Essays in Zen Buddhism · 24 of 66

Enlightenment and Ignorance, Part 8

It may not be altogether out of place here to make a few remarks concerning the popular view which identifies the philosophy of Schopenhauer with Buddhism. According to this view, the Buddha is supposed to have taught the negation of the will to live, which was insisted upon by the German pessimist, but nothing is further from the correct understanding of Buddhism than this negativism. The Buddha does not consider the will blind, irrational, and therefore to be denied; what he really denies is the notion of ego-entity due to Ignorance, from which notion come craving, attachment to things impermanent, and the giving way to the egotistic impulses. The object the Buddha always has in view and never forgets to set forth whenever he thinks opportune, is the Enlightenment of the will and not its negation. His teaching is based upon affirmative propositions. The reason why he does not countenance life as it is lived by most of us is because it is the product of Ignorance and egoism, which never fail to throw us into the abyss of pain and misery. The Buddha pointed the way to escape this by Enlightenment and not by annihilation.

The will as it is in itself is pure act, and no taint of egotism is there; this is awakened only when the intellect through its own error grows blind as to the true working of the will and falsely recognises here the principle of individuation. The Buddha thus wants an illumined will and not the negation of it. When the will is illumined, and thereby when the intellect is properly directed to follow its original course, we are liberated from the fetters which are put upon us by wrong understanding, and purified of all the defilements which ooze from the will not being correctly interpreted. Enlightenment and emancipation are the two central ideas of Buddhism.

The argument Aśvaghosha puts into the mouth of the Buddha against Arada (or Ālāra Kālāma), the Samkhya philosopher, is illuminating in this respect. When Arada told the Buddha to liberate the soul from the body as when the bird flies from the cage or the reed’s stalk is loosened from its sheath, which will result in the abandonment of egoism, the Buddha reasons in the following way: “As long as the soul continues there is no abandonment of egoism. The soul does not become free from qualities as long as it is not released from number and the rest; therefore, as long as there is no freedom from qualities, there is no liberation declared for it. There is no real separation of the qualities and their subject; for fire cannot be conceived apart from its form and heat. Before the body there will be nothing embodied, so before the qualities there will be no subject; how, if it was originally free, could the soul ever become bound? The body-knower (the soul) which is unembodied, must be either knowing or unknowing; if it is knowing, there must be some object to be known, and if there is this object, it is not liberated. Or if the soul be declared to be unknowing, then what use to you is this imagined soul? Even without such a soul, the existence of the absence of knowledge is notorious as, for instance, in a log of wood or a wall. And since each successive abandonment is held to be still accompanied by qualities, I maintain that the absolute attainment of our end can only be found in the abandonment of everything.”

As long as the dualistic conception is maintained in regard to the liberation of the soul, there will be no real freedom as is truly declared by the Buddha. “The abandonment of everything” means the transcending of the dualism of soul and body, of subject and object, of that which knows and that which is known, of “it is” and “it is not,” of soul and soul-lessness; and this transcending is not attained by merely negating the soul or the will, but by throwing light upon its nature, by realising it as it is in itself. This is the act of the will. An intellectual contemplation which is advocated by the Samkhya philosophers does not lead one to spiritual freedom, but to the realm of passivity which is their “realm of nothingness.” Buddhism teaches freedom and not annihilation, it advocates spiritual discipline and not mental torpor or emptiness. There must be a certain turning away in one’s ordinary course of life, there must be a certain opening up of a new vista in one’s spiritual outlook if one wants to be the true follower of the Buddha. His aversion to asceticism and nihilism as well as to hedonism becomes intelligible when seen in this light.

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The Majjhima-Nikāya’s account of the Buddha’s interview with the Samkhya thinkers somewhat differs from the Mahayana poet’s, but in a way gives a better support to my argument as regards the Buddha’s Enlightenment. The reason why he was not satisfied with the teaching and discipline of Ālāra Kālāma and Uddaka is stated to be this: “This doctrine does not lead to turning away, to dispassion, to cessation, to quietude, to perfect penetration, to supreme awakening, to Nirvana, but only to attainment to the Realm of Nothingness.” What did then the Buddha understand by Nirvana which literally means annihilation or cessation, but which is grouped here with such terms as awakening, turning away (that is, revaluation), and penetration, and contrasted to nothingness? There is no doubt, as far as we can judge from these qualifications, that Nirvana is a positive conception pointing to a certain determinable experience. When he came up to the bank of the Nairañjanā and took his seat of soft grass on a shady, peaceful spot, he made up his mind not to leave the place until he realised in himself what he had been after ever since his wandering away from home. According to the Lalita-vistara, he at that moment made this vow (praṇidhāna):

“Let my body be dried up on this seat, Let my skin and bones and flesh be destroyed: So long as Bodhi is not attained, so hard to attain for many a kalpa, My body and thought will not be removed from this seat.”

Thus resolved, the Buddha finally came to realise Supreme Enlightenment for which he had belaboured for ever so many lives. How does this vary from his former attainments under Uddaka and Ālāra Kālāma? Let him express himself:

“Then, disciples, myself subject to birth, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to birth and seeking after the incomparable security of Nirvana which is birthless, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is birthless.

“Myself subject to growth and decay, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to growth and decay and seeking after the incomparable security of Nirvana which is free from growth and decay, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is free from growth and decay.

“Myself subject to disease, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to disease and seeking after the incomparable security of Nirvana which is free from disease, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is free from disease.

“Myself subject to death, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to death and seeking after the incomparable security of Nirvana which is deathless, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is deathless.

“Myself subject to sorrow, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to sorrow and seeking after the incomparable security of Nirvana which is sorrowless, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is sorrowless.

“Myself subject to stain, but perceiving the wretchedness of things subject to stain and seeking the incomparable security of Nirvana which is stainless, to that incomparable security I attained, even to Nirvana which is stainless.

“Then I saw and knew: ‘Assured am I of deliverance; this is my final birth; never more shall I return to this life!’”

When Nirvana is qualified as birthless, deathless, stainless, sorrowless, and free from growth and decay and disease, it looks negativistic enough. But if there were nothing affirmed even in these negations, the Buddha could not rest in “the incomparable security” (anuttaraṁ yogakkhemaṁ) of Nirvana and been assured of final emancipation. What thus the Buddha denied, we can see, was Ignorance as to the true cause of birth and death, and this Ignorance was dispelled by the supreme effort of the will and not by mere dialectic reasoning and contemplation. The will was asserted and the intellect was awakened to its true significance. All the desires, feelings, thoughts, and strivings thus illuminated cease to be egotistic and are no more the cause of defilements and fetters and many other hindrances, of which so many are referred to in all Buddhist literature, Mahayana and Hinayana. In this sense the Buddha is the Jina, Conqueror, not an empty conqueror over nothingness, but the conqueror of confusion, darkness, and Ignorance.