BUDDHISM, like science, is based on the experimental facts of daily life, which are changing phenomena. As such it is progressive and dynamic; it is a living religion, concerned with life.

          “To discuss the origin of life is as senseless as the action of a man who should undertake to measure a line and who should not place a mark at the one point which he knows, on which he stands, but should take imaginary points on an endless line, and from them should measure the distance to himself… a measuring without measure.” (Leo Tolstoi). Man is conscious of life only in himself, only in his own personality, The life of other beings is learned from observation only and from inference. We are conscious of sensations which are fleeting and hence fraught with disappointment. Our aspirations are rarely realized to the full, and as soon as our hopes are fulfilled they leave an emptiness in the absence of the excitement, which their expectation produced. And thus we live for a while and see others live a life, narrow in its limitations, short in its duration, disappointing in its attainments, vulgar in its expectations, miserable in its gratifications.

          What is life? Life is significant, i.e. it becomes the goal of striving, or at least a means to attain that goal, only for him who strives ‘to become, to obtain, i.e. for him who walks in craving. If craving is done away with, life loses its significance altogether. Life then is a thing that can only be willed, for life is grasping. It cannot be understood, for grasping is ignorance. But through understanding does ignorance vanish, grasping cease, and life itself become no more. Understanding is the end of the process of becoming.

          But what is life? and from where is it becoming ?

          For those who see life as craving, Bichat’s definition is accurate enough, “Life is the sum of the functions which resist death.” It death is taken as the symbol of decay and dissolution, i.e. of impermanence the resistance to that is clinging to existence, striving for permanence, and that is life. Other definitions from a physiological point of view are too broad or not broad enough. Too broad is Spencer’s definition of life as “the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations”; for external conditions will always influence the internal conditions of anything, thus forcing a continuous adjustment. Thus the internal relations of water in a liquid state are forced to adjust themselves to the external relations of the fire over which it is placed, the adjustment resulting in the gaseous state of steam. As this is an entirely physical process of inorganic matter. It is clear that this definition of life is too broad. The definition of Bedard that “life is the sum of the phenomena peculiar to organised beings,” is incomplete, as intellectual activity is excluded.

          The old division of matter into animal, vegetable and mineral is too simple to bring it in line with the advance of science. If only these three kingdoms are allowed, it will be difficult to find a place for microbes7 as many are sharply distinguished both from plants and from animals, yet having life. A most startling feature about them is that some kinds never die of old age, but only violenty by accident or through crime. Being almost at the bottom of evolution, if we regard the simplicity of structure and of reproduction without sexual process as in bacteria, they are considered by many biologists as the transitory state between dead” and ” life”-matter. But still lower are viruses, sub-microbes, which have not even been observed with the best microscope, whose existence, however, is known to us by the diseases they cause. Biologists confess that they do not yet know whether virus is a substance (dead) or an organism (living). It means that science has not yet found the criterion of what is living and what is dead. Will the abstract borderline ever be visible to science?

          Some bacteria are capable of living in the dark entirely on chemicals without even the assistance of sunlight. These bacteria can produce life out of the indisputably dead. This fact suggests that a bacterium may have been the first kind of organism to evolve from dead matter. Though Pasteur sterilized all kinds of foodstuff by heating up to 76° C and preventing further contact and interference from outside. yet baccilli are found to keep alive even in steam of 30 lbs. per square inch pressure and at 120° C. They have been found to retain their vitality after six months in liquid air at-190° C.

          Professor Joseph Le Comte in his ” Correlation of vital with chemical and physical forces” asks : ” What is the nature of the difference between the living organism and the dead organism ? We can detect none, physical or chemical. All the physical and chemical forces withdrawn from the common fund of nature and embodied in the living organism, seem to be still embodied in the dead, until, little by little it is returned by decomposition,” The chemist brings into contact two elements contained in the atmosphere: hydrogen and oxygen, and by developing a latent force of affinity, he creates a new body, water. In this union of gases, in a water-drop transparent like a gem, are born the germs of organic life, and in their molecular interstices lurk heat, electricity and light, just as they do in the human body. Whence comes this life into the drop of water just born of the union of two gases?

