the Brahmanic theory of transmigration. Brahmanism teaches the transmigration of a real soul, an ātman, but the Dharma inculcates a mere succession of karmas. According to the Brahmanic conceptions the soul migrates from man to one or other of the so-called six kingdoms (shadgatis), from man to animal, from animal to hell, from hell to heaven and so forth, just as a man migrates from one house to another according to his necessities. It may indeed be true that in the Buddhist sutras also there are references to a transmigration to one or other of the 'ten worlds'-heaven and hell,* gods and demons, men and animals, sravakas and pratyekabuddhas, bodhisatvas and buddhas, but this does not mean that any being passes from one world to another. Na kas chid dharmo asmāl lokāt paralokam gacchati": says a Buddhist Sutra. In the Buddhistic sense transmigration is only a manifestation of cause and effect. Only by virtue of causes and conditions are produced mental phenomena accompanied by bodily forms, and thus results life after life, the nature and character of the successive lives being determined by the goodness or badness of the mental phenomena. It is to explain and illustrate the transmigration of karma to the ordinary man that the Blessed One employed the expression 'ten worlds,' while really he meant by the 'ten worlds' nothing more than the ten mental states typified by the beings and places referred to.

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While the Dharma lays stress upon karma as the effect of past deeds, good or bad, it must not be forgotten that it also lays equal stress on the liberating power of education, on the perfectability of human nature by means of self-culture and self-control. Buddhism is no fatalism. Fatalism teaches that everything, including also the human will, has been predetermined. It pre-supposes the existence of a person whose will is constrained by an external power. Hence a man's character cannot be improved by education. On the other hand, Buddhism teaches that man himself is a product of causes. Hence his will cannot exist previous

For the true Buddhist heaven and hell are not realities (svabhā vasambhuta). They are fanciful creations of the ignorant (bālapṛthag_ anair asadviparyūsavirachitaḥ svavikalpasambhutah.)

to his formation by these causes. Instead of being constrained by them, his will is made by them. Accordingly, the will can be made to acquire, by proper training, the power to repress the evil impulses. As fatalism regards a man's character as compelled, it can furnish no motive for action, and personal responsibility is out of the question. For the Buddhist, on the other hand, the innate character is caused, and therefore furnishes the strongest motive for action. The Buddhist knows exactly what is meant by the reign of law in the universe. There are not first laws, and then things and phenomena subject to them. Laws represent the forms in which the relations of things are conceived by the human mind under generalised or simplified circumstances. The human mind is, therefore, the proper lawgiver to the universe. Hence, the submission to karma, which Buddhism ascribes to action, is not a blind, but a discriminating submission. Karma is in form a creation of the mind, which makes action (mano vāk kāya karma) itself a smrtyupasthāna, an object of meditation. Accordingly a man is responsible for his actions, though his volitions are determined by causes. By the avoidance of all evil and the practice of the pāramitās, it is possible to attain

"that realm on earth,

Where one may stand and be free from an evil deed absolved." Death is the dissolution of mind and body. Yet the person that dies continues to live in his deeds. One's deeds are like the children born to him; they live and act apart from his will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never. Wherever a man's words, thoughts, deeds have impressed themselves in other minds, there he has reincarnated. He that has no clear idea of death, and does not master the fact that death everywhere consists in the dissolution of the groups (skandhas), comes, as Buddhagosha says, to a variety of conclusions, such as A living entity dies and transmigrates into another's body'; and similarly, he that has no clear idea of rebirth and does not master the fact that the appearance of the groups (skandhas) everywhere constitutes birth, he comes to a variety of conclusions, such as 'A living entity

is born and has obtained a new body.' There is not a being that is born, or acts and enjoys itself, or suffers and dies, or is reborn to die again, but simply birth, action, enjoyment, suffering and death take place. The life activities, the deeds alone are real, and these are preserved and nothing else. Therefore, has it been said :—

"No doer is there does the deed,

Nor is there one who feels the fruit;
Constituent parts alone roll on;
This view alone is orthodox.

"And thus the deed, and thus the fruit
Roll on and on, each from its cause;
As of the round of tree and seed,
No one can tell when they began.

"Nor is the time to be perceived

In future births when they shall cease,
The heretics perceive not this

And fail of mastery o'er themselves.

"An ego,' say they, 'doth exist,

Eternal, or that soon will cease;'
Thus two and sixty heresies

They amongst themselves discordant hold.

"Bound in the bonds of heresy

By passion's flood they're borne along;
And borne along by passion's flood
From misery find they no release.

"If once these facts he but perceive,
A man whose faith on Buddha rests
The subtle, deep, and self-devoid
Dependence will then penetrate.

"Not in its fruit is found the deed,
Nor in the deed finds one the fruit;
Of each the other is devoid,

Yet there is no fruit without the deed.

"Just as no store of fire is found

In jewel, cow-dung, or the sun
Nor separate from these exists,
Yet short of fuel no fire is known.

"Even so we ne'er within the deed
Can retribution's fruit descry,
Nor yet in any place without;
Nor can in fruit the deed be found.

"Deeds separate from their fruits exist
And fruits are separate from the deeds;
But consequent upon the deed
The fruit doth into being come.

"No god of Heaven or Brahma world

Doth cause the endless round of birth;

Constituent parts alone roll on

From cause and¡material sprung.”—Visuddhi-Magga.*

*Warren's Buddhism in translations.

ANITYA,

THE SUMMUM BONUM.

NITYA, anātman and nirvāṇa have been rightly called the three corner-stones of Buddhism. They form the three cardinal principles of the Dharma. Any system of thought which accepts these three fundamental tenets may properly claim identity with Buddhism, whatever may be the adventitious beliefs and practices which hide them. But no system of thought, that does not recognise these three principles, can lay any claim to kinship with the Dharma.

What, then, is the meaning of these three principles? Anitya means impermanence. It signifies that all things are in a perpetual flux. All things lived through, allerlebnisse, as the Germans call them, are transient and impermanent. Nothing is permanent in the universe but change. Mutability is the very characteristic of all existence (visvam kshanabhanguram). Only non-existence, çunyata, can claim to be immutable. Permanent unchanging substances exist in our thought, but not in reality. Whatsoever exists is made up of colours, sounds, temperatures, spaces, times, pressures, ideas, emotions, volitions, and so forth, connected with one another in manifold ways. And these are continually changing. Everything is therefore momentary (kshanika). Some things may be relatively more permanent than others, but nothing is absolutely permanent. It is the mistaking of what is impermanent for something permanent that makes anitya the source of sorrow (duhkha).

What is anitya is not necessarily mithya or illusory, as some have supposed. That which is momentary might prove deceptive, and thus become a source of sorrow, when mistaken for something nitya or permanent, for no deliverance of consciousness is in itself complete. The fragmentary character of a single deliverance of consciousness will naturally mislead, if it is not controlled and rectified by other deliverances of consciousness. When the traveller in the desert sees before him a large expanse of water, which continually recedes and finally disappears, proving to be the