CHAPTER 22
WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ?
"Inconceivable is the beginning, O disciples,
of this faring on. The earliest point is not revealed of the running on,
the faring on, of beings, cloaked in ignorance, tied by craving."
-- SAMYUTTA NIKĀYA
Rebirth,
which Buddhists do not regard as a mere theory but as a fact verifiable by
evidence, forms a fundamental tenet of Buddhism, though its goal Nibbāna
is attainable in this life itself. The Bodhisatta Ideal and the
correlative doctrine of freedom to attain utter perfection are based on
this doctrine of rebirth.
Documents record that this belief in rebirth,
viewed as transmigration or reincarnation, was accepted by philo-sophers
like Pythagoras and Plato, poets like Shelly, Tennyson
and Wordsworth, and many ordinary people in the East as well as
in the West.
The Buddhist doctrine of rebirth should be
differentiated from the theory of transmigration and reincarnation of
other systems, because Buddhism denies the existence of a transmigrating
permanent soul, created by God, or emanating from a Paramātma
(Divine Essence).
It is Kamma that conditions rebirth. Past Kamma
conditions the present birth; and present Kamma, in combination with past
Kamma, conditions the future. The present is the offspring of the past,
and becomes, in turn. the parent of the future.
The actuality of the present needs no proof as
it is self-evident. That of the past is based on memory and report, and
that of the future on forethought and inference.
If we postulate a past, a present and a future
life, then we are at once faced with the problem "What is the ultimate
origin of life?"
One school, in attempting to solve the problem,
postulates a first cause, whether as a cosmic force or as an Almighty
Being. Another school denies a first cause for, in common experience, the
cause ever becomes the effect and the effect becomes the cause. In a
circle of cause and effect a first cause
[1] is
inconceivable. According to the former, life has had a beginning,
according to the latter, it is beginningless. In the opinion of some the
conception of a first cause is as ridiculous as a round triangle.
One might argue that life must have had a
beginning in the infinite past and that beginning or the First Cause is
the Creator.
In that case there is no reason why the same
demand may not be made of this postulated Creator.
With respect to this alleged First Cause men
have held widely different views. In interpreting this First Cause,
Paramātma, Brahma, Isvara, Jehovah, God, the Almighty, Allah, Supreme
Being, Father in Heaven, Creator, Order of Heaven, Prime Mover, Uncaused
Cause, Divine Essence, Chance, Pakati, Padhāna are some significant terms
employed by certain religious teachers and philosophers.
Hinduism traces the origin of life to a
mystical Paramātma from which emanate all Ātmas or souls that
transmigrate from existence to existence until they are finally reabsorbed
in Paramātma. One might question whether there is any possibility for
these reabsorbed Ātmas for a further transmigration.
Christianity, admitting the possibility of an
ultimate origin, attributes everything to the fiat of an Almighty God.
"Whoever," as Sohopenhaeur says, "regards
himself as having come out of nothing must also think that he will again
become nothing, for that an eternity has passed before he was, and then a
second eternity had begun, through which he will never cease to be, is a
monstrous thought.
"Moreover, if birth is the absolute beginning,
then death must be the absolute end; and the assumption that man is made
out of nothing, leads necessarily to the assumption that death is his
absolute end.
[2]"
"According to the Theological principles,"
argues Spencer Lewis, "man is created arbitrarily and without his
desire, and at the moment of creation is either blessed or unfortunate,
noble or depraved, from the first step in the process of his
physical creation to the moment of his last breath, regardless of his
individual desires, hopes, ambitions, struggles or devoted prayers. Such
is theological fatalism.
"The doctrine that all men are sinners and have
the essential sin of Adam is a challenge to justice, mercy, love and
omnipotent fairness."
Huxley says:--
"If we are to assume that anybody has
designedly set this wonderful universe going, it is perfectly clear to me
that he is no more entirely benevolent and just, in any intelligible sense
of the words, than that he is malevolent and unjust."
According to Einstein:--
"If this being (God) is omnipolent, then every
occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every
human feeling and aspiration is also his work; how is it possible to think
of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an
Almighty Being?
"In giving out punishments and rewards, He
would to a certain extent be passing judgment on himself. How can this be
combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to him?"
According to Charles Bradlaugh:—
"The existence of evil is a terrible stumbling
block to the Theist. Pain, misery, crime, poverty confront the
advocate of eternal goodness, and challenge with unanswerable potency
his declaration of Deity as all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful."
Commenting on human suffering and God, Prof. J.
