The Buddha's Two Voices
by Bhikkhu Sīlācāra
As
a profound thinker, as the most profound thinker the world has ever
known, the Buddha had two ways of speaking to people. At one time he
would address them in words that expressed the utmost depth of his
knowledge. At other times he would tell them simple things within the
compass of their ready understanding, in words that were taken from the
ordinary speech used among themselves. In both modes of speech, he spoke
what was true. But in the former mode he spoke what was final, ultimate
truth and fact; in the latter mode, what was true for the people and
the time to and in which he spoke.
The
anattā-doctrine is a specimen of the former mode of speech. Here,
speaking what is finally and ultimately true, the Buddha said that there
are in the universe no entities anywhere, neither in mind nor in
matter. He said that all seeming entities, whether material or mental,
are only momentary expressions of energy, varying from moment to moment,
never constant, ever changing, somewhat as an electric bulb light is
not a fixed entity but an ever-renewed, from-moment-to-moment maintained
display of electric energy. This is a scientific fact, or is well on
the way to be demonstrated so. It has long been a philosopher’s belief
when philosophers have turned their minds to the consideration of what
so-called “matter” really is. When they have done so, when they have
analysed the data on which is founded the common belief in any solid
entity made of what is called “matter,” they have found that the only
evidence for its existence is that of our senses, and of the deductions
drawn therefrom. Principally the latter; and upon close consideration
indeed, have found that it is wholly the latter.
We
receive various sense-impressions through all our various senses, and
from these deduce the existence of something which originates these
impressions, which sends them to our senses. But on close analysis, we
find that this is a pure deduction, a simple inference, and nothing
else. All we are quite sure about is the impression on our senses, but
of nothing more. But what makes an impression on our senses is an
energy, a force. Hence all we can be sure about is that we have around
us all the time a variety of forces or energies playing upon us, and
that these, in sum, make up what we call the universe. Hence, when
people came to the Buddha, as they did, and asked him: “Is the world
limited or is it limitless? Is the world eternal or is it not eternal?,“
the Buddha had nothing to say to them in reply. Why not? Was it, as
some prejudiced critics who ought to know better have suggested, and in
fact have plainly said, because “he did not know”? Indeed it was not.
The Buddha here simply followed the age-old method of the polite East in
abstaining from calling attention to the ignorance of his interlocutor
which made him ask such a question, by simply saying nothing. For, in
asking such a question, the questioner assumed, implied, took for
granted, something which the Buddha, as a profound thinker, as the
profoundest thinker in the world at that time or any time before or
since, did not admit, namely, that there was then in existence a
“world,“ in the sense in which his questioner used the word, as a
definite concrete entity. The questioner was asking a question about
ultimate truth and fact: and since in ultimate truth and fact, the
Buddha did not recognise the existence of such a “world” as his
questioner was assuming to exist when he put the question, the Buddha
could do nothing but keep silence. And the questioner of those days knew
quite well what that silence meant, even if some of our modern critics
do not know, or pretend not to know. He knew that what the Buddha was
saying by that silence was this: “You ask a foolish question which you
have no right to ask, for you ask me about the history of something
which now, at this moment does not exist, for me, in truth and fact. How
then can I say anything about whether it is limitless or eternal or
anything else, any more than I can tell you if the third horn of a
buffalo is limitless or eternal. There is no third horn of a buffalo.
But I forbear from putting you to shame before all these listeners
around by pointing out to you that simple fact which, as a pretended
enquirer after ultimate truth and fact, you ought to know; and so I
preserve a silence that is only meant to be kind.“
When,
however, the Buddha is asked a question about the world which is not
concerned with ultimate truth and fact, but with practical every-day
life, as lived at the moment by the person asking him the question, then
he says: “There is a world, and you have a good deal to do in order to
find your proper place therein, and make proper use of your stay there.
There is a world; and there is a beyond-the-world; and I have to show
you how you may make your way from the one to the other.”
But
this world the Buddha believes in and deals with—and with no other kind
of world does he deal—is the world of men’s feelings and perceptions
and mentations and consciousnesses, the world that is immediately
present to every mother’s son of us, the world that none of us, even the
most sceptical, can ever possibly doubt, the world that is contained
within this “fathom-long mortal frame,” our body. Here is the world the
Buddha knows of and tells about; and it is the real world, in
contradistinction to that other world supposed to lie outside us, as
sole proof of whose existence we have nothing but deduction and
inference. With this real world within us the Buddha deals in the most
comprehensive and minute fashion in a psychology which makes most of
what passes for that science in the West seem mere childish groping and
fumbling. He shows how to deal with every one of its phases and
permutations with a detail that might take the most diligent student of
its intricacies all his life to master, and even then have still
something to learn. But the main purpose of all that minute tabulation
is quite easily grasped. As said, it is simply a method of bringing that
world to an end, and allowing to supervene that other state which takes
its place when place is made for it, Nibbāna. This Nibbāna is not
caused, not originated, does not have any beginning. It simply makes its
presence known when all that is opposed to it is removed. And what is
opposed to its manifestation is the whole complex congeries of feelings
and emotions and thinkings which make up that world, a human being.
These removed, without anything further, Nibbāna is present. And that is
the end of all evolution, the topmost height to which man can reach.
