Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) by Charles Eliot

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6

With this stage he attains Nirvana[488], the best known word and the
most difficult to explain in all the vocabulary of Buddhism.

It is perhaps used more by western students than by oriental believers
and it belongs to the same department of religious language as the word
saint. For most Christians there is something presumptuous in trying to
be a saint or in defining the precise form of bliss enjoyed by saints in
heaven and it is the same with nirvana. Yet no one denies that sanctity
and nirvana are religious ideals. In a passage already quoted[489],
Gotama described how in attaining Buddhahood he sought and arrived at
the incomparable security of nirvana in which there is no birth, age,
sickness, death, pain or defilement. This, confirmed by many other
statements, shows that nirvana is a state attainable in this existence
and compatible with a life of intellectual and physical exertion such as
he himself led. The original meaning is the state of peace and happiness
in which the fires of lust, hatred and stupidity are extinguished and
the participle _nibbuto_ apparently derived from the same root had
passed into popular language in the sense of happy[490]. Two forms of
nirvana are distinguished. The first is upadi-sesa-nibbanam[491] or
nirvana in which the skandhas remain, although passion is destroyed.
This state is also called arhatship, the condition of an arhat, meaning
originally a worthy or venerable man, and the person enjoying it is
alive. The idea that the emancipated saint who has attained the goal
still lingers in the world, though no longer of the world, and teaches
others, is common to all Indian religions. With the death of an arhat
comes the state known as an-upadi-sesa-nibbanam in which no skandhas
remain. It is also called Parinibbanam and this word and the participle
parinibbuto are frequently used with special reference to the death of
the Buddha[492]. The difference between the two forms of nirvana is
important though the second is only the continuation of the first.
Nirvana in this life admits of approximate definition: it is the goal of
the religious life, though only the elect can even enter the struggle.
Nirvana after death is not a goal in the same sense. The correct
doctrine is rather that death is indifferent to one who has obtained
nirvana and the difficulty of defining his nature after death does not
mean that he has been striving for something inexplicable and illusory.

Arhatship is the aim and sum of the Buddha's teaching: it is associated
in many passages with love for others, with wisdom, and happiness and is
a condition of perfection attainable in this life. The passages in the
Pitakas which seem to be the oldest and the most historical suggest that
the success of the Buddha was due to the fact that he substituted for
the chilly ideal of the Indian Munis something more inspiring and more
visibly fruitful, something akin to what Christ called the Kingdom of
Heaven. Thus we are told in the Vinaya that Bhaddiya was found sitting
at the foot of a tree and exclaiming ecstatically, O happiness,
happiness. When asked the reason of these ejaculations, he replied that
formerly when he was a raja he was anxious and full of fear but that
now, even when alone in the forest, he had become tranquil and calm,
"with mind as peaceful as an antelope's."

Nirvana is frequently described by such adjectives as deathless, endless
and changeless. These epithets seem to apply to the quality, not to the
duration of the arhat's existence (for they refer to the time before the
death of the body) and to signify that in the state which he has
attained death and change have no power over him. He may suffer in body
but he does not suffer in mind, for he does not identify himself with
the body or its feelings[493].

Numerous passages could be quoted from the poetical books of the Pali
Canon to the effect that nirvana is happiness and the same is stated in
the more dogmatic and logical portions. Thus we hear of the bliss of
emancipation and of the happiness which is based on the religious
life[494] and the words "Nirvana is the greatest happiness" are put into
Gotama's own mouth[495]. The middle way preached by him is declared to
be free from all distress, and those who walk in it make an end of pain
even in this life[496]. In one passage[497] Gotama is found meditating
in a wood one winter night and is asked if he feels well and happy. The
night is cold, his seat is hard, his clothes are light and the wind
bitter. He replies emphatically that he is happy. Those who live in
comfortable houses suffer from the evils of lust, hatred and stupidity
but he has made an end of those evils and therefore is happy. Thus
nirvana is freedom and joy: it is not extinction in the sense we give
the word but light to them that sit in darkness, release to those in
prison and torture. But though it is legitimately described in terms
which imply positive happiness it transcends all human standards of good
and evil, pleasure and pain. In describing the progress to it we
all--whether Indians or Europeans--necessarily use such words as better,
higher, happier, but in truth it is not to be expressed in terms of such
values. In an interesting sutta[498] a Jain argues that happiness is the
goal of life. But the Buddha states categorically first that perfect
happiness is only attainable by abandoning the conscious pursuit of
happiness and secondly that even absolute happiness when attained is not
the highest goal: there is a better state beyond, and that state is
certainly not annihilation or extinction of feeling, for it is described
in terms of freedom and knowledge.

