FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
34 matching pages
Page 1 of 21904 · 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 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 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 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 72
… this respect. Professor Ray Lankester, in crushing the unhappy theists of the recent Times contro- versy, does not hesitate to say that Science can never throw any light on certain mysteries. Even the theist is j ustified in retorting that Science, if this be so, may as w ell be dis- carded ; for these are problems which must ever intrude upon the human mind—upon the mind of the scientist most of all. To dismiss them by an act of w ill is at once heroic and puerile : courage is as necessary to progress as any quality that w e possess ; and as …
1904 · PDF PAGE 16
…tial attitude. 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 75
…o surgeons Go mad and cut up men like sturgeons ? (The questions are the late Chas. Spur- geon’s.) Of yogi I could quote you hundreds In science, law, art, commerce noted. They fear no lunacy : their on dread’s Not for their noddles doom-devoted. They are not like black bulls (that shunned reds In vain) that madly charge the goathead Of rural Pan, because some gay puss Had smeared with blood his stone Priapus. They are as sane as politicians And people who subscribe to missions. This says but little ; a long way are Yogi more sane that such as …
1904 · PDF PAGE 21
…by guarantee to pull A faith as quaint and beautiful As much attractive to an ass, And setting reason at defiance, As Zionism, Christian Science, Or Ladies’ Leage,65 “Keep off the Grass !” From “Alice through the Looking-Glass.” Hence I account no promise worse, Fail to conceive a fiercer curse Than John’s third chapter (sixteenth verse). But now (you say) broad-minded folk Think that those words the Master spoke Should save all men at last. But mind ! The text says nothing of the kind ! Read the next verses !† Then—one third Of all humanity ar…
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…
1904 · PDF PAGE 118
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 111 Psychology,” ii. 404). The breathing, m otions of walking, &c., are merely observed and recording; for instance, one may sit down quietly and say : “There is an indrawing of the breath.” “There is an expiration,” &c. Or, walking, “There is a raising of the right foot,” and so on, just as it happens. The thought is of course not quick enough to note all the movements or their subtle causes. For example, we cannot describe the c ompli- cated muscular contractions, &c. ; but this is not necessary. Concentrate on some serie…
1904 · PDF PAGE 73
…r results are contemptible, w e must admit ; but only so because empirical. An unwarranted reverence has overlaid the watchfulness which science would have enjoined, and the result is muck and misery, the wreck of a noble study. But what is the one fact on which all agree? The one fact whose knowledge has been since reliigon began the all-sufficient passport to their doubtfully-desirable company? This: that “I see a cat” is not only an unwarrantable assumption but a lie ; that the duality of consciousness ceases suddenly, once the rate of chang…
1904 · PDF PAGE 98
…en 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 of its infinity , or at any rate that of the infinity of God, or of the in…
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 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 94
… ; and on this wise cometh it to pass, O my Brethren, that by darkness and by sunlight y e will still learn ever these the Arcana of our Science. Lo ! who learneth by moonlight, he is the lucky one ! So our Father, having thus founded the Order, and our sacred Book being opened, rested awhile and beheld ma ny wonders, the like of which were never yet told. But ever chiefly his study was to reduce unto eight things his many. And thus , O Brethren of our Venerable Order, he at last succeeded. Those who know not will learn little herein: y et that…
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 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 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 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…