[f47] For this and the following, see the Essay entitled, “History of Zen Buddhism from Bodhi-Dharma to Hui-nêng,” p. [151] ff.
[f48] The story of Enlightenment is told in the Dīgha-Nikāya, XIV., and also in the Introduction to the Jātaka Tales, in the Mahāvastu, and the Majjhima-Nikāya, XXVI. and XXXVI., and again in the Samyutta-Nikāya, XII. In detail they vary more or less, but not materially. The Chinese translation of the Sutra on the Cause and Effect in the Past and Present, which seems to be a later version than the Pali Mahāpadāna, gives a somewhat different story, but as far as my point of argument is concerned, the main issue remains practically the same. Aśvaghosha’s Buddhacarita is highly poetical. The Lalita-vistara belongs to the Mahayana. In this Essay I have tried to take my material chiefly from The Dialogues of the Buddha, translated by Rhys Davids, The Kindred Sayings, translated by Mrs. Rhys Davids, Majjhima-Nikāya, translated by Sīlācāra, and the same by Neumann, the Chinese Āgamas and others.
[f49] The idea that there were some more Buddhas in the past seems to have originated very early in the history of Buddhism as we may notice here, and its further development, combined with the idea of the Jātaka, finally culminated in the conception of a Bodhisattva, which is one of the characteristic features of Mahayana Buddhism.
The six Buddhas of the past later increased into twenty-three or twenty-four in the Buddha-vamsa and Prajñā-pāramitā and even into forty-two in the Lalita-vistara. This idea of having predecessors or forerunners seems to have been general among ancient peoples. In China, Confucius claimed to have transmitted his doctrine from Yao and Shun, and Laotzŭ from the Emperor Huang. In India, Jainism which has, not only in the teaching but in the personality of the founder, many similarities to Buddhism, mentions twenty-three predecessors, naturally more or less corresponding so closely to those of Buddhism.
[f50] It is highly doubtful that the Buddha had a very distinct and definite scheme for the theory of Causation or Dependence or Origination, as the Paṭicca-samuppāda is variously translated. In the present Sutra, he does not go beyond Viññāna (consciousness or cognition), while in its accepted form now the Chain starts with Ignorance (avijjā). We have however no reason to consider this tenfold Chain of Causation the earliest and most authoritative of the doctrine of Paṭicca-samuppāda. In many respects the Sutra itself shows evidence of a later compilation. The point I wish to discuss here mainly concerns itself with the Buddha’s intellectual efforts to explain the realities of life by the theory of causation. That the Buddha regarded Ignorance as the principle of birth-and-death and therefore of misery in this world, is a well-established fact in the history of Buddhism.
[f51] Cakkhu literally means an eye. It is often found in combination with such terms as paññā (wisdom or reason), buddha, or samanta (all-round), when it means a faculty beyond ordinary relative understanding. As was elsewhere noticed, it is significant that in Buddhism, both Mahayana and Hinayana, seeing (passato) is so emphasised, and especially in this case the mention of an “eye” which sees directly into things never before presented to one’s mind is quite noteworthy. It is this cakkhu or paññā-cakkhu in fact that, transcending the conditionality of the Fourfold Noble Truth or the Chain of Origination, penetrates (sacchikato) into the very ground of consciousness, from which springs the opposition of subject and object.
[f52] Here as well as in the next verse, “the truth” stands for Dharma.
[f53] We have, besides this, another verse supposed to have been uttered by the Buddha at the moment of Supreme Enlightenment; it is known as the Hymn of Victory. It was quoted in my previous Essay on Zen Buddhism and the Doctrine of Enlightenment. The Hymn is unknown in the Mahayana literature. The Lalita-vistara has only this:
“Chinna vartmopasanta rajāḥ sushkā āsravā na punaḥ sravānti;
Chinne vartmani vartata duḥkhasyaisho ’nta ucyate.”[3.1]