Indian
Philosphy
by
Brahmasrii
Dr K C Varadachari
misery is to attain a state of nirvana
(freedom from all vana or movement of the desires which have become centralised
around the focus of the ego). Again and again this call to the renunciation of
the ego, empirical ego being the only concrete ego that we know of, has been
delivered. Whilst the Upanishads, a profound sense went deeper psychologically
and postulated a super ego, an ego that is metaphysically known rather than
known by the apparatus of the sensory-empirical psychology. Buddhism regulated
all psychology by its sensate knowledge. Thus its dhyana or jhana was also tied
up with the empirical sensory. No wonder it never had to acknowledge the self
of the Upanishads which is known not by any amount of sensory empirical even
when such an empirical becomes profoundly meditative and contemplative. This
restriction of the psychology of meditation and dhyana or jhana to the sensory
resulted in what was well apprehended, a scepticism in respect of the
transcendental self. The sensory intuition of jhana never went beyond the super
sensory or more subtle sensory but tied up to desire elements central to
persistence in the sensory empirical reality. Once this limitation on man’s
knowledge was imposed it was clear
– BUDDHISM AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE SYSTEMS
ABROAD
that the transcendental or non-sensory
intuitive realisation of the self becomes impossible. Scepticism regarding the
transcendental in Buddha became nihilism at the hands of Buddhists. That the
Buddha and Buddhists did experience nirvana as a non-sensory empirical thing
and that it had non negative characteristics as was previously predicated is
well known. It almost appeared to be the ananda experience of the Vedanta. So
much so today philosophers of Buddhism consider that behind the negative
nihilistic experiences of the arhat or attained one, there were positive
excellences in that experience. Thus beyond the nirguna they realised the
saguna or what Vedanta calls the Ubhaya linga dual characteristic of the
Highest experience, but in a different sense, even as in Vedanta. Saguna usually
means qualified, but when it is applied to the Highest it means that it is
transcendental qualities that it refers to, not to the empirical sensory,
however subtle and attenuated. As a matter of fact in Indian philosophy since
Buddhi is a material category, experience with its help falls within the
competence of the sensory, and the Self being beyond it, it is impossible to
know it with its help also.
One almost sees that Buddhism when properly
understood showed more clearly than Samkhya the basic impossibility of knowing
the Self by means of the buddhi which is a prakrti’s modification owing to an
unconscious desire to please or be pleased. The lacuna in the Samkhyan system
was but more fully expanded and we find that the two are but variants of the
same impulse to explain reality and one fails to do it being preoccupied with
the practical problem of solving misery and the other entering into the
metaphysical problem of enumerating categories. It is only when we find that
the human mind is incorrigibly trained to search for Reality rather than get
over its grief’s and miseries and would undergo all the trials of sorrow and
suffering and defeat and disgrace for arriving at it that Buddhism had itself
to undergo a modification.
Thus the pure Hinayana underwent a sea change when Mahayana came in. We
find a theogony developing on the lines of the tantras, a fourfold godhead
culminating in the images of the Buddha and the other bodhisattvas. The need
for God was not to be denied, all that has happened is that human persons who
became teachers towards liberation were
apotheosised. It has relevance to the very
psychology of the human consciousness. The personality cult rose in its subtle
form and the impersonal (so called) dharma got a body (dharmakaya) in the
personality of the Buddha. This truth we find gets repeated again and again,
whether it is eastern religion or mysticism. This basic fusion of the
impersonal acts as the superior partner or as the inferior one, that is to say
whether it is conceived that the impersonal bodies itself forth in the
personality of the great teacher or world saviour, or whether the personality
and person of the world saviour or creator ordains the laws which apply to all
phenomena of existence. Laws are impersonal, it is difficult to conceive of
laws without a law giver and therefore person. Science loves the impersonal
law, whereas religion harps back to the person. The mass of people may rejoice
in the uniformity of law and call it justice, but in deep moments of their own
experience they feel the need for the personal relationship, a need for the
experience of reciprocal feeling, which no law can grant. Dharma has to be
exceeded (though some may feel it has to descend) and the dharma-kaya or
Purusa has to be felt and loved and attained
and worshipped.
Thus we find that slowly one sees the transformation of dharma into being
the vehicle of the realisation of the super personal creatorship consciousness,
and one passes beyond the nothingness of the world and self to the eternal
presence of the transcendent Buddha, who is even now brooding over his realm.
