“What is here, that is there;
What is there, that is here:
Who sees duality here,
From death to death goes he.”[11]
This state of enlightenment may be called the spiritual expansion of the ego, or, negatively, the ideal annihilation of the ego. A never-drying stream of sympathy and love which is the life of religion will now spontaneously flow out of the fountainhead of Dharmakâya.
The doctrine of non-ego teaches us that there is no reality in individual existences, that we do not have any transcendental entity called ego-substance. The doctrine of Dharmakâya, to supplement this, teaches us that we all are one in the System of Being and only as such are immortal. The one shows us the folly of clinging to individual existences and of coveting the immortality of the ego-soul; the other convinces us of the truth that we are saved by living into the unity of Dharmakâya. The doctrine of non-âtman liberates us from the shackle of unfounded egoism; but as mere liberation does not mean anything positive and may perchance lead us to asceticism, we apply the energy thus released to the execution of the will of Dharmakâya.
The questions: “Why have we to love our neighbors as ourselves? Why have we to do to others all things whatsoever we would that they should do to us?” are answered thus by Buddhists: “It is because we are all one in the Dharmakâya, because when the clouds of ignorance and egoism are totally dispersed, the light of universal love and intelligence cannot help but shine in all its glory. And, enveloped in this glory, we do not see any enemy, nor neighbor, we are not even conscious of whether we are one in the Dharmakâya. There is no ‘my will’ here, but only ‘thy will,’ the will of Dharmakâya, in which we live and move and have our being.”
The Apostle Paul says: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Why? Buddhists would answer, “because Adam asserted his egoism in giving himself up to ignorance, (the tree of knowledge is in truth the tree of ignorance, for from it comes the duality of me and thee); while Christ on the contrary surrendered his egoistic assertion to the intelligence of the universal Dharmakâya. That is why we die in the former and are made alive in the latter.”
Nirvâna.
The meaning of Nirvâna has been variously interpreted by non-Buddhist students from the philological and the historical standpoint; but it matters little what conclusions they have reached, as we are not going to recapitulate them here; nor do they at all affect our presentation of the Buddhists’ own view as below. For it is the latter that concerns us here most and constitutes the all-important part of the problem. We have had too much of non-Buddhist speculation on the question at issue. The majority of the critics, while claiming to be fair and impartial, have, by some preconceived ideas, been led to a conclusion, which is not at all acceptable to intelligent Buddhists. Further, the fact has escaped their notice that Pâli literature from which they chiefly derive their information on the subject represents the views of one of the many sects that arose soon after the demise of the Master and were constantly branching off at and after the time of King Açoka. The probability is, that Buddha himself did not have any stereotyped conception of Nirvana, and, as most great minds do, expressed his ideas outright as formed under various circumstances; though of course they could not be in contradiction with his central beliefs, which must have remained the same throughout the course of his religious life. Therefore, to understand a problem in all its apparently contradictory aspects, it is very necessary to grasp at the start the spirit of the author of the problem, and when this is done the rest will be understood comparatively much easier. Non-Buddhist critics lack in this most important qualification; therefore, it is no wonder that Buddhists themselves are always reluctant to accede to their interpretations.
Enough for apology. Nirvâna, according to Buddhists, does not signify an annihilation of consciousness nor a temporal or permanent suppression of mentation[12], as imagined by some; but it is the annihilation of the notion of ego-substance and of all the desires that arise from this erroneous conception. But this represents the negative side of the doctrine, and its positive side consists in universal love or sympathy (karunâ) for all beings.
These two aspects of Nirvâna, i.e., negatively, the destruction of evil passions, and, positively, the practice of sympathy, are complementary to each other; and when we have one we have the other. Because, as soon as the heart is freed from the cangue of egoism, the same heart, hitherto so cold and hard, undergoes a complete change, shows animation, and, joyously escaping from self-imprisonment, finds its freedom in the bosom of Dharmakâya. In this latter sense, Nirvâna is the “humanisation” of Dharmakâya, that is to say, “God’s will done in earth as it is in heaven.” If we make use of the terms, subjective and objective. Nirvâna is the former, and the Dharmakâya is the latter, phase of one and the same principle. Again, psychologically, Nirvâna is enlightenment, the actualisation of the Bodhicitta[13] (Heart of Intelligence).
The gospel of love and the doctrine of Nirvâna may appear to some to contradict each other, for they think that the former is the source of energy and activity, while the latter is a lifeless, inhuman, ascetic quietism. But the truth is, love is the emotional aspect and Nirvâna the intellectual aspect of the inmost religious consciousness which constitutes the essence of the Buddhist life.