Further, it followed that man’s spirit, while so deluded and so separated for a time from the One Spirit, was compelled to migrate through innumerable bodily forms, and that such migration entailed misery, from which there was no escape except by a process of disillusionment, that is, by dissipating the illusion of separate individuality, through the acquisition of perfect knowledge leading to re-union with the One Spirit, as the river blends with the ocean. And such knowledge was best gained by suppression of the passions, abandonment of all worldly connexions, and abstinence from all action. Finally, it was held, with apparent inconsistency, that the storing up of merit by good works assisted in effecting this object by raising a man, not yet fit for union with the supreme Spirit, to forms of existence in which such union might be accomplished.
Now it is obvious that to believe in the ultimate merging of man’s personal spirit in One impersonal Spirit, is virtually to deny the ultimate existence of any human spirit at all. Nay more—it is virtually to deny the existence of a supreme universal Spirit also.
For how can a merely abstract universal Spirit, which is unconscious of personality, be regarded as possessing any real existence worth being called true life?
To assert that such a Spirit is pure abstract Entity or (according to Vedānta phraseology) pure Existence (without anything to exist for), pure Thought or even pure Consciousness (without anything to think about, or be conscious about), pure Joy (without anything to rejoice about), is practically to reduce it to pure non-entity.
All that Gautama did, therefore, was to purge Brāhmanism of a dogma which appeared to him to be a mere sham (Brahma-jāla I. 26).
He simply eliminated as incapable of proof the doctrine of a purely abstract, incorporeal spirit or self, whether human or divine. The assertion that any soul or self or Ego really existed (Atta-vādo) was an error. It formed one of the constituents of Upādāna ([p. 109]), and was the first of the ten fetters (Sakkāya-diṭṭhi, [p. 127]).
And with the rejection of this dogma, as incapable of demonstration, he found himself compelled to reject also, as beyond the range of man’s cognizance, the doctrine of any Supreme Being higher than the perfectly enlightened man. Like Kapila in the Sāṅkhya aphorisms (I. 92, V. 10) he felt bound to admit: ‘It is not proved that there is a God.’
This, indeed, is the chief foundation on which rests the assertion that Buddhism is a mere system of atheistic negations. And there can be no doubt that from one point of view its statements are steeped in negations, or rather perhaps in evasions. Its morality has been described as more negative than positive; but this is scarcely correct, and it would be fairer to say that it delights in telling men to abstain from doing evil, rather than in urging them to active exertions for the good of others. It has many positive precepts.
But if there was no probability of a soul existing separately from a body after death, how could there be any soul-transmigration? How could there be any agreement between the teaching of the Buddha and that of the Brāhmans, in regard to this important central dogma? The real fact was that the divergence of the Buddhist doctrine from the Brāhmanical, as stated in the Upanishads, was not greater than was to be expected from the difference of belief between the two systems in regard to the existence of soul.
Plato, we know, held that souls ‘found their prisons in the same natures’ at death, so that an effeminate man might be re-born as a woman, a tyrannical man as a wolf, and so on. In Manu’s Law-book is set forth a triple order of soul-transmigration through lower, middle, and higher planes of existence, resulting from good, middling, and bad acts, words, and thoughts. Thus—to instance only the lower—the soul of a man who spoke ill of his teacher was destined to pass into an ass or a dog (II. 201), the soul of a thief might occupy a mouse (XII. 62), the soul of one who neglected his caste-duties might pass into a demon (XII. 71, 72); and greater crimes might lead to the soul’s being condemned to occupy plants, stones, and minerals. Then there was also an intermediate condition of the soul. According to one idea it went to the moon; according to another it became a hungry ghost which required food to be offered to it at the Ṡrāddha ceremonies.