Buddhist Romanticism

knowledge are all one) at the same time the subject and substance of
that experience.” 51
This, of course, ignores the Buddha’s repeated emphasis that unbinding
was not identical with the brahmanical goal of union with Brahmā, that the
latter goal was inferior because it was still stuck in becoming, and so did
not lead to the end of suffering. Although Huxley treats union with Brahmā
as an eternal state lying beyond the flux of becoming, the Buddha saw that
any sense of identity—even with an infinite being—actually lies within the
flux of becoming because it is based on subtle craving.
The fact that Huxley is rewriting the Dhamma in a way that offers no
release from becoming is reflected in his use of strategy number 2 to rewrite
the noble eightfold path. In his account, the first seven factors are meant to
impose a regimen of mortification—which, by his definition, is not a matter
of self-cleansing or self-mastery through the mature cultivation of one’s
freedom of choice. Instead, it is a matter of opening oneself up to divine
grace. As for why the Buddha neglected to mention the need for grace, he
wrote:
“Of the means which are employed by the divine Ground for
helping human beings to reach their goal, the Buddha of the Pali
scriptures (a teacher whose dislike of ‘footless questions’ is no less
intense than that of the severest experimental physicist of the
twentieth century) declines to speak.” 52
In other words, in Huxley’s eyes, the Buddha gave an incomplete picture
of the path because his rhetorical style got in the way.
To make the noble eightfold path lead not to the end of becoming, but to
a refined level of becoming in which one attained union with the Ground of
the universe, Huxley redefined the factors of the path. A look at his version
of two of the factors will show how he managed this. First, right view—or
in his terms, right belief:
“Complete deliverance is conditional on the following: first, Right
Belief in the all too obvious truth that the cause of pain and evil is
craving for separative, ego-centred existence, with its corollary that
there can be no deliverance from evil, whether personal or collective,
except by getting rid of such craving and the obsession of ‘I,’ ‘me,’
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