[L. 122]   18 March 1964

Dear Sir,[1]

I should be most grateful if you could let me know the address of the English philosophical journal 'Mind'. Can you also tell me if the 'Hibbert Journal' is still alive and, if so, what its address is?




[L. 123]   23 April 1964

Many thanks for your letter of the 21st, just received. It is very good of you indeed, not only to have sent the addresses, but also to have been so thoughtful as to make the suggestion about an occasional loan of 'books with a philosophical background'. As things are, your suggestion is really rather welcome. Although a preoccupation with books should not be our prime concern, I am much handicapped by chronic sickness and find that some reading and a little writing do help out over difficult periods. And, as you will be aware, we are more or less entirely dependent on the kindness of others in such matters as the provision of books.

As I expect you are aware, a copy of my Notes on Dhamma was sent to your library a few months ago (and duly acknowledged). But I quite recognize that it is not everybody's cup of tea -- Buddhists, at least in Buddhist countries, have long since given up thinking, and thinkers have not yet begun to learn Pali. For the benefit of the thinkers, any future edition will be provided with English translations, but the problem is not solved so easily of getting the Buddhists to think.




[L. 124]   6 May 1964

Thank you for your letter of the 1st, in which you inform me that you hope to be seeing me on the 22nd in connexion with some books. In view of our past correspondence, this is quite intelligible to me. But you speak also of an 'Opening ceremony' which, I must confess, mystifies me. There is positively nothing to be opened at my kuti except the door, and that can be opened without any ceremony at all.

I have no doubt that there is something much more important than this to be Opened on the 22nd, but in some other place. Since there seems to be some slight confusion, I thought it better to let you know, so that you do not miss the ceremony in question by coming to the wrong place.




[L. 125]   10 May 1964

I received a copy of the 'Hibbert Journal' and also one of 'Mind', some two or three weeks back, and found them both illuminating -- I mean on the present atmosphere of religious and philosophical thinking in England.




[L. 126]   26 May 1964

Just a few words to express my appreciation of all the trouble you have taken in coming to visit me and in concerning yourself about my welfare -- particularly intellectual. The books that you brought me are all of interest to me in one way or another, and not the least the Zaehner (in spite of the fact that I find him partly unreadable).

The book on time confirms my suspicion that the whole subject is in a state of chaos, and I am glad to think that my own contribution (in the Notes), if it is mistaken, at least errs in good company. I see that the question of time has occupied not a few ecclesiastics in the Middle Ages, and their findings have been as intelligent as anything that is produced today. (The particular question of the 'variability of qualities' -- i.e., that a quality can vary in intensity while remaining unchanged in kind -- is one to which I myself have given some attention, and I find that it has already been considered by Duns Scotus.) St. Augustine -- a man of parts in more senses than one -- has made some very acute remarks. (Are his Confessions available?)

The book is, in part, a combination of the philosophical naivety so typical of the dedicated scientists[a] and a kind of ultra-sophistication (also typical of scientists) that does not shrink from a more-than-Hegelian dialectic.[b] The effect of this alternation is far from displeasing, but it convinces me that my world must be very different from that of the scientist (I used to be a mathematician in a small way, but with the pure mathematician's dislike of any practical applications).

Huxley has certainly set the cat amongst the pigeons with his implied suggestion that the Holy Ghost may, after all, turn out to be no more than a rather obscure chemical compound -- it puts the other two members of the Trinity in a strange light. No wonder the learned rescue-corps (Kierkegaard's expression) has to rush in to defend! However, in this particular controversy I am merely a spectator: I am more interested in Zaehner's references[1] to Pali Buddhism. He does not say much (and he admits he does not know much) about Theraváda texts, but what he does say is wrong in two respects.

(i) In the first place, he more or less identifies the anattá ('not-self') doctrine with Advaita Vedánta, and he does this with more than a suspicion that neither Buddhists nor even the Buddha himself would allow this.[c] Though this identification is quite gratuitous,[d] there is some excuse for it in view of certain books published in Europe which hold this view (Horner and Coomaraswamy in England, and Georg Grimm in Germany). No doubt you will gather from the Notes that I certainly do not hold the view that the object of the exercise is to get rid of my temporal 'self' in order to attain the permanent 'Self' behind it. But, this is not the place to pursue this question.

