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Art. V.—The Rise of Buddhism: Part Five.— Page 97.
There is of course some truth as to the value of self-discipline and abstinence underlying these views. We cannot, however, now pause to separate the grain from the chaff.
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• [Editorial Note]: As the anonymous writer has not taken pause when digressing elsewhere it is evident some other reason not to do so is at play here ... to wit: there is a lot of truth as to “the value of self-discipline and abstinence”, and not just “some truth” as slightingly claimed, and to detail it here would spoil the negative picture he is painting with his equally belittling “separate the grain from the chaff” propagandistic phraseology (which has effectively echoed his report of having found “a marvellous insight into moral truth” beneath those “rubbish-heaps of later accretions” in the opening paragraph of this ‘Church Quarterly Review’ article of his).
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For all who did not choose the path laid down, for all who failed in it through the faltering of resolution, through error, through neglect of minute ritual observance, each successive existence was only a further descent into

Page 98.—The Rise of Buddhism.—April.
misery, a further removal from the final goal.
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• [Editorial Note]: Here the anonymous writer typifies everyday life for each and every one of the untold millions of human beings alive during the time-period under discussion as “misery” without providing a single jot of evidence to demonstrate any such en bloc miserableness to actually be the case.

Also, as he has utilised this rhetorical device on numerous occasions throughout this article, its repeated usage emphasises the sparseness—if not the vacuity—of his knowledge regarding how life was actually lived and experienced by those multitudinously varied personages.
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Time itself was in the scale against a man. A single lifetime might require several succeeding lives for its expiation, each bringing its own liability of becoming the parent of another series. There was no pity, no mercy in the government of the world {i.e., in ‘karma’ (Sanskrit, also ‘karman’, Pāli ‘kamma’); the cosmic principle of each person bringing upon themself rewards and punishments for the acts performed either in the current life or in a past or a future incarnation}, only at the best an awful kind of justice, if indeed that could be called justice, which visited offences often trivial, often even unavoidable, such as breaches of the laws of purification, with such terrible penalties.
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• [Editorial Note]: For some unknown or yet-to-be-disclosed reason (or mayhap it be simple ignorance) the anonymous writer has blurred the distinction betwixt ‘karma’ (Sanskrit; Pāli ‘kamma’) and judicature where he segued from referring to the cosmic principle of each person bringing upon themself rewards and punishments for the acts performed either in this life or in a past or a future incarnation—as per his “government of the world” nomenclature—into generalising about the punishments meted out by secular authorities and gives the example of “the laws of purification” by way of illustrating the often trivial or even unavoidable nature of such breaches of monarchical and/or sacerdotal law.

As a matter of related interest, some two-and-a-half thousand years hence there progressively took place a democratising transition from hereditary royalty and religious institutions having autocratic control over the citizenry-at-large to electoral restraint on governance, via universal suffrage by that citizenry-at-large, despite repeated attempts to reimpose autocracy under the guise of socialism and/or communism—allegedly whereby ‘the means of production’ were collectively owned but effectively whereby officially-delegated and thus electorally-unaccountable factotums and functionaries (a.k.a. ‘the administrative state’.) were in charge—with the socialists and/or communists labelling the concurrent mercantile system of profitably producing and exchanging goods and services (and thereby generating sufficient capital to reinvest in further wealth-generating enterprises so as to thereby incrementally raise the standard of living via financing labour-saving devices, and, concomitantly, lifting indigents out of poverty) disparagingly as ‘capitalism’ and the practicians thereof as ‘capitalists’.

As a matter of further related interest, the primary distinction between capitalism and communism, as currently and previously practised, is the private ownership of property and/or the means of production (privatisation) versus the public ownership of property and/or means of production (nationalisation); the secondary distinction is a representative democracy (regular competitive elections for governance) versus a non-representative autocracy (non-competitive elections or imposition of governance); the other distinctions lie in the areas of accountable jurisprudence versus unaccountable jurisprudence, freedom of speech (uncensored media) versus restricted speech (censored media), freedom of association and/or assembly versus restricted association and/or assembly, freedom of contract versus restriction of contract, and freedom of religion versus restriction of religion (all of which involve issues of public policing versus secret policing).

