Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki

“ The Mahâyâna and the Hînayâna are one; the same spirit of the founder of Buddhism breathes through both. Only each has developed in its own way, according to the different surroundings in which it has thrived and grown-understanding by surroundings all those various factors of life that make up the peculiarities of an individual or a nation. Lack of communication has hitherto prevented the bringing together of Buddhists and the effecting of a complete understanding of each other. ”

“ Why could we suffer ourselves for the sake of others and lighten even to the smallest degree the burden of evil karma under which weak, ignorant ones are groaning, though they have nobody else to blame for their own wretchedness? ”

“ Christianity is built upon the history of a person, whatever its intrinsic authenticity may be, and not directly upon the facts of our religious consciousness and intellectual necessity. Therefore, it is unable to uphold the universal application of the principle of vicarious sacrifice, not to say its inability to appreciate the importance of the principle of karma. This is where Christianity derives its strength, the strength of concreteness and objectivity, as compared to Mahâyâna Buddhism; but here lies also its weakness, at least so it would seem to Buddhist thinkers. ”

“ When the conception of suchness is established, the raison d'être of the Mahâyâna becomes manifest. Buddhism is not an agnostic system of philosophy, nor is it an atheistic ethics. For in suchness, or dharmakāya, it finds the reason of existence, the real reality, the norm of morality, the source of love and goodness, the fountainhead of righteousness, the absolute intelligence, and the starting point of karma, the law of deeds. For suchness, according to Mahāyāna thinkers, is not merely a state of being, but it is energy, intelligence, and love. ”

“ Grant that the Hînayâna followers most faithfully adhered to the moral, monastic, and disciplinary life of primitive Buddhism, and that the Mahâyânists in the meantime were bent on the unfolding of the religio-philosophical significance of the teachings of the Buddha, and it will be seen that the further they advanced the wider grew their separation from each other. To the moralists, such a bold flight of imagination as conceived by the Mahâyâna was a very difficult thing to realize. Moral responsibility implies a strict observance of the law of karma; what is done cannot be undone. ”

“ The Mahâyâna thinkers have denied with their conservative fellow believers the existence of a concrete ego-soul; they have refused to accept the doctrine of a personal God; they are further reluctant to assert anything dogmatically; and the ultimate logical sequence of all these necessarily negative statements could not be anything else but the conception of suchness. Beyond this, one enters into mysticism; philosophy must bow her head modestly to religion at this gate of suchness ”

“ It is not his ego-soul that makes him think, feel, desire, or aspire, but the dharmakâya itself in the form of bodhichitta or wisdom heart which constitutes his ethical and religious being. If we abandon the thought of egoism and return to the universal source of love and wisdom, we are released from the bond of evil karma, and we are enlightened as to the reason of existence ”

“ Now let us see how Mahâyâna Buddhism has developed its speculative course as compared to the Hînayâna, and I will first discuss the doctrine of anâtman, or non-ego. This is considered one of the most important and characteristic features of Buddhism, and justly so, because both the Hînayâna and the Mahâyâna uphold this as essential to their raison d'être. However, the Hinayâna school seems to have remained almost too faithful, as it were, to the doctrine; it has not gone beyond its negative statement; it has not carried out its logical consequence to the utmost limits. ”

“ Though a man has to reap what he has sown and there is no escape possible from the consequence of his evil deeds, the Mahâyâna thinkers would say: A Bodhisattva wishes from the fulness of his heart to turn over whatever merit he can have from his acts of goodness to the general welfare of his spiritual kingdom, and to bear upon himself whatever burden of evil is going to befall his ignorant, self-destroying fellow-beings. The good he does is not necessarily for his own benefit. ”

“ But, as I have said before, such critics entirely ignore the fact that the human understanding, owing to its constitutional limitations, often finds it most expedient and indeed most logical to state a truth negatively, since a negation is really a higher form of affirmation, to be comprehended only through a process of intuition. ”

