ABSTRACT
Buddhism, then, is a way of life, from first to last a matter of experience. For the Way is a way to the supreme experience by which Gautama, the man, became Buddha, the Fully Awakened One. Buddhism, therefore, though including a set of doctrines alleged to be the Buddha's Teaching must, if it is to be true to its genesis, be at the same time a matter of doctrine applied. The Buddha's call was to move from the static to the dynamic, to eschew all futile argument on the 'Indeterminates', such as the nature of the First Cause or of the Self and to move and keep on moving towards Enlightenment. For these questions can never ex hypothesi be usefully answered. The First Cause is necessarily beyond, because prior to, causation, and that which is out of manifestation is beyond the reach of words. Buddhism, then, has no use for belief, save in the sense that 'a man believes a doctrine when he behaves as if it were true'. Nor has it any place for faith, save in the reasonable description by a guide of a Path and its Goal: 'Thus have I found', said that Guide, 'and this is the Way to that discovery. I tell you the steps on the Way, its dangers and difficulties, the fierce resistance offered by the self, the lures to beguile you into some other way which leads still deeper into the mire of suffering'. Meanwhile, that the Way is worthy, as Mrs Rhys Davids would have said, may be proved at every stage. For treading it there are two rules and only two: Begin, and walk on. Once the first step is taken-and where else than here and now?—each further stage will reveal a wider range of view, an air more pure to breathe, more light from the Indivisible as the
clouds of our present illusion and desire are, not so much dispersed, as quietly plodded through.