The Dhamma-sangani speaks of Nirvana as the Uncompounded Element[499]
and as a state not productive of good or evil. Numerous assertions[500]
are made about it incidentally but, though we hear that it is perfected
and supramundane, most of the epithets are negative and amount to little
more than that it transcends, or is absolutely detached from, all human
experience. Uncompounded (asankhato) may refer to the passing away of
all sankharas but what may be the meaning of dhatu or element in this
context, I do not presume to conjecture. But whatever else the word may
mean, it clearly does not signify annihilation. Both here and in the
Questions of Milinda an impression is produced in the mind of the
reader, and perhaps was not absent in the mind of the writer, that
nirvana is a sphere or plane of existence resembling though excelling
space or ether. It is true that the language when carefully examined
proves to be cautious and to exclude material interpretations but
clearly the expositor when trying to make plain the inexplicable leaned
to that side of error rather than towards annihilation[501].

Somewhat similar is the language attributed to the Buddha in the
Udana[502]. "There is a state (ayatanam) where there is neither earth
nor water, fire nor air, nor infinity either of space or of
consciousness, nor nothingness, nor the absence of perception or
non-perception[503], neither this world nor another, neither sun nor
moon. That I call neither coming, going, nor standing, neither death nor
birth. It is without stability, without movement, without basis: it is
the end of sorrow, unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, uncompounded[504]."
The statements about nirvana in the Questions of Milinda are definite
and interesting. In this work[505], Nagasena tells King Milinda that
there are two things which are not the result of a cause, to wit space
and Nirvana. Nirvana is unproduceable (which does not mean unattainable)
without origin, not made of anything and uncompounded. He who orders his
life aright passes beyond the transitory, and gains the Real, the
highest fruit. And when he has gained that, he has realized
Nirvana[506].

The parts of the Pitakas which seem oldest leave the impression that
those who heard and understood the Buddha's teaching at once attained
this blissful state, just as the Church regards the disciples of Christ
as saints. But already in the Pitakas[507] we find the idea that the
struggle to obtain nirvana extends over several births and that there
are four routes leading to sanctification. These routes are described by
the names of those who use them and are commonly defined in terms of
release from the ten fetters binding man to the world[508]. The first is
the Sotapanno, he who has entered into the stream and is on his way to
salvation. He has broken the first three fetters called belief in the
existence of self, doubt, and trust in ceremonies or good works. He will
be born again on earth or in some heaven but not more than seven times
before he attains nirvana. He who enters on the next stage is called
Sakadagamin or coming once, because he will be born once more in this
world[509] and in that birth attain nirvana. He has broken the fetters
mentioned and also reduced to a minimum the next two, lust and hate. The
Anagamin, or he who does not return, has freed himself entirely from
these five fetters and will not be reborn on earth or any sensuous
heaven but in a Brahma world once only. The fourth route is that of the
Arhat who has completed his release by breaking the bonds called love of
life, pride, self-righteousness and ignorance and has made an end of all
evil and impurity. He attains nirvana here and is no more subject to
rebirth. This simple and direct route is the one contemplated in the
older discourses but later doctrine and popular feeling came to regard
it as more and more unusual, just as saints grow fewer as the centuries
advance further from the Apostolic age. In the dearth of visible Arhats
it was consoling to think that nirvana could be won in other worlds.

