"That each, who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and, fusing all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet:
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside,
And I shall know him when we meet."
But is it not still more significant to notice that, in the lines which immediately succeed, the love inspired and deep musing genius of the English thinker can find ultimate repose only by recurring to the very faith of the Hindu theosophist?
"And we shall sit at endless feast,
Enjoying each the other's good:
What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth! He seeks at least
Upon the last and sharpest height,
Before the spirits fade away,
Some landing place, to clasp and say,
Farewell! We lose ourselves in light!"
We turn now to the Buddhist doctrine of a future life as distinguished from the Brahmanic. The "Four Sublime Truths" of Buddhism, as they are called, are these: first, that there is sorrow; secondly, that every living person necessarily feels it; thirdly, that it is desirable to be freed from it; fourthly, that the only deliverance from it is by that pure knowledge which destroys all cleaving to existence. A Buddha is a being who, in consequence of having reached the Buddhaship, which implies the possession of infinite goodness, infinite power, and infinite wisdom, is able to teach men that true knowledge which secures emancipation.
The Buddhaship that is, the possession of Supreme Godhead is open to every one, though few ever acquire it. Most wonderful and tremendous is the process of its attainment. Upon a time, some being, perhaps then incarnate as a mosquito alighting on a muddy leaf in some swamp, pauses for a while to muse. Looking up through infinite stellar systems, with hungry love and boundless ambition, to the throne and sceptre of absolute immensity, he vows within himself, "I will become a Buddha." The total influences of his past, the forces of destiny, conspiring with his purpose, omnipotence is in that resolution. Nothing shall ever turn him aside from it. He might soon acquire for himself deliverance from the dreadful vortex of births; but, determined to achieve the power of delivering others from their miseries as sentient beings, he voluntarily throws himself into the stream of successive existences, and with divine patience and fortitude undergoes every thing.
From that moment, no matter in what form he is successively born, whether as a disgusting bug, a white elephant, a monarch, or a god, he is a Bodhisat, that is, a candidate pressing towards the Buddhaship. He at once begins practising the ten primary virtues, called paramitas, necessary for the securing of his aim. The period required for the full exercise of one of these virtues is a bhumi. Its duration is thus illustrated. Were a Bodhisat once in a thousand births to shed a single drop of blood, he would in the space of a bhumi shed more blood than there is water in a thousand oceans. On account of his merit he might always be born amidst the pleasures of the heavens; but since he could there make no progress towards his goal, he prefers being born in the world of men. During his gradual advance, there is no good he does not perform, no hardship he does not undertake, no evil he does not willingly suffer; and all for the benefit of others, to obtain the means of emancipating those whom he sees fastened by ignorance in the afflictive circle of acts. Wherever born, acting, or suffering, his eye is still turned towards that EMPTY THRONE, at the apex of the universe, from which the last Buddha has vaulted into Nirwana. The Buddhists have many scriptures, especially one, called the "Book of the Five Hundred and Fifty Births," detailing the marvellous adventures of the Bodhisat during his numerous transmigrations, wherein he exhibits for each species of being to which he belongs a model character and life.
At length the momentous day dawns when the unweariable Bodhisat enters on his well earned Buddhaship. From that time, during the rest of his life, he goes about preaching discourses, teaching every prepared creature he meets the method of securing eternal deliverance. Leaving behind in these discourses a body of wisdom sufficient to guide to salvation all who will give attentive ear and heart, the Buddha then his sublime work of disinterested love being completed receives the fruition of his toil, the super essential prize of the universe, the Infinite Good. In a word, he dies, and enters Nirwana. There is no more evil of any sort for him at all forever. The final fading echo of sorrow has ceased in the silence of perfect blessedness; the last undulation of the wave of change has rolled upon the shore of immutability.
The only historic Buddha is Sakya Muni, or Gotama, who was born at Kapila about six centuries before Christ. His teachings contain many principles in common with those of the Brahmans. But he revolted against their insufferable conceit and cruelty. He protested against their claim that no one could obtain emancipation until after being born as a Brahman and passing through the various rites and degrees of their order. In the face of the most powerful and arrogant priesthood in the world, he preached the perfect equality of all mankind, and the consequent abolition of castes. Whoever acquires a total detachment of affection from all existence is thereby released from birth and misery; and the means of acquiring that detachment are freely offered to all in his doctrine.
Thus did Gotama preach. He took the monopoly of religion out of the hands of a caste, and proclaimed emancipation to every creature that breathes. He established his system in the valley of the Ganges near the middle of the sixth century before Christ. It soon overran the whole country, and held sway until about eight hundred years after Christ, when an awful persecution and slaughter on the part of the uprising Brahmans drove it out of the land with sword and fire. "The colossal figure which for fourteen centuries had bestridden the Indian continent vanished suddenly, like a rainbow at sunset."33
Gotama's philosophy, in its ontological profundity, is of a subtlety and vastness that would rack the brain of a Fichte or a Schelling; but, popularly stated, so far as our present purpose demands, it is this. Existence is the one all inclusive evil; cessation of existence, or Nirwana, is the infinite good. The cause of existence is ignorance, which leads one to cleave to existing objects; and this cleaving leads to reproduction. If one would escape from the chain of existence, he must destroy the cause of his confinement in it, that is, evil desire, or the cleaving to existing objects. The method of salvation in Gotama's system is to vanquish and annihilate all desire for existing things. How is this to be done? By acquiring an intense perception of the miseries of existence, on the one hand, and an intense perception, on the other hand, of the contrasted desirableness of the state of emancipation, or Nirwana. Accordingly, the discourses of Gotama, and the sacred books of the Buddhists, are filled with vivid accounts of every thing disgusting and horrible connected with existence, and with vivid descriptions, consciously faltering with inadequacy, of every thing supremely fascinating in connection with Nirwana. "The three reflections on the impermanency, suffering, and unreality of the body are three gates leading to the city of Nirwana." The constant claim is, that whosoever by adequate moral discipline and philosophical contemplation attains to a certain degree of wisdom, a certain degree of intellectual insight, instead of any longer cleaving to existence, will shudder at the thought of it, and, instead of shrinking from death, will be ravished with unfathomable ecstasy by the prospect of Nirwana. Then, when he dies, he is free from all liability to a return.