“ But as suchness begins to assume these attributes, it ceases to be transcendental suchness, it is now conditional suchness. So long as it remains absolutely transcendental, in which neither negation nor affirmation is possible, it is beyond the comprehension of the human understanding; suchness can not very well become the object of our religious consciousness. But there is the awakening of the will in suchness, and with this awakening we have conditional and self-limiting suchness in place of the absolute unknowable. ”

“ They are most earnestly religious; they know that the deepest religious truth cannot be presented in a stereotyped philosophical formula. Only those who are short-sighted timidly stop at the negation and refuse to go beyond. If they thus misjudge the significance of Mahâyâna Buddhism, the fault is on their own side.
What, then, is that positive something offered by the Mahâyâna scholars as the logical conclusion of the theory of non-atman? It is generally designated as tatvâ or suchness. This is a philosophical term, and when its religious importance is emphasized it is called dharmakâya. ”

“ In this conception of suchness, or dharmakâya, they find the highest possible affirmation which is reached after a series of negations and which unifies all forms of contradiction, psychological, ethical, and ontological. Ashvagosha, one of the greatest early Buddhist philosophers in India, says in his Awakening of Faith in the Mahâyâna: [2] "Suchness is neither that which is existent, nor that which is nonexistent; it is neither that which is at once existent and non-existent, nor that which is not at once existent and non-existent ”

“ With regard to the non-ego theory, the Mahāyāna followers assert that there is no àtman or ego-soul not only in its psychological signification, but in its objective sense. That is to say, they deny with the Hinayana followers that there is any such thing as an ego-entity, a concrete, simple, ultimate, and independent unit, behind our consciousness; but they go still further and declare that this objective world too has no âtman, no ego, no personal creator, no Ishvāra, who works and enjoys his absolute transcendence behind the eternal concatenation of cause and effect. ”

“ Or we may retain the old way of classifying the followers of the Buddha into two groups: the Mahâsanghika and the Sthâvira. Or, further, we can even invent a new method of division, and call one the progressives and the other the conservatives.
Taking all in all, however, it seems to me that the division of Mahâyâna and Hînayâna Buddhism is preferable to all the rest from the point of view of our knowledge of Buddhism. Of course, this way of dividing Buddhism has its historical odium, which is most desirable for modern scholars of Buddhism to avoid. ”

“ But the time is coming nearer when each will fully realize and candidly admit its own shortcomings, though not oblivious of its advantages, and earnestly desire to cooperate with the other in order to bring about a perfect assimilation into one uniform system of Buddhist thought and Buddhist practice, and to contribute to the promotion of peace and goodwill towards all beings, regardless of racial or national differences. ”

“ The Mahâyâna philosophy at this point becomes mysticism. Intellectually, it has gone as far as it can. Vidya must now give way to dhyâna or prajñā; that is, intellection must become intuition, which is after all the ultimate form of all religious discipline. ”

“ It is not an isolated phenomenon originating from the individual and returning to the same agent. It is no mere abstraction when I say that the lifting of my arm or the moving of my leg is not an accidental, indifferent act, but directly related to the ultimate cause of the universe. ”

“ Even a faint wavelet which is noticed in one part of the water is sure to spread all over its surface sooner or later according to the resistance of the molecules, and thus finally to disturb the serenity of the lunar image in it. ”

“ Likewise, with every deed, good or bad, committed by any sentient unit of this spiritual organization, the dharmakâya rejoices or is grieved. When it is grieved, it wills to counteract the evil with goodness; when it rejoices, it knows that so far the cause of goodness has been advanced. Individual karma, therefore, is not after all individual ”

“ This struggle and fighting, however, was quite in accord with the somewhat one-sided development of the Mahâyâna in the direction of speculative philosophy. Intellect is always inclined to dissent, to quarrel, to become self-conceited. The existence of ten or twelve sects of Japanese Buddhism was the inevitable result of the general movement of the speculative Mahâyâna. ”