shall I be born again.”

Buddhism has in its bottom a revolt against caste, colour and creed. It is revivalist in its approach towards life in society. Each and every aspirant is allowed to go ahead of his mundane life. “One deep divergence must be named. The Buddhist scheme proclaims the ultimate salvation of all beings. Christianity in its most widespread historic forms still condemns an uncounted number to endless torment and uncreasing sin.” Buddha himself suggests; “O monks ! live and preach the holy life for the good of all people, for the happiness of compassion for all; (for promoting) the goal of all, atthyā for the good, weal of gods and men,” Looking at the distractions and obstructions of domestic life, the path of salvation was open to monks only. For, “full of hindrances is household life, a path defiled by passion; free as the air is the life of him who has renounced all worldly things. How difficult is it for the man who dwells at home to live the higher life in all its fullness, in all its purity, in all its bright perfection !” Later on, an exception was made in favour of aspirants. “I tell theee O ! Mahānāma, that between a lay disciple who has attained the stage of deliverance and a monk freed from all impurity there exists no difference as regards the state of their deliverance.” All aspirants to Nirvāṇa are expected to be intelligent enough to grasp and act upon the teachings of the Buddha. “the doctrine may be masterd by any intelligent man for himself; such a one may be enlightened and is expected to act accordingly.”

The aim of man is to become what he is in its entire purity. One has to get on ceaselessly towards enlightenment. The Buddha warns us against the danger of assuming that because we are ‘divine in essence’, we are not divided in actuality. “To become actually divine is our goal. In this very life he is allayed, becomes cool, he abides in the experience of bliss with a self that has become Brahma (Brahmabhuta).” While Upanisads suggest knowledge for liberation, the Buddha says that he is liberated who has no cravings. Thus Buddha’s emphasis is more on the pathway (mārga) than the goal. In the Aggi-Vachchagotta Sutta, it is said that the flame ceases to appear when the fuel is consumed. Similarly when the cravings and desires which sustain the fire of life disappear, its fuel is consumed. The extinction of the visible fire is not utter annihilation. Buddha teaches this very goal of desirelessness, not by the universalisation of the I (Ātman) but by denying it altogether. For only when we consider anything as permanent and pleasant, as a self, we get attached to it and are averse to other things that are opposed to it; there is then bondage (saṁsāra). For the Upaniṣadas, the self is reality; for the Buddha it is a primordial wrong notion, not real. The highest experience, braḥmānubhāva, the Upanisadas take not as the annihilation of the ‘I’, but of its particularity and finitude. In fact, we realize the plenitude of our being there as bhūmā (whole). Buddha was impressed by the negative aspect of the highest trance state as devoid (śūnya) of intellect, consciousness etc. The spiritual genius of Buddha carved out a new path, the negative path. There are observations in Prof. Radhakrishnan’s writings which indicate the difference between Buddha and the Upaniṣadas: “If there is difference between the teachings of the Upanisads and the Buddha, it is not in their views of the world of experience (saṁsāra) but in regard to their conception of reality (nirvāṇa).”

The Mādhyamika dialectic as culminating in intuition is not only the fruition of the theoretic consciousness; it is the fruition of the practical and religious consciousness as well. According to this school the root-cause of pain and imperfection is avidyā or the tendency to conceptualise the real. Mistaking as this or that do we get attached to things or evince aversion towards them. Nāgārjuna says : “Freedom is the cessation of acts (karma) and the roots of evil (kleśa): these are born of vikalpa and this of prapañcha (the conceptual function of Reason); prapañcha ceases with the knowledge of Sūnyatā.” The dialectic as non-conceptual intuitional knowledge takes us beyond the possibility of pain. It is the summum bonum of all our endeavour. It is freedom itself (Nirvāṇa). Nirvāṇa is the reality of saṁsāra or conversely, saṁsāra is the falsity (Samvṛti) of Nirvāṇa. Nirvānā is saṁsāra without birth and decay. The difference between them is in our way of looking at them; it is epistemic, not metaphysical.

The Pārmitā Discipline Buddhist spiritual discipline has always been of three-tier type-Sīla, Samādhi and Prajñān-Virtues, Concentration of mind and Wisdom, The Pārmitā doctrine did not replace it exactly, but modified and elaborated it into the six-fold pārmitā discipline of dāna, śilā, kṣānti, vīrya, dhyān and prajñā. This gives greater prominence to the preparatory stages, and emphasises certain virtues and charity and forbearance, and enjoins ceaseless and enthusiastic effort as essential for attaining Buddhahood. The place of Prajñā as the guiding and controlling factor to which all other pārmitās tend is made abundantly clear. Though in the earlier systems, too, Prajñā was taken as the culmination of the disciplice, there was a tendency to regard the spiritual path as the almost mechanical performance of virtues and practice of concentration. Here Prajñā informs and inspires the entire spiritual discipline, every virtue and each act of concentration is dedicated to the gaining of insight into the real. The stress has shifted from the moral to the metaphysical axis. The parmitā way is distinguished from the older discipline of the Hīnayāna in three important respects : the replacement of arhat by the bodhisattva ideal, the elaboration of the older śīla-samādhi-prajñā stadia of spiritual discipline into pārmitās, and the minuter analysis of the hishest stages of spiritual life into bhūmis or planes of yoga culminating in complete Buddhahood. They revolutionalise the ideal, the path and the final result of the spiritual discipline; they impart a unity and universality never known before in spiritual discipline.

