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On
the occasion of the two previous meetings of our Symposium the
contribution of Buddhism to art and Letters was dealt with. We proceed
now to our discussion on Buddhism’s Contribution to Philosophy.
Making use of a simile employed by anandavardhana on poetry I may say
this : Art is the beautiful corporeal frame of Buddhism, literature is
its prana or life – breath, philosophy is its mind; so that the
topic of our deliberation is, as it were, a task of penetrating
gradually more and more into the depth of the inner core of the great
spiritual movement which has given so much to the world.
Presidential
Address delivered at the Fifth Session on “Buddhism’s Contribution
to Philosophy” of the Symposium on “Buddhism’s Contribution to
Art, Letters and Philosophy” arranged from November 26th
to 29th , 1956
in New Delhi, by the Working Committee for the 2,500th
Buddha Jayanti, Government of India, in collaboration with the UNESCO,
to commemorate the 2,500th Anniversary of the Parinirvana
of the Buddha – Reprinted from The
Maha Bodhi, Vaisakha Number 1957.
I
feel deeply honoured by having been asked to preside over this session.
I take it as a distinction not so much for my own humble endeavours to
fathom the profundity of Buddhist philosophy but as an award of honour
bestowed upon my country, because especially in Germany philosophers
have since a long time shown great interest in Buddhism.
The
first Germans who had heard the mane of the Buddha were probably
theologians who had read the works of St. Hieronymus, one of the
fathers of the Christian Church. For this saint mentions the
miraculous birth of the Buddha. But on Buddha’s doctrine nobody
seems to have had any detailed knowledge during the Middle Ages It was
not until the 17th century that a German philosopher
obtained some knowledge of Buddhism. It was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
(1646-1716) who took a very keen interest in china, whose philosophy
had just been made known to Europe by the works of French jesuits.
Leibniz drew from their books some points of the Buddhist Doctrine as
taught in the chinese Empire. In his most famous book, the “Theodicee”,
he speaks of Fo, as the Chinese call the Buddha and refers to the
Madhyamika – System and its doctrine of Emptiness.
A
wider range of knowledge we find with lmmanuel Kant (1724 – 1806).
It is not much known that Kant at the University of Konigsberg
delivered not only lectures on Philosophy but also on Geography.
Without ever having left his native town he had acquired a
considerable knowledge of all the parts of the globe by reading books
on travel. He therefore in his lectures speaks about Buddhism in
Ceylon, Burma, siam, in China, japan and Tibet. He draws a very
sympathetic picture of the Buddhist monks in Burma. He says: “The
Talapoins of Pegu are praised as the world’s kinliest men. They live
on the food which they beg at the houses and give to the poor what
they do not need for themselves. They do good to all living beings
without making any discrimination of religion. They think that all
religions are good which make men good and amiable”.
Kant
already knew that Buddhists do not believe in a creator and ruler of
the universe who judges men after death, for he writes : “They
reject the idea of divine providence, but they teach that vices are
punished and virtues are recompensed by a fatal necessity” Kant did
not yet know anything about the Buddhist doctrine of Karma and Rebirth,
and his philosophy has in no way been influenced by Buddhist ideas.,
But the doctrine of metempsychosis appealed to him in several periods
of his life Even a short time before his death, when asked by his
friend hasse about the future of the individual after death Kant
expressed himself in favour of the doctrine of transmigration. On
another occasion he called it one of the most attractive teachings of
Oriental philosophy. He himself taught a pre – existence of the soul
before man is born and he was of opinion that after death man has to
continue his way to perfection in infinite progress. His ideas have.
There fore, in this point much in common with Buddhism.
Kant
lived at a time when Buddhist texts had not yet been studied and
translated by European scholars. It was only after his death that
English and French scholars began to occupy themselves with the
Buddhist scriptures. In contradistinction to kant the German
philosophers of the beginning of the nineteenth century were better
informed about Buddhist philosophy. Thus we find with Schelling and
Hegel some more detailed remarks on Buddhism, and in later times with
Nietzsche and many other philosophers. An enthusiastic admirer of the
great religion of the East was Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860).
