Theosophy - Is The Buddhist an Atheist? - by
IS THE BUDDHIST AN ATHEIST?
by REMSEN WHITEHOUSE.
(Reprinted from Lucifer.)
and
reproduced in “Theosophical Siftings” Volume
- 5 -
GOLDEN
WORDS
by Jamblichus
WE
BEGIN WITH INSTINCT: THE END IS OMNISCIENCE
Prof. Alexander Wilder
A
STRANGE MESMERIC PHENOMENON
N. A. Fadeeff
[Page
16] THE
very general interest evinced at the present moment by
Western students in the religious system of Buddhism, although
it may prove to be no deeper than an insatiable craving
for new ideals, can, nevertheless, hardly fail to leave
some enduring mark on contemporaneous thought. Unfortunately
the vulgarization of a most complicated system of philosophy
has caused serious misapprehensions, affecting important
tenets of the doctrine, to become current. The allegation
most constantly levelled against the creed is that it is
a doctrine of pure pessimism and absolute Atheism — "that
ferocious system that leaves nothing above us to excite awe,
nor around us to awaken tenderness."
But is Buddhism really Atheistic ?
To begin with,
what is the popular definition of this much-abused word
(Atheism)? We find Worcester rendering it "the
denial or disbelief of a God"; while Webster amplifies
it to "the disbelief or denial of the existence of a
God, or Supreme intelligent Being". The theist may pronounce
such a "disbelief" as constituting an irrefutable
proof of atheism, holding, as he will, that theism inculcates
the existence of a conscious God governing the universe by
his will power. The lexicographer's definition is applicable,
however, only to the materialist, who rejects any spiritual
hypothesis whatever and relies wholly on matter for the formation
and preservation of Cosmos. Now Buddhism, although it certainly
denies the existence of an anthropomorphic and personal God,
yet does not reject spirituality as an attribute of the Primordial
Essence. On the contrary, a Divine Intelligence is acknowledged,
but at the same time is not held to have any direct control
over individual destiny, which is entirely subject to the
laws of Cause and Effect, or to use a technical term, to
the "Karma" (balance of merit and demerit) of the
individual monad which follows and controls the state, condition
or form of his re-births.
Does this denial of a personal God necessarily constitute
Atheism ? It is hardly fair to assume that it does; for the
rejection of a personal God need not imply the denial of
any God at all.
"The horror
inspired by this name (Atheist) is strikingly shown in [Page
17] the
way it is repudiated by the adherents of Pantheism, who
reject a personal God and substitute the idealized principle
of order that pervades the universe. It is hardly to be
denied, however, that the idea associated with the word
God has hitherto involved personality as its very essence;
and except for the purpose of avoiding odium, there could
be little propriety in retaining the word when the notion
is so completely altered". Pantheism and
Atheism are consequently hereby pronounced practically synonymous.
But are they really so? Certainly not to the Buddhist who
energetically refutes the charge of Atheism, although he
avows himself, in a measure, a Pantheist.
Fleming's analysis
is crushing in its comprehensive dogmatism and would seem
to leave no loophole of escape for the hunted Pantheist. "Pantheism",
says he, "when
explained to mean the absorption of the infinite in the
finite, of God in nature, is Atheism: and the doctrine
of Spinoza has been so regarded by many. When explained
to mean the absorption of nature in God, of the finite
in the infinite, it amounts to an exaggeration of Atheism".
Before condemning
Spinoza as an Atheist, however, I would quote Mr. Saltus'
terse but comprehensive explanation of the doctrine of
the great Jew thinker. He taught, says that writer, "that
there is but one substance, and in this substance all things
live, move and have their being. It is at once Cause and
Effect; it is God". But the term
thus used has nothing in common with the theistic idea of
a Creator, who, having fashioned the world, "sits aloft
and sees it go". On the contrary God and the universe
were, to Spinoza, one and identical; they were correlatives;
the existence of the one made that of the other a logical
necessity. To him the primordial entity, the "fons
et origo rerum" was God; but God was Nature, and Nature,
Substance. Goethe also agrees with the Pantheist, that to "discuss
God apart from Nature is both difficult and dangerous. It
is as though we separated the soul from the body". And
he goes on to add that "we know the soul only through
the medium of the body, and God only through Nature. Hence
the absurdity of accusing of absurdity those who philosophically
unite the world with God". This is Pantheism, but it
is not Atheism. It is not the "denial or disbelief of
a God".
