{"collection":"Buddhism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/w2n/w2n06.htm","path":"bud/w2n/w2n06.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/bud/w2n/w2n06.htm","text":"The Way to Nirvana, by L. de la Vall\u00e9e Poussin, [1917]\nI. Mechanism of transmigration. II. Classification of actions and mechanism of their fructification. III. Destiny, free-will, solidarity. IV. Cosmogony. V. Theogony.\nThe Buddhists did not discover the notion of Karman, but they were amongst the first to emphasize its importance, and probably the first to understand clearly its nature. It remains to be seen how the doctrine of Karman provides them with a rationalistic theory of the soul as a transmigrating non-entity, with a theory of cosmogony, or creation of the world, and of theogony, or origin of the gods.\nMan, according to the Buddhists, is not a metaphysical entity, an individual, a thing in itself (chose en sot), a self. Were he a Self, he could not be modified; he could not be extinguished; he would endure as he is and as he\nwas, for eternity; he would be lifeless and unconscious, since life and consciousness are succession and change. Man is a complex and impermanence itself.\nBut, on the other hand, Man is not lacking in unity and continuity; he is a living complex, not a haphazard succession of unconnected phenomena; he is a chain of causes and effects.\nThe diverse elements of this chain are to be classified under three headings: (1) passions or desires, (2) actions and (3) what is called fruit (phala), that is sensations together with the immediate conditions of sensation.\nTo be less technical. There arises a desire which may or may not be followed by an action (act of volition and physical action). If there is action, this action is to be rewarded; in Buddhist language, it ripens, it produces fruit: the fruit is pleasant or unpleasant sensation, together with the whole physical and psychical organism without which sensation is impossible. Sensation, in its turn, produces desire\u2014love or hatred\u2014which again produces action. The wheel continues to roll on this 'threefold rim': desire, action, ripening of action.\nSuch is the general principle.\nMuch space would be required to develop all\nthe consequences of this principle; but what follows is the essential.\nIf we consider the changes a being undergoes during the long journey through transmigration\u2014more exactly the changes which modify the complex we call a being\u2014it is evident that these changes are of a manifold nature. On the one hand, they are either physico-psychical or moral. On the other hand, they are either small or great, either of the nature of an evolution or of the nature of a revolution.\nThere is an incessant change both physico-psychical and moral.\nIn the course of one existence, that is, between what is called conception or birth and what is called death, physico-psychical changes are, as a rule, small. When a being is born as a man, an animal, a god, it lives and dies as a man, an animal, a god. There are exceptions. It is, for instance, recorded that a certain monk for having abused the congregation and having styled his colleagues \"Women!\" suddenly became a woman. It happens that the murderer of a saint is thrown down alive into hell, and, without dying as a man, is wrapped in a body of hell. Such events are rare. The physico-psychical changes that take place during a life do not, as\na rule, affect the general frame of the body or the mind.\nMoral changes may, on the contrary, be enormous, as is the case when a man becomes a saint or a murderer, when a man 'plants a strong root of merit' or when he commits a hellish sin. Let us observe in passing that man and woman alone are usually regarded as being capable of sin or good deeds. The other states of existence, hells and paradises, are almost exclusively states of enjoyment, of reward or punishment.\nBut then comes death. Death occurs when the mass of actions that were to receive retribution in some existence is exhausted. A life as a rule\u2014for there are exceptions\u2014is measured out with a measure, in length, in pains and pleasures, to make up exactly the quantity and the quality of reward for the enjoyment of which this life has been started. Death, we say, is the moment for great physico-psychical changes which depend on moral changes. At this moment, a sort of balance is made of the moral debit and credit. The moral status is ascertained and the next existence is to be in accordance with this status. A new physico-psychical complex suited to this next existence is to be created, and, in order to create it, the last state of consciousness,\nthat is, the dying consciousness, takes such and such a form. For instance, if the new existence is to be hell, the dying man hears the cries of the damned; he dies and, at the same moment, the dying consciousness is continued into the first state of consciousness of a new infernal being. This first state of consciousness of a new being is what we call technically 'birth-consciousness' or 'conception-consciousness' (pratisa\u1e43dhivij\u00f1\u0101na).