          It is nature itself which began experimenting with the production of life from lifeless matter. Today the scientist tries his hand at the same game. But where the scientist’s attempts are like a shot in the dark, nature was able to work through a gradual process of evolutionary stages of change, spread out over thousands and thousands of years, beginning from a mass of gas, slowly solidified into a clod, a rock, so called inanimate matter, developing into the slime we call protoplasm, which contains that principle of life which no analysis can isolate. Through analysis we know the compound of 72 per cent. oxygen, 13’5 per cent. carbon, 9’1 per cent. hydrogen, 2’5 per cent nitrogen, and about 3 per cent. of phosphor, sulphur, calcium, iron, magnesium together with traces of other elements. Yet all these chemical components mixed in just the right proportions do not produce a sign of life. The explanation is not that life has a supernatural origin, but that life instead of being a synthetic compound is a process of evolution itself, which can only evolve itself through innumerable centuries, because every chemical reaction needs its own time, Even if an infinitely wise physicist could order all the necessary chemicals, his wisdom would not be able to reduce millions of reactionary years into a few minutes. “Nature,” says the English scientist L. L. Whyte, “has her own rhythm and won’t be rushed.” The combination of molecules will take a physicist only about a thousandth of a second, but the formation of a colloidal semi-solid will require already a Full second. The formation of an organic colloid will take at least a minute. The greater the number of atoms, that have to settle down together, the longer the time must be. And time is the only thing man cannot dispose of; it is the element of time which beats him in his action, while nature can dispose of measureless time to let reactions work out. The scientist’s apparent failure to produce. life in a test-tube is not due to lack of knowledge or material, but to lack of time. According to a table of estimated times necessary for synthetic pro-cesses the formation of protein would require one hour, primitive protoplasm one month, the simplest unicelluar organism ten years, a protozoon thousand years, a mammal one million of years.

          Life seen as a process cannot be made, but is making itself constantly. Seen from a purely physical viewpoint there is no difference between dead matter and living matter, as both are two phases in a process of evolution. Actually the very atmosphere is alive in the physical sense, though it requires grouping together of molecules to form the cells which manifest life. It is this grouping in evolution, which requires such a period of time over which no scientist can dispose.

          As this grouping is going on all the time, there will be not the least difficulty for life to continue its process of evolution, even if atmospheric conditions on this world-planet will not allow the continuation of life in forms as known to us now. A different atmosphere and temperature will merely produce different conditions for life to develop along different lines.

          The presence or absence of life can therefore not be judged from external signs only. Immobility of the body, the coldness of surface, the absence of respiration and pulsation, the sunken state of the eye are no unequivocal evidences that life is wholly extinct. There-fore, when news reaches us from Russia that a Doctor Vladimir Negovsky “revives the dead,” this should be understood with some reserve. Respiration had ceased, heart-action had come to a standstill and all the other unmistakable signs had made their appearance. But through the combination of artificial respiration with transfusion of blood, a bloodstream which had come to standstill was set into motion again. Air pressed into the sagging lungs forced them to expand, nerve impulses were excited, and thus the stupor which was setting in was thrown off. The effectiveness of the method hinges on a break-neck race against time. To thwart death, intervention must take place within a margin of five or six minutes, before the disintegration of the most highly differentiated and complex braincel Is sets in. On the other hand, death agony sets in some time before the actual cessation of vital functions, while some tissues die sooner, and others hold out longer. Are perhaps life and death identical, like heat and cold are only different degrees of temperature?

          The common, definition of life by scholastic philosophy is the activity by which a being moves itself. Motion is here to be under-stood in the widest sense as equivalent to all forms of change or alteration, including growth, sensuous energy and intellectual cognition as well as local motion, as long as that motion proceeds from an internal principle, i.e. an immanent action. Thus according to this definition life is an action by which a being intrinsically strives for greater self-perfection. But if this definition is applied in all its rigour, we must conclude that everything lives. For even so-called inorganic matter without one single exception consists literally of that intrinsic striving for self-protection, which is the tendency to preserve and; it possible, to increase its perfection. It is through this striving that gases expand that matter resists, that forces attract and repel, that elements combine and combined matter dissolves. Thus an engine is supposed to be lifeless, because even if it moves, it does not move by itself, intrinsically, but under the influence of external causes: water, fire, steam. But what about the heat intrinsically developed by the fire? Is that life? What about the heat assimilated by the water like food by a living organism, which changes the water intrinsically into steam? What about the force inherent in concentrated steam? What about the composition of the metal, which by its inherent characteristics gives strength to the whole structure? What about the intrinsic motion of the electrons in their atoms, which motion constitutes the very essence of matter? Can there be electrons which do not move? Can there be steam which is not hot? Can there be concentration which does not try to expand? Can there be fire which does not burn?” If all this is not life, then life cannot be defined as intrinsic striving for self-perfection.