(ii) In the second place, Zaehner appears to assume that all experience attained in the practice of meditation (I use the word here in the widest sense) is of the mescalin/manic-depressive type, or at least that one has to pass through this state to reach the 'Beatific Vision'. Now, whatever the case may be with the Christian mystics, or with the Mahometan Sufis, or with the Hindus -- or even with Maháyána and Zen Buddhists -- about none of whom am I well informed (and, still less, practised in their disciplines), I can quite definitely assert that (to speak only of the practice of concentration -- samádhi) the effect of practice according to the Theraváda tradition (details in the Visuddhimagga -- Path of Purification) is quite different from anything Zaehner has described.

I myself have practised fairly continuously for one year, and then (after amoebiasis had crippled my capacity for practice) spasmodically for about fourteen years, and I am quite familiar with the low-level results of this practice. There is a gradual and increasing experience of calm and tranquillity as the object of meditation (in my case, the in- and out-breaths) becomes clearer and more definite, and at the same time distracting thoughts about other matters become less. (If one does turn one's attention to such matters, they are seen much more clearly and steadily than at normal times.) As one proceeds, one's capacity for practice increases, and one may be able to continue (with interruptions for meals, etc.) for many hours;[e] and also one positively dislikes any outside interruption, and necessary breaks are most unwelcome.

In all this there is, right from the start, no sign at all of elation and depression (or expansion and contraction -- Zaehner, pp. 85ff.), and no experience of 'one-ness' (with nature, with Self, with God, or with anything else). There is nothing one could possibly call 'ecstatic' about it -- it is pleasurable, and the more so the more one does it, but that is all. To begin with, certainly, one may be attacked either by sleepiness or by mental agitation (i.e. about other matters), but with persistence, and particularly when the object of meditation begins to appear clearly, these things no longer arise; but sleepiness is not depression and mental distraction is not manic exultation.

About the higher states (called jhánas), I am, unfortunately, unable to give you any personal account, since I have never reached them (though my motive in coming to Ceylon in the first place was to obtain them); but I am perfectly satisfied that they are attainable (given good health, persistence, and so on). In any case, in the descriptions of these attainments in the Suttas there is, once again, nothing that corresponds to what Zaehner describes; and, in particular, these practices alone do not lead to 'liberation' in the highest sense -- nibbána -- though Zaehner seems to assume that they do (pp. 155-6). Moreover, it is by no means necessary to reach the highest stages of concentration in order to attain nibbána -- first jhána (minimum) is sufficient.

I have wearied you with all this only because it seems possible that, in denying that there was anything 'mystical' about the Buddhism of the Pali Texts, I might have given you the impression that there was (in my opinion, at least) no practice of meditation. This, however, would be a mistake. In denying that Pali Buddhism was mystical, all I intended to convey was that (i) the practice of meditation (or, more specifically, concentration -- samádhi) that it teaches cannot in any way be described as mystical (though certainly its effects are, to begin with, unusual [because few people practise], and eventually, supernormal [they can lead to mastery of iddhi powers: levitation, clairvoyance, memory of past lives, and so on]); and (ii) that eventual liberation -- nibbána, extinction -- is not a mystical union with the Deity, nor even absorption in a Higher Self (both of which cover up and intensify the fundamental ambiguity of the subject ['I', 'myself', etc.]), but rather the attainment of the clear understanding and comprehension (paññá, aññá) about the nature of this ambiguity (which, when combined with suitable samádhi actually causes -- or, rather, allows -- the ambiguity to subside once for all).

Our actual discussion on the Dhamma was, I am afraid, rather indecisive. There are many world-views against which as a background the Buddha's Teaching is wholly incomprehensible -- indeed, the Buddha himself, upon occasion, when asked about his Teaching, would answer, 'It is hard for you, having (as you do) other teachers, other persuasions, other views, to understand these matters' (e.g. M. 72: i,487). Zaehner's Weltanschauung, for example, is hopeless -- and doubly so, since he is both a Roman Catholic and a University Professor, making him either hostile or indifferent (or both) to the Buddha. (Is there not, incidentally, something rather louche[3] about being at one and the same time a Catholic and a professor of comparative religion? Kierkegaard would have something to say about this. Perhaps he is objective on week-days and subjective on Sundays. But I know that I could never endure such a situation.) Anyway, I hope your visit was not entirely time wasted.




