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The Seventh Lesson: Buddhism.1261
Whole—that. Therefore anything that tended to kill out Desire was a step
on The Path. He had experienced, in his own life, the sense of the futility
of ceremonialism and ritual, and had tested asceticism and austerities, and
proved them worthless. Therefore all that remained for the Seeker after
Freedom to do was to “kill out Desire.” Here is where Gautama struck a new
note in India. Not by violent repression of Desire was it killed, he argued—
for that only fed the appetite of the beast by arousing an internal hunger.
But by avoiding all Selfish acts and devoting one’s life to unselfish deeds,
and acts of service to one’s fellows—by Love for All Living Things. Gautama
held that by thus turning the Life Energies out towards others, Selfishness
was dissolved and disappeared and the mind was purged of Desire and the
Lust-of-Life was overcome, and Nirvana reached. This was The Path of the
Cessation of Suffering.
It will be noticed that in the majority of the Hindu philosophies, Freedom
and Emancipation were held to be gained by the ultimate absorption of
the Individual Soul in the Universal Soul or Brahman. The Advaitist Vedanta,
not believing in the absolute existence of the Individual Soul, holds the
Emancipation comes from the individual (who is really Brahman in disguise—
deluded by Maya) awakening to a realization that he is not an individual, but
is Brahman himself. Buddhism, not recognizing an Individual Soul, or even
the temporary phenomenal separate entity called soul—the Buddhist “soul”
being but a bundle of desires, habits, etc., called “Character,” illumined by
the One Spirit—does not lead the “soul” to Recognition of the Real Self in
the manner of the Advaitist Vedanta, but instead reaches the Emancipation
by leading the mind to a knowledge of the true state of affairs; teaching it
that it, as a soul, does not exist; and then bidding it to deliberately destroy
and dissolve itself by the burning out and destroying of Desire—to the end
that finally when all Desire is burned out and destroyed, then the “soul” will
vanish and the Real Self alone will be left in its place. Nirvana is the state
of actual realization of the Oneness of Life—and that the Many are One.
Para-Nirvana is the withdrawal from Activity entirely, and dissolving into