Such a culmination of course was not perhaps sought at the beginning nor was it
visualised. Philosophy cannot be escaped. Though it begins with the very limited
practical aim of trying to remove misery through knowledge of the causes of
sorrow, such as desire and selfness etc., it ends up in trying to feel the
general pattern of the reality within which both the bondage and the liberation
are provided for; it entails the explanation of the causes of ignorance and the
causes of liberation and how both these could be engineered and are being
engineered. The possibility of these twin processes, originally called creation
and destruction, sristi and laya (samhara), is in reality and the ascent and
the descent or vice versa have to be explained by thought. That thought which
has been habituated to descent cannot grasp
the logic and law of the ascent is a fact that has to be admitted, even as the
pure logic of ascent cannot but neglect the logic of descent. Thus philosophy
tends to fall apart in its two tendencies, and though both are practical
enough, yet it has become rather a habit of thought to assume that one process
is practical whilst the other is theoretical.
Buddhism started with its conception of truth as that which is practically
verifiable by what it does: a truth claim is justified only be practical
verification. (artha-kriya karitva). This is again and again recurrent in the
theories of truth of Nyaya and Visistadvaita Vedanta; the paratah pramana
(extraneous test) and the Vyavaharanugunatva really owe their truth criterion
to Buddhist practicalness of the test of truth, rather than a purely
observational or so-called logical view of perceptual consistency or
consistency as such, or coherence of the perceived with the already accumulated
knowledge of the whole rather than the whole itself.
The doctrine of vivarta or inversion is
really an extension of the view that adharma – cycle is the opposite of the dharma
cycle and there is the possibility of correspondence even like the original and
its image in the mirror. The mirror analogy is an ancient one but really its
full import has not been clearly visualised. The image (prati-bimba) resembles
the original (bimba) but it can be seen that even perceptually there is lateral
inversion. Thus dharma and adharma are to be known as the original and its
lateral inversion and proceed in opposite directions. Maya is this principle of
recreative disjunction of the image and the original which has the
characteristic of leading one away from reality and to hug the image ultimately
which is a false or unworkable counterpart of the original. The exploitation of
this concept or principle that emerges from the simultaneous contemplation of
the image and the original at the beginning will lead to the turning point in
one’s own attitude to the changing reality and its processes. As a matter of
fact it is one of the basic realisations in philosophy that a theory of
changeable and changing reality will entail finally its abandonment for a
permanent reality albeit subjective. Thus
Buddhism started with the acceptance that all
reality is change, and somehow felt that this is not the ultimate truth since
this changeability of reality produces misery to one and all. Thus another
criterion was introduced and the optimism of attaining a condition or state
which is transcendent to change was accepted: a twofold reality thus emerged.
From this to proceed to deny the reality of the changeable misery producing
reality is a short step. Thus realism ended in entertaining illusionism of what
was previously considered to be real, and idealism resulted. Buddhism passed
through realism and its hinayana phase and entered upon idealism when it took the
subjective Mahayana phase. Man’s need for permanence beyond misery dictated the
‘illusional’ theory. These needs dictated the acceptance of a super reality
beyond all change rather than the logic of the phenomenal. It is here the
axiological principle that the Upanishads stated was accepted by Buddha and
applied with vigour to the problem of human misery. The logical contradictions
were essentially inherent in the whole of reality, and though Buddhism did not
realise it, it was sankara who revealed this essential two foldness of reality
and
showed the possibility of transition from the
one reality (vyavaharika satta) to the other reality (paramarthika satta). The
possibility of living in both types of reality again was shown by his concept
of renounced living (detached existence) which was considered to be fuller than
the ordinary living in the phenomenal though it was less perfect than the
living in the Other and for the Other.
Though the doctrine of Advaita is prominent in the Vedanta of the Upanishads,
it is not at all clear whether there is any theory of adhyasa or illusion. On
the other hand it is through the Buddhist analysis of experience from the
rational standpoint of sensory experience that the illusion theory gets its
sanction and prominence. Its origins are axiological but since every fact of
life craves for a metaphysical foundation as well we find that it grows
metaphysical roots. We are not here concerned with affirming or denying its
rightness as an explanation but that it has occurred – and nothing occurs
without some kind of justification, ethical or aesthetic, if it were not
logical.