A Critical Appareciation

The attitude of Buddha towards life is a critical one. He wants every one to be very very critical and relflective. According to the Buddhist analysis, composure of mind is only the prelude to the compassionate heart. Spirituality, the Buddha discovered, was not to be found in terms of what one affirmed and how he affirmed it. “The doctirine is not based on hearsay, it means ‘come and see;” “Buddha does not liberate men, but he teaches them how to liberate themselves as he is liberated himself. Men adhere to the preaching of the truth not because it comes from him but because, aroused by his word, a personal knowledge of what he preaches, arises in the light of their minds.” It will not be unfair to point out here that even while rejecting eternalism of the human soul, Buddha admits, unlike nihilists, rebirth and moral responsibility. His position has been correctly summarized by Prof. Stcherbatsky when he writes : “…..he denies an eternal soul against the eternalist but maintains moral responsibility against the materialists.”

Rhya Davids observes that the fact that Buddha declared Khandha (nāma and rūpa, i.e., mind and matter) to be completely free from any unchanging, undying essence does not mean that Buddhism taught annihilation of body and mind at death. For besides the doctrine of transience (anichchā) and soullessness (anattā), there is also the doctrine of Kamma, or the transmitted force of the act, bodily and mentally. A living being is a Khandha-complex, ever-changing, but ever-determined by its antecedent character and that is ruled by Kamma. The long-drawn outline of life is but a fluctuating curve of evolving experience. Man, even in this life is never the same, yet ever the result of his pre-existing self. Action, which is another Kamma, will be present as long as there is existence, because existence is not something static but a process. A process, must proceed, and this is done by activity, the activity of the senses. Just as a flame cannot exist without consuming, its very nature being combustion, so also the senses cannot exist without activity. But this is not the same as the psychological determinism of Leibnize and Herbert, for Kamma is not fatalism. “If anyone says” declares the Buddha : “that a man must necessarily reap according to all his deeds, in that case no religious striving is possible nor is there an opportunity to end sorrow.”

Hindusim finds the stable and the constant factor of human existence, in the innermost depth where the ātman resides, but Buddhism consigns the ātman within to impermanence and sorrow. It suggests that man seeks for something permanent, driven on by the desire for life, and that this very search is part of natural man’s delusion. The Buddhist conception of Reality differs fundamentally from that of the Vedanta. Where the Vedanta speaks of Being, the Buddhist thinks of Bhava (Becoming) “what is this that is being said.” “Becoming (bhava) becoming, what is this ?” Where the Hindu is anxious to stress the ‘changeless’, the Buddhist broods on the ‘changing’, “the significance of the Buddha does not lie in the domain of theoretical thought, but in the fact that he spiritualises world and life-negation and breathes into it a breath of ethics. He makes his own the ethical acquisitions of Jainism and carries further what was there begun.” As Buddha’s interest lay in the cessation of human suffering, he was concerned more, according to the usual interpretation of Buddhism, with preaching the analysis of self, and of desire which is the root cause of suffering, than with teaching the natue of the world. Prof. Viddhuśekhar Bhattāchārya says : “Thus by erracdicating the noting of ‘I’ (Ātman) and ‘mine’ (Ātmiya) the Buddha struck at the very root of ‘Kama’, ‘desire’, rightly described as Mara, ‘death’, without the extinction of which none can aspire to the realisation of Nirvāṇa.” It is for this reason that the earlier school of Buddhism preached only pudgala-nairatmya or the selflessness of the mind, and did not worry about the nature of the world. We do not consequenctly find in them systematic philosophy or inquiry into the nature of the world.