B. S. Haldane writes:--
"Either suffering is needed to perfect human
character, or God is not Almighty. The former theory is disproved by the
fact that some people who have suffered very little but have been
fortunate in their ancestry and education have very fine characters. The
objection to the second is that it is only in connection with the universe
as a whole that there is any intellectual gap to be filled by the
postulation of a deity. And a creator could presumably create
whatever he or it wanted.
[3]"
In "Despair," a poem of his old age, Lord
Tennyson thus boldly attacks God, who, as recorded in Isaiah, says –"I
make peace and create evil.
[4]"
"What! I should call on that infinite Love that
has served us so well?
Infinite cruelty, rather, that made everlasting hell.
Made us, foreknew us, foredoomed us, and does what he will with
his own.
Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan."
Dogmatic writers of old authoritatively
declared that God created man after his own image. Some modern thinkers
state, on the contrary, that man created God after his own image.
[5] With the growth
of civilization man's conception of God grows more and more refined. There
is at present a tendency to substitute this personal God by an impersonal
God.
Voltaire states that God is the noblest
creation of man.
It is however impossible to conceive of such an
omnipotent, omnipresent being, an epitome of everything that is good --
either in or outside the universe.
Modern science endeavours to tackle the problem
with its limited systematized knowledge. According to the scientific
standpoint, we are the direct products of the sperm and ovum cells
provided by our parents. But science does not give a satisfactory
explanation with regard to the development of the mind, which is
infinitely more important than the machinery of man's material body,
Scientists, while asserting "Omne vivum ex vivo" "all life
from life" maintain that mind and life evolved from the lifeless.
Now from the scientific standpoint we are
absolutely parent-born. Thus our lives are necessarily preceded by those
of our parents and so on. In this way life is preceded by life until one
goes back to the first protoplasm or colloid. As regards the origin of
this first protoplasm or colloid, however, scientists plead ignorance.
What is the attitude of Buddhism with regard to
the origin of life?
At the outset it should be stated that the
Buddha does not attempt to solve all the ethical and philosophical
problems that perplex mankind. Nor does He deal with speculations and
theories that tend neither to edification nor to enlightenment. Nor does
He demand blind faith from His adherents anent a First Cause. He is
chiefly concerned with one practical and specific problem -- that of
suffering and its destruction, all side issues are completely ignored.
On one occasion a Bhikkhu named
Mālunkyaputta, not content to lead the Holy Life, and achieve his
Emancipation by degrees, approached the Buddha and impatiently demanded an
immediate solution of some speculative problems with the threat of
discarding the robes if no satisfactory answer was given.
"Lord,"
he said, "these theories have not been elucidated, have been set aside
and rejected by the Blessed One -- whether the world is eternal or not
eternal, whether the world is finite or infinite. If the Blessed One will
elucidate these questions to me, then I will lead the Holy Life
under Him. If he will not, then I will abandon the precepts and return to
the lay life.
"If the Blessed One knows that the world is
eternal, let the Blessed One elucidate to me that the world is eternal; if
the Blessed One knows that the world is not eternal, let the Blessed One
elucidate that the world is not eternal -- in that case, certainly, for
one who does not know and lacks the insight, the only upright thing is to
say: I do not know, I have not the insight."
Calmly the Buddha questioned the erring Bhikkhu
whether his adoption of the Holy Life was in any way conditional upon the
solution of such problems.
"Nay, Lord," the Bhikkhu replied.
The Buddha then admonished him not to waste
time and energy over idle speculations detrimental to his moral progress,
and said:
"Whoever, Mālunkyaputta, should say, 'I will
not lead the Holy Life under the Blessed One until the Blessed One
elucidates these questions to me' -- that person would die before these
questions had ever been elucidated by the Accomplished One.
"It is as if a person were pierced by an arrow
thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and relatives were to procure
a surgeon, and then he were to say. 'I will not have this arrow taken out
until I know the details of the person by whom I was wounded, nature of
the arrow with which I was pierced, etc.' That person would die before
this would ever be known by him.
"In exactly the same way whoever should say, 'I
will not lead the Holy Life under the Blessed One until He elucidated to
me whether the world is eternal or not eternal, whether the world is
finite or infinite. . .' That person would die before these questions had
ever been elucidated by the Accomplished One.
"If it be the belief that the world is eternal,
will there be the observance of the Holy Life? In such a case -- No! If it
be the belief that the world is not eternal, will there be the observance
of the Holy Life? In that case also -- No! But, whether the belief be that
the world is eternal or that it is not eternal, there is birth, there is
old age, there is death, the extinction of which in this life itself I
make known.
"Mālunkyaputta, I have not revealed whether the
world is eternal or not eternal, whether the world is finite or infinite.
