210 



rewarded or punished. Indeed^ the fact itself of a blind moral 

 causality pervading Buddhism would seem to point to a some- 

 thing more real, which has dropped out of sight. Merit 

 rewarded and demerit punished in a future state must be 

 vestiges of a higher faith. When we add God and man^s 

 responsibility to God, the ruins are restored. Merit rewarded, 

 demerit punished,' — " thou shalt^^ and '' thou shalt not,^^ — are 

 natural parts of a divine law ; as they stand in Buddhism, they 

 are only fragments of the truth. 



22. With regard, again, to the doctrine of Nircdna, which 

 Dr. Oldenberg^s learned researches have further helped to 

 remove out of the gloomy region of a blank annihilation, 

 here also is something, if it did originally speak only of 

 " deliverance " and " peace,^^ that looks very like a vestige of 

 such teaching as inspired other wise men to write, " Wisdom^s 

 ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace ^^ j 

 " The wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the 

 righteous hath hope in his death " ; " Mark the perfect man, 

 and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace. ^' ^■ 



* When we go back to the very earliest texts that speak of Nirvana, we 

 find the subject aheady involved in metaphysics. This is a certain proof 

 that either the original dogmatic teaching on the subject had been lost, or 

 was being perverted. Every original teacher is dogmatic ; if on any portion 

 of his teaching he himself runs into metaphysical questions, that means that 

 he has inherited some tradition which he does not understand. In Buddha's 

 own mouth was Nirvana a circumscribed dogma l or was it a metaphysical 

 uncertainty ? One would suppose that it must have been with him a well- 

 defined dogma, or it is difiicult to see how it could become the one goal of all 

 his teaching. The doctrine that the original dogma of Nirvana was annihi- 

 lation of being was unorthodox, though already broached, when the Samyutta 

 Nikaya was written. There the following passage occurs (more fully 

 quoted by Dr. Oldenberg, p. 282): "Thus then, friend Yamaka, even here 

 in this world the Perfect One is not to be apprehended by thee in truth. 

 Hast thou, therefore, a right to speak, saying, ' I understand the doctrine 

 taught by the Exalted One to be this, that a monk, who is free from sin, when 

 his body dissolves, is subject to annihilation, that he passes away, that he 

 does not exist beyond death ' ? " Yamaka answers, " Such, indeed, was 

 hitherto, friend Sariputta, the heretical view which I ignorantly entertained. 

 But now, when I hear the venerable Sariputta expound the doctrine, the 

 heretical view has lost its hold of me, and I have learned the doctrine." 

 Echoes of the original teaching exist in the Pali texts, of which the fol- 

 lowing are quoted by Dr. Oldenberg, as examples, from the Dhammapada 

 (p. 285) :— 



" Plunged into meditation, the immovable ones who valiantly struggle 

 evermore, the wise, grasp the Nirvana, the gain which no other gain sur- 

 passes." 



" Hunger is the most grievous illness ; the Sankhara are the most grievous 

 sorrow ; recognising this of a truth man attains the Nirvana, the supreme 

 happiness." 