Since he was introduced to Indian Wisdom as a young man of 26 years of
age until his death at the age of 72
he read almost every book published on Buddhism and came to the
conviction that Buddha together with Plato and Kant was of the three
great illuminators of the world. He was much influenced by
Buddhist thought in framing his own system of metaphysics. He
believed in a strong conformity of his doctrine with that of the
Buddha. So he wrote: “If I were to take the results of my philosophy
as a yardstick for the truth, I would concede to Buddhism the
Preeminence of all religions of the world. In any case I can be happy
to see that my teaching is in such great harmony wigh a religion which
has the greatest number of adherents on earth”. There are indeed,
many points in which the German philosopher agrees with Buddhists;
they both deny the existence of a personal God, they teach that
neither a beginning nor an end of the cosmic process can be
established. They both assume the existence of a plurality of world
systems, they see no essential but only a gradual difference between
men and animals and are therefore ardent advocates of the protection
of animals against cruelty. They do not believe in permanent immortal
souls and metempsychosis, but in a rebirth caused by the will (sankara)
which manifests itself in the doings of the previous existence. They
both acknowledge a moral law (dharma) as the moving factor in the
universe. Though they both have a pessimistic outlook on life, they
are optimistic in so far, as they are both convinced of the
possibility of a liberation from the trammels of existence. Just as
for Buddha so for Schopenhauer too the state of deliverance cannot be
explained with the help of terms and words belonging to our world of
phenomena. Schopenhauer’s system being an original and independent
outcome of his own thinking it differs, of course, in many other
points, from Buddhism. This partly finds its reason in the fact that
at the time of Schopenhauer Buddhism was not yet sufficiently known in
Europe.
Schopenhauer
was the greatest herald of Buddhist wisdom, ever arisen among the
philosophers of the western world. His works had a deep influence on
many other thinkers rendering them in their turn, very keen on
studying the sacred writings of the Buddhist faith at least in
translations. A remarkable witness of the over whelming impression
that Buddhism made on him are the following words of a great musician,
the famous composer Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883). He wrote:
“Buddha’s teaching is such a grand view of life that every other
one must seem rather small when compared to it, The philosopher with
his deepest thoughts, the scientist with his largest results, the
artist with his most extravagant imaginations, the man with the most
open heart for everything that breathes and suffers they’ll find
their unlimited abode in this wonderful and in comparable conception
of the world.”
It
is an uncontested fact that Buddhism has played a very prominent role
in the realm of Indian Philosophy during the one thousand five hundred
years of its existence on the sub – continent. Not only because it
produced a great variaty of metaphysical systems many of which belong
to the most elaborate and sublime ones which the fertile Indian mind
has ever created . But the contribution of Buddhism is still greater.
Through its very existence it has compelled the Brahmanic and Jaina
Philoscphers to defend their teachings and to improve and remodel them.
The discussions kindled by the struggle waged between Buddhist
philosophy of permanent flux and the Upanishadic philosophy of
unchangeable being have raised Indian metaphysical thought to that
high level which has gained it the admiration of the world. Since the
celebrated passage in Majjhima – nikaya 22 where Buddha argues
controversially against the doctrine of the Vedanta, and Kathaka
Upanishad 4, 14, where the Brahmins reject the Buddhist theories of
Dharmas, the antagonism between Vedanta and Buddhism permeates the
whole history of Indian philosophy, just as the fight between the
conception of the world of Heraclitus and Parmenides dominates Greek
philosophy. As so often in similar cases, each of the two opponents
has learned much from the other and taken over some of his ideas. To
my mind the monistic Mahayana shows the deep influence which Vedanta
has exerted on later Buddhism. On the other hand the lofty idealism of
Yogavasishta, of Gaudapada and Shankara are indebted to Nagarjuna’s
and Asanga’s theories on the unreality of the world.
But the contribution of
Buddhism to philosophical thought is not confined to India. Buddhism
has been the ariginator and promoter of philosophy in many countries
that had not yet developed a philosophy of their own when the doctrine
of the Buddha reached them. Buddhism has stimulated the inteligentsia
in Ceylon, Burma, Siam, Kamboja, Laos, in Korea, Japan, Tibet and
Mongolia to philosophical endeavours. In China, too, which already
possessed a philosophy of a high level Buddhism has greatly developed
the indigenous metaphysical thought. It is well known that Taoism, at
least in its later phases, has been influenced by Buddhist theories.
But also Confucianism is indebted to it. It seems to me that the
founder of the Neo – confucianist school, the celebrated Chu His
(1130 – 1200), though a staunch opponent of Buddhism, much learned
has therefrom. And Idealists such as Shao Yung (1011 – 1077)
and Wans Yangmtn (1472 – 1528) have deeply drawn from the
fountain of Mahayana.
Buddhism
having had such an enormous direct and indirect influence on
philosophical thought in the whole of Southern and Eastern Asia proves
that it must have appealed in a high degree to Asian mentality.
