DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45392#0158
Buddha the Gospel of Buddhism
II. SAMSARA AND KA MM A (KARMA)
We are now in a better position to understand the
theory of soul-wandering in Early Buddhism. I say
particularly Early Buddhism, because in the greater
part of pre-Buddhist thought, and in all popular thought,
whether Brahmanical or Buddhist, the doctrine of metem-
psychosis, the passing of life from one form to another
at death, is conceived animistically as the transmigration
of an individual soul.
Take for example, such a text as Bhagavad Gita, ii, 22 :
“ As a man lays aside outworn garments and takes others
that are new, so the Body-Dweller puts away outworn
bodies and goes to others that are new.” Here the
language is plainly animistic. One reader will understand
that a soul, an ethereal mannikin, removes from one abode
to another; a second reader, observing that This (Body-
Dweller) is no other than That which is ‘ not so, not so,’
perceives that empirically speaking nothing—nothing that
we can call anything—transmigrates. There is here an
ambiguity which is inseparable in the case of all concep-
tions which are sublimated from experiences originally
animistic or sensuous.1 Brahmanical thought does not seek
to evade this ambiguity of expression, which is, moreover,
of historical significance; and this continuity of develop-
ment has the advantage that no impassable gulf is fixed
between the animist and the philosopher.
This advantage is emphasized by Sankara in his distinc-
tion of esoteric and exoteric knowledge, para, and apard
1 As, for example, in the analogous case of rasa, which meant taste or
flavour in the sense of savour, and has come to mean in a technical
sense, aesthetic emotion. So with ananda, originally physical pleasure,
afterwards also spiritual bliss.
104
II. SAMSARA AND KA MM A (KARMA)
We are now in a better position to understand the
theory of soul-wandering in Early Buddhism. I say
particularly Early Buddhism, because in the greater
part of pre-Buddhist thought, and in all popular thought,
whether Brahmanical or Buddhist, the doctrine of metem-
psychosis, the passing of life from one form to another
at death, is conceived animistically as the transmigration
of an individual soul.
Take for example, such a text as Bhagavad Gita, ii, 22 :
“ As a man lays aside outworn garments and takes others
that are new, so the Body-Dweller puts away outworn
bodies and goes to others that are new.” Here the
language is plainly animistic. One reader will understand
that a soul, an ethereal mannikin, removes from one abode
to another; a second reader, observing that This (Body-
Dweller) is no other than That which is ‘ not so, not so,’
perceives that empirically speaking nothing—nothing that
we can call anything—transmigrates. There is here an
ambiguity which is inseparable in the case of all concep-
tions which are sublimated from experiences originally
animistic or sensuous.1 Brahmanical thought does not seek
to evade this ambiguity of expression, which is, moreover,
of historical significance; and this continuity of develop-
ment has the advantage that no impassable gulf is fixed
between the animist and the philosopher.
This advantage is emphasized by Sankara in his distinc-
tion of esoteric and exoteric knowledge, para, and apard
1 As, for example, in the analogous case of rasa, which meant taste or
flavour in the sense of savour, and has come to mean in a technical
sense, aesthetic emotion. So with ananda, originally physical pleasure,
afterwards also spiritual bliss.
104