Essays in Zen Buddhism · 19 of 66
Enlightenment and Ignorance, Part 3
Therefore, it betrays an utter ignorance on the part of Buddhist scholars when they relegate Ignorance to the past in trying to explain the rationale of the Twelvefold Chain of Causation (paṭicca-samuppāda) from the temporal point of view. According to them, the first two factors (angāni) of the Paṭicca-samuppāda belong to the past while the following eight belong to the present and the last two to the future. Ignorance from which starts the series of the Nidānas has no time-limits, for it is not of time, but of the will, as is enlightenment. When time-conception enters, enlightenment which is negatively the dispelling of Ignorance loses all its character of finality, and we begin to look around for something going beyond it. The Fetters would ever be tightening around us, and the Defilements would be our eternal condition. No gods would sing of the Awakened One as “a lotus unsoiled by the dust of passion, sprung from the lake of knowledge; a sun that destroys the darkness of delusion; a moon that takes away the scorching heat of the inherent sins of existence.” If Enlightenment made the whole universe tremble in six different ways as is recorded in the Sutras, Ignorance over which it finally prevailed must have as much power, though diametrically opposed to it in value and virtue, as Enlightenment. To take Ignorance for an intellectual term and then to interpret it in terms of time-relation, altogether destroys its fundamental character as the first in the series of the Twelve Nidānas. The extraordinary power wielded by the Buddha over his contemporaries as well as posterity was not entirely due to his wonderful analytical acumen though we have to admit this in him; it was essentially due to his spiritual greatness and profound personality, which came from his will-power penetrating down into the very basis of creation. The vanquishing of Ignorance was an exhibition of this power which therefore was invincible and against which Mara with all his hosts was utterly powerless either to overwhelm or to entice. The failure to see into the true meaning of Ignorance in the system of the Paṭicca-samuppāda or in the Ariya-sacca will end unavoidably in misconstruing the essential nature of Enlightenment and consequently of Buddhism.
In the beginning which is really no beginning and which has no spiritual meaning except in our finite life, the will wants to know itself, and consciousness is awakened, and with the awakening of consciousness the will is split into two. The one will, whole and complete in itself, is now at once actor and observer. Conflict is inevitable; for the actor now wants to be free from the limitations under which he has been obliged to put himself in his desire for consciousness. He has in one sense been enabled to see, but at the same time there is something which he as observer cannot see. In the trail of knowledge, Ignorance follows with the inevitability of fate, the one accompanies the other as shadow accompanies object, no separation can be effected between the two companions. But the will as actor is bent on going back to his own original abode where there was yet no dualism, and therefore peace prevailed. This longing for the home, however, cannot be satisfied without a long hard trying experience. For the thing, once divided into two, cannot be restored to its former unity until some struggle is gone through with. And the restoration is more than a mere going back, the original content is enriched by the division, struggle, and re-settlement.
When first the division takes place in the will, consciousness is so enamoured of its novelty and its apparent efficiency in solving the practical problems of life that it forgets its own mission which is to enlighten the will. Instead of turning its illuminating rays within itself, that is, towards the will from which it has its principle of existence, consciousness is kept busy with the objective world of realities and ideas; and when it tries to look into itself, there is a world of absolute unity where the object of which it wishes to know is the subject itself. The sword cannot cut itself. The darkness of Ignorance cannot be dispelled because it is its own self. At this point the will has to make a heroic effort to enlighten itself, to redeem itself, without destroying the once-awakened consciousness or rather by working out the principle lying at the basis of consciousness. This was accomplished as we see in the case of the Buddha, and he became more than mere Gautama, he was the Awakened One and the Exalted and supremely Enlightened. In willing there is really something more than mere willing, there is thinking and seeing. By this seeing, the will sees itself and is thereby made free and its own master. This is knowing in the most fundamental sense of the term and herein consists the Buddhist redemption.
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Ignorance prevails as long as the will remains cheated by its own offspring or its own image, consciousness, in which the knower always stands distinguished from the known. The cheating, however, cannot last, the will wishes to be enlightened, to be free, to be by itself. Ignorance always presupposes the existence of something outside and unknown. This unknown outsider is generally termed ego or soul, which is in reality the will itself in the state of Ignorance. Therefore, when the Buddha experienced Enlightenment, he at once realised that there was no Atman, no soul-entity as an unknown and unknowable quantity. Enlightenment dispelled Ignorance and with it all the bogies conjured up from the dark cave of ego disappeared. Ignorance in its general use is opposed to knowledge, but from the Buddhist point of view in which it stands contrasted to Enlightenment, it means the ego (ātman), which is so emphatically denied by the Buddha. This is not to be wondered at, seeing that the Buddha’s teaching centred in the doctrine of Enlightenment, the dispelling of Ignorance.
