CTITLE>The Buddhism in Heraclitus

The Buddhism in Heraclitus

By Edmund J. Mills
The Buddhist Review
Vol 11:1, 1910.01-03, pp. 269-279



p. 269 The simultaneous or practically simultaneous discovery of some fact, or institution of some principle, has repeatedly been a subject of curious remark. Thus Adams and Leverrier were joint propounders of the Neptune theory, afterwards verified by Galle; Darwin and Wallace originated the theory of natural selection at nearly the same time; and Priestley and Scheele both discovered oxygen consentaneously. In all three cases, and in many similar ones, the investigators were working in apparently absolute independence of each other. A close study, however, of such phenomena soon brings us to the conclusion that an absolute coincidence in point of time is extremely improbable; one of the rivals, if we could perfect our inquiries, must have been the originator, the other was an unconscious follower. If, then, a direct conscious transference forms no part of the question, how is the result brought about? Two theories have been suggested. According to the first, like circumstances produce like results. A science cultivated in one country is much the same thing as a science cultivated in another; and if we have two philosophers of similar temperament, disposition, endowments, specialities and physical surroundings, they may naturally be expected to arrive at like incidents at the same time. But surely this is asking for too many conditions in concurrence, to say nothing of others equally necessary. And so we come to the much simpler second alternative, --that of telepathy. Telepathy has been so thoroughly investigated of late years, that no one can now doubt it as a fact. Experimentally, it merely requires the Marconi conditions, -- a strong _________________________________ 1 An address delivered before the Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland, July 17th, 1910. p. 270 transmitter and a receiver in tune with the transmitter-- and the communication is made, regardless of distance. The person receiving does not necessarily know the person, or the personal conditions, of the sender. It will be observed that this theory is not only simpler than the other, but it is much preferable on the ground of economy of effort, and of sensory circumstances. As an instance, then, of ancient telepathy, I wish to draw your attention to the Buddhism we find in Heraclitus--in other words, to the Buddha as a telepathic missionary. That the Buddha claimed this power, we know from the Samanna Phala Sutta (Rhys Davids' Dialogues of the Buddha, 88--90). It is an attribute of the pure in heart. Unfortunately, we moderns have contented ourselves with establishing the fact of telepathy, but have not yet reduced it to an organised science. The Buddha dates are 563--483 B.C.; those of Heraclitus, 535--475 B.C.; so that these great teachers were contemporaries for about forty-four years. The Buddha's career as a teacher began shortly after the birth of Heraclitus. We have no evidence that any of the Buddha's missionaries ever reached Ephesus, and it is reasonable to suppose that, if they had done so, some literary proof would have been forthcoming. Patna, which is in the heart of the Buddha's country, is about 4,000 miles from Ephesus. It is probable that no direct evangelisation reached so far until the time of the great effort under King Asoka. Heraclitus, like the Buddha, was of aristocratic descent. He, too, began thinking at an early date, and decided on leading the life of a recluse. In order to isolate himself more effectually, he gave up the hereditary office of basileus (probably something to do with the "Mysteries") to his younger brother. His contempt for the ignorance of his fellow-townsmen was something immense. One never hears of him "cheering and gladdening" them with his discourse. And occasionally he betrayed some sad faults of temper. But he well knew that he had made a very important and original discovery. Meditate upon p. 271 this as he would, he was much hampered by the difficulties naturally incidental even to so plastic a language as Greek. The different terms which he uses to express a variety of things are to a great extent interchangeable in meaning. Some similar difficulties occur in Pali. But the distress of the great Ephesian was so marked, that even his clever contemporaries named him "The Obscure." Socrates,who read his work, said that, so far as he could follow it, it was very satisfactory; but "the book requires a tough swimmer." How different from the clarity of the Buddha! What, then, was the position of this aloof, profound and struggling genius? Heraclitus differed from the Eleatics just as the Buddha differed from the Brahmans. That school believed that the One is God, and that God is self-existent, eternal, unchangeable, immovable, of the same substance throughout, and in every respect incomparable with man. It took its rise in a justifiable dissidence from the popular mythology, and may be said to have been founded in a complete opposition of thought to sense. Sense gives only false appearances, not being; thought gives a knowledge of being and God. Between thought and material being there was no distinction. Creation, change, destruction, diversity, multiplication, time, space, and sensations are all false appearances. "For a thing cannot arise from what differs from it." Buddhists will