\nHere we have to make a distinction.\nInfernal beings and gods have no parents: their birth is 'apparitional,' that is, is accounted for as a magical apparition. To put it otherwise, the birth-consciousness of a new god or creature of hell is apt to make for itself and by itself, out of unorganized matter, the body it is to inhabit. Therefore the birth of such beings will follow immediately after the death of the being which is to be reborn as infernal being or god.\nThe case is different, as a rule, with animals, ghosts and men; with such beings, birth or conception presupposes physical circumstances that may not be realized at the moment of the death of the being to be reincarnated. Physical\nconditions of conception are wanting if a being is to be reborn as a dog at a moment when the season of dogs is over. Physical conditions of birth are wanting for such animals as maggots, which are born from putrid meat, if there is no meat to be found in such a state. In these cases, and in many similar cases, the dying consciousness cannot be continued at once into the birth-consciousness of a new being.\nHence a difficulty which is clearly solved by the schools which maintain the so-called 'intermediary existence' (antar\u0101bhava). According to these schools, the dying consciousness is continued into a short-lived being, named Gandharva, which lasts for seven days or for seven times seven days\u2014evidently a notion borrowed from the animistic theories of old. This Gandharva, very like a disincarnated spirit, creates, with the help of the conceptional elements, an animal embryo, a ghostly or human embryo, as soon as it can find opportunity. It is driven by the wind of acts towards the right matrix; but there are, sometimes, mistakes: for instance it happens that the new animal is born as a jackal instead of a dog.\nThe decisive element on which depends the\nnext existence is the dying consciousness. It is the dying consciousness which originates the birth-consciousness, and which is the immediate cause of the birth-consciousness.\nThat the moral dispositions at death are of great importance has been admitted by many a religion, in India and outside India. And that these dispositions depend on the life which is ending, that a man dies as he has lived, this is also a common notion and not a bad piece of psychology.\nIdeas that have been cherished during life reappear at death; a man has, in this crucial moment, a vivid memory of his sins and good deeds,\u2014and, in the latter case, of the reward for which he has been striving.\n\u015a\u0101kyamuni says this in so many words: A man, who is endowed with merit, has been thinking: \"May I, when my body dissolves, obtain rebirth in a powerful princely family!\" He thinks this thought, dwells on this thought, cherishes this thought, and this thought, which he has thus cherished and fostered, will be his last thought. \"This is, O monks, the avenue and path which leads to rebirth in a powerful princely family.\"\nThe last thought is often a summary and the\nresult of the moral and intellectual life of a dying man. But such is not always the case.\nThe last thought is to bring about the next existence; it is therefore predetermined by the action which is to be rewarded in this next existence\u2014and this action may be a very ancient action, performed many centuries ago. This will be made evident by an example.\nWhen an animal is to be reborn as a man, it will have a dying consciousness to this effect. This dying consciousness does not depend on any action or thought of the animal, for animals are dull and incapable of morality; this dying consciousness depends on some ancient good deed which was to ripen into a human birth and which, for a long time, has been prevented from producing its result: there was a mass of bad actions first requiring retribution. Now that this mass of bad actions has borne its fruit\u2014let us say a score of infernal or animal rebirths\u2014the turn of the good action comes at last, and the last animal in the score of animal rebirths cherishes in its last moment the ideas, desires or images, which will cause a human rebirth.