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.