..续本文上一页 cut out most of their apocryphal adornments, especially those in which the Northern traditions abound, yet he did not deem it wise to shrink form preserving the marvellous that appears in the old records, whenever its moral seemed to justify its mention; he only pruned away the exuberance of wonder which delights in relating the most incredible things, apparently put on to impress while in fact they can only tire. Miracles have ceased to be a religious test; yet the belief in the miraculous powers of the Master still bears witness to the holy awe of the first disciples and reflects their religious enthusiasm.

　　Lest the fundamental idea of the Buddha”s doctrines be misunderstood, the reader is warned to take the term "self" in the sense in which the Buddha uses it. The "self" of man translates the word atman which can be and has been understood, even the Buddhist canon, in a sense to which the Buddha would never have made any objection. The Buddha denies the existence of a "self" as it was commonly understood in his time; he does not deny man”s mentality, his spiritual constitution, the importance of his personality, in a word, his soul. But he does deny the mysterious ego-entity, the atman, in the sense of a kind of soul-nomad which by some schools was supposed to reside behind or within man”s bodily and psychical activity as a distinct being, a kind of thing-in-itself, and a metaphysical agent assumed to be the soul.

　　Buddhism is monistic. It claims that man”s soul dies not consist of two things, of an atman (self) and of a manas (mind or thoughts), but that there is one reality, our thoughts, our mind or manas, and this manas constitutes the soul. Man”s thoughts, if anything, are his self, and these is no atman, no additional and separate "self" besides. Accordingly, the translation of atman by "soul", which would imply that the Buddha denied the exitstence of the soul, is extremely misleading. Representative Buddhists, of different schools and of various countries, acknoledge the correctness of the view here taken, and we emphasize especially the assent of Southern Buddhists because they have preserved the tradition most faithfully and are very punctilious in the statement of doctrinal points.

　　"The Buddhist, the Organ of the Southern Church of Buddhism," writes in a review of The Gospel of Buddha:

　　"The eminent feature of the work is its grasp of the difficult subject and the clear enunciation of the doctrine of the most puzzling problem of atman, as taught in Buddhism. So far as we have examined the question of atman ourselves from the works of the Southern canon, the view taken by Dr. Paul Carus is accurate, and we venture to think that it is not opposed to the doctrine of Northern Buddhism."

　　This atman-superstition, so common not only in India, but all over the world, corresponds to man”s habitual egotism in practical life. Both are illusions growing out of the same root, which is the vanity of worldliness, inducing man to believe that the purpose of his life lies in his self. The Buddha puroposes to cut off entirely all thought of self, so that it will no longer bear fruit. Thus Nirvana is an ideal state, in which man”s soul, after being cleansed from all selfishness, hatred and lust, has become a habitation of the truth, teaching him to distrust the allurements of pleasure and to confine all his energies to attending to the duties of life.

　　The Buddha”s doctrine is not negativism. An investigation of the nature of man”s soul shows that, while there is no atman or ego-entity, the very being of man consists in his karma, his deeds, and his karma remains untouched by death and continues to live. Thus, by denying the existence of that which appears to be our soul and for the destruction of which in death we tremble, the Bud…

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