The doctrine of pratītya-samutpāda is intimately related to the doctrine of momentariness. Taking the twelve links of the cause, the final cause of suffering and therefore, of the world, according to the Buddhists, is ignorance. Some interpretators of Buddhism hold that it is the ignorance of this or that individual; others hold that it is cosmic. Oldenberg writes : “The first link of the series the ultimate ground of earthly existence, ignorance and the ‘conformation’ (saṁskāras) which develop themselves from ignorance-are in their nature much more difficult of comprehension by concrete explanation than the following categories.” This difficulty is certainly due to the links being the causes of thought and the phenomenal world; and it is difficult for thought to understand the origin of itself. Yet Oldenberg objects to giving any cosmic significance to ignorance. “it is tempting” he says : “the place assigned to the category of ignorance at the beginning of the whole line of causality, to allow oneself to be carried away by interpretations which is seen in this idea, as it were, a cosmological power working at the primitive foundation of things….The philosophy of later Branmanical schools speak in similar fashion of Māyā, that power of delusion which causes the deceptive picture of the created world to appear to the One, the uncreated, as if it were the being.” “Interpretations of this kind, which find in the category of ignorance an expansion for the deceptive, nothing appearing as the being, completely correspond in fact with the explicit utterances of latter Buddhist texts.” The ignorance is not declared to be anything in the way of a cosmic power, not anything like a mysterious original sin, but it is within the range of earthly tangible reality. “Not to know suffering, friend, not to know the origin of suffering, not to know the extinction of suffering, not to know the path to the exitinction of suffering : this, O friend ! is the cause of ignorance. Not to know the four sacred truths as they are, I have wandered on the long path from one birth to another. Now have I seen them, the current of being is stemmed. The root of suffering is destroyed, there is henceforward no rebirth.”

Bondage, for Buddhism, means the flow of an impure series beginning with ignorance, while liberation means the transformation of this flow into that of a pure series beginning with knowledge. Buddha replaced the soul by the theory of a mind-continuum, by a series of psychical states rigorously conditioned as to their nature by the causal law governing them (dharma-saṅketa). According to him this alone provides for progress (change, efficacy) and continuity (responsibility), as each succeeding state (good or bad) is the result of the previous state. Thus it avoids the futility of Karma which is an inescapable predicament of the acceptance of the permanent soul on one hand, and nihilism of materialism which follows from the non-acceptance of continuity on the other. Rebirth does not mean that the soul, bodily, as an identical individual essence, transports itself from one place to another. It only means that a new series of state is generated, conditioned by the previous states. Nothing is lost, and the new birth is a result of the previous states. The Sālistaṁba Sūtra puts the matter definitely : “There is no element which migrates from this world to the other; but there is a recognition (realisation) of the fruition of Karma, as there is continuity of causes and conditions.” When the Buddha says that in a previous birth he was himself a Sunetra, a veneralble teacher, as he does in the Saptasūryodaya Sūtra and in many of the Jātakas, this only means that the Buddha-series (Buddhasantāna) is one that both Sunetra and Gautama belong to the same continuum. The identity of the individual is affirmed by ignoring the differences (abhedopachāra) and emphasising only the causal connection. Human reasoning cannot be satisfied with mere illusions or momentary impulses. We may dream of golden era or fly in the unbounded sky, but there must be a substantial ground to stand on. We cannot have a way of life which does not imply a philosophy, an appraisal of reality. The human mind cannot for long be in a sense of suspense and postponement. As regards the annihilationist interpretation, Dr. E.J. Thomsa very pertinently observes: “They could not consider it (Nirvāṇa) as bhāva, for it is not what is cognised by the senses, nor as non-existence. The Buddhists had reached the conception of a state of which neither existence nor non-existence could be asserted.” Buddhism has always laid stress on self-effort; it has even repudiated Īśvara. Prof. T.R.V. Murti observes that with the revolution in Buddhism which changed it from the radical pluralism of the Hīnayāna to the Absolutism of the Mahāyāna, there was felt the need for a mediating principle between the Absolute and phenomenal beings. Buddha is that mediator. In prajñā he is identical with the absolute; but as a human being subjecting himself to all the limitations, he is at once phenomenal. Buddha came to be deified. His englightenment was not an accident; it was deliberately and freely chosen by the Deity. And Gautama, the Buddha is just one of those innumerable manifestations in the past and the future. Nor is Buddha different from other beings. In essence, they are identical with him; every being is Buddha in the making. “The Buddhas were subjected to a six-fold process of evolution; they were multiplied, immortalized, spiritualised, universalised and unified.”

The perennial stream of moral and spiritual discipline runs smoothly and undisturbedly through the entire field of Buddhist literature. The only thing which follows a man after death, according to Buddhism, is his Karma, and accordingly it has been said in the Saṁyutta Nikāya; “Nor again, nor wealth, nor gold, nor silver, nor wife, nor child, nor slave, nor servant, nor dependent, can accompany a dying man, but must remain behind him; while, whatever a man doth through his body, speech or thought, are to be called his own by him for they follow him when he departeth this life like a shadow that leaveth not. Therefore all men should do noble deeds considering them to be a stored treasure for future weal, and a crop of merit sown in this life will yield, in a future birth, a rich harvest of bliss.” Does Buddhism overlook the paramount importance of this present life ? Does it sing of tragic songs regarding life and its struggles ? Is it a mere show of darker side of human race ? The answer can be given in optimistic way. With its staunch belief in the unperishableness of Karma and the law of cause and effect, Buddhism regards every birth to the moulder of the next, until, through the exhausition of the individual karmā, Nirvāṇa is reached, Accordingly, far from over-looking the paramount importance of this life, the Buddhist is enjoined to make the best use of it. Accordingly, it is laid down in the Sacred cannon : “Let noble deeds each man perform, A treasure-store for future weal, Since merit gained in present birth Will yield a blessing in the next.”