at once recognise fundamental differences between the Eleatic teaching and that of our Lord. Those who wish to investigate for themselves the doctrines of Heraclitus will find them in Lassalle's learned and laborious work (1858),-- a work sometimes deserving the epithet cast upon his master. Only one little study-- On Nature---has come down to us in a genuine condition; we have to depend for the rest mostly on quotations and references found in contemporaneous and later writers. The opinion of Heraclitus with regard to the gods, was that they were the subject of continual change. The world itself was not made by them; nor, indeed, by men. Sometimes,--as in the case of Apollo and Dionysus,--he p. 272 even interchanges their characters, so unstable does he consider them. Zeus, he says, is a skittish boy, playing with marbles and "pottering about". He could not have regarded Zeus very seriously. As to the "mysteries," he indulges in a severe polemic against them. Ritual is of no value to mankind. The world originates from fire with "craving' ; and will be reconverted into fire, period after period, in accordance with fixed law. Fire is not necessarily or always physical fire; but means something indefinitely expanded or tenuous. The world, therefore will come to an end and then be remade, an indefinite number of times. Here Heraclitus had caught hold of an important physical phenomenon, that of variable stars, to say nothing of periodicity in modern chemistry. The "kalpas" of early Buddhist literature correspond with these "periods"; but it is very doubtful if the Buddha himself ever propounded anything suggestive of a cosmogony. The various stages in a world-growth are, (1) fire, (2) air, (3) water, (4) earth, -- by successive condensation; and the order is reversed by succesive rarefaction. So that there is always going on a "way up" and a "way down." Air, water and earth, taken together, may be looked on as correlatives of fire. Everything is changed for fire, and fire for things,as gold is exchanged for things and things for gold; that is, there is a quantitative value on all cosmic transactions. Here again, we come across a well-known "modern" discovery. And, if we regard "fire " as material, it is the Unity in the world of things. Behind all nature is Necessity, which is at the same time a Logos; so that the process of development is a reasoned one. "Strife is the father of things"; but it is also a harmony: and the two are like the interaction of the bow and the lyre. Here is another pair of correlatives. Heraclitus differs from the Buddha in admitting the existence of souls; but the term is ill-defined. The soul is apparently a kind of "exhalation" not having any bodily property, and evidently some early p. 273 stage of condensation from the " fire." A further stage of condensation towards water destroys it. In the natural course of things, e.g., at death, the soul returns " up" to the generated Logos, and is used anew, but not apparently with the same individuality. While we live, our souls are dead in us. Our duty is to realise our self, and then separate from the sensible and realise the One as Logos. Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are strewed through all things. The wise man looks at things as a whole. The highest good is to rouse one's self to alertness to receive the universal reason: ordinarily this will be found in public law. Law and order are absolutely immanent in the world. Everything living means the death of something else, so that the sum total of energy must remain constant. Every exertion of the will is at the expense of soul. Freedom of the will is definitely associable with an individual only: and Man's character is his fate. These last two sentences are, we need hardly say, intensely characteristic of Buddhism. While the Buddha is constantly appealing to his auditors as free to receive or reject the truth, on the other hand, he points out the strict determinism of Karma. We make our own prison, he says. We cannot escape the quantitative consequences of either a good or evil thought or act. But it is open to us to make good rather than bad karma if we will. And this is one of the commonest Buddhist correlatives -- freedom and determinism. We must now consider the most important point in the whole Heraclitic doctrine. Just as the Buddha thought out for himself a really new and original position, so Heraclitus faced his predecessors, and denied one of their fundamental postulates. Far from admitting that change is an illusion, he declares it to be the great reality. Everything flows; nothing stands still. You cannot come down twice to the same stream,--and everything is a stream. We can only call it "same" as a convenience of speech. Nothing escapes the universal law of flux, p. 274 whether it be gods, men, or matter. Change, under various names, is the ultimate truth. At this point, we may suitably pause to take note that a doctrine of this extraordinary novelty could scarcely have originated per se among the uncongenial surroundings of the Ephesian philosophers. It is Anicca, and nothing else. And when we go on to consider the details of the doctrine, we shall see the resemblance growing into a close identity. The pendulum swings from opposite to opposite. The IS and IS NOT are the same. This swing conciliates the One with the Many. Wherever you go, no matter what phenomena you consider, there is the ever