\nThe Buddhists say that if the seed of a plant has been dyed a certain colour, this colour will reappear in the flower although it does not\nexist in any of the stages of development of the plant, in the stem and so on. A western comparison is better and really to the point: heredity. A man may be like his grandfather, not like his father. The germs of a disease have been introduced into the organism of an ancestor; for some generations they remain dormant; they suddenly manifest themselves in actual disease. So intricate is the living complex; so mysterious the laws of heredity, we should say; so mysterious the reward of actions, say the Buddhists.\nWe believe that this comparison is to the point. For every moment in the life of these physico-psychical complexes which are called living beings, is the heir of the preceding one, and carries all the potentialities of a very long past.\nA few remarks are necessary on the time of the reward of actions.\nThere are actions which are styled lokottara, supermundane, actions that are not born from desire. They bear no fruit, except the fruit of deliverance (visa\u1e43yoga); they destroy desire; they cancel the reward of the other actions;\nthey lead to Nirv\u0101\u1e47a; they are part of, or rather they constitute the path to Nirv\u0101\u1e47a. We shall study them presently 1. We are now concerned with the actions which foster transmigration, that is produce rebirth or reward: because they originate from desire.\nSome are necessarily rewarded, some are not.\nI. The first are to be classified in three groups: acts rewarded in the present life; acts rewarded in the next existence; acts rewarded later.\n1. When compared with the reward in another life, the reward in this life is looked upon as small. Pain in this life is nothing when compared with pain in hell; human pleasures cannot vie with celestial pleasures.\nAn important point is that the retribution of a sin depends to a large extent on the moral status of the sinner.\nWhen a man is deficient in merit, a slight evil deed will ripen into an infernal existence. A good man, on the contrary, will expiate the same evil deed in this life: a slight punishment, although, says the text, it may appear not slight but very painful.\nIt is as if a man were to put a lump of salt into a small cup of water: the water would be made salt and undrinkable. But if the same lump of salt were put into the river Ganges, the water of the Ganges would not be perceptibly modified 2.\nIn the same way, the moral status of a good man is not modified by a small sin; but this sin, if complete, is to be rewarded; it is therefore rewarded here below.\n2. Some acts are necessarily rewarded in the next existence. Their retribution cannot be delayed by the retribution of any other act; and they are accordingly styled 'immediate,' \u0101nantarya. Parricide, for instance. Such sins prevent the acquisition of Sanctity.\n3. There is a third category of sins, which, heavy as they may be, are not necessarily rewarded in the following existence. Their retribution may be delayed to make room for the retribution of other acts; in that case they are rewarded 'later on.' Or, and this point is interesting, as they do not prevent the acquisition of Sanctity, it happens that they are turned into actions to be rewarded here below.\nThe classical illustration of this rule is the case of A\u1e45gulim\u0101la, \"the man with a garland of fingers,\" a celebrated robber and murderer. \u015a\u0101kyamuni converted him, owing to some ancient root of merit he possessed hidden under a heap of sins. A\u1e45gulim\u0101la became a monk and a Saint, that is a man who has obtained deliverance and will not be reborn; but he did not avoid the fruit of his sinful actions: when he goes into the town\nto collect alms, as the monks do every day, the populace greets him with stones; he is covered with blood; his begging bowl is broken and his robe torn. In this state he comes to \u015a\u0101kyamuni who says to him: \"The reward of your evil deeds, you should have experienced for long years, for many thousands of years in hell; and you are now experiencing it already in this life 1.\"\nII. A few words will give an idea of the actions which are not necessarily rewarded, which may be abandoned or 'left behind.' A Saint, who has acquired much merit, is not obliged to enjoy this merit in paradise: he will, at death, reach Nirv\u0101\u1e47a. Again, a man who is to be reborn in one of the highest heavens and to obtain Nirv\u0101\u1e47a there\u2014in technical language an An\u0101g\u0101min\u2014abandons all the actions, good or evil, that were to be rewarded in hell, here below, or in the inferior paradises. In the same way, say the texts, a man who changes his residence for ever, leaves his debts behind him.\nWe are now able to understand the mechanism of the fructification of actions 2.\nExistences are good or bad: human and divine existences are good; infernal existence, ghostly existence, animal existence are bad.