[L. 127]   16 July 1964

It was a disappointment to me, too, not to see you last Sunday, not merely because I should have been interested to meet some intelligent twenty-year-old Britons (how many light-years away from them am I?), but rather because I find you a very pleasant person to talk to, and though I feel no need of a confidant (I have kept my own counsel all my life, and indeed now find that I have no alternative) it is an unaccustomed luxury for me to be able to talk about myself (sometimes perhaps indirectly) with little feeling of constraint.

In my letter to you about Zaehner and, more particularly, in letting you see Sister Vajirá's correspondence, I hoped to be able to convey to you that the Buddha's Teaching is very far from being understood in the West. Zaehner's misapprehension about the nature of our concentration (samádhi) is quite understandable, and one need only do some personal practice (mindfulness of one's breathing, for example) to see his mistake. But the Sister Vajirá correspondence is another matter: though I do not know your latest reactions on rereading the letters, it seemed to me that your first reaction was one of bewilderment. And this is quite in order -- it is a matter for bewilderment, and if you had produced some facile interpretation I should have felt that it was a mistake to show you the letters. Their significance for you personally is, I think, that loss of faith in the Christian Myth[a] is no reason for despair. (I could, of course, say this more emphatically, but you might not then accept it.)

About the books that I have borrowed from you I am still bothered by a daily temperature of 99° or so, and in spite of (I think) William James' remark that spiritual truths, for aught we know, might flourish much better at, say, a temperature of 103° than at normal blood heat, I find that even one degree's rise in temperature makes the reading of plain philosophy an almost impossible undertaking. So I have not made much headway in this department, though I can perhaps expect my temperature to settle by and by.

As for the novels and drama, there is really a great deal to say, and at another time, I might take pleasure in saying it. But for the present I shall only remark that Huxley's 'Buddhism' in Island is in almost complete contradiction, point for point, with what the Buddha actually taught. In particular, there is absolutely no justification at all to be found in the Suttas for the idea that the way to salvation is through sex (however mystically conceived). The Buddha is quite explicit on this point -- without giving up attachment (let alone sex) there is no putting an end to suffering. The view that 'there is no harm in sensuality' (M. 45: i,305) fills the charnel grounds (i.e. it leads to repeated birth and death). Durrell's attitude is better: for the artist, love is justified as providing the raw material of suffering out of which the artist produces his masterpiece. But the question still remains 'What is there to justify the artist?'

Certainly, one might reply that the artist is justified by the existence of suffering, of the limitations of the human condition; but the Buddha removes suffering, and the artist's position is undermined. Laclos[1] is really the only consistent one, since he offers no justification at all.

P.S. Huxley speaks of the pain of bereavement as right and proper, for if we did not feel it we should be less than human beings. How, then, can he approve the Buddha's Teaching, which leads to the end of suffering -- to the end, that is, of 'sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair'? Just as the arahat has no need of art, so he is incapable of grief; it is all one and the same thing. But Huxley wants the Buddha without the arahat -- impossible!




[L. 128]   26 July 1964

Part of me is thoroughly jealous of Jimmy Porter's generous fury -- how satisfying to get one's own back so articulately on the wearisome hypocrisy of those who appoint themselves our elders and betters! (I have all my life been miserably tongue-tied at just those moments when a vigorous protest seemed what was most needed. But I have never been able to believe in my own anger, and the only thing I can do is to turn my back on the whole affair and walk away.) Part of me, I say, is green with envy of Jimmy Porter's extraordinary vitality -- his anger is justified (so I almost feel) by his existence. But has Jimmy Porter ever asked himself whether his existence is justified?

The other part of me sees that my existence is purely gratuitous and that, without any logical inconsistency at all, I could perfectly well not be. My presence in the world and therefore a fortiori also my anger (or my lack of it) are de trop. So long as I exist there will be occasion for anger (or for restraint); but why exist? The immediate answer, of course, is that we can't help it. We do exist, and that's an end of the matter: let us rage furiously together or turn our backs in silence, au choix; it is all the same in the end (that is, if there were an end). But no -- there is a way out, there is a way to put a stop to existence, if only we have the courage to let go of our cherished humanity.