present transiency. As with the Buddha, so with Heraclitus, the shift is always from one correlative to another, and back. The "way up" and the "way down"; wisdom and ignorance; life and death; joy and sorrow; good and evil; freedom and deterrminism; -- are unity in pairs. According to Heraclitus, this "becoming," as it is termed, is eternal in its nature. It is itself the great truth, the very being, the One. To learn this is to know everything, to become the One. Mistrust the senses, for they are "stiff and dead"; they are "bad witnesses," and understand nought of "becoming." Turn to your inner self; ever purify and reform that, until the soul returns to the Logos whence it came. For man is free to make himself, and take his full share in the seriated cause which is his destiny. Such, in brief, are the leading conclusions of Heraclitus. To have arrived at them, in the midst of much that was adverse and ill-contrived, shows elements of true greatness, never surpassed, perhaps, but by one Master. He largely influenced his contemporaries, and founded a school which eventually disappeared amid uncongenial surroundings. We may, with some reservation, but not inappropriately, consider him as the farthest Western outpost of our own religion. We are now in a position to make a definite comparison between Heraclitus and the Buddha; in other words, to p. 275 ascertain how far the Eastern influence has filled and influenced the former. And, in the first place, we are struck with the universal clearness of the Buddha. Everywhere in his dialogues and parables the true meaning is evident, crystalline, distinguished. None could have given him the epithet "obscure." Everywhere also in the dialogues there is a subtle tone that comes from the background, as one reads, of immeasurable superiority to all his hearers. Let us hear the Buddha's own recital. "Whether Buddhas arise, O monks, or whether Buddhas do not arise, it remains a fact, and the fixed and necessary condition of being, that all its constituents are transitory. This fact a Buddha discovers and masters, and when he has discovered and mastered it, he announces, publishes, proclaims, discloses, minutely explains and makes it clear, that all the constituents of being are transitory." This is the first of the three great "characteristics," and its importance in the Buddhist scheme is evident from the sixfold declaration as to the mode of its divulgence. Doubtless the discovery has been made many times, and there is no great literature that does not contain some reference to the fact, that the world is a fleeting show. But our Lord's announcement goes far beyond that. Transiency, he says, is a fixed and necessary property of all the constituents of being.Therefore we shall never escape from it, until we escape from being. What then is the prospect before him who has realised this awful fact, felt the misery of his being's constituents, yearned for some stable anchorage, and so far yearned in vain ? Sorrow inevitably comes in with the discovery that all is change. Is there any hope? Is there any remedy? Much must depend on our capacity of realising what "being" is, and upon the nature of our desires; for desire is ever a parent of sorrow. What does the Master tell us now? He offers us the eight fold prescription of perfect righteousness. He explains its ingredients, he encourages us, he rebukes us, he leaves the whole instruction replete with detail. And finally p. 276 he tells us that there is a condition transcending even righteousness. Every grade of intellect and feeling is touched by this far-reaching doctrine. Not a single gap is left. He who can understand its most elementary rudiment is already on the way; he who has transcended righteousness has already left the " way "-he has reached the "other shore," Nibbana. Making, then, our comparison, we recognise very distinctly that Heraclitus had the message of transiency. He, too, had perceived that all being, animate and inanimate, was subject to this law. But he lays no stress upon sorrow; and his prescription for betterment is to gaze on Unity. Leave behind you the Individual, and seek only the One. On the other hand, the Buddha does not lay much stress on the synthesis of contraries. He leaves the fact to speak for itself, as speak it must. But it is not a moral element in the amelioration of mankind, or more than a matter of impermanent interest. As we have seen, the Ephesian philosopher had a fairly clear conception of the quantitative nature of all change. One thing is exchanged for another, one effect succeeds one cause, on a footing of strict equivalence, -- the payment of the "uttermost farthing." Had he followed this up, we might have had the great doctrine of Karma installed upon Western soil.... As it happened, (=the seriated law of change) was the limit of the Heraclitic position, and this was eternal. The Buddha, on the other hand, taught the gradual fatigue and exhaustion of Karma, and laid great stress on the generation of the good kind. In the ultimate event, of course, all karma ceases with the lapse of personality. The third great characteristic in Buddhism is as follows: -"Whether Buddhas arise, O monks, or whether Buddhas do not arise, it remains a fact and the fixed and necessary condition of being, that all its elements are lacking in an Ego. This fact a Buddha discovers and masters, and when he has discovered and p. 277 mastered