Thomas William Rhys Davids
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 20
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI ADOPTED DOCTRINES--KARMA Transmigration.--The above are the essential doctrines of the original Buddhism. They are at the same time the distinctive doctrines: that is to say, the doctrines that distinguish it from all previous teaching in India. But the Buddha, while rejecting the sacrifices and the ritualistic magic of the brahmin schools, the animistic superstitions of the people, and the pantheistic speculations of the poets of the pre-Buddhistic Upanishads, still retained the belief in transmigration. This belief--the transmigration of the soul, after the death of the body, into other bodies, either of men, beasts or gods--is part of the animistic creed, and is so widely found throughout the world that it was probably universal. In India it had already, before the rise of Buddhism, been raised into an ethical conception by the associated doctrine of Karma, according to which a man's social position in life and his physical advantages, or the reverse, were the result of his actions in a previous birth.1 The doctrine thus afforded an explanation, quite complete to those who could believe it, of the apparent anomalies and wrongs in the distribution here of happiness or woe. A man, for instance, is blind. This is owing to his lust of the eye in a previous birth. But he has also unusual powers of hearing. This is because he loved, in a previous birth, to listen to the preaching of the law. The explanation could always be exact, for it was scarcely more than a repetition of the point to be explained. It fits the facts because it is derived from them. And it cannot be disproved, for it lies in a sphere beyond the reach of human inquiry. The Bridge.--It was because it thus provided a moral cause that it was retained in Buddhism....