Vision conceived as "transparency" is the Buddhist ideal: as one sees through clear water, the sand, the gravel, and the color of the pebbles, simply by reason of its transparency, so one who seeks the path of liberation must have just such a clear mind.

Vision conceived as "transparency" is the Buddhist ideal: "as one sees through clear water, the sand, the gravel, and the color of the pebbles, simply by reason of its transparency, so one who

seeks the path of liberation must have just such a clear mind."

 

The image that illustrates the manner in which an ascetic apprehends the four truths of the Ariya is this: "If at the edge of an alpine lake of clear, transparent and pure water there were to stand a man with keen sight looking at the shells and shellfish, the gravel and the sand and the fish, watching how they swim and how they rest; this thought would come to him: 'This alpine lake is clear, transparent, and pure; I see the shells and shellfish, the gravel, the sand and the fish, how they swim and rest'”.

 

In this same manner an ascetic apprehends "in conformity with truth" the supreme object of the doctrine. The formula "in conformity with truth" or "with reality" is a recurrent theme in the texts, like the attributes, "eye of the world", or "become eye", or "become knowledge", of the Awakened Ones.

 

This is naturally an achievement only through a gradual process. "As an ocean deepens gradually, declines gradually, shelves gradually without sudden precipices, so in this law and discipline there is a gradual training, a gradual action, a gradual unfolding, and no sudden apprehension of supreme knowledge."

 

Again: "One cannot, I say, attain supreme knowledge all at once; only by a gradual training, a gradual action, a gradual unfolding, does one attain perfect knowledge. In what manner? A man comes, moved by confidence; having come, he joins (the order of the Ariya); having joined, he listens; listening, he receives the doctrine; having received the doctrine, he remembers it; he examines the sense of the things remembered; from examining the sense, the things are approved of; having approved, desire is born; he ponders; pondering, he eagerly trains himself; and eagerly training himself, he mentally realizes the highest truth itself and, penetrating it by means of wisdom, he sees." These are the milestones of the development.

 

It is hardly worth saying that the placing of "confidence" at the beginning of the series does not signify a falling back into "belief": in the first place, the texts always consider that confidence is prompted by the inspiring stature and the example of a master; in the second place, as we can see clearly from the development of the series, it is a matter of a provisional admission only; the real adherence comes when, with examination and practice, the faculty of direct apprehension, of intellectual intuition, absolutely independent of its antecedents, has become possible.

 

Therefore it is said: "He who cannot strenuously train himself, cannot achieve truth; through strenuous training (an ascetic) achieves truth: therefore strenuous training is the most important thing for the achieving of truth."

 

Naturally, there is here an implicit assumption, which we shall discuss before long in detail, an assumption, that is to say, that the men to whom the doctrine was directed were not entirely in the state of brute beasts: that they recognised, not as an intellectual opinion, but through a natural and innate sense, the existence of a reality superior to that of the senses. For the "common man," one who thinks in his heart: "There is no giving, no offering, no alms, there is no result of good and bad actions, there is no this world, there, is no other world, there is no spiritual rebirth, there are not in the world ascetics or Brāhmans who are perfect and fulfilled and who, having with their own understanding comprehended, and realised this world and the other world, make known their

knowledge" - for such the doctrine was not considered to have been expounded, since they lack the elementary quality of "confidence" that defines the "noble son" and that is the first member of the series we have mentioned.

 

Such men, according to an apt textual illustration, are as "arrows shot by night”.

 

As for the preeminence accorded (in a pragmatic and anti-intellectualistic spirit) to action in the Doctrine of Awakening, we quote another Buddhist simile. A man struck by a poisoned arrow, for whom his friends and companions wish to fetch a surgeon, refuses to have the arrow extracted before learning who struck him, what his name might he, who his people are, what his appearance, if his bow was great or small, of what wood it was made, with what it was strung, and so on. This man would not succeed in learning enough to satisfy him before he died. Just so (says the text) would a man behave who followed the Sublime One only on the condition that the latter gave him answers to various speculative problems, telling him if the world was eternal or not, if body and the life-principle are distinct or not, what happens to the Accomplished One after death, and so on. None of this—says the Buddha—has been explained by me. "And why has it not been explained by me? Because this is not salutary, it is not truly ascetic, it does not lead to disgust, it does not lead to detachment, it does not lead to dispassion, it does not lead to calmness, it does not lead to contemplation, it does not lead to awakening, it does not lead to extinction: therefore has this not been explained by me”.

 

In the opposing theories regarding the world and regarding man, characteristically reminiscent of the Kantian antinomies, either one opposite or the other might he true. One thing is certain, however: the state in which man actually finds himself, and the possibility of his training himself, during his lifetime, to achieve the destruction of this state.

 

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Julius Evola: The Doctrine of Awakening - Part I., Chapter 4. - Destruction of the Demon of Dialectics (excerpt)

 

Done