And so, too, the question of sex (about which, as you know, I feel rather strongly these days). How much I wish I could enter into the fun of the game with Durrell's unquestioning enthusiasm! What a fascinating experience to have been a sculptor of one of those incredible erotic groups on the outside of the Indian temples (why not on the outside of our English cathedrals to take the place of the figures destroyed by the Puritans?) -- to recapture and perpetuate publicly in stone, by day, the intimate and fleeting carnal extasies of the night! But suppose one sees also the other side of the picture, what then? I don't mean death (whose presence, in any case, may only sharpen one's living desire) but the understanding that love (all brands) must be without significance (however passionately we may wish to believe otherwise) if life is pointless. The Buddha, at any rate, tells us that the only purpose of existence is to put an end to it. And how do we put an end to it?

Hitvá icchañ ca lobhañ ca,       yattha satto puthujjano, cakkhumá patipajjeyya tareyya narakam imam.

Forsaking desire and lust where the commoner is stuck Let the man with eyes proceed and get across this hell.

(Sn. 706: 137) And there is no way of compromise, in spite of Huxley and the mystics. Huxley wants the best of both worlds, maithuna and mescalin; and where the Hindus say, not altogether without reason, that the self is in the yoni, Huxley quotes a Tantric Buddhist text to the effect that Buddhahood is in the yoni, which is mere wishful thinking -- how quickly we should all become Buddhas! And the mystics, what little I have read of them, seem to describe their union with the Divine in terms of copulation.

Augustine certainly knows that chambering and wantonness must be given up if any sort of mental calm is to be obtained, but the poor fellow sadly deceived himself when he imagined that, once given up, these things would never be with him again for all eternity. No doubt they were given up for his lifetime, and perhaps for some time after (where is he now?), but the root of sex is not dug up finally until the third stage of attainment on the Path to Awakening. Both the sotápanna (stream-attainer, whose future human births are limited in number) and the sakadágámí (once-returner [scil. to human existence]) have, or may have, sexual appetite (and corresponding performance; for there is no question of impotence), and it is only the anágámí (non-returner) who is free of sensual cravings. Augustine, then, though temporarily victorious over the Bed, still had the root of desire within him, and his mystical experience was only possible because of this. No one who had attained any of the stages on the Buddha's Path could think of regarding sex or its mystical sublimations as something of value.

I am enclosing two passages, from Grenier and from Tennent, that might be of interest. You will see that Tennent seems to confirm Grenier's main contention, that the idea of a (beginningless) transmigration is no less acceptable to the natural understanding of the average ignorant Oriental than the idea of a single unique existence is to that of the average ignorant Occidental. But Tennent, who is using a more powerful microscope, sees that the idea of cessation of existence through extinction of desire is not such a popular notion, such a croyance biologique, as Grenier perhaps likes to think. We may suspect that Grenier has less firmly grasped than Tennent that there is a radical distinction between the Hindu and the Buddhist teachings of nirvána. (The situation is complicated by the fact that the Maháyána Buddhists adopt, without due acknowledgement, the Hindu notion of máyá -- that all is illusory, that nothing really exists -- and in consequence that their ideas of nirvána are closer to the Hindu concept than to the Teaching of the Pali Suttas. The French, through historical accident, are more familiar with Maháyána than with Theraváda.)

Of course, Tennent himself has not said the last word on the subject (though as far as it goes his account is surprisingly accurate -- how often do we not find that hostile evangelizing Christians take more trouble to understand what the Buddha taught than disinterested scholars!), and if we turn on Tennent a still more powerful microscope we shall see that 'the nature of Nirwana' is not quite so obvious from his account as he assumes. But here I must refer you to NA CA SO of my Notes on Dhamma.

I wonder if you are put off by the rather didactic tone of my letters? I should prefer, really, to be wholly a pupil amongst other pupils -- or better still, not at school in any capacity at all. But if there is something to be said that someone else has perhaps not heard before, and wants to hear, then in the nature of things there must be a speaker as well as a listener. I only hope that didacticism has not invaded my ordinary conversation -- living alone one gets out of the habit of conversing with people.