With the ceasing of all self-referred feelings and thinkings and
imaginings and consciousnesses, there goes on a life that is lived as a
result only of past causes set in motion, like a top to which no further
spinning motion is imparted, but still keeps on spinning only from the
motion already given it in the past. And when that motion is all
exhausted, then comes the real “death,“ the ceasing of all these
externally perceptible feelings, and so on, in a sense-perceptible
physical body; and the secret of what lies beyond remains a secret, and
must always remain one, to those who still remain on this hither side of
that mystery. By the very fact of our position in this world, doing all
our thinking with brains belonging to this world— since, what other
brains have we got to think with?—it is quite impossible to state what
that ultimate state, Nibbāna is, in words of this world.
Some,
indeed, attempted to find out from the Buddha himself. They enquired,
in their artless innocence—artless and innocent of the tremendous
difference between the Conditioned and the Unconditioned—“Does the
Arahant exist after death? Or does he not exist?” And just as to the
artless and innocent question regarding the existence of the world
implied in the questions as to its limitlessness and eternity, so here
also the Buddha replied with kindly silence. He forbore to expose to
shame the ignorance of his interlocutor by pointing out that even now
there is no actual Arahant in the sense in which the questioner assumed
there was one, but only a series of manifestations of kamma-energy,
displaying themselves from moment to moment to our physical senses and
that to ask after what happens after death to something that does not
exist now is simply a display of miscomprehension which a kindly person
can only treat with kindly silence, such as any decent person practises
when some blunderer commits a bad faux pas in conversation, in a
company.
For,
to come to a thinker like the Buddha and ask such a question after he
had been going about for years trying to let men see that in ultimate
truth and fact—in which alone he was interested, and which he sought to
impart to as many as were ripe to learn it of him—there are no entities
called men, but only manifestations of kamma-energy, was something so
stupid that in any one lesser than a Buddha, it would have been
excusable if he burst out into annoyed protest at it, and at its
propounder.
But
this truth that there are no entities called men, it is well to note,
is an ultimate, final truth, spoken to thinkers and analysts and
philosophers. When speaking to common men, the Buddha said: “There is
such an entity as a man. You all know it and feel it. And I know it and
feel it with you. You are not the same man that you were ten years ago:
and yet you are not another man. You are not me. I am not you. What that
man of ten years ago was, makes the man you are today just what he is,
and not otherwise. And going still further back than ten years of this
present lifetime of yours, what you are ten hundred years ago you are
not today, and yet you are not another person altogether. What you were
ten hundred years ago makes you what you are today, just as you are, so,
not otherwise, distant from me and from others around you. And
further—and take good heed of this!—what you are today will go to make
you what you will be ten years after this, and ten hundred years after
this. There is no break in the stream of kammacausation anywhere. There
is no break between the man of this moment and the man of ten minutes,
or ten months, or ten years, or of ten lifetimes ago. It is all one
unbroken chain of happening. And all my teaching is to show you how to
bring to an end all happening, to produce the one sole real break there
ever is in this chain of kammacausation, the break which is its final
break, its final ceasing, Nibbāna. This last is the only real death
there is. What is ordinarily called death is only a passing on to
another state in this or some other world. It is not a ceasing, but only
a change. But what I would teach you, is how to arrive at the ceasing
of all this change, and the final, ultimate attainment of the
Changeless.”
Thus
the Buddha has two voices. When speaking to philosophers and thinkers,
he says there is no world, in the vulgar acceptation of the world. But
when speaking to the common man of every-day life, he says: “There is a
world, and you have to find deliverance from it; and I will show you
how.” When speaking to philosophers and thinkers he says there is no
such entity as a man. But when speaking to the ordinary every-day
person, he says: “There is a man; and you, that man, have to gain
freedom from that world.”
How
resolve these antimonies? In the only way in which all antimonies of
thought have to be resolved—by action. The end of man is not a thought
but a deed, as was said years ago by the Western philosopher, Goethe,
and after him by Carlyle. And so was said the Buddha, in effect,
twenty-five hundred of years before them, in another era and on another
continent, Asia, the old mother-continent of all wisdom and knowledge of
higher and deeper things. His teaching is the teaching of a Way, of a
deed, of a doing. In the following of that Way or Method or Path lies
the solution of all the seeming contradictions of the thought, or
expression of thought, by which he accompanied his teaching of his Way.
Thus the final lesson of Buddhism, its only lesson ultimately, is:
Follow the Way, Tread the Path. Everything else is subsidiary to that,
leads to that, or, leads to nothing, but a wild waste of warring words,
in which men may flounder for ever as in the morass. But out of that
jungle, that thicket, that snare, that jungle of words and opinions and
views they may, if they will, find a way on to firm ground, the firm
ground of the Noble Eightfold Path shown by him, a Path that leads to
that other firm solid ground, the ultimate, highest end open to him,
complete deliverance from the very possibility of views and opinions, in
the attainment of the one final, ultimate certainty, Nibbāna.
Source:
BPS Bodhi Leaves 80 (excerpt), Kandy, Sri Lanka. For free
distribution only. Originally published in the Buddhist Annual of
Ceylon, 1928.