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Page 1 of 21904 · PDF PAGE 109
102 1903 SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM (Inscribed to the revered Memory of Thomas Henry Huxley.) I. THE purpose of this essay is to draw a strict comparison between the modern scien- tific conceptions of Phenomena and their explanation, where such exis ts, and the ancient ideas of the Buddhists; to show that Buddhism, alike in theory and practice, is a scientific religion; a logical superstructure on a basis of experimentally verifiable truth ; and that its method is identical with that of science. W e m ust resolutely exclude the accidental features of…
1904 · PDF PAGE 126
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 119 and it will go hard with us if we do not !) regard all progress in any direction as morbid. So (as with Lombroso) “disease” will become a m ere word, like its prede- cessor “infidelity,” and cease to carry any obloquy. If Science is never to go bey ond its present lim its; if the barriers which m eta- physical speculation shows to exist are never to be trans cended, then indeed we are thrown back on faith, and all the rest of the nauseous mess of medieval superstition, and we may just as well have vital principle and cr…
1904 · PDF PAGE 125
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 118 I take my refuge in the Sangha. These are not isolated efforts on my part; although in one sense isolation is eternally perfect and can never be overcome, 1 in another s ense as sociates are pos sible and desirable. One third of humanity are Buddhists; add men of Science and we form an absolute majority ; among Buddhists a very large proportion have deliberately gone out from social life of any kind to tread t hese paths of Research. Is the Way very hard? Is the brain tired? The results slow to com e? Others are working…
1904 · PDF PAGE 121
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 114 pendent thought, of keen ecstasy of love of knowledge, of practical training, that the Buddhasanana Samagama 1 appeals; it is time that Buddhism reformed itself from within; though its truths be held untarnished (and even this is not every where the cas e), its methods, its organisation, are sadly in need of repair; research must be done, men must be perfected, error must be fought. And if in the West a great Buddhist society is built up of m en of intellect, of the men in whose hands the future lie s, there is then an …
1904 · PDF PAGE 110
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 103 but here I have nothing to do with what is uncertain.1 There is an excellent tes t for the value of any passage in a Buddhist book. We are, I think, justified in discarding passages which are clearly Oriental fiction, jus t as m odern criticism, however secretly Theistic, discards the Story of Hasisadra or of Noah. In justice to Buddhism, let us not charge its Scripture with the Sisy phean task of seriously upholding the literal interpreta- tion of obviously fantastic passages. 2 May our Buddhist zealots be warned by th…
1904 · PDF PAGE 120
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 113 And this is Agnosticism. We have a scien- tific religion. How far would Newton have got if he had stuck to Ty cho Brahe as the One Guide? How far the Buddha had he reverenced the Vedas with blind faith? Or how far can we proceed even from partial truth, unless a perfectly open mind be kept regarding it, aware that some new pheno- menon may possibly overthrow our most fun- damental hypotheses ! Give me a reasonable proof of some (intelligent) existence which is not liable to sorrow, and I will throw the First Noble Truth…
1904 · PDF PAGE 114
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 107 survives death, what does it m atter to us? Why are we to be so altruistic as to avoid the reincarnation of a being in all points different from ourselves? As the small boy said, “What has posterity done for me?” But som ethin does persist; something changing, though less slowly . What evi- dence have we after all that an anim al does not remember his man-incarnation? Or, as Levi says, “In the suns they remember, and in the planets they forget.” I think it unlikely (may be), but in the total absence of all evidence for …
1904 · PDF PAGE 35
…ion of principal cos- mic theories. Bard check- mates himself. Consciousness and Christi- anity. Dhyana and Hinduism. Sammasa- madhi and Buddhism.