Now, the apologist for the High Church of England has made no secret of his desire to see the world-wide subjugation of every man, woman, and child on the planet (as in, be subdued and brought under absolute power and control and thus submissively obedient) to the Judaic ‘deus absolutus’ of early biblical lore and legend—the jealous and wrathful Old Testament creator god—and the Christian ‘deus absolutus’ of later biblical lore and legend—the New Testament creator god, having undergone a dramatic makeover from ‘Elohim’ (plural) to ‘Abba’ (singular) in the interregnum, is an absolvitory and merciful creator god—who not only owns everything in creation, but is totally autocratic, arbitrarily imposes judgement, despotically punishes dissention, condemns proscribed association and/or assembly, has an authoritarian insistence on an exclusive contract—else eternal damnation in fiery tophetic furnaces—and secretly spies on everyone and on everything they feel, think, and do (all of which makes the most notorious worldly dictator but a rank amateur by comparison).

However if a pious supplicant can somehow manage to love this god-of-the-makeover they will be loved in return ... but even that is a matter of caprice (i.e., grace).

’Tis out-and-out bizarrerie—if not bordering on grotesquerie—how anyone would want divinity ruling the roost.
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There are points in which Dr. Rhys Davids is not quite in accord with Professor Max Duncker. He thinks, for example, that the caste system was neither so rigidly established nor really so oppressive as is represented by the Professor and others; and we are aware that there is some foundation for this view[1].
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• [Editorial Note]: Not only does he provide a report about how the caste system was neither so rigidly established nor really so oppressive, as represented by Professor Duncker and those unnamed others, he also points out, four paragraphs later, how it was not so very different from the state of society in Judæa in the time of Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene. Viz.:

• [Dr. Rhys Davids]: “The state of society in the valley of the Ganges at the time of the rise of Buddhism, was not so very different from the state of society in other races at similar stages of their history. The hereditary priesthood, the exclusive privileges of the Brāhmans, were, no doubt, as incontestable as the hereditary priesthood and exclusive privileges of *the corresponding classes in Judæa in the time of Christ*. Superstitions regarding purity and impurity, which play so great a part elsewhere in the settlement of early religious and social customs, *were held as strongly as among the Jews and Persians*. And a few, but by no means all or the most important, of men’s daily occupations had become confined to certain families, *which were really castes in the modern sense* ...”. [emphases added]. ~ (page 24, Lecture One: ‘The Place of Buddhism in the Development of Religious Thought’).

’Tis quite revealing how the anonymous writer did not include mention of that follow-on paragraph.
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We have, therefore, the more satisfaction in supporting our statement of the terrible aspect of the Indian religion by a quotation from Dr. Rhys Davids’ latest exposition of early Buddhism. Speaking of the regeneration of living beings he tells us that the founder of Buddhism found something like this the accepted belief: “The outward condition of the soul is in each new birth determined by its actions in a previous birth; but by each action in succession, and not by the balance struck after the evil has been reckoned off against the good. ... A robber who has once done an act of mercy, may come to life in a king’s body as the result of his virtue, and then suffer torments for ages in hell, or as a ghost without a body, or be re-born many times as a slave or an outcast, in consequence of his evil life[2]”.
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• [Editorial Note]: Whilst that truncated quotation does convey the gist of what Dr. Rhys Davids wrote, regarding the prevailing pre-Buddhist palingenesia, the anonymous writer does not mention how he thereafter depicts Mr. Gotama the Sakyan as (ostensibly) rejecting the transmigrating-soul aspect, of the above Brahmanistic version of determinism, and (purportedly) replacing it with a different personage inheriting a prior person’s ‘karma’ / ‘kamma’ who, in turn, had fallen heir to some previous persona’s ‘karma’ / ‘kamma’ (and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum, from an unknowably distant past unto an incalculably distant future).

His weirder-than-weird notion is totally fanciable, of course, and completely made-up out of whole cloth, but his as-ye-sow-so-shall-another-reap reformulation of the biblical version of ‘karma’ / ‘kamma’ does provide a timely warning to read Dr. Rhys Davids with an extra-large salt-cellar handy!

