DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45392#0160
Buddha & the Gospel of Buddhism
contributed to the hesitation which he felt in regard to the
preaching of the gospel. The method he was forced to
adopt, was to make use of the current phraseology,
expanding and emphasizing in his own way, and
employing well-known words in new uses.
We have therefore to guard ourselves, as Buddhaghosha
says, from supposing that the manner of stating the case
exactly expresses the fact. The term Samsara is a case
in point; for this ‘Wandering’ is not for Gautama the
wandering of any thing. Buddhism nowhere teaches
the transmigration of souls, but only the transmigration
of character, of personality without a person.
Many are the similes employed by Gautama to show that
no thing transmigrates from one life to another. The
ending of one life and the beginning of another, indeed,
hardly differ in kind from the change that takes place
when a boy becomes a man—that also is a transmigration,
a wandering, a new becoming.
Among the similes most often used we find that of flame
especially convenient. Life is a flame, and transmigration,
new becoming, rebirth, is the transmitting of the flame
from one combustible aggregate to another; just that,
and nothing more. If we light one candle from another,
the communicated flame is one and the same, in the sense
of an observed continuity, but the candle is not the same.
Or, again, we could not offer a better illustration, if a
modern instance be permitted, than that of a series of
billiard balls in close contact: if another ball is rolled
against the last stationary ball, the moving ball will stop
dead, and the foremost stationary ball will move on. Here
precisely is Buddhist transmigration: the first moving
ball does not pass over, it remains behind, it dies; but it
is undeniably the movement of that ball, its momentum,
106
contributed to the hesitation which he felt in regard to the
preaching of the gospel. The method he was forced to
adopt, was to make use of the current phraseology,
expanding and emphasizing in his own way, and
employing well-known words in new uses.
We have therefore to guard ourselves, as Buddhaghosha
says, from supposing that the manner of stating the case
exactly expresses the fact. The term Samsara is a case
in point; for this ‘Wandering’ is not for Gautama the
wandering of any thing. Buddhism nowhere teaches
the transmigration of souls, but only the transmigration
of character, of personality without a person.
Many are the similes employed by Gautama to show that
no thing transmigrates from one life to another. The
ending of one life and the beginning of another, indeed,
hardly differ in kind from the change that takes place
when a boy becomes a man—that also is a transmigration,
a wandering, a new becoming.
Among the similes most often used we find that of flame
especially convenient. Life is a flame, and transmigration,
new becoming, rebirth, is the transmitting of the flame
from one combustible aggregate to another; just that,
and nothing more. If we light one candle from another,
the communicated flame is one and the same, in the sense
of an observed continuity, but the candle is not the same.
Or, again, we could not offer a better illustration, if a
modern instance be permitted, than that of a series of
billiard balls in close contact: if another ball is rolled
against the last stationary ball, the moving ball will stop
dead, and the foremost stationary ball will move on. Here
precisely is Buddhist transmigration: the first moving
ball does not pass over, it remains behind, it dies; but it
is undeniably the movement of that ball, its momentum,
106