1904 · PDF PAGE 124
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 117 The mind is a machine that reasons; here are its results. Very good; can it do anything else? This is the question not only of the Buddhist; but of the Hindu, of the Mohammedan, of the My stic. All try their various methods; all attain results of sorts; none have had the genuine training which would have enabled them to record those results in an intelligible, orderly form. Others deliberately set their face agains t such an attem pt. I am not of them; humanity has grown up; if the knowledge be dangerous in unexpected w…
1904 · PDF PAGE 119
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 112 this term. And I am convinced in my own mind that the Ananda (bliss) of Dhyana will surely arise long before one has passed even up to Sankhara. And for the reality, ’twill be a brave jest, my masters, to fling back on the materialists that terrible gibe of Voltaire’s at the m ystery- mongers of his day : “Ils nient ce qui est, et expliquent ce qui n’est pas.” NOTE TO SECTION VIII. Transfigured Realism. I will not waste my own time and that of my readers by any lengthy discussion of Mr. Herbert S pencer’s “ Transfigured…
1904 · PDF PAGE 16
…e. And so I scorn the thousand subtle points Wherein a man might find a fulcrum (Ex utero Matris ad sepulcrum, * Vide infra “Science and Buddhism”, and the writings of Immanuel Kant and his successors. 260 265 270 275 280 285 290 295 Basis of poem to be that of the Compro- mise of 1870. Non-medical nature of poem. Crowley J. No mention will be made of the Figs and the Pigs
1904 · PDF PAGE 57
…ted with the crux: that a Buddhist, convinced intellectually and philo- sophically of the truth of the teaching of Gotama; a man to whom Buddhism is the equivalent of scientific methods of Thought; an expert in dialectic whose logical faculty is bewildered, whose critical admiration is ex- torted by the subtle vigour of Buddhist reason- ing; I am yet forced to admit that, this being so, the Five Precepts‡ are mere nonsense. If the Buddha spoke scientifically, not popularly, not rhetorically, then his precepts are not his. We must reject them or…
1904 · PDF PAGE 98
…ion, viz.—that my theory has the merit of explaining the divergences between the three great forms of religion now existing in the world—Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity , and of adapting them to ontological science by conclusions not mystical but mathematical. Of M ohamme- dism I s hall not now treat, as , in whatever light we may decide to regard it (and its esoteric schools are often orthodox), in any case it must fall under one of the three heads of Nihilism, Advaitism, and Dvaitism. Taking the ordinary hy pothesis of the universe, that …
1904 · PDF PAGE 65
THE SWORD OF SONG 58 “Science and Buddhism,” infra, for a full discussion of this point. 518. And.67—Note the correct stress upon this word. Previously, Mr. W. S. Gilbert has done this in his superb lines : “ Except the plot of freehold land That held the cot, and Mary, and—” But his demonstration is vitiated by the bad iambic “and Ma-” ; unless indeed the juxta- position is intentional, as exposing the sophis- tries of our official prosodists. 548. The heathen.68—“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” 580.…
1904 · PDF PAGE 115
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 108 VII. THE RELATIVE REALITY OF CERTAIN STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS Whether we adopt Herbert Spencer’s dictum that the primary testimony of con- sciousness is to the existence of externality, or no;1 whether or no we fly to the extrem e idealistic position; there is no question that, to our normal consciousness, things as they present themselves—apart from obvious illusion, if even we dare to except this—are undisprovable to the immediate apprehen- sion. Whatever our reason may tell us, we act precisely as through Berkeley had…
1904 · PDF PAGE 5
… whether the cloud be the red m ist of Christianity , or the glim - mering silver-white of Celtic Paganism ; the hard grey dim-gilded of Buddhism, the fleecy opacity of Islam, or the my sterious medium of those ancient faiths which com e up in as many colours as their investigator has moods.* * “ In order to get over the ethical difficulties presented by the naïve naturalism of many parts of those Scr iptures, in the divine autho- rity of which he fir mly believed, Philo bor rowed from the Stoics ( who had been in like straits in respect of Gre…
1904 · PDF PAGE 107
…Vedanta system has been suggested to m e on the lines of the Syllogism— God = Being (Patanjali). Being = Nothing (Hegel). God = Nothing (Buddhism). Or, in the language of religion: Every one m ay admit that m onotheism, exalted by the introduction of the ∞ symbol, is equivalent to pantheism. Pantheism and atheism ar e r eally identical, as the opponents of both ar e the first to admit. If this be r eally taught, I m ust tender my apologies, for the r econcilement is of cour se complete.—A.C.
1904 · PDF PAGE 102
…bjected that our 1 Compare and contrast this doctrine with that of Herbert Spencer (“First Principles,” Pt. I.), and see my “Science and Buddhism ” for a full discussion of the difference involved. —A. C. 2 If by “infinitely gr eat” we only mean “indefinitely gr eat,” as a m athematician would perhaps tell us, we of cour se begin at the very point I am aim ing at, viz. , E crasez l’Infini. —A.C.
1904 · PDF PAGE 123
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 116 now bring all his powers with tremendous force to bear upon any one object he may have in view, and this ability so to use the energies of his being to put forth a constant and tremendous effort of the will, marks the attainment of the Sixth Stage, Sammávayamo, usually translated Right Effort, but perhaps Right Will-Power would come nearer to the meaning, or Right Energy , for effort has been m ade even to attain to Sammaditthi.1 And this power being gained by its use he is enabled to concentrate all his thoughts and ho…
1904 · PDF PAGE 111
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 104 shriek of a peripheral anguish. Here we leave the dom ain of fact; but at leas t as far our knowledge extends, all or nearly all the operations of Nature are vanity and vexation of spirit. Consider food, the desire for which periodically arises in all conscious beings.1 The existence of thes e desires, or rather necessities, which I realise to be m ine, is unpleasant. It is this desire inherent in me for continued consciousness that is responsible for it all, and this leads us to the Third Noble Truth. (3) S ORROW’S CEA…