Those who only see the doctrine of non-atman in Buddhism and fail to inquire into the meaning of Enlightenment are incapable of appreciating the full significance of the Buddha’s message to the world. If he simply denied the existence of an ego-entity from the psychological point of view after reducing it into its component factors, scientifically he may be called great as his analytical faculties stood far above those of his contemporaries in this respect; but his influence as a spiritual leader would not have reached so far and endured so long. His theory of non-atman was not only established by a modern scientific method, but essentially was the outcome of his inner experience. When Ignorance is understood in the deeper sense, its dispelling unavoidably results in the negation of an ego-entity as the basis of all our life-activities. Enlightenment is a positive conception, and for ordinary minds it is quite hard to comprehend it in its true bearings. But when we know what it means in the general system of Buddhism, and concentrate our efforts in the realisation of it, all the rest will take care of themselves, such as the notion of Ego, attachment to it, Ignorance, Fetters, Defilements, etc. Moral Conduct, Contemplation, and Higher Understanding—all these are meant to bring about the desired end of Buddhism, that is, Enlightenment. The Buddha’s constant reiteration of the theory of causation, telling his disciples how when this is cause that is effect and how when cause disappears, effect also disappears, is not primarily to get them acquainted with a kind of formal logic, but to let them see how Enlightenment is causally related to all human happiness and spiritual freedom and tranquillity.
As long as Ignorance is understood as logical inability to know, its disappearance can never bring out the spiritual freedom to which even the earliest known literature of Buddhism makes so frequent and so emphatic allusions. See how the Arhat’s declaration of spiritual independence reads in the Nikayas: “There arose in me insight, the emancipation of my heart became unshakeable, this is my last birth, there is now no rebirth for me.” This is quite a strong statement showing how intensely and convincingly one has seized the central facts of life. The passage is indeed one of the characterisations of Arhatship, and when a fuller delineation of it is made, we have something like the following: “To him, thus knowing, thus seeing, the heart is set free from the defilement of lust, is set free from the defilement of becoming, is set free from the defilement of Ignorance. In him, thus set free, there arises the knowledge of his emancipation, and he knows that rebirth has been destroyed, that the Higher Life has been fulfilled, that what had to be done has been accomplished, and after this present life there will be no beyond.” In essence the Arhat is the Buddha and even the Tathagata, and in the beginning of the history of Buddhism the distinction between these terms did not seem quite sharply marked. Thus to a great extent they may be qualified in the same terms.
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When the Buddha was talking with his disciples concerning various speculations prevalent in his days, he made the following remarks about the knowledge of things in command by the Tathagata:
“That does he know, and he knows also other things far beyond, far better than those speculations; and having that knowledge he is not puffed up; and thus untarnished he has, in his own heart, realised the way of escape from them, has understood, as really they are, the rising up and passing away of sensations, their sweet taste, their danger, how they cannot be relied on, and not grasping after any of those things men are eager for, he the Tathagata is quite set free. These are those other things, profound, difficult to realise, and hard to understand, tranquillising, sweet, not to be grasped by logic, subtle, comprehensible only by the wise, which the Tathagata, having himself realised and seen face to face, hath set forth; and it is concerning these that they who would rightly praise the Tathagata in accordance with the truth, should speak.”
These virtues for which the Tathagata was to be praised were manifestly not derived from speculation and analytical reasoning. His intellectual sight was just as keen and far-reaching as any of his contemporaries, but he was endowed with a higher faculty, will-power, which was exercised to its fullest capacity in order to bring about all these virtues which belonged to the entire being of Tathagatahood. And naturally there was no need for him to face these metaphysical problems that agitated the philosophers of his days; they were solved in him, when he attained his spiritual freedom and serenity, in their entirety, in their synthetic aspect, and not partially or fragmentarily—which should be the case if they were presented to the Buddha’s cognition as philosophical problems. In this light is to be read the Mahāli Sutta. Some scholars wonder why two entirely disconnected ideas are treated together in one body of the Sutra, which however shows scholarly ignorance in regard to matters spiritual, as they fail to notice the true import of Enlightenment in the system of Buddhist faith. To understand this, we need imaginative intuition directly penetrating the centre of life, and not always do mere literary and philological talents succeed in unravelling its secrets.
The Mahāli Sutta is a Pali Sutra in the Dīgha-Nikāya, in which Mahāli asks the Buddha as to the object of the religious life practised by his disciples, and the following is the gist of his answer: The Buddhists do not practise self-concentration in order to acquire any miraculous power such as hearing heavenly sounds or seeing heavenly sights. There are things higher and sweeter than that, one of which is the complete destruction of the Three Bonds (delusion of self, doubt, and trust in the efficacy of good works and ceremonies) and the attainment of such a state of mind as to lead to the insight of the higher things in one’s spiritual life. When this insight is gained the heart grows serene, is released from the taint of Ignorance, and there arises the knowledge of emancipation. Such questions as are asked by you, O Mahāli, regarding the identity of body and soul, are idle ones; for when you attain to the supreme insight and see things as they really are in themselves, that is, emancipated from the Bonds, Taints, and Deadly Flows, those questions that are bothering you at the moment will completely lose their value and no more be asked in the way you do. Hence no need of my answering your questions.
This dialogue between the Buddha and Mahāli well illustrates the relation between Enlightenment and the problem of the soul. There is no need of wondering why the Buddha did not definitely solve the ever-recurring question instead of ignoring it in the manner as he did and talking about something apparently in no connection with the point at issue. This is one of the instances by which we must try to see into the meaning of Ignorance.