Inspite of momentariness and fluctuation, the life and the world, both are dominated and controlled by truth and Reality. Change is the law of nature but it does not mean destruction. It means an opeing of a new window to peep through; a construction of a new road to go ahead. One important point we have to note, which Suzuki regards as the special feature of the Laṅkāvatāra, is the idea of self-realisation. If there were no reality, no truth, self-realisation would not have been preached. “That all things are in their self-nature unborn, Mahamati ! belongs to the realm of self-realisation attained by the noble wisdom, and does not belong essentially to the reach of dualistic discrimination cherished by the ignorant and the simple-minded.” Suzuki tells us that this self-realization is practically a recognition of one’s true and original nature and in Zen Buddhism ; “The experience is compared to the visiting (of) one’s native home and quietly getting settled.” We are here reminded of the Pratyabhijñāna-system of Abhinavagupta. In the ‘Sagathakām’, which Suzuki doubts belonged originally to the text of the Laṅkāvatāra’s we find the ātman doctrine preached and the anātman doctrine refuted. “Those who hold the theory of non-ego are injurers of Buddhistic doctrines, they are given up to the dualistic views of being and non-being; they are to be ejected by the convocation of the Bikṣus and are never to be spoken to.” “The doctrine of an ego-soul shines brilliantly like the rising of the world-end fire, wiping away the faults of philosophers, burning up the forest of egolessness.” “Trying to seek in fine ways for an ego-soul in accumulation of the skandhas, the unintelligent fail to see it, but the wise seeing it are liberated.” The world is not regarded in the ‘Sagathākam’ as a shadow of nothing on nothing, cast by nothing, but as a sign indicative of reality.” In the text of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra itself, it is said that reality is eternal. “The ancient road of reality, Mahāmati ! has been here all time, like gold, silver or pearl preserved in the mine; Mahāmati ! the Dharmadhātu, abides for ever, whether the Tathāgata appears in the world or not; as the Tathāgata eternally abides so does the reason (dharmatā) of all things; reality for ever abides, reality keeps its order, like the roads in an ancient city.”

Asaṅga goes even further and calls the ultimate truth ‘Sat’ or existence, and wonders why the foolish man becomes attached to the world, which is unreal leaving out reality. He says that by longing for ‘sat’ we lose nothing, because the world is identical with it; but the world by itself is unreal, and so our attachment to the world is only due to our stupidity. Inspite of this definitely positive conception of reality, the refrain of the Mahāyāna, that reality is neither positive nor negative, is not absent in Asaṅga’s work. He says that astitva and nāstitva-existence and non-existence, are found only in Māyā, and not in the ultimate truth. He writes that both bhāva and abhāva are śūnya; and the man who has realized the perfect truth is called śūnya. But in the philosophy of Asaṅga, śūnya seems to express the unreality of the world rather than rality itself. And in this sense, we may say that Mahāyāna Sūtrālaṅkara is still less negative than the Laṅkāvatar. While Aśvaghoṣa uses the word Tathatā more frequently to mean ultimate reality, Nāgārjuna’s Sūnya and the Laṅkāvatāra Chitta, Asaṅga seems to think that the word Dharmadhātu is more appropriate; at least the use of that word is more conspicuous in his work. Dharmadhatu is definitely identified by Asanga with Dharamakāyā, Tathatā and chittamātratā or Vijñāptimātratā.

Reference 1.Samyutta Nikāya, Oldenberg, Buddha, pp. 216-217. 2.Laṅkāvatār Sūtra, p. 138. 3. Madhyānta-Vibhāga-sūtra of Maitreyanath, i.11-12 a-b. 4.Vibhāga-Sūtra-Bhāṣya of Vasubandhu, p. 35. 5.Visuddhimagga, xvii, 293. 5.Trisvabhāva-nirdeśa of Vasubandhu 6.Triṅśika of Vasubandhu. 39. 7.Laṅkāvatāra-Sūtra, iii. 121. 8.Mujjhima Nikāya, Mahāsudassan Sutta. 9.Suttanipāta, iii. 12. 10.Dhammapada, Chapater v. 1. 11.Conception of Buddhist Nirvāṇa, p. 21.