1. Preliminary.
1. What happens after death is a question often asked,
2. The contemporaries of the Buddha held two different views. One set was called Eternalist and the other was called Annihilationist.
3. The Eternalist said that the soul knows no death: therefore life is eternal. It is renewed by rebirth.
4. The thesis of the Annihilationists was summed up in one word, Ucchedvad, which meant that death is the end of everything. There is nothing left after death.
5. The Buddha was not an eternalist. For it involved a belief in the existence of a separate, immortal soul to which he was opposed.
6. Was the Buddha an annihilationist? With his belief in the non-existence of the soul, the Buddha would naturally be expected to be an annihilationist.
7. But in the Alagaddupamma-Sutta the Buddha complains that he is called an annihilationist when as a matter of fact he is not.
8. This is what he says : " Though this is what I affirm and what I preach yet some recluses and Brahmins, wrongly, erroneously and falsely charge me in defiance of facts, with being an annihilationist and with preaching the disintegration, destruction and extirpation of human beings.
9. " It is just what lam not, and what I do not affirm, that is wrongly, erroneously, and falsely charged against me by these good people who would make me out to be an annihilationist."
10. If this statement is a genuine one and is not an interpolation by those who wanted to foist a Brahmanic doctrine on Buddhism the statement raises a serious dilemma
11. How can the Buddha not believe in the existence of the soul and yet say that he is not an annihilationist ? 12. This raises the question : Did the Buddha believe in rebirth ?
No comments:
Post a Comment