Speaking of which, he is the “well-known Pāli scholar” who foisted the noun “mindfulness” onto credulous perusers of buddhistic reading material in 1881—(a word which made its debut appearance in 1530 as “myndfulnesse” when Rev. John Palsgrave, 1485-1554, a priest-tutor in the court of King Henry VIII of England, translated the French term ‘pensée’ on page 245 of his “The Clarification of the French Language”)—when he press-ganged it into service as a (mis)translation of a Pāli word which quite evidentially referred to the perfervid rememorance—a vivifying rememoration inasmuch the memoria be luminously presentiated in the (thusly-transcendent) memorative faculty—of the sacred wisdom, or numinous knowledge, uttered by ‘ṛṣī’ since the beginningless beginning, and, of more even note, reiterated in full by the sammāsambuddha.

Dr. Rhys Davids’ legacy has mushroomed into a multi-million-dollar world-wide therapeutical mindfulness industry. A brief article published online in May, 2014, entitled “Which Mindfulness?”—in which authors Mr. Robert Buswell and Mr. Donald Lopez make the point that “the modern understanding of mindfulness differs significantly from what the term has historically meant in Buddhism”—is elucidative in this regard. Viz.:

• “(...). Mindfulness mania is sweeping the land, with mindfulness being prescribed for high blood pressure, obesity, substance abuse, relationship problems, and depression, to name just a few examples. While some mindfulness teachers maintain that what they are teaching is a distinctly secular pursuit, many others claim it is the very essence of Buddhist practice. Regardless, in the current media, mindfulness is strongly associated with Buddhism. “Moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness”, however, is not what mindfulness has historically meant in Buddhism. Indeed, whatever relationship this interpretation of mindfulness has to Buddhist thought can be traced back no earlier than the last century. The Sanskrit term smṛti (Pali, sati) *was first translated as “mindfulness” in 1881 by Thomas W. Rhys Davids (1843-1922),* a former British colonial officer in Sri Lanka *who went on to become the most celebrated Victorian scholar of Buddhism.* (...elided...). “Mindfulness of the body is intended to result in the understanding that the body is a collection of impure elements that incessantly arise and cease, utterly lacking any semblance of a permanent self. That is, the body, like all conditioned things, is marked by three characteristics (trilakṣaṇa): impermanence, suffering, and non-self. Clearly, mindfulness here is hardly “non-judgmental awareness”. The story of how the popular understanding of mindfulness derived from modern Vipassanā meditation and how Vipassanā first came to be taught to laypeople in Burma in the early decades of the 20th century is told in Erik Braun’s article “Meditation en Masse” in the Spring 2014 issue of Tricycle. There is thus no need to retell that story here. Armed with this knowledge, Buddhists of the world can unite in the fight against high blood pressure, but need not concede that the mindfulness taught by various medical professionals today was somehow taught by the Buddha”. [emphases added]. ~ (from “Which Mindfulness?”, by Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.; May 08, 2014, Tricycle Blog Series).

That last line of theirs could be more usefully phrased—as ‘Armed with this knowledge, Buddhists of the world can unite in the fight against the pseudo-buddhism spawned by Dr. Rhys Davids in 1881’ for instance—but it is too much to expect them to give-up their pet beliefs (e.g., the above ‘three characteristics’ anattāvāda belief) whilst the ghost of Mr. Buddhaghosa of Moraṇḍacetaka remains unexorcised.
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But here it is to be remarked that Brahmanism has never been an organised religion[3]. Here is the explanation of the fact that thought was absolutely free, as Dr. Rhys Davids tells us, in ancient India. Brahmanism is capable of taking
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[1]See the ‘Hibbert Lectures’ for 1881, pp. 22-25. See also the remarks on caste in his Address to the University of Calcutta by Sir Henry Sumner Maine, in the volume entitled ‘Village Communities’, p. 219 p. 56. Sir Henry’s contention is that the Brahmanic literature is not a trustworthy authority as to the prevalence of caste or of other institutions. Professor Max Müller, it may be remembered, regards as an essential feature of Buddhism that it was a reaction against caste, and this view can be supported by many passages from the earliest Buddhist books.
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• [Editorial Note]: Here the apologist for the High Church of England is again referring to “the earliest Buddhist books” as if it were meaningful to do so.