\nAn existence, a rebirth, is caused, technically 'projected' (\u0101k\u1e63ipta), by a single act. All men are reborn as men owing to a good action: how is it then that so many men are unhappy? Because a number of acts combine to condition an existence; hence the variety of the living beings belonging to the same kind.\nA man, owing to wrong views or bad inherited dispositions commits one of the ten sins: he commits murder, theft, adultery; he uses mendacious, malignant, rude, foolish language; he nourishes covetous designs, hateful sentiments, wrong views. These sins are supposed to be complete, that is, fully premeditated, consciously done, cherished and approved: they are to be necessarily rewarded in the following existence; and accordingly the man is reborn in hell. When the sin is very heavy (owing to repetition, etc.) this man dies in some hell only to be reborn in another' hell; and that ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times. His infernal existences and his sufferings are what is technically called the 'fruit of ripening' (vip\u0101kaphala) of his sin.\nThe birth-projecting force of the sin is not\nyet exhausted; but it is diminished. Therefore, we have now animal rebirths, one, ten, or a hundred animal rebirths. The sufferings undergone in these animal existences are again the 'fruit of ripening'; but the nature of the animal is a fruit called ni\u1e63yandaphala, 'a fruit similar to the action.' For instance a murderer will be reborn as a tiger; a thief as a cunning animal, a serpent, and so on.\nThe birth-projecting force of the sin is now exhausted; accordingly, there is room for the projecting power of some ancient good act which was 'to be rewarded later'; and now this act projects a human life: this human life, together with the pleasures to be enjoyed in this life, is the 'fruit of ripening' of the good act.\nBut these pleasures will be few and small. Such a human existence will not be a happy one. The former inhabitant of hell, the former animal, although reborn as a man, remains under the influence of his ancient sin. He suffers pains akin to this sin. An ancient murderer will be short-lived, he will be crushed to death; a thief will be poor; an adulterer will have an unfaithful wife, and so on. These pains are a part of the ni\u1e63yandaphala of the ancient sin. The second part consists in mental or moral dispositions\nin accordance with the dispositions which, long ago, culminated in an actual sin. The murderer, after a long abode in hell (vip\u0101kaphala), has been reborn as a tiger (ni\u1e63yandaphala) and, suffered as a tiger (vip\u0101kaphala). Dying as a tiger, he is reborn as a man (vip\u0101kaphala of a former good act), but as a man destined to violent death and of a cruel nature (ni\u1e63yandaphala of the sin). And so on. In short, Karman explains everything that concerns 'the world of living beings' (sattvaloka), inhabitants of hell, animals, ghosts, men and gods; the power of gods and kings, the physical beauty of women, the splendid tail of peacocks, the moral dispositions of every one.\nAncient India, as does also to a large extent the India of to-day, believed in destiny, a \u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03ae, the daiva, from deva, god (also vidhi or ha\u1e6dha), a blind power against which human wisdom and endeavour are weak. Man is not even free to be prudent and wise, deus quos vult perdere prius dementat, a formula which could be the motto of many an episode in the Mah\u0101bh\u0101rata.\nBuddhism does not deny the power of\ndestiny; but it maintains that destiny is only one's own former action. A man is born from his own deeds, not from his parents, or more exactly he has the parents he merits to have:\nMy action is my possession; my action is my inheritance; my action is the matrix which bears me; my action is the race to which I belong; my action is my refuge 1.\nAs it is said:\nAll that we are is the result of what we have thought and done.\nBut the question is whether \"all that we do now, in this present life, is the result of what we have done\"? The conception of destiny left some room for free-will: does the doctrine of Karman, understood strictly as the Buddhists are prompt to understand it, leave any loophole?\nHere we are, as is often the case with Buddhism, in the very middle of a jungle of contradictions.\nOn the one hand, Buddhist ontology does not admit the existence of an agent, a doer (kartar):\nNo doer is there, naught save the deed is found.\nThere is no Self, but only a 'series' of physico-psychical phenomena. We have seen that a volition is only the further state of a desire.\nOn the other hand, we are told that our actual dispositions are inherited. A man is not cruel or covetous because he chooses to be so, but because he has just been a tiger or a lustful animal.