DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45392#0162
Buddha the Gospel of Buddhism
If we combine the doctrine of kamma with that of samsara,
‘deeds’ with ‘wandering,’ kamma represents a familiar
truth—the truth that the history of the individual does
not begin at birth. “ Man is born like a garden ready
planted and sown.”
Before I was born out of my mother generations
guided me. . . .
Now on this spot I stand.
This heredity is thinkable in two ways. The first way,
the truth of which is undeniable, represents the action of
past lives on present ones;1 the second, which may or
may not be true, represents the action of a single con-
tinuous series of past lives on a single present life. The
Buddhist theory of kamma plus samsara does not differ
from its Brahmanical prototype in adopting the second
view. This may have been because of its pragmatic
advantage in the explanation of apparent natural in-
justice ; for it affords a reasonable answer to the question,
“Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born
1 That the human individual is polypsychic, that an indefinite number
of streams of consciousness coexist in each of us which can be variously
and in varying degrees associated or dissociated is now a doctrine
widely accepted even by “ orthodox psychology.”
G. W. Balfour, HibbertJournal, No. 43.
The same thought is expressed more Buddhistically by Lafcadio Hearn :
“For what is our individuality? Most certainly it is not individuality at
all; it is multiplicity incalculable. What is the human body ? A form
built up out of billions of living entities, an impermanent agglomeration
of individuals called cells. And the human soul? A composite of
quintillions of souls. We are, each and all, infinite compounds of
fragments of anterior lives.” In the Psalm of Ananda : “a congeries
diseased, teeming with many purposes and places, and yet in whom
there is no power to persist.”
108
If we combine the doctrine of kamma with that of samsara,
‘deeds’ with ‘wandering,’ kamma represents a familiar
truth—the truth that the history of the individual does
not begin at birth. “ Man is born like a garden ready
planted and sown.”
Before I was born out of my mother generations
guided me. . . .
Now on this spot I stand.
This heredity is thinkable in two ways. The first way,
the truth of which is undeniable, represents the action of
past lives on present ones;1 the second, which may or
may not be true, represents the action of a single con-
tinuous series of past lives on a single present life. The
Buddhist theory of kamma plus samsara does not differ
from its Brahmanical prototype in adopting the second
view. This may have been because of its pragmatic
advantage in the explanation of apparent natural in-
justice ; for it affords a reasonable answer to the question,
“Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born
1 That the human individual is polypsychic, that an indefinite number
of streams of consciousness coexist in each of us which can be variously
and in varying degrees associated or dissociated is now a doctrine
widely accepted even by “ orthodox psychology.”
G. W. Balfour, HibbertJournal, No. 43.
The same thought is expressed more Buddhistically by Lafcadio Hearn :
“For what is our individuality? Most certainly it is not individuality at
all; it is multiplicity incalculable. What is the human body ? A form
built up out of billions of living entities, an impermanent agglomeration
of individuals called cells. And the human soul? A composite of
quintillions of souls. We are, each and all, infinite compounds of
fragments of anterior lives.” In the Psalm of Ananda : “a congeries
diseased, teeming with many purposes and places, and yet in whom
there is no power to persist.”
108