Eternal India Encyclopedia

Eternal India

encyclopedia

PHILOSOPHY

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

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

That all forms of existence whatsoever are unsatisfactory and

subject to suffering.

That all suffering, and all rebirth is produced by craving.

That extinction of craving necessarily results in extinction of

rebirth and suffering.

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.

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

"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

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.