From such a union
of God and Nature (in the widest cosmographical sense)
sprang the "Divine Principle" of the Esoteric
Buddhists: that which is "neither entity nor non-entity,
but Abstract Entity, which is no entity, liable to
be described by either words or attributes".
Without plunging into the bewildering maze of the transcendentalism
of the esoteric brotherhood, which is entirely beyond the
scope of [Page 18] the present paper, we can affirm, on general
principles, that Buddhism, like Schopenhauer's philosophy,
teaches that Will is the fundamental Supreme Power, whose
vivifying essence pervades all cosmos, reaching in an endless
circuit from the most minute inorganic atom to man. But,
unlike Schopenhauer, it does not deny that this Will is the
outcome of a Supreme Intelligence: it merely professes such
knowledge as beyond the pale of physical conception.
Of course the
above must be understood as the briefest synopsis of a
most complicated hypothesis; and I hesitate to affirm that
the occult sages of Lhassa or Khatmandhu would endorse
such an interpretation "verbatim"; or without
much amplification and exhaustive analytical distinction.
But it is sufficient for the object of this paper; and
I know I shall secure the suffrages of the mass of their
co-religionists of the "Lesser Vehicle" when
I state that these latter, far from being "materialistic-atheists",
if I may borrow the phrase, do acknowledge a Supreme Essence;
so absolutely and immeasurably above mundane intellect, however,
as to be utterly beyond mortal conceptibility,and consequently
prudently let, by their exoteric doctrine, severely alone.
It is perhaps
unnecessary to state that the preceding remarks have little
or no application to Chinese or Japanese Buddhism, for
the religion of those countries is so hopelessly distorted
by the interweaving of Confucianism, Taoism and Shintoism,
as to present but little interest to the student of the pure
doctrine. I would add for the information of those who are
not familiar with the technical terms of our subject, that
by the "Greater Vehicle" the esoteric philosophy
of Thibet and Nepaul is referred to; the "Lesser Vehicle" embracing
Burmah, Siam and Ceylon. This last country also, lays claim
to the purest and most ancient form of the Buddha's exoteric
teachings.
By these the Buddhist
is taught to work out his own ultimate salvation (or shall
we not rather say evolution?) following the path
of the most excellent Law, discovered and laid down for
his guidance by Gautama Buddha. I use the term "ultimate
salvation" advisedly, for it should be clearly understood
that no Buddhist expects to attain Nirvana on escaping from
his present existence. On the contrary, he realizes, as Mr.
Sinnett expresses it, " the manifest irrationality in
the commonplace notion that man's existence is divided into
a material beginning, lasting sixty or seventy years, and
a spiritual remainder lasting for ever". The life just
passed through, the spiritual quiescence upon which he then
enters, and the subsequent maze of alternating material and
spiritual phases through which he must pass (their number
depending on the spiritual level he has attained), are merely
links. [Page 19] in the great
chain of spiritual and material evolution which will ultimately
lead him, purified and etherealized, to Nirvana — that
condition which is not annihilation, but a "sublime
state of conscious rest in omniscience";
in very truth that peace of mind, "which passeth all
understanding."
Concerning such
refinement of subtilty as the permanence of Nirvana we
need not concern ourselves. Still, paradoxical as it may
seem even the duration of this theoretically "eternal" bliss
may be computed; and as there can be no such thing as Perpetuity,
there may dawn a tomorrow, millions of years hence,
when the spiritual monad must again start forth on an evolutionary
round; but on an immeasurably higher plane. Such is the atheology
of Buddhism.
Although it touches our subject but indirectly, even this
rapid sketch would be incomplete without a glance at what
is meant by the Buddhist denial of the immortality of the
soul. This denial it will be seen is more apparent than real.
In the Theosophist's Buddhist Catechism, by Colonel Olcott,
a work which may safely be taken as authoritative on questions
affecting the exoteric belief as it has been endorsed
by the High Priest of the Southern Buddhists, and recommended
by him for use in the Sinhalese schools, we read that "soul" (as
understood in popular phraseology) is considered "a
word used by the ignorant to express a false idea". "The
denial of 'soul', by Buddha, points to the prevalent delusive
belief in an independent transmissible personality; an entity
that could move from birth to birth unchanged, or go to a
place or state where, as such perfect entity, it could eternally
enjoy or suffer. But this 'I am I' consciousness is, as regards
permanency, logically impossible, since its elementary constituents
constantly change, and 'I' of one birth differs from the
'I' of every other birth."