Put succinctly: those “earliest Buddhist books” are beset by inaccuracies from beginning to end, regarding the history, principles and practices of “early Buddhism”, as those first-out-of-the-gate professorial authors (videlicet: Prof. Eugène Burnouf, Prof. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, Prof. Max Müller, Prof. Monier-Monier Williams, Prof. Hermann Oldenberg, Prof. Thomas Rhys Davids, et al.) relied almost entirely on the sectarian Commentaries and Abhidhamma—which are associated with ‘later Buddhism’ of course—to inform themselves of same.
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On the whole, it seems clear that the region which was the theatre of Gotama’s teaching was the head-quarters of Brahmanism, and that the caste system had acquired at that period a rigidity in this region which was lacking elsewhere.
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• [Editorial Note]: It is simply not true that the district of Magadha was “the head-quarters of Brahmanism” (let alone the caste system having acquired at that period “a rigidity in this region which was lacking elsewhere”). According to Professor Friedrich Albrecht Weber (1825-1901)—a Prussian-German Indologist and historian proficient in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit, and who might be one of the earliest Indologists to emphasise the social philosophy of Buddhism—in his 1852 “Academic Lectures on Indian Literary History” (second edition, 1876, translated by John Mann and Theodor Zachariae, London, 1878), the district of Magadha, as an extreme border province, was never completely brahmanised inasmuch the native inhabitants always retained “a kind of influence”. Viz.:

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• [Professor Albrecht Weber]: “Budhha’s teaching was mainly fostered in the district of Magadha, which, *as an extreme border province, was perhaps never completely brahmanised;* so that the native inhabitants *always retained a kind of influence*, and now *gladly seized the opportunity to rid themselves of the brahmanical hierarchy and the system of caste.* The hostile allusions to these Mȧgadhas in the Atharva-Samhitá (see page 147—and in the thirtieth book of the Vájasaneyi-Saṃhitá, pp. 111, 112) might indeed possibly refer to *their anti-brahmanical tendencies in times antecedent to Buddhism:* the similar allusions in the Sáma-Sútras, on the contrary (see page 79), are only to be explained as referring to the actual flourishing of Buddhism in Magadha. (...elided...). If, now, we strip the accounts of Buddha’s personality of all supernatural accretion, we find that he was a king’s son, who, penetrated by the nothingness of earthly things, forsook his kindred in order thenceforth to live on alms, and devote himself in the first place to contemplation, and thereafter to the instruction of his fellow-men.
His doctrine was, that “men’s lots in this life are conditioned and regulated by the actions of a previous existence, that no evil deed remains without punishment, and no good deed without reward. From this fate, which dominates the individual within the circle of transmigration, he can only escape by directing his will towards the one thought of liberation from this circle, by remaining true to this aim, and striving with steadfast zeal after meritorious action only; whereby finally, having cast aside all passions, which are regarded as the strongest fetters in this prison-house of existence, he attains the desired goal of complete emancipation from re-birth”.
This teaching contains, in itself, absolutely nothing new; on the contrary, it is entirely identical with the corresponding Brahmanical doctrine; only the fashion in which Buddha proclaimed and disseminated it was something altogether novel and unwonted. For while *the Brahmans taught solely in their hermitages, and received pupils of their own caste only,* he wandered about the country with his disciples, preaching his doctrine to the whole people, and—although still recognising the existing caste-system, and explaining its origin, as the Brahmans themselves did, by the dogma of rewards and punishments for prior actions—receiving as adherents men of every caste without distinction. To these he assigned rank in the community according to their age and understanding, thus abolishing within the community itself the social distinctions that birth entailed, and opening up to all men the prospect of emancipation from the trammels of their birth. This of itself sufficiently explains *the enormous success that attended his doctrine: the oppressed all turned to him as their redeemer. If by this alone he struck at the root of the Brahmanical hierarchy,* he did so not less by declaring sacrificial worship—the performance of which was the exclusive privilege of the Brahmans—to be utterly unavailing and worthless, and a virtuous disposition and virtuous conduct, on the contrary, to be the only real means of attaining final deliverance.
He did so, further, by the fact that, wholly penetrated by the truth of his opinions, he claimed to be in possession of the highest enlightenment, and so by implication rejected the validity of the Veda as the supreme source of knowledge. These two doctrines also were in no way new; till then, however, *they had been the possession of a few anchorites; never before had they been freely and publicly proclaimed to all* ...”. [emphases added]. ~ (pp. 286-290, “The History of Indian Literature”, by Albrecht Weber (1825-1901), translated from the German Second Edition by John Mann, M.A., & Theodor Zachariae, PhD, with the sanction of the author; 1882, Trübner & Co., London).
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If anywhere is to be depicted as “the head-quarters of Brahmanism” it is the area *on the opposite side of the sub-continent* (Punjab) from where Mr. Gotama the Sakyan resolutely sat under a ‘Ficus religiosa’ (Bihar) some two and a half millennia ago.

