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Page 1 of 21904 · PDF PAGE 110
…CE 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 the fat…
1904 · PDF PAGE 121
…rganisation, 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 awakening, a true redem ption, of the weary and forgetful Empires of the East. X THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH To return from our little digression to the original plan of our essay . It is time to note the “Noble Eightfold Path,” referred to and its consideration deferred, in Sec-tion III. In this Fourth…
1904 · PDF PAGE 57
THE SWORD OF SONG 50 97. While their Buddha I attack.30—Many Buddhists think I fill the bill with the following remarks on— PANSIL. Unwilling as I am to sap the foundations of the Buddhist religion by the introduction of Porphyry’s terrible catapult, Allegory, I am yet compelled by the more fearful ballista of Aristotle, D ilemma. This is the two-handed engine spoken of by the prophet Milton!* This is the horn of the prophet Zeruiah, and with this am I, though no Syrian, utterly pushed, till I find myself back against the dead wall of Dogma. On…
1904 · PDF PAGE 105
…n with the other forces. But by creating in thought an infinite Impersonal Personality, by defining it as such, all religions except the Buddhist and, as I believe, the Qabalistic, have sought to annihilate their own personality . The Buddhist aims directly at extinction; the Hindu denies and abolished his own finity by the creation of an absolute. As this cannot be done in reality , the process is illusory ; y et it is useful in the early s tages—as far, at any rate, as the fourth stage of Dhy ana, where the Buddha places it, though the Yogis …
1904 · PDF PAGE 111
…h. But we must, before we can perceive its possibility on the one hand, or its necessity on the other, form a clear idea of what are the Buddhist tenets with regard to the Cosm os; and, in particular, to man.2 IV. THE THREE CHARACTERISTICS. The Three Characteris tics (which we may predicate of all known existing things: (a) Change. Anikka. (b) Sorrow. Dukkha. (c) Absence of an Ego. Anatta. 1 Change is the great enem y, the im mediate cause of pain. Unable to arrest it, I slo w the process, and render it tem porarily painless, by eating. T his i…
1904 · PDF PAGE 112
…Paramatma, the s oul free; the former being the basis of our normal consciousness; the latter of the Nirvikalpa-Samadhi conscious- 1 The Buddhist position may be interpreted as agnostic in this matter, these ar guments being directed against, and destructive of , the unwarranted assumptions of the Hindus; but no more. See Sabbasava Sutta, 10. “In him , thus unwisely consider ing, ther e springs up one or other of the six (absurd) notions. “As something real and true he gets the notion, ‘I have a self.’ “As something real and true he gets the no…
1904 · PDF PAGE 109
…parison 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 both, es pecially of Buddhism; and unfortunately in both cases we have to deal with dishonest and shame- less attempts to foist on either o…
1904 · PDF PAGE 124
…M 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 way s, what of bacte…
1904 · PDF PAGE 21
…m- borne. Fearful aspect of John iii. 16. Universalism. Will God get the bara* slam ? Eternal life. Divergent views of its desirability. Buddhist idea. Dogma of Belief. 460 465 470 475 480 485 490 495
1904 · PDF PAGE 122
…of any immortal principle or Atma—such a one is said to be Sam maditthi, to hold right views, and the term has com e to m ean one of the Buddhist Faith. We may not have taken the other and higher steps on the Noble Eightfold Path; but must have rea- lised those Four Truths and their sequential three Characteristics. He who has attained Sammaditthi has at least entered upon the Holy W ay, and, if he but try, there will come to him the power to overcome the other fetters that restri ct his progress. But first of all he must abandon all those fals…
1904 · PDF PAGE 104
…n inconceiv- able idea. H. Spencer, op. cit. T his con- sideration alone should add gr eat weight to the agnostic, and à fortiori to the Buddhist, position. 2 See H. Spencer, “ First Principles,” “ The Knowable,” for a fair summary of the facts under- lying this gener alisation; which indeed he comes within an ace of making in so many words. It may be observed that this law is nearly if not quite axiomatic, its contr ary being enor mously difficult if not impossible to formulate mentally. As to an infinite intelligence, all philo- sophers of an…
