HPB-SB-14-45

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

T i

vol. 14, p. 45	volume 14, page 45 vol. title: vol. period: 1882 pages in vol.: 174
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eng • рус

November 11, 1882.]

LIGHT.

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< On Some Theosophic Doctrines. III. “Buddhism.” (continued from page 14-41) >

ON SOME THEOSOPHIC DOCTRINES.

“Buddhism.”

By the Hon. Roden Noel. (Continued from page 492.)

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III.

It should be distinctly understood that Buddhism (and the editors of the Theosophist are Buddhists) not only refuses to recognise that human individuality, upon which I have insisted as a great central truth, but expressly regards such recognition as a deadly heresy, as the illusion of illusions, one of the four Upadanas, which are the cause of birth, decay, death, sorrow, pain, and despair. Two well-known words, Mr. Rhys-Davids tells us, have been invented to stigmatise it. In the Brahmajala Sutta, Gautama, after shewing how the unfounded belief in the eternal existence of God arose, goes on to refute the heresy of the Brahmans concerning the eternal existence of the soul. He teaches that the soul will have neither a conscious, nor an unconscious existence after death—will have none at all. Man consists, on the contrary, of five skandhas, or aggregates, material qualities, sensations, abstract ideas, tendencies of mind, and mental powers. Now, here we have again what I may term the sand-grains-in-one-bag, or loose-beads-on-one-string psychology, against which, as I have endeavoured to shew, all introspective consciousness implacably declares itself. If the sense of individuality be an illusion, and a deadly heresy, it is, at all events, a heresy and illusion which stands at the very foundation of all possible self-consistent, and reasonable philosophy—nay, of any thought and experience whatsoever—a postulate pre-supposed even in the very verbal denial of its reality. No doubt we have had the same sort of suicidal pseudo-philosophy in Europe. Hume and the French Materialists are parents of it with us, and following them came Comte, Mill, and the physiological scientists of to-day. But, assimilating the great thinkers of Germany, our best and latest English thinkers have entirely repudiated such doctrine. I need cite only Stirling, Green, Caird, Wallace, and Hinton.

I will, however, briefly state why I am unable to receive this Buddhist teaching that a man is not an individual, an Ego, a person, a self, but consists of five skandhas, or aggregates, with interminable subdivisions. (1) This is not a logical, philosophical analysis at all, as anyone who takes the trouble to examine the enumeration of the skandhas and their subdivisions may decide at once. For even the five principles overlap, include, and repeat one another, and far more is this true of their details; it is a higgledy-piggledy collection, a catalogue made apparently at random, without guiding principle. (2) And were this otherwise, the principles are not rightly named aggregates, because, since they involve one another in their very essence and idea, they cannot exist apart, and therefore they can neither be aggregated, collected together, nor divorced. Thus the material properties (including space and time) are placed side by side with sensations and abstract ideas, though out of sensations and abstract ideas the former can have no existence. Again, abstract ideas and sensations can only be logically, but not actually, severed from tendencies of mind, and mental powers. (3) The qualities are wrongly pigeon-holed—thus thought is called a material property, though it is also called a tendency, pertaining to No. 4, and classed by itself a third time as Skandha No. 5. It is distinctly laid down in the Pitakas that all the skandhas are functions of the living body, produced by contact with external objects; that as the body is ever changing, man changes with it; and that, when the body disintegrates, the man disintegrates also. Now I have already shewn what indeed (to the shallow Western mind) needs little shewing, that thought, sensation, the sense of self, are so little functions of the living body, that the living body and the external world are, on the contrary, their products, their resultant. (4) But here we have another glaring inconsistency; for we are expressly taught (see “Isis Unveiled,” for instance) that Upadana, grasping trishna, thirst, produce not only Karma, but will, and that will develops force, while the latter generates matter, or an object having form. That will generates (apparent) force and matter I also believe; but then how reconcile this statement with the doctrine that, contrariwise, will, desire, and thought are the products of vital force, organism, and the external world? Can anything act before it is? (5) Individuality is placed under Skandha 4. Though we were assured that this “illusion of illusions” and “deadly heresy” was the curious result of the aggregation of four principles, and that it was not one of them, yet here it appears as one of them, or rather as part of one of them.