          Buddhism also considers striving to be of the intrinsic nature of life, yet not unqualified. This striving should be endowed with, or rather proceed from consciousness. Life is called the controlling faculty of life which points to the active, dynamic, self-expressive side of life. It is not a principle of life which like the supposed soul can animate matter or live separate from it. But life is living, like sight is just seeing. As long as one is talking about the principle of life, seeking to express itself through matter, one might just as well talk about aquosity seeking to express itself through water. Life is not something apart from matter, though there may be matter which is not alive, like wetness is not a property of hydrogen or of oxygen, though in combining the two gases a liquid is obtained. Why could life not be a product of non-living elements, why could mind not arise from non-mental factors?

          In Buddhist conception life is synonymous with consciousness. To constitute life the intrinsic striving for self-perfection must be conscious. Intrinsic motion, whether it expresses itself as locomotion, as growth or as internal change which is decay, is a property of all matter.’ That this does not constitute life is admitted by all who say that in-organic beings like minerals have no life. But even the fact of having organs is no sign of life. That plants have organs is beyond all doubt. For, as a minimum there is the sense of touch. But is that ruled by consciousness? Plants, unlike a machine, grow and turn towards the light but do they perceive it? The leaf-movements of the acacia, the mimosa the sensitive plant, are well known; plants seek, their food, for they send out their roots towards humid places and attach their tendrils to find support. Yet all this action does no trise to the level of conscious action, because it does not contain those elements of volition and determination which go into the making of any thought. If a sunflower turns towards the sun, this is no sign of volition or choice or determination, but rather of mechanical determinism, like the needle of the compass turns to the North, like any piece of cardboard will begin to warp, when exposed to the heat of sun or fire. If there would be sunflowers which would not necessarily react upon the influence of the heat of the sun, but could resist it and turn away from it now and then, there would be some evidence of mind and conscious life. The actions of the organs in a plant which seem comparable to touch in mimosa, to smell in carnivorous plants to sight in sunflowers, can only be explained as mere physical reactions to certain irritations which would not be greatly different from mechanical, automatic reaction.

          Even the fact of growth in the physiological sense of the word is no sign of life, for even the hair and the nails of a corpse continue to grow, as long as there is humour in the body. From a chemical point of view no difference can be detected between the living organism and the dead organism. All can be reduced to carbon. hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. But animals and men who seek their food, their protection, the propagation of their life intentionally and by selection, at times and by means of chdice, show clearly to possess that element of life which is not found in mineral or plant: intellect.

          It is thus consciousness alone which distinguishes the living from the dead. Consciousness is life; the process of thought is the process of becoming of living beings. Then a person who is unconscious is not alive? Unconscious does not stand opposite to consciousness, like the fact of not listening does not disprove the faculty of hearing. Moreover, a person who is unconscious is so only with regard to his environment, but this does not involve that no more thoughts arise.

          If consciousness is life, is then the brain the seat of thought as well as of life?

          When speaking of the sense-organs, one finds in Buddhism always the enumeration of six senses; sight, sound, odour, taste, touch and thought. When one further learns that sight is in the eye-organ, sound in the ear, odour in the nose, taste in the tongue and touch in the whole body, the natural question arises: Where is the organ of thought? Scientists and medical men in splendid research and experimental work have been able to indicate in the brain the different controlling centres, which regulate motions in the various parts, of the body. The most important motory regions and sensory centres have been localized Yet the preponderant importance of the brain, as secured in the latest cerebral researches, does not make it appear as a “soul” not even as an organ which produces ” intelligence,” “thought” or “will”, but merely as an organ which brings about the most complicated combinations of sensation and motion. The brain is shown as the organ where reflex actions are exchanged; but at the same time the absolute necessity is admitted of the smooth functioning of the nervous system, which is dependent on a regular supply of new material to replace wastage by means of the circulation of blood. Thus both the nervous system with its sensory and motor-nerves and the system of blood circulation with its arteries and vains spreai themselves throughout the budy. Whether one takes the heart or the brain as basis for intellectual action, it is really the matter in the whole of the body. That consciousness does not arise only in the brain, but may arise anywhere in the body.—though heart and brain can be considered as the central points where supply and reflex’s are ex-changed.—is clear from the Book of Relations where matter is said to be the basis of aporehension and mind-cognition The heart-base as the organ of the mind is only mentioned in commentaries like Visuddhi Magga (Chapter 14) and Atthasalini (I, 4. 2,) but omitted in the canonical books from the list making up matter e.g. Dhammasangani. The heart-base is not the heart, but the whole of the material body. Thus consciousness has no seat, but arises based on the senses and functions wherever that sense-contact is felt and perceived. Therefore we speak of eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, etc.

