^96:1 In this brief exposition of the teaching of Buddha I have said nothing about the "Wheel of Life," or "Chain of Causation." I have two reasons for ignoring it. The first is that it is doubtful, to say the least, if it was formulated by Buddha himself. Mr H. C. Warren, in his learned work, "Buddhism in Translation," surmises that "the full formula in its present shape is a piece of patchwork put together of two or more that were current in Buddha's time"; and, for my own part, I find it difficult to believe that a teacher of Buddha's breadth and force of mind could have accepted the formula as a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon of physical life. The second reason is that the formula does not take us an inch beyond the two truths which Buddha regarded as fundamental,--that man is bound to the "Wheel of Life" (or caught in the "Whirlpool of Rebirth"), and that it is possible for him to free himself from his bonds.

Nor have I said anything about the belief which Buddha is said to have embodied in his teaching,--"that it was possible [for the disciples] by intense self-absorption and mystic meditation to attain to a condition of trance, in which the ordinary conditions of material existence were suspended," and certain supernormal powers were acquired. My reason for ignoring this belief is, not that I regard it as intrinsically ridiculous or even as out of keeping with Buddha's philosophy, but that in the attempt to correlate it with his scheme of life I should have to discuss great and burning questions, which could not receive adequate treatment within the limits of this work. To the Western mind, drugged and stupefied with the idea of the Supernatural, the counter idea of the Supernormal in Nature comes with so tremendous a shock as to deprive it for the time being of the power of coherent thought. That being so, it is better that I should ignore what is possibly a vital aspect of Buddha's teaching, even though my interpretation of his creed should suffer from this enforced reticence, than that I should handle a problem which demands for its preliminary consideration an entirely new conception of Nature, and the cursory treatment of which would therefore give rise to perpetual misunderstanding, and would serve no useful purpose.