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assured of its existence. While men follow true intelligence of things, as they really are or rather are changed, they tend upward like air and light; but if they follow passion, which comes of ignorance, they both bring misery through sin upon themselves, and beget in turn a race of children destined to go through the same cycle of delusion. You see then, how no external interference with the course of the world is necessary in order to give things what you observed was a certain appearance of order. For all things act according to their qualities, while they possess them; but the substance being changed, the quality changes, and life changes into death, or death into life, or either of them leads on to Nirvana, or else to renewed transmigration."

BLAN. "Perhaps I hardly understand the nature of your argument; though many difficulties occur to me; partly, for instance, in the shape of a doubt about what you call causes, whether they are not more properly sources, and whether our tracing of a particular source gives us any real clue to a general or original cause; and partly also about those qualities which you speak of, whether they are not merely attributed by your imagination, and so are figures of speech; or, again, if those qualities are real existences, how they became inherent, or who fixed the law of succession, whether progress or revolution, by which they guide, or, at least, the things to which you attribute them are guided; while concurrently with this last doubt, or as a part of it, comes in my old difficulty about a beginning; and that I can scarcely ask you to explain, because to you it appears a difficulty which need not even be raised."

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SAUG. Certainly I must abide by what has been said about not ascribing to the whole ocean of existence a beginning; for, if there ever had been a time when the entire whole was a blank, neither then (as Sadananda will demonstrate to you) could anything but a blank have begun to be. Moreover, such a supposition would make even the Supreme Intelligence, Adi Buddha, himself unnecessary. For, if there was no world, why

CO-EXISTENT INTELLIGENCE.

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should we any longer suppose any Deity to be? So that, although I have heard some Europeans call us Bauddhas atheists, which it seems is an ugly appellation with you, in my judgment, the true atheists are those who say the vast order of things and events ever began to be, or had a time when it was not, instead of rather, as is the reality, always being, and always becoming."

BLAN. "Pray pardon me, if I have seemed for a moment, by mistake, to imitate those unwise persons who put all their arguments in the shape of reproaches. Such was not even for an instant my intention; yet let me acknowledge that I don't quite understand how the benefit of this last argument belongs to you; for you imply that the existence of the world is the reason from which we infer a Deity, which is a just inference with us who make the Deity the Creator; but since you deny Him apparently any share, or at least any active and operative share, in creation or control, I feel a difficulty in seeing the sort of connexion which you imply between the eternity of the world and of the Supreme Intelligence."

SAUG. Well, we have never denied that the whole subject is, from its vastness, one of difficulty; but you allow, I suppose, that man in general has intelligence."

BLAN.

SAUG.

"Certainly."

"And you infer the real existence of what you call a mind from seeing a human body in full life."

BLAN. "Exactly so."

SAUG. "But yet you allow that some of the operations of the body, dependent on health or disease, go on pretty much mechanically, or with little aid from the mere volition of the mind."

BLAN. "Partly I allow that."

SAUG. "Well, then, partly you will comprehend how, in allowing the world to exist, I also admit the existence of the Highest Intelligence; but to say, that this Supreme Being is cumbered about the ordinary processes of the world, would be like saying that the wisest or holiest of men has no better

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SUPERINTENDENCE OF DEITY.

employment than making his hair or his nails grow, all which sort of things proceed naturally, neither needing his aid, nor perhaps being much benefited by it. Our full conviction therefore that this universal frame has what, if you please, you may call a soul, or a Deity, or any other name, but which we have learnt to call the Supreme Intelligence; and, again, our belief in numerous other beings, some nearer and some farther from the highest and most serenely blessed, are neither absurd, nor yet imply any necessity of troubling what is highest with the care of what is lowest."