\nFurther, living beings are without real connexion one with another. They are water-tight series of thoughts. Each of them eats the fruit of his own actions. Accordingly \u015a\u0101kyamuni teaches that \"Nobody can harm or benefit another,\" for \"The Self is the protector of the Self: what other protector could the Self have?\" The most powerful demon cannot harm a man who has not merited to be crushed by him; and, inversely, Buddha himself cannot favour a disciple with a lesson which this disciple has not merited to receive.\nThe problem of free-will is a difficult one, but it can be said that Buddhism has added difficulties and contradictions of its own to a problem in itself difficult. These difficulties are the more striking in Buddhism, because Buddhism, which flatly denies freedom and solidarity, is essentially a discipline of endeavour and benevolence.\nBuddhist philosophers, it is true, do not\nhide these difficulties, but they do nothing to explain them away.\nThere is no self, no doer, no free agent: kart\u0101 svatantro n\u0101sti; there is only a succession of psychical states. Every Buddhist knows quite well this essential truth: not only in the scholastical texts but even in the common language, the word sa\u1e43t\u0101na or sa\u1e43tati, 'series,' is used for what we call a soul: \"At this time the series which is now named \u015a\u0101kyamuni was called Sunetra.\" \"When the Scripture says that consciousness (vij\u00f1\u0101na) is to take up its abode in the matrix, the meaning is [not that a conscious Self is reincarnated, but] that a series of states of consciousness continues to develop in the embryo.\"\nThe Buddhist authors are always aware that the soul is only a series. This does not prevent them from preaching endeavour as the only means of salvation, and, without paying any attention to verbal contradictions, they say: \"The series is to be drawn against the flow of passions by means of good acts, owing to a strong endeavour; the series must be driven away from pleasurable objects.\" They do not explain how an unsubstantial series of thoughts can draw itself against passions and prejudices which are the series itself.\nJust as the Christian philosophers\u2014Calvin or the Jansenists\u2014who strictly limit or are inclined to deny human free-will, are nevertheless fairly good 'teachers of energy,' in the same way Buddhists lay all the stress of their teaching on the cultivation of endeavour, on self-restraint (sa\u1e43yama, sa\u1e43vara 1). The virtue of energy (v\u012brya) is indispensable, for the struggle is hard against lust, hate, and error. \u015a\u0101kyamuni was an 'enlightened one,' buddha; but he was equally a hero, a conqueror, v\u012bra, jina; and his disciples must be worthy of such a king.\nA most happy contradiction indeed.\nA second contradiction is no less striking and happy.\nBuddha is not a saviour. \"Buddha is only a preacher; the path to deliverance is open to everybody; but, according to their dispositions, some will be delivered, some will not.\" Again, the very fact that we are reborn as men, in Jambudv\u012bpa, in India, at the time when Buddha opens the Path, is the result of our own good deeds accumulated during many ages of men. But Buddha looks twice every day in all directions in order to see whether he can help some of his fellow creatures; owing to his 'eye of a\n[paragraph continues] Buddha,' he is keen to perceive any 'root of merit' which any miserable and wretched man can have stored up at any time in the past; he takes any trouble to bring this 'root of merit' to maturity by appropriate sermons or miracles. Owing to his strength of benevolence, he converts whomsoever he will. His disciples are urged to imitate, in some way, the virtues and the peaceful conquests of the Master. They have to practise the best sort of gift, the gift of the Doctrine (dharmad\u0101na); they have to convert and edify sinners by friendship and benevolence.\nTo sum up, the doctrine of Karman is the root of morality. It makes clear the necessity of \"avoiding what is evil, practising what is good, purifying one's thought\"; and \"that is,\" in short, \"the rule of Buddha.\" The idea that our enemies are only the delegates of our old sins will make us patient and compassionate: \"My enemies do harm to themselves when they try to harm me; and they do not harm me, nay they are very useful to me.\" But there are certain consequences of the doctrine of Karman. What is to be said about denial of free-will, impossibility of benevolent action? Buddhists see and plainly state these consequences, for they are candid men and good\nscholars. But they do not trouble themselves about them; they write and they live as if they had not seen them.