Incidentally, according to Indology professor Dr. Wolfgang Morgenroth, in an encomium published in the ‘Indologica Taurinensia’ in 1975, Prof. Weber was writing about the Prākrit of the grammarians vis-à-vis Pāli in 1865. Viz.:

• “Prof. Albrecht Weber intensively promoted the studies on Jainism in the eighteen-seventies and eighties, even supported by his pupils Hermann Georg Jacobi (1850-1937) and Ernst Leumann (1859-1931) who later on continued his work successfully. The treatment of Jaina literature resulted even in a revival of Prākrit studies which so far had been confined to the Prākrit of the dramas (especially the Śauraseni). In his two-part 1865 treatise “Uber ein Fragment der Bhagavati” (‘On a Fragment of Bhagavati’) he was the first scholar to describe the Prākrit of Jaina. He correctly interpreted it as a stage in the development of language standing right between Pāli and the Prākrit of the grammarians”. ~ (page 333, “Albrecht Friedrich Weber—A Pioneer of Indology”, by Dr. Wolfgang Morgenroth (Professor of Indology); 1975, Indologica Taurinensia; 3:4).

As the subject of “Pāli and the Prākrit of the grammarians” has already been addressed in detail earlier in these Editorial Notes (and particularly with reference to the 1926 book “The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language” by Prof. Suniti Chatterji) it is a case of full-marks to Prof. Weber for having correctly twigged to it some sixty-plus years earlier circa 1865.
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[2]See ‘Hibbert Lectures’, pp. 84-86.
[3]See ‘The History of Antiquity’, vol. iv. p. 463, and Sir H. S. Maine’s ‘Village Communities’, pp. 216, 217 pp. 56, 57.
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1882.—The Rise of Buddhism.—Page 99.
[cont’d from page 98...Brahmanism is capable of taking...] up and adapting new and inconsistent elements when they become sufficiently prevalent. There is no doubt that this was the case to some extent with Brahmanism after the rise of Buddhism, in spite of the fact that the two religions were eventually seen to be so incompatible, that in self-preservation Brahmanism actually expelled its rival from its original home.
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• [Editorial Note]: As already detailed earlier, by Sir Charles Eliot, it was slaughterous Mohammedan invasive forces and the continued depredations of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857) which tolled the death-knell for Indian Buddhism—thus Brahmanism never “actually expelled its rival from its original home” (let alone “in self-preservation” due to any such supposed-to-be “the fact” of being so incompatible with the, by then, degraded if not decadent buddhistic practice)—along with the gradual spread of a revolutionised form of Hinduism, known as Advaita Vedānta, which had its advent over a thousand years after the life and times of Mr. Gotama the Sakyan.
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With this, however, we are not now concerned.
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• [Editorial Note]: Then why even raise the matter—and especially in the context of Brahmanism being entirely capable of absorbing all religions under its over-arching supreme godhead, its immanent and sempiternal ground-of-being umbrella—if not in order to subtly create an impression, en passant, of Buddhism ultimately being somehow an inferior religion to its so-called parent?

