Note 12 — Chapter I

Metempsychosis is one of the fundamental dogmas of Buddhism. That continual transition from one existence to another, from a state of happiness to one of unhappiness, and vice versa, forms a circle encompassing the Buddhist in every direction. He is doomed to fluctuate incessantly on the never-settled waters of existence. Hence his ardent wishes to be delivered from that most pitiable position, and his earnest longings for the ever-tranquil state of Neibban, the way to which Buddha alone can teach him by his precepts and his examples.

This dogma is common both to Brahmins and Buddhists. The originator and propagator of the creed of the latter found it already established; he had but to embody it among his own conceptions, and make it agree with his new ideas. His first teachers were Brahmins, and under their tuition he learned that dogma which may be considered as the basis on which hinge both systems. In fact, the two rival creeds have a common object in view, the elevating of the soul from those imperfections forced upon her by her connection with matter, and the setting of her free from the sway of passions, which keep her always linked to this world. According to the votaries of both creeds, transmigration has for its object the effecting of those several purposes. There is a curious opinion among Buddhists respecting the mode of transmigrations, and there is no doubt it is a very ancient one, belonging to the genuine productions of the earliest Buddhism. Transmigration, they say, is caused and entirely controlled by the influence of merits and demerits, but in such a way that a being who has come to his end transmits nothing of his entity to the being to be immediately reproduced. The latter is a being apart, independent of the former, created, it is true, by the influence of the late being's good or bad deeds, but having nothing in common with him. They explain this startling doctrine by the comparison of a tree successively producing and bearing fruits, of which some are good and some bad. The fruits, though coming from the same tree, have nothing in common, either with each other or with those that were previously grown, or may afterwards grow out of the same plant; they are distinct and separate. So they say, kan, or the influence of merits and demerits, produces successively beings totally distinct one from the other. This atheistic or materialistic doctrine is not generally known by the common people, who practically hold that transmigration is effected in the manner professed and taught by Pythagoras and his school.

If between the adherents of the two creeds there is a perfect agreement respecting the means to be resorted to for reaching the point when man becomes free from miseries, ignorance, and imperfections, they are at variance as to the end to be arrived to. The Brahmin leads the perfected being to the supreme essence, in which he is merged as a drop of water in the ocean, losing his personality, to form a whole with the Divine substance. This is Pantheism. The Buddhist, ignoring a supreme being, conducts the individual that has become emancipated from the thraldom of passions to a state of complete isolation, called Neibban. This is, strictly speaking, Annihilation.