\nIn that they are wise, and they only follow the golden principle of \u015a\u0101kyamuni. It happened one day that, being questioned on the doctrine of Karman, he soberly answered: \"My teaching is to do good deeds, to avoid evil deeds.\" And, more than once, he ventured to say that this doctrine is inconceivable or incomprehensible (acintya), that is to a human mind, for a Buddha is omniscient.\nThe variety of the material universe (bh\u0101janaloka), including the hells, the earth with the plants, and the heavens, depends upon some cause.\nTo admit that things are such as they are, because they are such as they are, that lotuses are lotuses, thorns thorns, owing to their own nature (svabh\u0101va), such is the doctrine of the philosophers 'who attribute the origin of all things to chance' ('fortuitous-originists 1').\nThat is pure nonsense. The truth is that actions bear a 'fruit of mastery' (adhipatiphala),\nthat is, they create or organize the material things necessary to their reward.\nA being is to be reborn as a god\u2014the Sun god for instance\u2014of such a size, of such a physical beauty and strength, destined to live so many ages of men. All these advantages are the 'fruit of ripening' of the good deeds of this being. But this god must have an abode, a celestial palace\u2014the moving chariot, fifty miles in diameter that we call the Sun: this palace is the 'fruit of mastery.'\nIn the same way, at the beginning of a cosmic period, the whole material universe is created by the 'mastering' energy of the mass of the ancient acts that are to be enjoyed by its future inhabitants. The 'receptacle world' (bh\u0101janaloka) is the 'fruit of mastery' of the mass of the acts of the 'world of living beings' (sattvaloka).\nAnother aspect of Karman, Karman as a theogonic power, has never been emphasized in Brahmanism as it is in Buddhism.\nThe Brahmans sometimes venture to think that the gods are not eternal or immortal. The gods have reached a divine status by their pious doings, their sacrifices, their penances\u2014not necessarily by 'good' actions. It is well known\nthat many gods are bad, fond of killing, stealing, wantonly destroying, and that \u015a\u0101kyamuni did his best to tame them. The gods die when their reserve of divinity is exhausted by the very experience of divine pleasures: they are the happy or rather unhappy possessors of a 'peau de chagrin' and, as the hero of Balzac, they know that it is drawing in.\nFurther the Brahman gods have to struggle for life, for their divine life. While they are enjoying their reserve of power, there are in the vast world ascetics who are heaping up penances and merits, penances and merits which can be, at the will of the ascetics, turned into divinity at the cost of the actual gods. The gods defend themselves as they can. The Epic (Mah\u0101bh\u0101rata) contains numerous stories of temptations, when the gods, anxious about the accumulating austerity of some Muni, dispatch to him heavenly damsels to disturb his pious exercises. A dangerous employ: \u015aakuntal\u0101, the most charming child of Indian fancy, was born in such circumstances; but Menak\u0101, her mother, perished. \u015a\u0101kyamuni himself was attacked by the daughters of M\u0101ra, the god of love and death.\nBut this theogony in terms of merit, penance, or sacrifice, is, in Brahmanism, only a theoretical\nview and a literary topic. It does not endanger the traditional mythology or jeopardize the status of the supreme god, whether Brahm\u0101 or Vi\u1e63\u1e47u or \u015aiva,\u2014so many names for the Absolute.\nIn Buddhism, Karman and transmigration apply, in fact as in theory, to all beings.\nThe position of the gods, when compared with the Buddhist saints, is a subordinate one. It is true that the actions resulting in the present happiness and power of the gods are good actions; but these actions were accomplished through 'worldly' motives: the gods have reached the reward for which they have been striving: vani vanam. A monk who has begun his career towards a loftier aim, Nirv\u0101\u1e47a, is by far superior to the gods, even in magic.\nAs concerns Brahm\u0101, who according to the Brahmans is \u012a\u015bvara, the Lord, the universal sovereign who cares for everything, who takes account of actions and governs the transmigration of individual beings, who designs the successive creations of the universe after the successive periods of chaos\u2014the Buddhists do not recognize him. They know that an infinite number of gods, each with the title of Brahm\u0101, but having a separate name of his own, have reigned in succession, each during a cosmic\nperiod (kalpa). Such gods are great gods; they enjoy the fruit of very good deeds, the fruit of very high meditations tinged with altruism 1; they are quasi spiritual, non-sexual gods, but by no means sovereigns of the world, creators, or overrulers of the retribution of actions.