The Sword of Song

SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 111 Psychology,” ii. 404). The breathing, m otions of walking, &c., are merely observed and recording; for instance, one may sit down quietly and say : “There is an indrawing of the breath.” “There is an expiration,” &c. Or, walking, “There is a raising of the right foot,” and so on, just as it happens. The thought is of course not quick enough to note all the movements or their subtle causes. For example, we cannot describe the c ompli- cated muscular contractions, &c. ; but this is not necessary. Concentrate on some series of simple movements. When this through habit becomes i ntuitive so that the thought is really “T here i s a raising,” as opposed to “I raise” (the latter being in reality a complex and adult idea, as philosophers have often shown, ever since Descartes fell into the trap), one m ay begin to analyse, as explained above, and the second stage is “There is a s ensation (Vedana) of a raising, &c.” Sensations are further clas sed as pleasant or unpleasant. When this is the true intuitive instantaneous testimony of consciousness (so that “There is a raising, &c.” is rejected as a palpable lie),1 we procede to Sañña, perception. “There is a perception of a (pleas ant or unpleasant) sensation of a raising, &c.” When this has becom e intuitive—why ! here’s a strange result ! The emotions of pain and pleasure have vanished. They are subincluded in the lesser skandha of Vedana, and Sañña is free from them. And to him who can live in this third stage, and live so for ever, there is no m ore pain; only an intense interest sim ilar to that which has enabled men of science to watch and note the progress of their own death-agony. Un- 1 “W hy should y ou expect Vedana to m ake Rupa appear illusory?” asked a friend of mine, on reading through the MS. of this essay. The reason of my omission to explain is that to m e it had seemed obvious. T he fact had been assim ilated. To meditate on any thing is to per ceive its unr eal nature. Notably this is so in concentrating on parts of the body, such as the nose. On this phenomenon the Hindus have based their famous aphorism, “That which can be thought is not true.”—A. C. fortunately the living in such a state is conditional on sound mental health, and terminable by disease or death at any moment. Were it not so, the First Noble Truth would be a lie. The two further stages Sankhara and V iñ- ñanam pursue the analy sis to its ultimation, “There is a consciousness of a tendency to perceive the (pleasant or unpleasant) sensa- tion of a raising of a right foot” being the final form. And I suppose no psy chologist of any standing will quarrel with this.1 Reasoning in fact leads us to this analysis; the Buddhist goes further only in so far as h e may be said to knock down the scaffolding of reasoning processes, and to assimilate t he actual truth of the matter. It is the difference between the schoolboy who painfully construes “Balbus murum ædi- ficavit,” and the Roman who announces that historic fact without a thought of his grammer. I have called this m editation the most famous of the Buddhist meditations, b ecause it is stated by the Buddha himself that if one practices it honestly and intelligently a r esult is certain. And he says this of no other. I have personally not found the time to devote m yself seriously to this Mahasati- patthana, and the s tatements here m ade are those derived from reason and not from ex- perience. But I can say that the unreality of the grosser (rupa) relative to the sublter Vedana and still m ore subtle Sañña be- comes rapidly apparent, and I can only conclude that with time and trouble the process would continue. What will occur when one reaches the final stage of Viññanam, and finds no Atman behind it ? Surely the Viññanam stage will soon seem as unreal as the former have be- come. It is idle to speculate; but if I may escape the imputation of explaining the ob- scure by the more obscure, I may hint that such a pers on m ust be very near the s tate called Nirvana, whatever m ay be meant by 1 I deal with Mr. Spencer and “ Transfigured Realism” in a note at the end of this section. —A. C.