Note 18 — Chapter I · A GENERAL CHARACTERISATION OF BUDDHISM.

Further, in India there was no distinction between religion and philosophy. Every philosophical system was at the same time a religion, and vice versa. Philosophy with the Hindus was not an idle display of logical subtlety which generally ends in entangling itself in the meshes of sophistry. Their aim of philosophising was to have an intellectual insight into the significance of existence and the destiny of humanity. They did not believe in anything blindly nor accept anything on mere tradition. Buddha most characteristically echoes this sentiment when he says, “Follow my teachings not as taught by a Buddha, but as being in accord with truth.” This spirit of self-reliance and self-salvation later became singularly Buddhistic. Even when Buddha was still merely an enthusiastic aspirant for Nirvâna, he seems to have been strongly possessed of this spirit, for he most emphatically declared the following famous passage, in response to the pathetic persuasion of his father’s ministers, who wanted him to come home with them: “The doubt whether there exists anything or not, is not to be settled for me by another’s words. Arriving at the truth either by mortification or by tranquilisation, I will grasp myself whatever is ascertainable about it. It is not mine to receive a view which is full of conflicts, uncertainties, and contradictions. What enlightened men would go by other’s faith? The multitudes are like the blind led in the darkness by the blind.”[18]