\nWhen, at the beginning of a cosmic period 2, after the chaos, the inferior part of the universe is to be rebuilt, the heaven or palace of Brahm\u0101 is the first part of the 'receptacle world' to appear, as the 'fruit of mastery' of the actions of the being who is to be the Brahm\u0101 of the period. Then this Brahm\u0101 is produced in this palace. As he does not remember his former existences, he is apt to believe that he is born from himself, that he is self-existent (svaya\u1e43bh\u016b). After a time, he gets tired of his solitude; he thinks that servants and companions would be pleasant, and, at the same moment, there are produced the gods Companions of Brahm\u0101; that is to say, owing to the special nature of their own acts, certain beings are born in the Brahm\u0101's palace. Brahm\u0101, of course, believes that he has created them, and they, in turn, believe that they have been created by Brahm\u0101. They\nadore Brahm\u0101, and this religion of Brahm\u0101 has been propagated among men.\nThis is brought out in the following story 1:\nThere was a monk indulging, against the teaching of the Master, in cosmological inquiries. In order to know where the world ends, he began journeying far away in the sky, interrogating in succession the gods of the successive heavens. The gods 'Servants of the Four Kings of the cardinal regions,' said to him: \"Ask the Four Kings\"; the Four Kings said to him: \"Ask the Thirty Three Gods.\". . . The monk finally arrived in the heaven of the Servants of Brahm\u0101: \"We, monk,\" said they, \"do not know where the world ends. But there is Brahm\u0101, the Great Brahm\u0101, the supreme one, the mighty one, the all seeing one, the ruler, the lord of all, the controller, the creator, the chief of all, appointing to each his place, the ancient of days, the father of all that are and are to be. He will know that.\"\u2014\"Where then is that Great Brahm\u0101 now?\" asked the monk.\u2014\"We, monk, know not where Brahm\u0101 is, nor why Brahm\u0101 is, nor whence.\" \"But,\" added the gods, \"he may suddenly appear.\" And, before long, Brahm\u0101 indeed became manifest, and the monk asked him where the world ends. Brahm\u0101 answered: \"I am the Great Brahm\u0101. . . the father of all that are and are to be.\"\u2014\"I do not ask you, friend,\" said the monk, \"as to whether you are indeed all that you now say. But I ask you where the four great elements\u2014earth, water, fire and wind\u2014cease, leaving no trace behind.\" Then the Great Brahm\u0101 took that monk by the arm, led him aside, and said: \"These gods, my servants, hold me to be such that there is nothing I cannot see, understand, realize. Therefore I gave no answer in their presence. But I do not know where the world ends. . . . Go you now,\nreturn to the Lord, ask him the question, and accept the answer according as he shall make reply.\" The monk returned to \u015a\u0101kyamuni who told him: \"Long ago, O monk, sea-faring traders were wont, when they were setting sail on an ocean voyage, to take with them a land-sighting bird. . . . Such a bird would fly to the East, and to the South. . ., and if no land were visible, it would come back to the ship. Just so, O monk, do you, having sought an answer to this question, even up to the world of Brahm\u0101, come back to me.\"\n\u015a\u0101kyamuni is the only source of truth. It happened that the god Indra met some monks, and wondered at the wisdom of their sayings: \"Here is,\" he said, \"a fine doctrine. Did you discover it by yourselves?\" The monks answered: \"When there are to be seen, in the neighbourhood of a large granary, men bearing corn, some in baskets, some in their robes, some in their hands, it is not difficult to guess where the corn comes from. In the same way, every 'good and true saying'. (subh\u0101\u1e63ita) comes from the Lord 1.\"\n89:2 A\u1e45guttara, I, 249 (Warren, p. 218).\n91:1 Majjhima, II, p. 97. The story of Losakatissa (J\u0101taka, I, p. 235, tr. I, p. 110) is interesting in this connexion. See also Vajracchedik\u0101, \u00a7 16.\n91:2 Abhidharmako\u015ba, chap. IV.\n95:1 Majjhima, III, p. 203; Milinda, I, p. 101.\n98:1 Mrs Rhys Davids, Psychology (1914), P. 37.\n100:1 Dialogues of the Buddha, I, pp. 41, 71.\n104:1 Mrs Rhys Davids, Psychology (1914), p. 103.\n104:2 See art. 'Cosmology' in Hastings, E.R.E.\n105:1 Dialogues of the Buddha, I, p. 280.\n106:1 A\u1e45guttara, iv, p. 163. See below, p. 153.","title":"The Way to Nirvana: Chapter IV. The Doctrine of Karman an...","type":"page"}