          “Some scientific investigators insist that the .mind is merely an epiphenomenon of matter that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile; that the very notion of consciousness can be discarded altogether and that all mental activity can be explained in terms of conditioned reflexes; that the mind is nothing but an instrument, forged during the course of evolution for searching food, sexual satisfaction and the conditions of physical survival. Others on the contrary argue that the phenomena investigated by science are to a consider-able extent constructs of the investigating consciousness: that mind cannot be determined by a “matter” which is itself in part a creation of mind; that mind is a fundamental reality in the universe and is consequently able to pass valid judgments about the nature of the world; that the laws of thought are also laws of things” (Aldous Huxley : End and Means p. 256.)

          Buddhism once more avoids the two extremes by rejecting matter as the sole ruler of all phenomena by rejecting mind as an entity not subject to material conditions. It is the mutual influence of action and reaction between matter and mind, which constitutes life. Whether that material body has five senses like a human being, or only one sense, that of touch like in unicellular protozoa, does not make any essential difference. It is not the structure of the material form, which constitutes life, for that is only the instrument of living. A more complicated instrument like a human body makes life only more complicated too, but that is only a difference in degree not in being. The essential factor is the intellectual faculty, which however must have the physical basis of life, protoplasm. The basis of life in itself is not enough to explain the structure of life. But it is the impulse to live which gives that passionate desire to the physico-psychical combination called “the five aggregates of grasping”

          Now the all-important question is: If life is synonymous with conscious grasping,—or in other words, if life is the will to live or the result thereof,—then where does that will come from? Can that will-to-live arise in any material from and thus animate any matter? Can the origin of life be demonstrated as a natural process acting on non-living material by spontaneous generation?

          The examples given of spontaneous generation are not so in the real, ultimate sense, for there is material from which a living being evolves, and there are influences which produce certain conditions. Those experiments may only be called spontaneous in so far as the generation does not come about, through parental influence, not from living organism. The difficulty of this problem of the origin of life is only caused by the conception or rather misconception of life as an entity. But life is not an entity but a process of living which like any other process arises constantly, has a new beginning at any imaginary moment. As such it has nothing to do with matter any more than a flame arising from fuel, but not generated by it.

          Light is a mode of motion and as such of the same kind as daikness in which that vibration is slowed down. As light is the vibration of darkness, laying hold of objects and making them visible.– so feeling which is the awareness of contact, originates in pure contact which is non-feeling and lays hold of objects which thus become known. Mind arises from dead matter, not as an entity, not by gene-ration, but conditioned. It is becoming and ceasing like a process. The term ‘becoming’ denotes dynamism. But it has not the same meaning as Bergson’s Vitalism, where the ceaselessly changing Vital Force, though continuing as a process. yet requires a metaphysical reality as time for its duration, and finally is even deified as ‘unceasing life, action, freedom” (Creative Evolution p 262).

          Life in the Buddhist sense has all the individuality of action and all the impersonality of a process. This paradoxical impersonal individual can only be understood as a process of action, the persistence, the progress the continuance, the preservation of a subjectively unified, individual process of material and mental formations. This process can arise anywhere, as long as the necessary conditions for its arising are present. Those necessary conditions are its pat entage; the coming about of those conditions its lineage and genealogy. Those conditions are a form. in which bodily senses are not absolutely required —and the arising of a will-to-live. Whether the form in which craving will clothe itself anew is as simple as the Amoeba. which in reproducing merely splits itself, as simple as an inhabitant of the Formless Spheres living on intellectual joy, or as complicated as a so-called civilised human being,—does not make any essential difference. For all these forms are forms of craving. And if there would be other forms which cannot even find a place in our imagination, forms which do not possess our traditional three dimensions, but would be as subtle and evasive as an electric spark—they too might become the basis and the condition for the genesis of thought and then constitute a living being.