it, he announces, teaches, publishes, proclaims, discloses, minutely explains, and makes it clear, that all the elements of being are lacking in an Ego." What evil is there that we may not trace to selfhood? It blocks the path to all amelioration. Every interest is a separate interest. We raise up the fiction of " others,"-- other beings, other spaces, other days. We strengthen the fiction by the practice of competition; we cultivate it by greed and the sense of aggrandisement and pleasure. Most of us very naturally believe in a personal soul or entity conferred upon us at birth and proceeding to eternal bliss or misery at death. Death, instead of being a mere incident, becomes a perilous venture, only to be rendered safe by the priest. From all this the Buddha preached deliverance, to be attained, either in this life or a later one, by our own exertion. But Heraclitus had not realised this; and the Soul, with him, was some material indweller, ultimately destined to return to the seed (Logos) whence it came; whence again, as part or not of some other portion, it was destined to house itself anew in some bundle of sensory associations. Thus, the wheel, with him, eternally rotates, and apparently there is no escape from the endless oscillations of the everlasting pendulum. The idea of rebirth had not occurred to him, and, as a necessary consequence, he could not trace the effect of rebirth in association with the dying karma. It is true that, in a noble sentence, he draws us away from the particular to the universal:--" It is wise for those who hear, not me, but the Logos, to admit that all things are One": but the great Unity is an unending process after all. Is there no escape from it? To this question he has no answer. If we regard Heraclitus at a dispassionate distance, we can see clearly the artistic and constructive Hellenic intellect struggling with its Eastern message. His mind is far more busy in shaping a reasoned cosmogony than in working out a scheme of deliverance from sorrow. Everyone knows how the Buddha absolutely refused to p. 278 consider such topics. Even the Heraclitic announcement that all things originate with "craving," though highly Buddhist in tone, is of no permanent interest to the great sorrow of man. Let us test Heraclitus in another way. The Buddha followed up his great pronouncement against separateness with the most beautiful picture ever drawn of human love. "As a mother loves her son, her only son, and protects him even at the risk of her own life,"--how these words haunt the memory! And even so are we to love our enemies! And the love is to be immeasurable, of all space, unstinted, free from all sense of differing or opposing interests. But where, alas! is "love" in Heraclitus? It is possible, of course, that the word may have occurred in his teaching; but if so, it has failed to come down to us. Neither had he in his temperament the infinite Compassion of our Lord or the Pity enjoined on our early Saints. The multitude were ignorant, contemptible, unworthy of the wise. Heraclitus, like the Buddha, can hardly be said to have constituted a theology. The Buddha recoganised, most reasonably, the existence of beings of higher orders than ourselves, some of them even capable of rendering us assistance in our need. It is much to be regretted that so little attention has been paid to this branch of Buddhism. Brahma and the devas frequently occur in Pali literature. But there is no supreme "All-Father" or personal God in the Christian or Pagan sense. Gods and all other beings are subject to the great law of transiency; great Brahma is inferior to the Buddha. Heraclitus has not much to say about them. The air, it is true, is full of gods and "demons" (devas); but there is something akin to jest in his treatment of the eminences of the older mythology. Again, as regards righteousness, its value with the Buddha lies in a consideration as between man and man; but not ultimately, for he recognises no ultimate " other "; he claims it as being the only possible method for the cure of sorrow. Heraclitus, who, strange to say, does p.279 not deal with sorrow, finds his righteousness in insight into the cosmic process, the reasoned, ordered synthesis of contraries,--the One countering the Many. As we have seen, the Buddhist interest in Heraclitus mainly centres in this synthesis. Contraries, or, as we should term them now, "correlatives, " constantly appear in Buddhist literature. Time and eternity, existence and non-existence, finite and infinite, subject and object, cause and effect, are some of the familiar instances. But the Buddha barely considers their synthesis. More important to him is it to demonstrate that all are illusions of selfhood, and cease to be in question at all as selfhood is vanquished. And so he reaches a transcendent height never attained by any other teacher. He sees the counter-position to all these correlates,--itself the final, unrelated correlate, Nibbana, --the crown of the "right effort" of mankind. Heraclitus, then, can never take the place for us of his utterly enlightened contemporary. He received the message on a tarnished instrument, and gathered uncertain signals. But he had heard the vast truths of transiency, law and desire, and proclaimed these, at least, rightly and clearly to the world. The Buddhist knows well what that means; and will not deny to his Ephesian brother the dignity of a great apostle.