It was, of course, the aforementioned ‘later Buddhism’ (the buddhistic school which dispensed with “by searching find out God” or, in a more philosophical phrase, lost the ability of being able to “formulate a tolerable account of man’s relation to the universe” of earlier mention) which ceded ground to its rival as ‘early Buddhism’ prevailed for a millennia or more.
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The point we have to note is that it was no unheard-of phenomenon when Gotama, son of the petty chief Suddhodana, came forward as the expounder of a better system than that of the Brahmans.
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• [Editorial Note]: Au contraire, there had never been the likes of Mr. Gotama the Sakyan before—his dispensation was not only unparalleled but delivered on what it promised (only to those who exemplified his example, of course, via activating his precepts precisively)—such as to be venerated and revered by perhaps a hundred generations, or over thirty-five lifetimes, and still held in the highest esteem, to this very day, by religionaries, spiritualists, metaphysicians, and the ilk.

(The anonymous writer has evidently given-up on being duly impressed by upwards of five-hundred millions—a third of the then world-wide population—being of a buddhistic persuasion such as to initially represent himself as being a thoughtful Christian seeking the secret of such power).

To just think about how edifices such as Borobudur in Indonesia, for instance, were inspired by the example and precepts of just one man, a one-in-a-billion man, is to surely be suitably amazed.
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How much of early Buddhism was actually due to him, how much he owed to philosophic thinkers who preceded him, in decrying, for example, the importance of ritual and exalting that of moral conduct[1], are questions more easily asked than, answered.
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• [Editorial Note]: One point, at least, which is certainly for sure is how the decrying-ritual-exalting-morality example given above was not—as is surreptitiously insinuated in the Footnote One entry further below (videlicet: “the Buddhistic teaching that bears the closest resemblance to the precepts of Christianity”)—an instance of a teaching which was actually due to Christianity’s latter-day precepts.

The anonymous writer’s none-too-subtle attempts to have Christianity be the ultimate source of all godly teachings are quite entertaining (albeit in a darkling-humour fashion).

Another for-certain point is the way in which the essential distinction betwixt Hinduism and Buddhism—and a forever unbridgeable distinguishment at that—pertains to the Absolute of the former being an immanent and all-pervading ‘deus absolutus’ and the absolute, the extrinsic ‘deus absolutus’ of the latter, an acausal, atemporal, aspatial, aphenomenal alterity of an ‘utterly other’ nature.

Put succinctly, ‘amata-pada’ and/or ‘amata-dhātu’ and/or ‘nibbāna’ (i.e., the deathless realm and/or the immortality refuge) is an utter otherness—totally, completely and absolutely other than space, time, and matter (mass/ energy)—as is expressly spelled-out in detail, for example, in the illuminative “1st Nibbāna Udāna” (Ud 8.1; PTS: Ud 80) alternatively titled “Parinibbāna Udāna”. Vis.:

• [Mr. Gotama the Sakyan]: “There is that dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind (...) neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis; neither passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support. This, just this, is the end of dukkha (i.e., the end of being asunder-apart-away-from ākāsa)”. (Udana 8.1; PTS: viii.1; Nibbana Sutta).

In other words, it is a totally away-from-the-world dimension, a non-sensately-experienceable realm, inasmuch it has nothing to do with the physical whatsoever: “neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind” (no physical world); “neither this world nor the next world” (no more rebirth); “neither earth, nor moon, nor sun” (no solar system).
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One point, however, is as certain as any in this case can be. The founder of Buddhism owed his success in some measure to his having struck out a new path in regard to the method of his teaching and the audiences whom he addressed.
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• [Editorial Note]: The new path the sammāsambuddha struck out in regard to “the audiences whom he addressed” was to openly share the fruits of what he had rediscovered, under that ‘Ficus religiosa’ of buddhistic fame and fancy, with anyone vitally interested regardless of sex a.k.a. gender, race a.k.a. ethnicity, age a.k.a. years, class a.k.a. caste, sect a.k.a. religion, belief a.k.a. ideology, or any other demarcation of similar ilk, and the new path he struck out in regard to “the method of his teaching” was to prescribe how the buddhavacana was to be rote-remembered and recited with his own words (‘nirutti’) and terminology, and, also, to forbid those words of his being rendered into Vedic recitative verse (‘chandaso’).

