The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana — Th. Stcherbatsky (1927)

thaumaturgy. 1 How else could one understand the following very explicit deliverances? «The yoga out of which Buddhism was produced had no specu¬ lative tendencies)) (p. 53), i. e., it was «a technical routine iu itself quite foreign to every moral, religious or philosophic view» (p. 12). 2 It was, iu a word, magic and thaumaturgy. «In this condition)), i. e., in the condition of a yoga without speculative tendencies, «has the Buddhism of the Hinavana remained, beginning from the Mahavagga up to Buddhaghosa, viz. it was a yoga almost without any alloy» (p. 53). 3

Here we beg leave to remark that the case of Indian philosophy would really be a desperate one if a conception so familiar in it, so fundamental, so thoroughly developed in every possible detail, a conception to which a whole system is specially devoted were something vague and undefinable.

Yoga is defined as concentrated thought ( samadhi ) or fixing the attention on a single point ( ekdgrata) and doing it persistently (pariah punah cetasi nivesanam). It is synonymous with dhyana and samdpatti which mean the same. 4 According to a peculiarity of the Sanscrit language all these

1 A similar tendency is displayed in another recent book, A. B. Keith, Buddhist Philo¬ sophy in India and Ceylon (Oxford, 1923). Buddhism is here represented as a product of a {(bar¬ barous age» (p. 26), Buddha as a «magician of a trivial and vulgar kind» (p. 29), Buddhist philosophical conceptions as lacking «both system and maturity, a fact historically reflected in the Negativism of the Mahay ana» (p. 4).

2 Similar opinions were emitted by H. Beck, «Der ganze Buddhismus ist durch und 2durch nichts als Yoga», (Buddhismus 2 II, p. 11), Ed. Lehman (Buddhismus, p. 49) N. Soderblom (La vie future, p. 397 f.), Fr. Heiler (Die Buddhistische Yersenkung, p. 7 et passim). They are all more or less mystics. They imagine to have found in Buddhism something congenial with their own emotions. Buddhist mysticism is for them hardly distinguishable from Christian devo- , tion, (cp. Heiler, op. cit., p. 51 f., p. 61 f., p. 66). The identification of Buddhism and Yoga by \

M. de la Y. P. seems to be inspired by quite different feelings, he therefore converts Buddhism into magic or sorcery. f

3 M. de la Vallee Poussin tries to impress on his readers that he finds himself in I agreement with M. E. Sen art, as far as I can see, with but little foundation. The origin of [

Buddhism was formerly sought in some kind of Upanisbad ideology or some Sankhya ideas.

M. Senart has shown (R. H. R., t. 42, p. 345) that the coincidences with the yoga of Patanjali are much more numerous and striking. Although this work is now proved (by H. Jacobi, see J. A. 0. S., 31, 1 ff.) to be much later than M. Senart assumed and, in some points at least, had itself been influenced by Buddhism, nevertheless the coincidences pointed out by M. Senart are solid facts which nobody would be likely to deny. They can be now supplemented in that sense that yoga ideas have found their way into many other Indian systems as well. Senart’s main result (ibid. p. 364) I understand to refer to pre-Buddhistic conditions.

4 The subtle difference between these terms assumed in Y. S. II. 29 and.HI. 2-4, 11, rendered by prof. J. H. Woods as a singleness of intent, contemplation and concentrations, as well as the definition of Yoga as a the restriction of the fluctuations of the mind-stuff • ibid.