Thus Buddhism played a very important role by
developing at first dynamically and positively an axiological ethical concern
for freedom from misery which is real and issues from the nature of the world
which is basically of the form of aggregation and change which never keeps
anything remaining as it is. A more dynamic view would have led to the concept
of growth, which should never have been analysed simply into the mechanical
triple processes of making, preserving and destroying production, growth and
dissolution; nor should the concept of mechanical aggregations and
constructions, skandhas, avayava-avayavi relationship be considered only in the
mechanical manner. Biological processes once having been reduced in this order
which our reason by its very nature does, there was open neither to Buddhism
nor the atomists or the originationists or the other theorists (like the
vaisesikas, carvakas and other potter-god theorists) any other way out. A
theory of change of the phenomenal reality cannot be reconciled with a theory
of permanence of the transcendental reality expect by negational logic. But
that is not the real logic of reality which moves in terms of organic realism
which
reconciles the two in a continuous creativity
and fusion of the two orders of reality; this was inherent in the Upanishads as
Sri Ramanuja showed.
All the sutrakaras of the orthodox schools have been critical of the
buddhistic logics and their extreme belief in the capacity of sensate logic or
the logic of the negative to help establishing the extraordinary non-existence
of the world. The very methodology of Buddhism was to show that no pramana or
source of knowledge can establish reality, therefore reality is not or
existence is not is a daring innovation which has been followed by Nagarjuna
and Sankara and in the west by Bradley recently. Negational logic succeeds
exactly in being negative, it cannot be expected that it would even succeed in
establishing anything positive. How it ever expected to do that is more than
what one can ever believe. But such things happen even in the domains of
philosophy.
That is the reason why it was well known that a new logic which will not
accept the methodology of buddhistic logic was necessary. Sankara’s commendable
attempt to turn the tables proved
unfortunately unsuccessful, and therefore it
was that the other schools of Vedanta had to throw the negative logic overboard
or show its fatal defects.
The necessity to seek a pramana higher than the negative intellectual
sensate logic was shown by them, which alone will rehabilitate the self in its
real integrity; it alone can justify the claims of religious experience and the
need for God. Godliness needs a God, and this is true even as it is in the case
of the impersonal demanding the person as its cause or being. Thus sruti
pramana was shown by all to be the only source of our knowledge of self, God
and of our dharma (Rtam). Ethical life is not real unless it leads to
transcendental life of freedom from misery. Its society or sangha is not the
modern notion of humanity striving for its living in terms of this world of
desires and needs but a humanity which has almost transcended such concerns. However
today we find it is this lower essentials of living here that have to be
provided for and society is said to be the order of life which ensures fair
distribution of life’s needs and comforts for all. Whether this needs a God or
personality is a question that has to be answered by
the modern Buddhist, but it would surely be a
translation rather than an exposition of Buddhism.
II
BUDDHISM ABROAD
Buddhism had a wonderful reception at the beginning. It was a religion of
the common man who has hardly the capacity for deep speculations or
metaphysics. It was a religion with tears in the sense of a long practice of
reading and thinking and believing and doing activity. Yet it was by far the
most epoch making religion of thought or reason. Practical reason dictated the
discernment of the causes of man’s state, his misery. But to know that all is
misery is surely the beginning and this required thinking over all the
instances of one’s life and Buddha’s own experience of the world of fading
youth, failing health, fitful fate and collapse of life were not arguments or
proofs for the existence of evil or misery of the entire world. The misery of
the whole process of man’s life and environment became recognised as one of the
cardinal tenets of maya-vada or illusory theory. The sermon on
the truth reveals the practicality of the
instruction about life’s evanescence and misery. The second doctrine of
compassion really showed not so much what today goes as the service of man as
the realisation of the extraordinary foolishness of men who seek permanent
pleasure in this changing world. The pity of Buddha was not that of one who
felt it as a sentimental feeling of sympathy nor even the dynamics of trying to
relieve this suffering as to find an inward cure for the man in suffering, a
cure which in a sense everybody has to effect by his own reversal of values.
Man must pass from his adharma to his dharma and no one can do it for him
except himself. Buddha however also taught that no one has a right to interfere
with the growth and development or life of any one else. So the call is for
individual effort and individual growth and transcendence of the world.
Buddha’s teaching of awakening reason in each individual to its perception
of the highest beatitude of nirvana was followed up by the ardent work of Asoka
who with his sovereign position was able to carry the message of Buddha to all.
He made Buddha a national
figure and an avatar of Dharma – the true
dharma of liberation and peace.
Moving southward Buddhism got adherents in the south and even occupied the
whole of Lanka or Ceylon. The teachers of this message were purely wedded to
the original writings of the Buddha and were in a sense fundamentalists. They
were called men of the smaller vehicle – Hinayana. Buddhism spread in Ceylon.