Furthermore, the pāṭimokkha—the basic code of monastic discipline conducive to communal living—were to be rote-remembered and recited every half-month, at an assembly of the bhikkhu-sangha and the bhikkhuni-sangha, whereupon each bhikkhu and bhikkhuni could test each other for word-perfect recitation.

What the sammāsambuddha did *not* do, however, is teach in parables.
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Like a greater than he, he addressed the multitudes, and like Him too he employed popular methods, such as the parable, as the vehicle of his instruction.
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• [Editorial Note]: Ha! the anonymous writer blatantly reveals his hand, here, for all to see with the sneaky put-down contained in the wording “Like a greater than he...” (especially as it is followed shortly thereafter with a capitalised “and like Him too...” no less) and yet all for the sake of a puerile cheap-shot quite unbecoming to the image portrayed of a thoughtful inquirer-cum-reflecter in this essay’s commencement paragraphs!

(That is, all those fine words about having had his attention called in recent years to various forms of religion, amongst which there is not one showing a stronger claim to be made a subject of inquiry and reflection, nor one more fruitful in revelations, than Buddhism—as well as those about being a thoughtful Christian anticipating with prayerful hope the subjugation of the world to the obedience of Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene, and how he is seeing Buddhism as a subject of uncommon interest inasmuch having learned its past conquests and appreciating the extent of its present sway (nearly five hundred millions of human beings, or about one-third of the human race being, with whatever inconsistencies, its adherents) he is seeking to know the secret of its power—was evidentially just plain bunkum, a lot of smoke-blowing guff to disguise his article’s raison d’être, as he is instead seizing every opportunity to slip in put-downs of both Brahmanism and Buddhism whilst elevating Christianity).