The nirvana hitherto considered is that attained by a being living in
this or some other world. But all states of existence whatever come to
an end. When one who has not attained nirvana dies, he is born again.
But what happens when an Arhat or a Buddha dies? This question did not
fail to arouse interest during the Buddha's lifetime yet in the Pitakas
the discussion, though it could not be stifled, is relegated to the
background and brought forward only to be put aside as unpractical. The
greatest teachers of religion--Christ as well as Buddha--have shown little
disposition to speak of what follows on death. For them the centre of
gravity is on this side of the grave not on the other: the all important
thing is to live a religious life, at the end of which death is met
fearlessly as an incident of little moment. The Kingdom of Heaven, of
which Christ speaks, begins on earth though it may end elsewhere. In the
Gospels we hear something of the second coming of Christ and the
Judgment: hardly anything of the place and character of the soul's
eternal life. We only gather that a child of God who has done his best
need have no apprehension in this or another world. Though expressed in
very different phraseology, something like that is the gist of what the
Buddha teaches about the dying Saint. But this reticent attitude did not
satisfy ancient India any more than it satisfies modern Europe and we
have the record of how he was questioned and what he said in reply.
Within certain limits that reply is quite definite. The question, does
the Tathagata, that is the Buddha or perfected saint, exist after death,
which is the phraseology usually employed by the Pitakas in formulating
the problem, belongs to the class of questions called not declared or
undetermined[510], because they do not admit of either an affirmative or
a negative answer. Other problems belonging to this class are: Is the
world eternal or not: Is the world infinite or not: Is the soul[511] the
same as the body or different from it? It is categorically asserted that
none of these questions admit of a reply: thus it is not right to say
that _(a)_ the saint exists after death, _(b)_ or that he does not
exist, _(c)_ or that he both does and does not exist, _(d)_ or that he
neither exists nor does not exist. The Buddha's teaching about these
problems is stated with great clearness in a Sutta named after
Malunkyaputta[512], an enquirer who visits him and after enumerating
them says frankly that he is dissatisfied because the Buddha will not
answer them. "If the Lord answers them, I will lead a religious life
under him, but if he does not answer them, I will give up religion and
return to the world. But if the Lord does not know, then the
straightforward thing is to say, I do not know." This is plain speaking,
almost discourtesy. The Buddha's reply is equally plain, but unyielding.
"Have I said to you, come and be my disciple and I will teach you
whether the world is eternal or not, infinite or not: whether the soul
is identical with the body, or separate, whether the saint exists after
death or not?" "No, Lord." "Now suppose a man were wounded by a poisoned
arrow and his friends called in a physician to dress his wound. What if
the man were to say, I shall not have my wound treated until I know what
was the caste, the family, the dwelling-place, the complexion and
stature of the man who wounded me; nor shall I let the arrow be drawn
out until I know what is the exact shape of the arrow and bow, and what
were the animals and plants which supplied the feathers, leather, shaft
and string. The man would never learn all that, because he would die
first." "Therefore" is the conclusion, "hold what I have determined as
determined and what I have not determined, as not determined."

This sutta may be taken in connection with passages asserting that the
Buddha knows more than he tells his disciples. The result seems to be
that there are certain questions which the human mind and human language
had better leave alone because we are incapable of taking or expressing
a view sufficiently large to be correct, but that the Buddha has a more
than human knowledge which he does not impart because it is not
profitable and overstrains the faculties, just as it is no part of a
cure that the patient should make an exhaustive study of his disease.

With reference to the special question of the existence of the saint
after death, the story of Yamaka[513] is important. He maintained that a
monk in whom evil is destroyed (khinasavo) is annihilated when he dies,
and does not exist. This was considered a grave heresy and refuted by
Sariputta who argues that even in this life the nature of a saint passes
understanding because he is neither all the skandhas taken together nor
yet one or more of them.

Yet it would seem that according to the psychology of the Pitakas an
ordinary human being is an aggregate of the skandhas and nothing more.
When such a being dies and in popular language is born again, the
skandhas reconstitute themselves but it is expressly stated that when
the saint dies this does not happen. The Chain of Causation says that
consciousness and the sankharas are interdependent. If there is no
rebirth, it is because (as it would seem) there are in the dying saint
no sankharas. His nature cannot be formulated in the same terms as the
nature of an ordinary man. It may be noted that karma is not equivalent
to the effect produced on the world by a man's words and deeds, for if
that were so, no one would have died leaving more karma behind him than
the Buddha himself, yet according to Hindu doctrine, whether Buddhist or
Brahmanic, no karma attaches to the deeds of a saint. His acts may
affect others but there is nothing in them which tends to create a new
existence.

In another dialogue[514] the Buddha replies to a wandering monk called
Vaccha who questioned him about the undetermined problems and in answer
to every solution suggested says that he does not hold that view. Vaccha
asks what objection he has to these theories that he has not adopted any
of them?