It
is noteworthy that in contradistinction to the overwhelming importance
Buddhism has had in the East, it has till now not been able to
fertilize in a comparable way thought in the West. The reason for this
fact may have been that its sublime doctrines were not easy to
understand for Westerners, though the emperor Ashoka had already sent
missions to the Greek kings.
As
far as our present knowledge goes it was only gradually that Buddhism
unveiled its essence to the Occident. The Greeks already knew of the
name of Buddha. They also knew of his supernatural birth and they were
aware of the fact that the Samanaioi (sramana) were different from the
brahmanical ascetics. In the Middle Ages the story of Buddha’s
leaving His home was known in the Christianized form of the legend of
Barlaam and Josaphat. Marco Polo (1254 – 1323), the famous Italian
traveller, paid his tributes to the saintly life of Gautama when he
wrote in his Travel Diary: “Iilec fist moult grans adbstinences,
ainsi comme s’ll eust este crestien. Car s’il l’eust este. Il
feust un grand saint avecnotre Seigneur Jhesucrist, a la bonne vie et
honneste qu’il mena” “He lived a life of grand abstinence as if
he had been a Christian. For had he been. He would have been a great
saint with our Lord jesus Christ, considering the good and honest life
he led”. The first European I know of who mentions an important
doctrine of Buddhism which distinguishes it from the other great
religions of the world was the French traveller la Loubere, who wrote
in has work “Du Royaume de Siam”, Published in 1691, (vol 1, p.
395) “I think that one can establish that the Buddhists do not
believe in a world – ruling deity”. We are indebrted to the great
English indologist henry Thomas colebrooke for the first
interpretation of the Buddhist theory that there is no transmigrating
soul but nevertheless a rebirth caused by karmic influences. In the
lecture “On Indian Sectaries”, read at a public meething of the
Royal Asiatic Society, February 3, 1827, he said ; there is not an
eternal soul, but merely succession of thought attended with
individual consciousness abiding within body”. Colebrooke also
explained the ‘concatenation of causes and effects” which link one
existence with another. Though many European scholars have dealt with
this crucial point of Buddhist metaphysics it took many years of
investigation before the true basis of this doctrine was elucidated.
The two Russian sholars Theodore Stcherbatsky and his pupil Otto
Rosenberg have shown that the doctrine of the “dharmas’, ie.
Impersonal soul forces, is the central philosophical conception which
is at the bottom of all Buiddhist philosophical thought. The great
Belgian Indologist La Valle Poussin has dealt more minutely with the
probleam in his magnificent translation of Vasubandhu’s Abhidharma
– kosha. We understand now why the celebrated stanza ‘Ye dharmah
hetuprabhavah”
is the credo of all Buddhists.
It
is to be regretted that most European indologists in former times have
continued to occupy themselves iess with the doctrines of living
Buddhism as they have been taught for over at least 2000 years than
with speculations on the doctrine that the Buddha may have taught.
Many of these scholars have tried to show that Buddha’s own doctrine
differed greatly from the doctrines that to – day form the basis of
all Buddhist philosophy. It seems to me very improbable that Buddha
was no philosopher at all, as some scholars think. For in a time in
which as the texts show a very highly developed philosophical life was
going on in Ancient India, Buddha would not have been able to win
adherents from the philosophically trained Brahmans and Kshatriyas if
He had not propounded a doctrine which could hold its own in view of
hairsplitting dialectics of materialists, agnostics, sceptics and the
very elaborate systems of Brahmans and Jains Other scholars are of
opinion that Buddha’s teaching was a special form of Vedanta and
that the monks later on changed it to its present form, I do not think
that this is probable. For to maintain this assertion it would be
necessary to show in detail how the anatma – doctrine of the
Buddhists has developed out of
the alleged atmadoctrine of the Buddha It will not do to quote
some sayings of the Buddha unconnected with their context and to
interpret them in the said manner. Nor is it to be understood that on
the one side the texts at our disposal should be so reliable that the
so – called true original Vedantic doctrine of the Buddha may be
surmised therefrom, and that at the same time they should be so
unreliable that most of their metaphysical contents have been
fabricated by the monks of a later time. Nor do I understand what
necessity there may have been for the Buddha to teach a particular new
doctrine, when it was only a re-hash of the Upanishadic teachings of
His time. One may ask with Professor T.R.V. Murti in his excellent
book on the Madhyamika system “If the atman had been a cardinal
doctrine with Buddhism. Why was it so securely hidden under a bushel
that even the immediate followers of the Master had no inkling of it.”
