44 NOTES 



Buddhists themselves as a difficulty. They avoided it, partly by 

 explaining that it was a particular thirst in the creature dying 

 (a craving, Tanha, which plays otherwise a great part in the 

 Buddhist theory) which actually caused the birth of the new 

 individual who was to inherit the Karma of the former one. 

 But, how this took place, how the craving desire produced this 

 effect was acknowledged to be a mystery patent only to a 

 Buddha." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 95.) 



Among the many parallelisms of Stoicism and Buddhism, it is 

 curious to find one for this Tanha, ' thirst,' or 'craving desire' 

 for life. Seneca writes (Epist. Ixxvi. 18): "Si enim ullum 

 aliud est bonum quam honestum, sequetur nos aviditas vitce 

 aviditas rerum vitam instruentium : quod est intolerable 

 infinitum, vagum." 



Note 8 (p. 19). 



"The distinguishing characteristic of Buddhism was that it 

 started a new line, that it looked upon the deepest questions 

 men have to solve from an entirely different standpoint. It 

 swept away from the field of its vision the whole of the great soul- 

 theory which had hitherto so completely filled and dominated 

 the minds of the superstitious and the thoughtful alike. For 

 the first time in the history of the world, it proclaimed a salva- 

 tion which each man could gain for himself and by himself, in 

 this world, during this life, without any the least reference to 

 God, or to gods, either great or small. Like the Upanishads, it 

 placed the first importance on knowledge ; but it was no longer 

 a knowledge of God, it was a clear perception of the real nature, 

 as they supposed it to be, of men and things. And it added to 

 the necessity of knowledge, the necessity of purity, of courtesy, 

 of uprightness, of peace and of a universal love far reaching, 

 grown great and beyond measure." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert 

 Lectures, p. 29.) 



The contemporary Greek philosophy takes an analogous 

 direction. According to Heracleitus, the universe was made 

 neither by gods nor men ; but, from, all eternity, has been, and to 

 all eternity, 'will be, immortal fire, glowing and fading in due 

 measure. (Mullach, Heracliti Fragmenta, 27.) And the part 

 assigned by his successors the Stoics, to the knowledge and the 