          But for the arising of thought are required feeling, perception, and differentiations. And as long as they in their natural tendencies of grasping have the will-to-become, its process of the arising thought will reproduce itself and for that purpose lay hold of a form in which to express itself. It is that purposive laying hold of matter which constitutes volitional action, which is called kamma. It is this intrinsic nature to grasp which makes life live and which will make it live again, like the nature of fire is to burn and will burn forever, as long as it has fuel to sustain itself. The fuel is an absolutely necessary condition to the flame; and so is matter to the mind.

          Now from this absolute conditionality that on material contact depends mental sensation is made a very frequent materialistic conclusion that if we knew sufficient about the distribution of material energy, about the actions of matter and the reactions thereon, we would also be able to explain all mental phenomena and life itself in terms of matter. But the assumption that if we knew everything in space at some particular moment, we would also know everything in any place at any time, is a metaphysical fantasy, not supported by any scientist.

          Life is a series of events, incalculable like accidents. A real accident it was which brought us into this world; our conception was a misconception; the latest edition of our life is not only full of misprints, but the publication thereof was an economic and a social blunder. The rejection of the mechanical world view does not necessarily lead us to the other extreme, which accepts a supernatural world view. Accidents do happen. But from the fact that accidents cannot be calculated in advance.—for then they would cease to be accidents,—it does not follow that accidents cannot be accounted for. An accident is not the same as a mystery; it is only the unexpected, Even if the unexpected cannot be foretold, it may be explained after the event. Such a post-mortem however should never attempt to put purpose in the accident.

          To see a purpose in life is to repeat the mistake made in a previous life, for it means the introduction of new craving which will inevitably keep the process going, like additional fuel keeps the fire burning To put purpose in life makes life as dreadful as a mathematical problem, nay worse than that, because a mathematical problem solves itself, i e, it contains in itself its own solution ; but purpose put into life is like the square root of minus one ; multiplied by itself it remains a non-entity. Purpose grows from a lack of the spirit of adventure which alone can lead to the discovery of the truth. Purpose supposes the truth discovered already. But the truth must be found in and by each one for himself. Purpose grows from a lack of imagination, i e. from ignorance. For it is ignorance which makes man purposefully run after the perishable goods and impermanent pleasures of the world, while knowing even by experience their satisfactoriness. Man craves for rebirth, while he is already disgusted before having finished this present existence. Some are mad after gold or science, others after women; some are after God, few, very few after truth. For it is truth alone which must be discovered and which, therefore does not a low any purpose, any striving, which narrows our outlook and keeps us bound.

          Life is only a means. And hence, as long as we have not realized the truth in ourselves, as long as we Feel in ourselves the urge to go forth and find the happiness and satisfaction of life elsewhere, we abuse the means and make of life a purpose, an end in itself. If life is a striving and a struggle, it cannot be an end in itself. At the most it can be a means, an instrument which, however useful, will have to be abandoned. If the will-to-live and will-to-do make For further action and renewed life, thereby prolonging and complicating the problem, the solution will have to be sought in no-more-willing. Should we then will non-willing? This, of course would involve a contradiction in itself. Non-willing cannot be considered as an ideal; the extinction of life cannot be thought of as the end of life. Only if life is understood as a process of ignorance craving and sorrow, i e, ignorance in its origin craving in its continuance and sorrow as its result, its solution can be the goal of striving. Thus life may be useful as a means for understanding and through understanding to solution; but considered as an aim it becomes dangerous and harmful in the development of I-ness, separateness, isolation.

          A good life is useful in keeping away from evil modes of living. But if we live for the purpose of a good life, for the purpose of a meritorious life, we live for life’s sake and we makes for ourselves a golden cage in which some day we shall find ourselves prisoners. Lust for life under any form is delusion which can only be overcome by knowledge, by insight in the fact that there is nothing to lust for. Thus the understanding of the void of soullessness as a process, individual in delusion, but a non-entity in reality will automatically produce non-willing. Craving must be overcome by detachment; but absolute detachment is only possible as a result of insight. This insight is the goal for which we must strive in earnest meditation. This is the goal of our striving, for it will solve the problem of life.