The distinction
between the pseudonymous "soul" and
this subtle "individuality" consists in the psychological "personality" transmitted
by the tanha (=unsatisfied desire for existence) at
the moment of dissolution, to the "character" of
the re-birth. We learn from the same source, that, "the
successive appearances upon one or many earths, or 'descents
into generation', of the 'tanhaically' coherent parts
of a certain being, are a succession of personalities. In
each birth the personality differs from that of the previous
or next succeeding birth. Karma, the 'deus ex machina',
masks (or, shall we say, reflects?) itself now in the personality
of a sage, again as an artisan, and so on through the string
of births. But though personalities ever shift, the one line
of life along which they are strung like beads, runs unbroken;
it is [Page 20] ever that
particular line, never any other.
It is, therefore, individual; an individual vital undulation,
which began in Nirvana, or the subjective side of nature,
as the light or heat undulation through ether began at its
dynamic source; is careering through the objective side of
Nature, under the impulse of Karma and the creative direction
of Tanha; and tends, through many cyclic changes
back to Nirvana. However incomplete in detail the foregoing
may be, it is nevertheless sufficient in as far as it goes
for the object we have at present in view — a cursory
examination of three of the fundamental principles of Buddhistic
philosophy.
Am I wrong in
supposing that the unprejudiced mind will readily agree
that the creed which inculcates such lofty conceptions
of Man's destiny is not that of the atheist— "idealized
pantheism" though it may be?
GOLDEN WORDS
THERE is
a faculty of the human mind, which is superior to all which
is born or begotten. Through it we are enabled to attain
union with the superior intelligences, of being transported
beyond the scenes and arrangements of this world, and of
partaking the higher life and peculiar powers of the heavenly
ones. By this faculty we are made free from the dominations
of Fate (Karma), and are made, so to speak, the arbiters
of our own destinies. For, when the most excellent parts
of us become filled with energy, and the soul is elevated
to natures loftier than itself, it becomes separated from
those conditions which keep it under the dominion of the
present every-day life of the world, exchanges the present
for another life, and abandons the conventional habits belonging
to the external order of things, to give and mingle itself
with that order which pertains to higher life.
JAMBLICHUS
WE
BEGIN WITH INSTINCT: THE END IS OMNISCIENCE
It
is as a direct beholding; what Schelling denominates
a realization of the identity of subject and object called
Deity; so that transported out of himself, so to speak,
he thinks divine thoughts, views all things from their
highest point of view, and, to use an expression of Emerson "becomes recipient
of the Soul of the World". —
PROF. ALEXANDER WILDER.
A
STRANGE MESMERIC PHENOMENON
IN Astrachan,
on the Caspian Sea, there was, during our stay there, an
apothecary named Ossey (probably his sons are still there).
He suffered terribly from toothache whether neuralgic or
otherwise, I do not know. Probably the former, because
the extraction of several teeth on that side did not relieve
him. Somebody told him that there lived in the town an
old retired soldier who "talked away" [This
is the literal translation of the popular and mystic term
"Zagovarivayt”,
in Russia. For the good men and women in towns and villages
who play at local medicine-men (and the people will have
no others) literally “talk away”, by means of
some strange words which no one understands but themselves,
and by breathing on the water, all kinds of diseases and
ailments most effectively] most effectually the toothache.
Ossey found out the soldier- wizard, who did talk away his
pain in a few minutes, so that it never returned.
Some time after,
the apothecary happened to meet the soldier, and asked
him whether his pain was ever likely to return; to which
the soldier replied as follows: "This depends
on which of us survives the other. If you die before me,
then the toothache will never return; but if I die before
you, the pain will return immediately, and more violent than
ever".
For nine years
Ossey had no pain, and the remembrance of his suffering
even had vanished from his thoughts, when, in the tenth
year, his neuralgia returned with redoubled violence. He
rushed off in search of his soldier-healer, but could nowhere
find him, and learnt a few days later that the soldier
had died; and thus his forewarning had proved correct.
It seems to me
that this "talking away" is just
another kind of mesmeric healing. My arm pains me more and
more, even interfering with my writing, as the fingers are
becoming stiff. For me there is no more doubt that my rheumatism
returned in Odessa, on the very day on which Evette died
in Paris.
Ossey' s story is interesting as a corroboration of my own
case.
N. A. FADEEFF
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