he must have grasped something much deeper than mere dialectics. There must have been something most fundamental and ultimate which at once set all his doubts at rest, not only intellectual doubts but spiritual anguish. Indeed, forty-nine years of his active life after Enlightenment were commentaries on it, and yet they did not exhaust its content; nor did all the later speculations of Nāgārjuna, Aśvaghosha, and Vasubandhu, and Asanga explain it away. In the Laṅkāvatāra therefore the author makes the Buddha confess that since his Enlightenment, till his passing into Nirvana he uttered not a word.[f32]
Therefore, again with all his memory and learning, Ānanda could not sound the bottom of the Buddha’s wisdom, while the latter was still alive. According to tradition, Ānanda’s attainment to Arhatship took place at the time of the First Convocation in which he was not allowed to take part in spite of his twenty-five years’ attendance upon the Buddha. Grieving over the fact, he spent the whole night perambulating in an open square, and when he was about to lay himself down on a couch all exhausted, he all of a sudden came to realise the truth of Buddhism, which with all his knowledge and understanding had escaped him all those years.
What does this mean? Arhatship is evidently not a matter of scholarship; it is something realised in the twinkling of an eye after a long arduous application to the matter. The preparatory course may occupy a long stretch of time, but the crisis breaks out at a point instantaneously, and one is an Arhat, or a Bodhisattva, or even a Buddha. The content of Enlightenment must be quite simple in nature and yet tremendous in effect. That is to say, intellectually, it must transcend all the complications involved in an epistemological exposition of it; and psychologically, it must be the reconstruction of one’s entire personality. Such a fundamental fact naturally evades description, and can be grasped only by an act of intuition and through personal experience. It is really the Dharma in its highest sense. If by “the stirring of one thought” Ignorance came into our life, the awakening of another thought must put a stop to Ignorance and bring about Enlightenment.[f33] And in this there is no thought to be an object of logical consciousness or empirical reasoning; for in Enlightenment thinker and thinking and thought are merged in the one act of seeing into the very being of Self. No further explanation of the Dharma is possible, hence an appeal to via negativa. And this has reached its climax in the Śūnyatā philosophy of Nāgārjuna, which is based upon the teaching of the Prajñāpāramitā literature of Buddhism.
So we see that Enlightenment is not the outcome of an intellectual process in which one idea follows another in sequence finally to terminate in conclusion or judgment. There is neither process nor judgment in Enlightenment, it is something more fundamental, something which makes a judgment possible, and without which no form of judgment can take place. In judgment there are a subject and a predicate; in Enlightenment subject is predicate, and predicate is subject; they are here merged as one, but not as one of which something can be stated, but as one from which arises judgment. We cannot go beyond this absolute oneness; all the intellectual operations stop here; when they endeavour to go further, they draw a circle in which they for ever repeat themselves. This is the wall against which all philosophies have beaten in vain. This is an intellectual terra incognita, in which prevails the principle, “Credo quia absurdum est.” This region of darkness, however, gives up its secrets when attacked by the will, by the force of one’s entire personality. Enlightenment is the illuminating of this dark region, when the whole thing is seen at one glance, and all intellectual inquiries find here their rationale. Hitherto one may have been intellectually convinced of the truth of a certain proposition, but somehow it has not yet entered into his life, the truth still lacks ultimate confirmation, and he cannot help feeling a vague sense of indeterminateness and uneasiness. Enlightenment now comes upon him in a mysterious way without any previous announcement, and all is settled with him, he is an Arhat or even a Buddha. The dragon has got its eyes dotted, and it is no more a lifeless image painted on a canvas, but winds and rains are its willing servants now.
It is quite evident that Enlightenment is not the consciousness of logical perspicuity or analytical completeness, it is something more than an intellectual sense of conclusiveness, there is something in it which engages the entire field of consciousness not only by throwing light on the whole series of links welded for the purpose of solving the problems of life, but by giving a feeling of finality to all the spiritual anguish that has ever been so disquieting to one’s soul. The logical links however accurately adjusted and perfectly wrought together, fail by themselves to be pacifying to the soul in the most thoroughgoing manner. We require something more fundamental or more immediate for the purpose, and I maintain that the mere reviewing of the Fourfold Noble Truth or the Twelvefold Chain of Origination does not result in the attainment of the Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. The Buddha must have experienced something that went far deeper into his inmost consciousness than the mere intellectual grasping of empirical truths. He must have gone beyond the sphere of analytical reasoning. He must have come in touch with that which makes our intellectual operations possible, in fact that which conditions the very existence of our conscious life.
When Śāriputra saw Aśvajit, he noticed how composed the latter was, with all his organs of sense well controlled and how clear and bright the colour of his skin was. Śāriputra could not help asking him who was his teacher and what doctrine he taught. To this Aśvajit replied: “The great Śākyamuni, the Blessed One, is my teacher and his doctrine in substance is this:
“The Buddha hath the cause told
Of all things springing from a cause;
And also how things cease to be—