Golly, by their actions, ye shall know them, eh?
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Among the Jâtaka Tales, an instalment of which, with an interesting and scholarly Introduction, has already been published by Dr. Rhys Davids, it is very possible that we have some examples of that ‘good-natured humour which led to his (Buddha’s) inventing as occasion arose some fable or some tale of a previous birth, to explain away existing failures in conduct among the monks, or to draw a moral from contemporaneous events[2]’.
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• [Editorial Note]: As virtually none of the Jâtakas have any historicity—they are mainly morality tales, often clumsily made-up through being pressed into service to meet the needs, for instance, of some obvious or obscure palliation, if not amelioration, of pleasantry, carnality, cupidity, venery, do-goodery, egoity, &c., in ‘hīnāya dhātuyā’, according to Mr. Dhammapāla of Kāñcipura (Vimānavatthu-Aṭṭhakathā), which is a lesser world known as ‘kāma-dhātu’, or, for that matter, in the middling world, ‘majjhimāya dhātuyā’, known as ‘rūpa-dhātu’, which is an incarnate or bodily sphere, or even in the exalted world, ‘paṇītāya dhātuyā’, known as ‘arūpa-dhātu’, which is a discarnate or bodiless sphere—and as none of them can be verified as having been contrived, compiled, collated, composed, or copied (plagiarised and/or autoplagiarised) contemporaneous to the lifetime of Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, let alone authored by him, there is simply no way it is possible (never mind “very possible” of course) that “we have some examples of that good-natured humour which led to his (Buddha’s) inventing as occasion arose some fable or some tale of a previous birth” to explain away “existing failures in conduct among the monks” (nor any drawing of a moral from *contemporaneous* events, either).
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And the many elaborate similes which enforce the arguments in the Pâli Suttas leave no reasonable doubt that he ‘was really accustomed to teach much by the aid of parables’.
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• [Editorial Note]: Again, as virtually none of those often clumsily made-up apocryphal tales have any historicity—and as none of them can be verified as having been contrived, compiled, collated, composed, or copied contemporaneous to the lifetime of Mr. Gotama the Sakyan (let alone authored by him)—there is simply no way the many elaborate similes which enforce the arguments in the Pâli Suttas can “leave no reasonable doubt” that he really was “accustomed to teach much by the aid of parables” in any way, manner, or form.
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The fact that he did choose to popularise his doctrine, that he did thus address himself to the multitudes, throws a welcome light upon Buddha’s personal character.
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• [Editorial Note]: As Mr. Gotama the Sakyan did *not* conduct his affairs in the manner which Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene carried out his ministry, some five-hundred years later, then no such christocentric “welcome light” can possibly be thrown on his personal character.
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Through the darkness of our ignorance as to anything beyond the most meagre details of his life, through the mist of legend with which the enthusiasm of his followers surrounded his personality, through the confusion of modern theorisers, who
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[1]Some even of the Buddhistic teaching that bears the closest resemblance to the precepts of Christianity was perhaps inculcated, though only occasionally and not consistently, by some of the Brahmans of Buddha’s time; the duty, for example, of overcoming evil by good. See ‘Jâtaka Tales’, or ‘Buddhist Birth Stories’, Introduction, pp. xxvii, xxviii.
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• [Editorial Note]: As the above “overcoming evil by good” injunction predates the advent of Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene by some five-hundred years it would be more honest to have written “Some even of the Christian teaching that bears the closest resemblance to the precepts of the Brahmans of Buddha’s time was perhaps inculcated ...”, instead of ťother way round (whereby the anonymous writer—writing on behalf of the High Church of England—has none-too-subtly endeavoured to create an impression of it nonetheless being primarily a Christian teaching after all).
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[2]‘Jâtaka Tales’, vol. i., Introduction, p. lxxxiv. See also ‘The History of Antiquity’, vol. iv. p. 359.
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Page 100.—The Rise of Buddhism.—April.
[cont’d from page 99 ...through the confusion of modern theorisers, who...] have seen in the founder of Buddhism the originator of what they are pleased to call the higher Judaism and the higher Christianity[1], we catch a glimpse of one who, born a prince, sympathised with the sorrows and the moral struggles of the meanest; who, though a philosopher, sought not amongst the élite the renown that waits upon the learned teacher; who, instead of saying ‘odi profanum vulgus et arceo’ {= “I hate the unholy rabble; keep them away”. ~ Horace, Odes 3.1.1}, opened his arms to receive as a brother every one, who pursued goodness, truth, unselfishness, as his ideal; a glimpse of one who renounced luxury, splendour, and distinction in order to mitigate the distress which he was powerless to remove.
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• [Editorial Note]: As the spiritually-enlightened/ mystically-awakened Mr. Gotama the Sakyan was anything but “powerless to remove” the root cause of all the ills of humankind—namely ‘dukkha’ (i.e., being asunder, apart, away from ‘ākāsa’)—then the anonymous writer can only be referring to the unenlightened/ unawakened Mr. Siddhattho Gotama who purportedly “opened his arms to receive as a brother” all who pursued, as their ideal, moral excellence (piety), verity (sooth), allocentricity (altruism), and renounced worldliness in order to “mitigate the distress” which all worldlings are impotent vis-à-vis the removal thereof.

And as the anonymous writer has used the English word “distress” as a translation of the Pāli ‘dukkha’ it remains unclear as to how a worldling opening their arms and welcoming idealists—even regardless of what was pursued “as his ideal” in fact—serves to “mitigate” being asunder, apart, away from ‘ākāsa’.

Put differently, this “opened his arms to receive as a brother” (and thusly provide solace and comfort via empathetic consolation) only has its effect when ‘dukkha’ is translated as “distress” because providing solace and comfort via empathetic consolation only has its effect on people who are in emotional and/or psychological pain.

The anonymous writer’s nescience of matters pertaining to the very core of Buddhism becomes ever more obvious. As remarked earlier, he is so far out of his depth, in fact, he is not even aware there is any such depths to be so far out of.
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• The Rise of Buddhism: Part Six.
• An Examen of “The Rise of Buddhism” Contents.
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