In my opinien from the point of view of objective scholarship we may
acknowledge that the real doctrine of the Buddha cannot be ascertained
to – day because we do not possess manuscripts from his own hand nor
were his teachings taken down on records. All we know of Him was taken
down in writing only four centuries after His Nirvana. If we cannot
ascertain with absolute certainty the original doctrine of the Buddha
we may ask: what may it most predecessor of what all Buddhists of to
day agree in. I can see two reasons for the Vedantic explanation of
Buddha’s teachings. One is an emotional one: the Vedantist has the
natural endeavour to havrmonize the teachings of the great Gautama
with a system which he thinks to be the most sublime in the world. I
myself having written several works on Vedanta have the greatest
esteem for it. I consider Vedanta to be one of the most grandiose
philosophical conceptions ever originated in the world of thought. But
this admiration for the Vedanta does not carry me, as an historian of
Indian Philosophy, so far as to interpret Vedantic ideas into the
Buddhist texts. The other reason why many scholars have tried to
interpret the teachings of the Buddha in a Vedantic fashion is one of
a view of history. It is an undoubted duty of an investigator of the
history of Indian thought to show the dependence of every new system
on older ones preceding It, and to trace its very roots to
contemporary ideas. Now there is no possible doubt that the sublime
teachings of the Upanishads were in existence before Buddha. As
Buddha’s Nirvana iin some respect resembles the Brahma of the
Vedanta it seems plausible to believe that Buddha was a sort of
Vedantist. But this, In my opinion, is a delusion For Buddha’s
Nirvana is in no way like the Brahma, the absolute being which is the
very foundation of the world, or out of which everything that is has
developed and came to existance. It is only that nirvana is a state of
peace, of rest, of calm in which is may be compared to one of the
aspects of the Brahma. Butthere are many different systems in the
world the ultimate aim of which is such a state of redemption. But the
several systems as such differ widely from advita Vedanta because they
have a theistic basis, as the Mohammedan and Christian mysticism, or
as Jainism. Which denies the existence of a world – ruling deity For
this reason the reference to Vedanta carries no weight. One may, of
course, argue that a similar need, or requirement, is deeply rooted in
many religious minds , but there is neither a necessity nor a
possibility to trace all kinds of quietism to the same source.
There
is yet another deliberation which speaks against the exclusive
dependence of Buddha’s teachings on that of the Upanishads. The
Buddhism of the Theravadins and all the older schools is a pluralistic
system. Now a pluralistic interpretation of the world was very common
in Magadha, for Jainism was spreading there just at Buddha’s time.
As far as I know nobody has ever tried to deduce jainism from the
Upanishads or to interpret its doctrine in a Vedantic manner. I cannot
therefore see any reasonable ground for assuming that Buddhism must
have sprung from an Upanishadic fountain. In my work on the stages of
development of Indian thought published in 1940 I have tried to trace
the Buddhistic dharma – theory to antecedents in the Vedic time For
the Brahmanas and the Vedic texts teach a pluralism of substantial
factors which have a strong similarity to Buddhist Dharmas. For in
that remote period of Indian thought qualities such as love, hatred,
knowledge etc. Were considered as substances which had their own quasi
– independent existence, and were not regarded as inherent in any
substance. Of course by this I do not mean that the dharmas of
Buddhism are in any way identical with these archaic concepts of the
epoch of the Brahmana texts. What I would suggest is only this; that
the Buddhist theory of dharmas may have arisen out of ideas that have
their precursors in the Brahmana – time. Between the comparatively
primitive and crude concepts of this archaic mode of thinking the
highly refined means of the Buddha there lay centuries of
philosophical development. It may be that between these two periods
other thinkers were active in shaping and perfecting these ideas, and
in this respect the Buddhist doctrine that there were Buddhas before
Gautama may not be without foundation.
I
have tried to show the contribution of Buddhism to philosophy. I have
tried to show how the knowledge of Buddhism has developed step by step
in the realm of the mind of European scholars, I have tried to show
some of the problems
which European thinkers have tackled and I have taken the
liberty of pointing out how I myself stand in this respect. Far be it
for me to maintain that the solutions I have tried to offer are any
way definitive nor do I want to force them upon others who many have
more knowledge than I have But perhaps the thoughts I have tried to
expound here may form a basis for a discussion which may bring to
light new facets of thinking and may serve to elucidate some problems
of Buddhist philosophy.
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