"Vaccha, the theory that the saint exists (or does not exist and so on)
after death is a jungle, a desert, a puppet show, a writhing, an
entanglement and brings with it sorrow, anger, wrangling and agony. It
does not conduce to distaste for the world, to the absence of passion,
to the cessation of evil, to peace, to knowledge, to perfect
enlightenment, to nirvana. Perceiving this objection, I have not adopted
any of these theories." "Then has Gotama any theory of his own?"
"Vaccha, the Tathagata has nothing to do with theories, but this is what
he knows: the nature of form, how form arises, how form perishes: the
nature of perception, how it arises and how it perishes (and so on with
the other skandhas). Therefore I say that the Tathagata is emancipated
because he has completely and entirely abandoned all imaginations,
agitations and false notions about the Ego and anything pertaining to
the Ego." But, asks Vaccha, when one who has attained this emancipation
of mind dies where is he reborn? "Vaccha, the word 'reborn' does not fit
the case." "Then, Gotama, he is not reborn." "To say he is not reborn
does not fit the case, nor is it any better to say he is both reborn and
not reborn or that he is neither reborn nor not reborn." "Really,
Gotama, I am completely bewildered and my faith in you is gone."

"Never mind your bewilderment. This doctrine is profound and difficult.
Suppose there was a fire in front of you. You would see it burning and
know that its burning depended on fuel. And if it went out (nibbayeyya)
you would know that it had gone out. But if some one were to ask you, to
which quarter has it gone, East, West, North or South, what would you
say?"

"The expression does not fit the case, Gotama. For the fire depended on
fuel and when the fuel is gone it is said to be extinguished, being
without nourishment."

"In just the same way, all form by which one could predicate the
existence of the saint is abandoned and uprooted like a fan palm[515],
so that it will never grow up in future. The saint who is released from
what is styled form is deep, immeasurable, hard to fathom, like the
great ocean. It does not fit the case to say either that he is reborn,
not reborn, both reborn and not reborn, or neither reborn nor not
reborn." Exactly the same statement is then repeated four times the
words sensation, perception, sankharas and consciousness being
substituted successively for the word form. Vaccha, we are told, was
satisfied.

To appreciate properly the Buddha's simile we must concentrate our
attention on the fire. When we apply this metaphor to annihilation, we
usually think of the fuel or receptacle and our mind dwells sadly on the
heap of ashes or the extinguished lamp. But what has become of the fire?
It is hardly correct to say that it has been destroyed. If a particular
fire may be said to be annihilated in the sense that it is impossible to
reconstitute it by repeating the same process of burning, the reason is
not so much that we cannot get the same flames as that we cannot burn
the same fuel twice. But so long as there is continuous combustion in
the same fireplace or pile of fuel, we speak of the same fire although
neither the flame nor the fuel remains the same. When combustion ceases,
the fire goes out in popular language. To what quarter does it go? That
question clearly does not "fit the case." But neither does it fit the
case to say that the fire is annihilated[516].

Nirvana is the cessation of a process not the annihilation of an
existence. If I take a walk, nothing is annihilated when the walk comes
to an end: a particular form of action has ceased. Strictly speaking the
case of a fire is the same: when it goes out a process ceases. For the
ordinary man nirvana is annihilation in the sense that it is the absence
of all the activities which he considers desirable. But for the arhat
(who is the only person able to judge) nirvana after death, as compared
with nirvana in life, may be quiescence and suspension of activity, only
that such phrases seem to imply that activity is the right and normal
condition, quiescence being negative and unnatural, whereas for an arhat
these values are reversed.

We may use too the parallel metaphor of water. A wave cannot become an
immortal personality. It may have an indefinitely long existence as it
moves across the ocean, although both its shape and substance are
constantly changing, and when it breaks against an obstacle the
resultant motion may form new waves. And if a wave ceases to struggle
for individual existence and differentiation from the surrounding sea,
it cannot be said to exist any more as a wave. Yet neither the water
which was its substance nor the motion which impelled it have been
annihilated. It is not even quite correct to say that it has been merged
in the sea. A drop of water added to a larger liquid mass is merged. The
wave simply ceases to be active and differentiated.

In the Samyutta-Nikaya[517] the Buddha's statement that the saint after
death is deep and immeasurable like the ocean is expanded by significant
illustration of the mathematician's inability to number the sand or
express the sea in terms of liquid measure. It is in fact implied that
if we cannot say _he is_, this is only because that word cannot properly
be applied to the infinite, innumerable and immeasurable.