Why have I not revealed these? Because these are not profitable, do not
concern the bases of holiness, are not conducive to aversion, to
passionlessness, to cessation, to tranquility, to intuitive wisdom, to
enlightenment or to Nibbāna. Therefore I have not revealed these.
[6]
According to Buddhism, we are born from the
matrix of action (Kammayoni). Parents merely provide us with a
material layer. Therefore being precedes being. At the moment of
conception, it is Kamma that conditions the initial consciousness that
vitalizes the foetus. It is this invisible Kammic energy, generated from
the past birth, that produces mental phenomena and the phenomena of life
in an already extant physical phenomena, to complete the trio that
constitutes man.
Dealing with the conception of beings, the
Buddha states:
"Where three are found in combination, there a
germ of life is planted. If mother and father come together, but it is not
the mother's fertile period, and the 'being-to-be-born' (gandhabba) is not
present, then no germ of life is planted. If mother and father come
together, and it is the mother's fertile period, but the
'being-to-be-born' is not present then again no germ of life is planted.
If mother and father come together and it is the mother's fertile period,
and the 'being-to-be-born' is present, then by the conjunction of these
three, a germ of life is there planted.
[7]"
Here Gandhabba (= gantabba) does not
mean "a class of devas said to preside over the process of conception"
[8] but refers to a
suitable being ready to be born in that particular womb. This term is used
only in this particular connection, and must not be mistaken for a
permanent soul.
For a being to be born here, somewhere a being
must die. The birth of a being, which strictly means the arising of
the Aggregates (khandhānam pātubhāvo), or psycho-physical
phenomena in this present life, corresponds to the death of a being in a
past life; just as, in conventional terms, the rising of the sun in one
place means the setting of the sun in another place. This enigmatic
statement may be better understood by imagining life as a wave and not as
a straight line. Birth and death are only two phases of the same process.
Birth precedes death, and death, on the other hand, precedes birth. This
constant succession of birth and death connection with each individual
life-flux constitutes what is technically known as Samsāra -- recurrent
wandering.
What is the ultimate origin of life?
The Buddha positively declares:
"Without, cognizable beginning is this Samsāra.
The earliest point of beings who, obstructed by ignorance and fettered by
craving, wander and fare on, is not to be perceived.
[9]"
This life-stream flows ad infinitum, as
long as it is fed with the muddy waters of ignorance and craving. When
these two are completely cut off, then only does the life-stream cease to
flow; rebirth ends, as in the case of Buddhas and Arahants. A first
beginning of this life-stream cannot be determined, as a stage cannot be
perceived when this life force was not fraught with ignorance and craving.
It should be understood that the Buddha has
here referred merely to the beginning of the life stream of living beings.
It is left to scientists to speculate on the origin and the evolution of
the universe.
[1]
"There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The
idea that things must have a beginning is due to the poverty of our
imagination." Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian.
[2] See The world
as Will and Idea.
[3] See his essay on
"A Plea for Atheism," Humanity's Gain from Unbelief.
[4] Isaiah, XXV, 7
[5] "A strict
demonstration of the existence of God is utterly impossible. Almost all
the proofs that have been offered assume in the very premises the
conclusion to be proved." Rev.W. Kirkus in Orthodoxy Scripture and
Reason, p. 34.
"We have got to recognize that evil falls
within a universe for which God is responsible. We cannot absolve God for
permitting the existence of sin and pain." -- Canon. C. E. Raven, The
Grounds of Christian Assumption.
[6]
Majjhima Nikāya, Cūla Mālunkya Sutta No. 63.
[7] Ibid.,
Mahātanhāsamkhaya Sutta, No. 38. Although wick and oil may be present,
yet an external fire should be introduced to produce a flame.
[8] See F. L.
Woodward, Some Sayings of the Buddha., p. 40.
[9] Anamataggo’
yam bhikkhave samsāro, pubbākoti na paññāyati
avijjānivaranānam sattānam tanhāsamyojanānam sandhāvatam.
"Incalculable is the beginning, brethren, of
this faring on. The earliest point is not revealed of the running
on, the faring, of beings cloaked in ignorance, tied to craving." F. L.
Woodward -- Kindred Sayings, part iii. p.118..
"Inconceivable is the beginning of this Samsāra,
not to be discovered a first beginning of beings, who, obstructed by
ignorance and ensnared by craving, are hurrying and hastening through this
round of rebirths." -- Nyānatiloka Thera.
Samsāra, literally, means recurrent wandering.
Atthasālini defines Samsāra thus:-
Khandhānam patipāti dhātu-āyatanāna ca
Abbhocchinnam vattamānā samsāro’ti pavuccati..
Samsāra is the unbroken succession of
aggregates, elements, and the sense-bases.
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