Eternal India Encyclopedia

Eternal India encyclopedia

PHILOSOPHY

But while retaining the notion of Karma, Buddhism shifted the emphasis from the action or the act to its motivation. Accordingly Karma has been defined in Buddhism as cetana or volition. A person cannot be held morally or legally responsible for any action if it is not intentional. The factor that determines the individual's future life and its quality cannot be sought in the act itself but lies in its motivation. The process of rebirth can only be stopped by achieving Nirvana, first by adopting right views about the nature of existence, then by a carefully controlled system of moral conduct, meditative concen- tration and finally by insight. Nirvana literally means " blowing out" as of a lamp or flame. In Nirvana all individual personality or ego ceases to exist and there is nothing to be reborn. According to Buddhism, there are gods, many gods, who are more evolved than the human beings. What Buddhism denies is the God with a capital G., the creator of universe and according to whose wishes everything happens in this world. Buddha forbade all specu- lation regarding the nature of the unknowable holding that the ultimate question could not be grasped by the human mind although all would be understood when the state of Nirvana was reached. A hundred years after the Buddha's death, at the second general council held at Vaishali, there arose a schism with the order breaking into two sections: the orthodox Theravadins ( Sthaviravadins ) or "Believers in the Teaching of the Elders" and the Mahasanghikas or "Members of the Great Community" The Theravada school admits the human character of the Bud- dha though he is recognised as having certain superhuman qualities. In the 1 st century AD another sect, the Sarvastivadins, developed. Like the Sthaviravadins, the Sarvastivadins were the realists among the Buddhists. They derided the transcendent power ascribed to the Buddha by the Mahasanghikas. The Sarvastivadins revolted against the dominance of Arhants - perfected beings for whom there was no rebirth, who already enjoyed Nirvana and who would finally enter that state after death - who had attained a position of unsurpassed eminence among the Sthaviravadins. They maintained that an Arhant was subject to fall or retrogressions. The Mahasanghikas were the forerunners of the Mahayana school which took shape around the first century A.D. It styled itself Mahayana, the Great Vehicle (to salvation) as opposed to the older Buddhism which it contemptuously referred to as Hinayana or the Lesser Vehicle. The replacement of the ideal of the Arhant by that of the Bodhi- sattva is the basic difference between the Mahayana and the older cects. Boddhisattva, literally meaning "Being of wisdom" was first used to describe the previous births of the Buddha as a Bodhisattva, a being destined to become a Buddha. The Buddha performed many deeds of compassion and mercy in his long series of previous births. In the Mahayana school the Bodhisattva is a being who would wait and postpone his Buddhahood till even the smallest insect had attained liberation. There are said to have been a number of Buddhas in earlier ages, before Gautama. (This is why the Chinese and Japanese refer to Gautama Buddha as Sakyamuni Buddha to differ- entiate him from the other Buddhas). Gautama is said to have prophe- sied the coming of Maitreya, the future Buddha. The old ideal of tjhe Arhant who achieved Nirvana without bothering about others be- gan to be looked on as rather selfish. According to the Theravadins a man can help another on the way by example and advice. Each being must work out his own salvation.

The Jains played a very important role in the linguistic develop- ment of India. While Sanskrit was the medium of the sacred writings and preachings of the Brahmans and Pali that of the Buddhists, the Jains utilised Apabhramsha, Prakrit or Ardha-Magadhi and the regional languages for their religious propaganda as well as for the preservation of knowledge. In Western India the Jains produced lit- erature in Apabhramsa which forms the link between Sanskrit and Prakrit, on the one hand and the modern regional languages, Hindi, Gujarati and the others. The earliest and major part of literature in Kannada is of Jain authorship and the early Tamil literature also owes much to Jain writers. (PJ.T.) BUDDHISM The fundamental teaching of Buddhism is contained in the "Ser- mon of the Turning of the Wheel of Law" (Dhammacakkapavattana sutta) which the Buddha preached to his first five disciples at Samath. This contains the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path which are accepted as basic by all Buddhist sects. The fundamental truths of Buddhism are ethical, psychological and philosophical. The Four Noble Truths are 1) That all forms of existence whatsoever are unsatisfactory and subject to suffering. 2) That all suffering, and all rebirth is produced by craving. 3) That extinction of craving necessarily results in extinction of rebirth and suffering. 4) That the eightfold path indicates the means by which this extinction is attained. The Noble Eightfold Path which leads to the stopping of suffer- ing is — Right Views, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Meditative Concentration, the combination of which was described as the Middle Way between ascetism and wordly life. The universe has three salient characteristics: it is full of suffering ( dukkha ), it is transient ( anicca ) and it is soulless ( anatta ).. Thus there is no immortal soul, even the gods are soulless and the concept of World Soul of the Upanishads is an illusion. Though there is no permanent soul, Buddhism propounds the doctrine of rebirth. Rebirth takes place according to the doctrine of Karma . Critics of Buddhism propounds the doctrine of rebirth who argued that there could be no rebirth if there was no soul and no transmigration were countered by the analogy of the flame of a lamp which might kindle a flame in another lamp and then be extinguished. The Upanishadic teachers who postulated an immortal soul ( at- man) in every being and taught that all these souls were identical with one another as well as with the world soul ( Brahman ) were contra- dicted by the Buddha who declared that there was no immortal soul which survived the body nor a world soul with which it was one. If there is no soul that transmigrates from one life to another how is continuity maintained? The cycle of worldly life is explained by the Law or Chain of Dependent Orgination ( Pattica-Samuppada ). The Buddha explained how rebirth takes place without a soul. It is not so much the deeds as the intentions that condition the next existence. The intentions, whether good or bad, affect consciousness which brings about in a womb the development of a new embryo without, however, transmigrating into it. When the monk Sati expressed the view that consciousness continued throughout transmigration like a kind of soul he was sharply rebuked by the Buddha.