CHAPTER V

A

THE BUDDHIST MORAL SYSTEM IN GENERAL

N author who wishes to describe the Buddhist view of morals in a way intelligible to an English reader, and yet as nearly as possible in the language and spirit of the Buddhist books, is met by considerable difficulties; and in stating some of these difficulties I shall perhaps be able at the same time to convey to the reader some true impressions as to the shape and structure of the books from which our materials are to be derived.

Greatly as the metaphysical element in Buddhist teaching has sometimes been overstated, it is impossible entirely to separate the discussion of morals from that of the general laws of being. This is true to some extent in regard to any moral system, ancient or modern, Greek or Oriental; for whether we consider that the end of conduct is the attainment of truth, or regard the knowledge of truth as the foundation of conduct, either way the two are intimately associated. But it is conspicuously true in the case of the Buddhist system. Not only did Gotama base his rules on his 'Four Truths,' but knowledge itself in the

Buddhist view is almost identified with moral power. The very name Buddhism,' of a system which is preeminently one of conduct, is derived from 'budh,' to know; and the two are linked together by another characteristic feature of Buddhism, the emphasis which it lays on meditation. Meditation, by which knowledge is brought to bear on conduct, is in fact a part of conduct. Conversely, meditation, by which truth is arrived at, depends upon the essentially moral conditions of purity and self-control. Of the intermediate position which belongs to meditation, the Buddhist compilers were well aware; and accordingly they classified the whole course as conduct, meditation, knowledge. The Buddhist, like the Platonist, though for very different reasons, can never separate virtue from knowledge. We shall see, however, that the knowledge involved is that of a strictly limited group of propositions, and that neither metaphysics nor intellectual knowledge play any large part in the Buddhist system.

Nor are morals separated clearly from metaphysics in the sacred books. It has been usually said that morality is the theme of the Sutta Pitaka, or collection of discourses, exclusively. This is not the case. The Vinaya Pitaka, or collection of the Rules of the Community, contains a very large element of directly moral precepts and lectures, and has embodied in it some of the same discourses which are found in the Sutta (or Sutra) Pitaka. The Abhidhamma Pitaka, though so often spoken of as

deep and subtle, consists in great part of matter similar to that of the Sutta Pitaka, and often differs little from it in arrangement. In the portions of this Pitaka which have been published, many of the sections are virtually Suttas, only without the preface, on such an occasion the Buddha said,' and long passages are word for word the same as in the Sutta Pitaka. In fact in the Puggala Pannatti' may be found some of the best concise summaries of the whole system. In speaking, therefore, in the following pages of the Suttas' I shall not necessarily imply that my material is taken from the Sutta Pitaka, though that will usually be the case. The popular division is so far true that the Sutta Pitaka is the chief repository of teaching specifically moral.

But neither in the Sutta Pitaka nor in either of the others do we find a systematic treatment, on any large scale, of the whole subject of morals.

The notion of a volume, setting out the whole of a subject in a continuous treatise, is unknown to the ancient Buddhist literature. And accordingly, in regard to morality, there is not to be found in the 'canonical' books any complete and regular work upon it, nor any authorised course of instruction.

Nor could such a treatise or course be formed by reading the Suttas in succession. The longest Suttas are hardly longer than a modern essay or sermon; the large majority are shorter; none are so long as the longer dialogues of Plato; and one is not supplemen

many

tary to another; each does not take up the subject where the last left off; each purports to be complete in itself. There is very little gained by reading two in succession. It is true that they are extremely systematic in a certain sense of the word, and that of them cover or summarise a very large part of the field,'-in fact it is their vice to be each separately exhaustive-but they go over the field in different directions, and divide up the same subject by a great variety of independent classifications. For instance, while one leads the disciple from conversion to Nirvana by the successive casting off of a series of 'impediments,' another leads him the same journey by the rooting out of certain bad habits or states of mind. Under a different name, or even under the same name, the same vice, as for instance 'hatred,' will appear in both series. One Sutta will treat of the three kinds of act, acts of body, of speech, and of thought; and the next Sutta will contrast two characters, that of the man who injures both his neighbour and himself, and that of the man who does good to both; and this contrast will consist in the acts, words, and thoughts of the two men. By studying a multitude of such chapters one receives a forcible impression of the teaching as a connected whole; but it is impossible to compile a connected treatise by putting such chapters together. Such an attempt would result in a mass of repetitions and cross-divisions.

1 The Sutta translated on pp. 328-337 is a good instance of this, and comes as near as any one would do to giving the reader a notion of the systematic method.

This will appear clearly enough from a rough abridgment of the first and second Suttas of the Majjhima Nikáya, or Collection of treatises of middle length.

The first insists on the necessity of an exact knowledge of the true character, as regards impermanence, etc., of the outer world. Such knowledge will free the man from all attachment to the four material elements, earth, water, fire, and air, to animals, to the lower deities, to the various (fully enumerated) higher deities, to the four infinite regions, to the objects of sight, hearing, thought, and consciousness, to unity, multiplicity, and universality, and to Nirvana itself. This condition exists in the advanced disciple, and is caused by the destruction in him of lust, spite, and stupidity; and this condition is identical with the final perfection of a Buddha.

The second Sutta teaches how to destroy the asavas or 'corruptions,' of which three are specified, those of desire, existence, ignorance. They are got rid of by seven methods, viz., by thinking only of such things as tend to get rid of them, by guarding the five senses, by recollectedness in the use of the conventional list of necessaries, by resignation to the conventional list of inconveniences, by avoidance of the occasions of evil, by dispelling the three wrong reflections, desire, malice, and cruelty, by practising the seven elements of supreme wisdom. He who has achieved these has ended sorrow.

From this instance it will also be partly seen in