Mystic Tendencies in Buddhism
© Nasim Fatima
Buddhism is a philosophical religion, which originated in India, and came into being as a protest against Brahmanism or the religious hegemony of the Brahmins, which they exercised as the sole interpreter of the Vedas. As members of the highest caste, the Brahmins claimed that the whole universe had been evolved for their benefit. Sidhartha, the founder of Buddhism, owing to his great philosophical vision and interest in the well-being of mankind, remains as one of the greatest sons of humanity. The understanding of his mysticism is not possible without knowing his philosophy, which is complex and requires attention. However, the Buddhist philosophy like the western philosophy is not a cult of the mind or an intellectual innovation but is a path to self-realization where anyone can travel and report his experience to his fellow travelers and exchange his views with them.
Buddhist mystic, like any mystic, is different from the secular perception, because his oblivion to surroundings, and the disinterest in fleeting things, takes him out of the bounds of space and time.
Its major precepts are:
- There is no divine creator. He believes that the universe is uncreated; it has no beginning or end; what comes into being must suffer destruction and what faces annihilation must come back again; becoming and unbecoming follow each other like day and night. The existence is, in fact, a recurrent cyclical change.
- The world is a phenomenon of "dependent origination," that is, everything is caused by something else. Therefore, dependent origination means the inter-relational existence or all things.
- Everything is in a constant flux. Thus, life is a series of manifestations and extinction. Therefore, there is no such thing as self, atman or ego for lack of permanence. A human is an embodiment of five aggregates i.e. Sakandhas. As a person is constantly subject to the process of change, he has no fixed underlying identity.
Thus Buddhism does not acknowledge the identity of soul and by the same token is silent about the existence of God.
- Now, the Buddhist doctrine becomes quite baffling. There is no self or soul, yet according to the doctrine of Karman, a good action brings happiness and a bad deed produces sorrow; a person is followed by the goodness and wickedness of his actions life after life.
- The Buddhist concept of voidness holds that there is no real existence; all things are forms of appearance. However, voidness or Sunyata is the middle stage of being and nonbeing. Therefore, it is neither existence nor extinction. The void includes everything and is free from the polar strife, for it neither excludes nor opposes anything. This void or emptiness is live, because all manifestations come out of it. Thus realization of the void is tantamount to life and power. It is this voidness, which is the ultimate reality.
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