BLAN. 66 Perhaps I might remark, in passing, that the case of this universal frame and its Highest Intelligence, as you put it, differs from that of our body and our soul, inasmuch as whatever care our body may need, independent of our exertions, may, it is conceivable, be supplied by the forethought of a higher or external Being; whereas the world must be either cared for by its Highest Ruler, or not at all; or again I might argue, that because some of the lesser processes of our animal constitution go on without much aid from our mind, it does not at all follow, and it is an illegitimate extension of the facts of the case to suppose, that the mind has no share in guiding, controlling, and even preserving the body; for surely we might find, even in this instance, the lower does not exist without the supervision of the higher; but it is more interesting for me at present to ask, if the supreme Buddha be so tranquil as you conceive, not to call it what my countrymen in general would, so inert, why do you offer worship? wherefore all your temples, and priests, and prayers, as well as your own anxiety, which I have observed is very great, not to act in any way against what you conceive to be piety, either in injuring animal life or otherwise? For piety, I suppose, means conformity with the will of Buddha, does it not? or, at least, your prayers seem to imply a belief in some Being capable of answering them, and of whom you imagine that he may grant your petitions.'

SAUG. 66

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Supreme Intelligence can will what is wrong, for then He would not be intelligent; though neither do I see why we should encumber Him with much volition, supposing, as we believe, that to see clearly all things, as it were with a mental eye, is in itself the highest happiness; but although the Deity neither wants anything, nor therefore should be said to wish anything, it is clear that mankind become happier in proportion as they draw nearer to what is most perfect. Now I suppose you will not deny that prayer is an instrument by which man is exalted and improved, his intelligence raised, and his passions calmed; so that by devotion we may draw ourselves nearer to that which is in itself immovable."

BLAN. "Certainly; we may walk, for example, towards a city, yet no man in doing so utters exclamations to the city to come nearer him, for he conceives of the motion as a thing depending upon himself; whereas in prayer we ask for something which depends upon another; and, except for this mode of thinking, I imagine men in general would scarcely pray at all."

SAUG, "Have I not, then, heard that your own great Teacher told you that your Heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of, as if it did not much concern the Supreme to hear from us a list of our desires, and yet he commanded you, I believe, to pray?"

BLAN. "That means, that we are not to use pompous declamations, as if a true prayer to God was to be cast in the same mould as an harangue to men; but it still leaves asking as a condition of our receiving, though not as a means of our Heavenly Father's learning."

SAUG. "If you please, I am willing to allow that the distinction which you draw is correct, or, at least, intelligible; but still it is our belief that prayer is a part of virtue; and, although we attach little value to devotional ceremonies, when put in the balance against doing good actions, we should still think it an unpropitious beginning for a teacher of religion to use arguments against prayer.”

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BLAN.

PRAYER AND ASPIRATION.

"Such, pray believe me, was far from my intention; only it occurred to me that devotions, if they are undertaken rather as the means of self-improvement than in the hope of obtaining any petition from a higher power, might, in our language, be called not so much prayers as aspirations."

SAUG. "What is the difference?"

BLAN. "Something of this kind. Prayers are, as it were, from a child to his father, asking for something. Aspirations are rather a lifting of the affections, as of a man gazing on some beautiful object, or rising in conception to some sublime idea, either of which he endeavours, as it were, to draw himself nearer to."

SAUG. "Perhaps I understand."

BLAN.

"But it is also part of my distinction, that prayer to the highest of all Beings would most naturally be addressed by those who fancy they have some positive reason for knowing it will be favourably received, and be of some service to them in bringing down an assistance from above, as the light and rain come upon flowers; whereas aspiration will be rather the mental posture of those who by reasoning or inference have conjectured some higher intelligence to exist, but are either not persuaded of his hearing prayer, or deny his active government of the world. This, then, I would gladly ask further of you." SAUG. "What do you mean ?"

BLAN. "What is your ground of belief that one kind of religious worship is better than another, or upon what is that expectation built, which you profess to entertain, of arriving by a certain course of conduct at Nirvana?"

SAUG. "Our expectation is part of the faith taught us by the last Buddha, and our worship is also shaped according to his directions, or those of the saints who have followed in his footsteps."

BLAN. "In saying the last Buddha, you denote that others had preceded him?"

SAUG. "Certainly."

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