In the Milinda Prashnaya (a Sinhalese translation of a very ancient Pali work), that there may be no possible mistake as to the real meaning of Buddhist doctrine on the head of selfhood or personality, we have the following illustration used and ascribed to Buddha himself:—

“As the various parts of a chariot form, when united, the chariot, so the five skandhas, when united in one body, form a being, a living existence.”

Between the illustrations of a chariot, and a pudding-stone there is not, perhaps, much to choose, except for beauty. In both cases, at least, the parts are mechanically juxtaposed; and of such heterogeneous parts, we are assured, is a man made up! The Western mind dissents. When I perceive I also judge, and remember; when I remember I recall my judgment and perception; when I reason my perception, memory, and judgment are involved; when I love that is also true; when I act from a sense of duty it is equally true; when I imagine, and when I desire or will, my other faculties likewise are in exercise; if I ever attain to insight, to perfect knowledge, it can only be when the very essence and substance of all my faculties shall be perfectly fused, and raised to their own highest power, being now lame and mutilated, and not themselves, just in so far as they are mutually separated in their action*: and then how can thought, love, will, imagination, be “united in one (physical) body”? Why, they all go roaming over the illimitable universe! They are infinite. As to Karma, I would observe, though I will speak further about it presently, that, while it does not really provide a future life for the individual, it might be popularly supposed to do so, and therefore involves a rather mischievous equivoke, has an ambiguous signification. Hence we find Buddhists speaking and thinking as if Karma did provide a personal future for each, which certainly it does not.†

But, as I have argued, I fear ad nauseam, individuality is, in fact, pre-supposed in all these skandhas, and their constituent details, to constitute, and give them reality. And therefore the sense of it cannot be an illusion generated by their aggregation, since without it they would not exist to be aggregated. Without willer, feeler, thinker, there is none of them possible.

Hence all this is to us utterly unphilosophical. I do not, of course, deny that there is embryonic consciousness in the case of our own infancy, in the case of the inferior animals, possibly in plants, and in some “elementals”; but to my mind it appears that, since even the very simplest conceivable sensation involves discriminated feeling, there is necessarily behind it an implicit, though not necessarily an explicit Ego, [which is not known explicitly save as correlate of a non-Ego, or resisting Power]; there is necessarily a comparing, contrasting, judging, conscious unit, which is the germ of self; but the Self into which this will ultimately develope is necessarily in being to form the germinating self according to its own idea. According to Hinton, the organic is a limitation of the inorganic; the latter being the most truly vital and spiritual. But Hinton is not indubitably right in this contention, because there may be other species of the organic, of which occult lore may inform us, even in the apparently inorganic world. If, however, there be embryonic consciousness, as I admit, I also allow that there is a universal consciousness, wherein the self becomes as implicit as it was in the embryonic. Still it must always be there as the principle of individualizing, or personal, discrimination, without which there is neither consciousness, nor action, nor love possible.

Therefore, to the pretensions of Eastern philosophy to exclusive knowledge, and philosophical acumen in these lofty regions of metaphysics I cannot assent. We are told by Mr. Sinnet that “Isis Unveiled” is the work rather of the Himalayan Brothers than of Madame Blavatsky, who was chiefly the organ of their inspiration. Now, if that be so, though “Isis” is undoubtedly a very remarkable book, for reasons given in these articles, and for others, I should conclude that the Brothers were certainly not the equals in metaphysical acumen of some of our Western thinkers, for instance of Plato, Aristotle, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Berkeley, Behmen, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, or James Hinton. But it is evidently the fact that their Hindu votaries regard them with no less veneration than we are accustomed to pay to <... continues on page 14-46 >

* We shall have the carbon still, but in the form of diamond.

† And among all these re-incarnations, with no memory of each other, even before you go out altogether, what provision is there for the fulfilment of love, for meeting again the beloved, who are a very integral part of ourselves? But perhaps that may be deemed a frivolous question, far beneath the dignity of occult philosophy, and only worthy of some poor benighted Spiritualist. Christ’s teaching is less pretentious and detailed, but it is more satisfying, and Divinely-Human.

Sources

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  Light, v. 2, No. 97, November 11, 1882, pp. 503-504