The point which is clearest in the Buddha's treatment of this question
is that whatever his disciples may have thought, he did not himself
consider it of importance for true religion. Speculation on such points
may be interesting to the intellect but is not edifying. It is a jungle
where the traveller wanders without advancing, and a puppet-show, a vain
worldly amusement which wears a false appearance of religion because it
is diverting itself with quasi-religious problems. What is the state of
the saint after death, is not as people vainly suppose a question
parallel to, am I going to heaven or hell, what shall I do to be saved?
To those questions the Buddha gives but one answer in terms of human
language and human thought, namely, attain to nirvana and arhatship on
this side of death, if possible in your present existence; if not now,
then in the future good existences which you can fashion for yourself.
What lies beyond is impracticable as a goal, unprofitable as a subject
of speculation. We shall probably not be transgressing the limits of
Gotama's thought if we add that those who are not arhats are bound to
approach the question with misconception and it is a necessary part of
an Arhat's training to get rid of the idea "I am[518]." The state of a
Saint after death cannot be legitimately described in language which
suggests that it is a fuller and deeper mode of life[519]. Yet it is
clear that nearly all who dispute about it wish to make out that it is a
state they could somehow regard with active satisfaction. In technical
language they are infected with aruparago, or desire for life in a
formless world, and this is the seventh of the ten fetters, all of which
must be broken before arhatship is attained. I imagine that those modern
sects, such as the Zen in Japan, which hold that the deepest mysteries
of the faith cannot be communicated in words but somehow grow clear in
meditation are not far from the master's teaching, though to the best of
my belief no passage has been produced from the Pitakas stating that an
arahat has special knowledge about the avyakatani or undetermined
questions.

Almost all who treat of nirvana after death try to make the Buddha say,
is or is not. That is what he refused to do. We still want a plain
answer to a plain question and insist that he really means either that
the saint is annihilated or enters on an infinite existence. But the
true analogues to this question are the other insoluble questions, for
instance, is the world infinite or finite in space? This is in form a
simple physical problem, yet it is impossible for the mind to conceive
either an infinite world or a world stopping abruptly with not even
space beyond. A common answer to this antinomy is that the mind is
attempting to deal with a subject with which it is incompetent to deal,
that the question is wrongly formulated and that every answer to it thus
formulated must be wrong. The way of truth lies in first finding the
true question. The real difficulty of the Buddha's teaching, though it
does not stimulate curiosity so much as the question of life after
death, is the nature and being of the saint in this life before death,
raised in the argument with Yamaka[520].

Another reason for not pressing the Buddha's language in either
direction is that, if he had wished to preach in the subtlest form
either infinite life or annihilation, he would have found minds
accustomed to the ideas and a vocabulary ready for his use. If he had
wished to indicate any form of absorption into a universal soul, or the
acquisition by the individual self of the knowledge that it is identical
with the universal self, he could easily have done so. But he studiously
avoided saying anything of the kind. He teaches that all existence
involves suffering and he preaches escape from it. After that escape the
words being and not being no longer apply, and the reason why some
people adopt the false idea of annihilation is because they have
commenced by adopting the false alternative of either annihilation or an
eternal prolongation of this life. A man makes[521] himself miserable
because he thinks he has lost something or that there is something which
he cannot get. But if he does not think he has lost something or is
deprived of something he might have, then he does not feel miserable.
Similarly, a man holds the erroneous opinion, "This world is the self,
or soul and I shall become it after death and be eternal, and
unchanging." Then he hears the preaching of a Buddha and he thinks "I
shall be annihilated, I shall not exist any more," and he feels
miserable. But if a man does not hold this doctrine that the soul is
identical with the universe and will exist eternally--which is just
complete full-blown folly[522]--and then hears the preaching of a Buddha
it does not occur to him to think that he will be annihilated and he is
not miserable. Here the Buddha emphasizes the fact that his teaching is
not a variety of the Brahmanic doctrine about the Atman. Shortly
afterwards in the same sutta he even more emphatically says that he does
not teach annihilation. He teaches that the saint is already in this
life inconceivable (_ananuvejjo_): "And when I teach and explain this
some accuse me falsely and without the smallest ground[523] saying
'Gotama is an unbeliever; he preaches the annihilation, the destruction,
the dying out of real being.' When they talk like this they accuse me of
being what I am not, of saying what I do not say."