ABSOLUTE AND CHOICE[1]

Are we entitled to reject the testimony of Hindu thought? On whose behalf? Are these not, for millions of minds, truths of common sense as stable as the so-called universal principles of the Greco-Europeans? Do not Hindus and Chinese, for instance, when religious common sense is involved, have postulates inverse to ours? We have the fear of death. Lucretius asserts that all religions originate from this fear, that in any case the aim of all of them is the healing of it. But we see that entire peoples in the Orient start from the opposite idea and look for an opposite aim: the universe follows an eternal change (while the Europeans are particularly sensitive to its permanence) and a future life, far from being desirable in any specific form, is the most dreadful thing in the world. It is necessary to observe that these are not only philosophical theories reserved for an elite, nor even just religious dogmas imposed by education or by the clergy, but common popular concepts, beliefs, which are, so to say, biological. An illiterate Hindu, an illiterate Chinese Buddhist, believes in transmigration with the same spontaneity as an illiterate French or German believes in a unique and personal life. Where the Occidental fears the cessation of life, the Oriental fears the continuation of survival. Thus one understands that 'salvation' is sought in opposite directions; by Europeans in the 'eternal life' and by Indians in the extinction of desire and consequently of all life.

'Buddhist Doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls
and Nature of Nirwana'[2]

The general mass of the Buddhists in Ceylon are not orthodox in their view of transmigration, as they believe that the same soul migrates into different bodies. But this is contrary to the teaching of Buddhu, and of this the learned priests are fully aware; but they do not attempt to correct the error, regarding the subject as too difficult to be understood by the unlearned. His doctrine is that of a series of existences, which he illustrates by the metaphors of a tree and a lamp. A tree produces fruit, from which fruit another tree is produced, and so the series continues. The last tree is not the identical tree with the first, but it is a result, so that if the first tree had not been, the last tree could not have existed. Man is the tree, his conduct is the fruit, the vivifying energy of the fruit is desire. While this continues, the series will proceed: the good or evil actions performed give the quality of the fruit, so that the existence springing from these actions will be happy or miserable as the quality of the fruit affects the tree produced from it. According to this doctrine the present body and soul of man never had a previous existence, but a previously existing being under the influence of desire performed virtuous or vicious actions, and in consequence of these upon the death of that individual a new body and soul is produced. The metaphor of the lamp is similar. One lamp is lighted from another; the two lamps are distinct, but the one could not have been lighted had not the other existed. The nature of Nirwana, or cessation of being, is obvious from this. It is not the destruction of an existent being, but the cessation of his existence. It is not an absorption into a superior being, as the Brahmans teach; it is not a retreat into a place of eternal repose, free from further transmigration; it is not a violent destruction of being, but a complete and final cessation of existence.

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Footnotes:

[126.a] How can he pass such a statement as this: '...the newborn is not conscious and only gradually becomes so in the first five or ten months of life'? [Back to text]

[126.b] No doubt you are aware that scientific research has established the existence of an 'Absolute Zero of Temperature' -- about -273.4° C. -- but did you know that some scientists now think that there may be things even colder than that? Heat is envisaged as the movement of particles, and Absolute Zero is the state where all these particles are at rest. A temperature below Absolute Zero seems to take us through the looking-glass. [Back to text]

[126.c] '...the Buddha saw something that did not change, over against prakriti he saw purusha though he would not have formulated it thus.' And again, 'Moreover the Hindus, overwhelmingly, and the Buddhists when they are off their guard, speak of this eternal being as the "self"...' (p. 126). [Back to text]

[126.d] There is one text (at least) that directly opposes the idea that nibbána (extinction) is attá (self). [Back to text]

[126.e] In the Suttas, the Buddha and others continue for a week at a time[2] 'without changing their sitting position', and this is, to me, perfectly credible. [Back to text]

[127.a] How far you have lost it, I am not sure; it remains implicit, anyway, in the Western cultural tradition -- even Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger accepts the church bells as valid for the 'next world'. [Back to text]















Editorial notes:

[122.1] Dear Sir: This first letter was addressed to the British Council Library. All subsequent letters were addressed to Mr. Brady who, from 1958 to 1968, was the Colombo Representative of the Library. (After further service in Cyprus and a brief retirement, Mr. Brady died in 1979.) [Back to text]

[126.1] Zaehner: Mysticism...; see Acknowledgements. [Back to text]

[126.2] week at a time: See Editorial note 2 to L. 56. [Back to text]

[126.3] louche: suspect. [Back to text]

[127.1] Laclos: Les Liaisons Dangereuses, by Choderlos de Laclos. [Back to text]

[128.1] Grenier: p. 23. All translations from Grenier are by the editors. [Back to text]

[128.2] Tennent: p. 241. Tennent, Colonial Secretary during the mid-Nineteenth Century, was influential as an administrator who held decidedly anti-Buddhist views. [Back to text]