Here is pure Buddhism and it is this Buddhism that was the target of criticism
from the vedantins and other systems. That Buddhism did provide a rethinking of
values on the part of the darsanas is a fact of capital importance: ethical life
based on the basic concepts of satya, aparigraha, brahmacarya and ahimsa was
more important and will lead to the emancipation from samsaric cycle than the
worship of the gods and sacrifices. This was a truth that held sway in the
minds of the people of south India. Great thinkers were supplied to Buddhism
from the south such as Dinnaga (of kanci), Dharmakirti (of Tirumalai) and
Nagarjuna, and these thinkers could hardly have influenced the Hinayana. Indeed
we find that these thinkers were most influential in the Mahayana or the
greater vehicle.
It is true however that south India gave to
Japan the leading exponent of the Dhyana school or Zen (in China Chen). The
yoga methodology of Buddhism stems out of the importance of Dhyana for Bodhi,
there can be no Bodhi without dhyana. The most important technique of yoga
namely citta-vrtti nirodha, usually translated as the restraint of mental
modifications is unfortunately a translation that has hardly the sanction of
practice. Indeed many yogis have gone wrong in trying to arrest all thought
processes and ended up in that sleep-samadhi where consciousness was reduced to
a state of exhaustion and this kind of dhyana was most detrimental to the
vision awakening dhyana of the Buddha. Concentration arising out of the
contemplation of the process of the dialectical mind and of the process of the
stream of reality or flux raises the tension of the consciousness to vision of
the true nature of the mind and consciousness itself. Indeed it is then that
one transcends the dualities not by annulling them but by including them in the
totality and perceives the arising and passing of all things. It is not the
concentration on the permanent that leads to the discovery of the nature of
reality but intuition into the change that leads to the
vision of that which is beyond change or
changeless state or nothingness. Nothingness is the very definition of
permanence since all experience is experience of change alone. Dhyana
techniques were devised to liberate consciousness from the permanence and
finally bodhi was seen to have led to the transcendence of the limiting
consciousness. True citta-vrtti-nirodha meant then the liberation of the citta
from the modifications that it undergoes when it pursues the objects of desire
or constructs them. It is a technique of awakening the true nature or
consciousness by reversing its mode of modifying itself and thus turning it
back into its own source or alaya. This alayavijnana of the Yogacara Buddhism
is the most important discovery and contributed to that extraordinary capacity
of the Japanese in their powers of endurance and conquest over the dualities
and concentration of mind. It is that which led to their being even today the
most active minds. Buddhism abroad has precisely led to the improvement of the
mind of other nations, and its positive contribution lay in its leading to
training the mind in perfect flexibility and awareness, whilst by a sad fate in
India the very dhyana cult has been
extinguished thanks to a metaphysical misunderstanding
of the nature of Nirvana or Sunyata. That real apprehension of reality and true
freedom cannot come about unless the mind itself is changed radically in such a
way that it does not enter slothfulness or inertia or sleep at no time is the
one supreme contribution that Japanese Buddhism has done to its own Shinto
religion. Indeed it is precisely to stimulate that true worship of being which
led to interiority of perceptions open to the soul of man in a sense that led
to the transcendence of the private embodied ego. It is to south India that
Japan owed this forward movement. Today all over the world the Zen Buddhist
practices have become common and efficiency in work (yoga is skill technique)
is now sought through it. But it is ultimately to lead to emancipation from the
samsara, this view however is now relegated to the background thanks to the
pressing needs of this world affairs and goods.
China had a long and hoary religion. But this religion too was more or less
for human living. Confucius, Mencius and other thinkers were worshipping the
highest as Tao. This Tao was said to
be the highest that one should realise and
live by in every thing. Chinese religion is the religion of the respectable and
humanistic man. It was not otherworldly nor did it very much speculate on the
Ultimate except in so far as absolutely necessary. It was by and large an
ethical religion of good and decent behaviour in society. However ethical
religion can hardly be satisfactory or satisfying to man as such for problems of
metaphysical import constantly come up. Some explanations of the origin of the
world come up for consideration however much put aside. So too naturalness of
life itself bears the imprint of several kinds of naturalness. Confucius did
discover that enlightened behaviour as basically related to reasonableness or
reason, in the social context. This was and even today one of the attractive
features of Chinese Taoism or Confucianism. Tao ‘is principle of sageness
within and kingliness without’, and is also the method for the attainment of
the sublime and the performance of the common task. Again and again we find
that this supreme principle of Tao is fully to be realised in the ordinary
tasks of life and is not reserved only for the extraordinary works.
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
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