1904 · PDF PAGE 118
…the final form. And I suppose no psy chologist of any standing will quarrel with this.1 Reasoning in fact leads us to this analysis; the Buddhist goes further only in so far as h e may be said to knock down the scaffolding of reasoning processes, and to assimilate t he actual truth of the matter. It is the difference between the schoolboy who painfully construes “Balbus murum ædi- ficavit,” and the Roman who announces that historic fact without a thought of his grammer. I have called this m editation the most famous of the Buddhist meditations,…
1904 · PDF PAGE 65
…en whose brains Are made of smut and shoddy), I’ll stop it if I can. (Ah Jesus, if Thou couldest !) I’ll go to Martaban To make myself a Buddhist. V. And yet : the bigger chance Lies with annihilation. Follow the lead of France, Freedom’s enlightened nation ! Off ! sacredotal stealth Of faith and fraud and gnosis ! Come, drink me : Here’s thy health, Arterio-sclerosis !* Let me die in a ditch, Damnably drunk, Or lipping a punk, Or in bed with a bitch ! I was ever a hog ; Muck ? I am one with it ! Let me die like a dog ; Die, and be done with it…
1904 · PDF PAGE 79
… us on the phy sical plane. W e must transcend it.’ No sooner said than done : 1 “O the Jewel in the Lotus! Aum!” The most famous of the Buddhist formularies. 2 The Burmese name for an elemental spirit.
1904 · PDF PAGE 94
…ained his tongue : he fixed 1 Achad, unity, adds to thirteen. Ther e follow attributions of the “ thirteen times table.” 2 These are the Buddhist “paths of enlightment.” 3 The eightfold path. The rest is very obscure. Somnium Auri Potabilis. Tredecim Voces. Ordinis In- ceptio. Vitae. Viae.
1904 · PDF PAGE 83
…al the lower elements and dwell in this alone. 2 Here is the little rift within the lute which alienated Crowley f rom a ctive w ork o n Buddhist lines; the orthodox failing to see his attitude. 3 A more likely idea that the brilliantly logical nonsense of “Pansil,” supra.
1904 · PDF PAGE 106
…t as 0 0 and finity are phas es of an iden-tical expression, and I have an even chance only of being on the right side of the fence! The Buddhist leaves no chances of this kind; in all his categories he is infinitely unextended; though the categories t hemselves exist; he is in fact 0A+B+C+D+E+ +N and capable of no conceivable change, unless w e imagine Nirvana to b e i ncomprehensibly divided by Nirvana, w hich w ould (supposing the two Nirvanas to pos sess identical cate-g ories) result in the production of the o riginal 00. But a further cha…
1904 · PDF PAGE 120
…hich Science, t he child, was deformed, distorted, stunted, in the interest of the contrary proposition? If you ask me why you should be Buddhists and not indifferentists, as y ou are now, I tell you that I come, however unworthy , to take up the sword that Huxley wielded; I tell you that the Oppressor of Science in her girlhood is already at work to ravish her virginity; that a m oment’s hesitation, idle- ness, security may force us back from the positions so hardly won. Are we never to go forward, moreover ? Are our children still to be taugh…
1904 · PDF PAGE 117
…t to dis cuss.1 I shall, however, suggest certain ideas in the follow- ing section, in which I propose to discuss the most famous of the Buddhist medita- tions (Mahasatipatthana, its method, object, and results. VIII. MAHASATIPATTHANA. This meditation differs fundamentally from the usual Hindu methods by the fact that the m ind is not restrained to the contemplation of a single object, and there is no interference with the natural functions of the body as there is, e.g., in P ranayama. It is essentially an observation-practice, which later assu…
1904 · PDF PAGE 71
… of us. The bulk of these poems w as w ritten w hen I was an A dvaitist, incredible as the retrospect now appears. My revision has borne Buddhist fruits, but some of the Advaita blossom is left. Look, for example, at the dreadfully Papistical tendency of my celebrated essay : AFTER AGNOSTICISM Allow me to introduce myself as the original Irishman whose first question on landing at New Yor k was, “I s t here a Gover nment in this country? ” and on being told “Yes,” instantly replied, “Then I’m agin it. ” For after some years of consistent Agnost…