Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s3: 3. Intuition and Nirvāṇa

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s3

Language: English

3. Intuition and Nirvāṇa

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The end of the meditations of the disciple is to lead to the final intuition of the four noble truths which brings with it the recognition that there is no chance of rebirth. This is the essential fact of Nirvāṇa; the monk is freed from the intoxicants or defilements (āsava)¹ of desire, of becoming, of false views, of ignorance; all appetite, all aversion, all dullness and confusion are departed; the outward form remains, it is true, while life lasts, but the essential result is achieved, and what happens to the monk when physical death sets in cannot alter this fact; we can understand how the Buddha was willing to rule such questionings out as inadmissible, because he had formed a conception of the summum bonum as Nirvāṇa, which provided for its being attained in this life. The conception is entirely parallel to the man released in life (jivanmukta) of the Vedānta and of the Upaniṣads, and was doubtless adopted from earlier speculation. Should then, since the monk knows that he has attained release, he remain longer alive in the world? The answer is that, as the world is indifferent to him, so he craves neither for life nor death, but awaits like a servant his wages—a strange confusion of ideas but characteristic; yet suicide is permissible now and then as Godhika’s case shows.² On death there is now no continuity of consciousness; the Viññāṇa transmigrates no longer, for the chain of causation is broken for ever. Man has attained the Nirvāṇa element (nibbāna-dhātu) without any remainder of empirical existence; the Milindapañha co-ordinates Nirvāṇa with the ether which is uncreate and endless, and the Abhidhamma classifies Nirvāṇa as the uncompound element, distinguishing it radically from all the passing world.³

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¹ That of false views (diṭṭhi) is omitted in DN. i. 83; MN. i. 23, 155; AN. i. 167; SN. iv. 256. For the four, DN. ii. 98; DS. § 1096; ‘intoxicant’ (ā-su) is possible, SBB. ii. 92, n. 3; iii. 28, n. 2; āsrava is probably a mere Sanskritization; āçraya is possible, TDC., p. 8; āsnava, IF. xxiii. 267.

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² Mil., p. 45; cf. Theragāthā, 1002 f. On suicide, see SN. i. 120 f.; DPC., p. 255; (Vakkali), SN. iii. 123 f.

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³ Mil., p. 271; Psych. Eth., p. 367 f.

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Positively of the state there is asserted happiness or holiness of release or enlightenment (vimutti—, sambodha—, sukha); the terms seem at first sight contradictory since pleasure (sukha) is empirical, and therefore out of place; ‘Nirvāṇa is happiness’, Sāriputta asserts, and, when asked how that can be when feeling does not exist, he asserts that it is happiness because there is no feeling.¹ Feeling, as we have seen, is transitory and therefore in the wide sense misery; happiness therefore must be distinct from feeling, but beyond that we cannot go. All empirical qualifications are unfitted to describe the ineffable. What we are assured by the overwhelming evidence of the Canon is that Nirvāṇa is the blissful end for which every one must strive and which, when attained, is worth the pains to win it.

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¹ AN. v. 414; cf. VP. i. 2, 3; Nirvāṇa as happiness, Mil., p. 313.

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This is the general aspect of Nirvāṇa, but there are indications also of a more prosaic kind of the nature of the intuitive consciousness, which is the final product of the Meditations and other exercises, and from the elaboration with which details of this state are set out in the Canon and later we would err gravely if we treated Nirvāṇa in any abstract way. It was, while life lasted, a state of extremely marked psychic powers, conferring on the saint powers of a varied, and to western ideas, incongruous kind.² The first is the power of perceiving the interrelation of consciousness and the body,³ and this leads to the second, higher fruit of the power to create a body made by,⁴ or of, mind, a conception to which we owe, it may be feared, the astral body of Spiritualism and other follies. Then he enjoys magic power (iddhi); he can multiply himself and become one again; be visible or invisible; penetrate a wall as if air, or the ground as if water; walk on water; fly like a bird in the sky; touch sun and moon, and reach in body the heaven of Brahmā. The next power is less remarkable; he can hear sounds celestial and human, far and near. Then he knows the minds of others, in all their manifold natures and conditions. Then he can remember his former births, through many an Aeon in all details and modes. Then with the heavenly eye he discerns the destinies of all persons dying and being reborn according to their deserts. Then he directs his mind to the destruction of the intoxicants of desire, becoming, ignorance, by the knowledge first of the four noble truths, and then by like knowledge of the intoxicants, their origin, their cessation, and the path. In him then is accomplished liberation from the intoxicants; ‘Rebirth has been destroyed; the higher life has been fulfilled; what had to be done has been done; after this present life there will be no beyond.’ This is the highest fruit of the life of the recluse, to see as clearly as one can in a clear pool the shells and the pebbles, and the swimming shoals of fish.

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² DN. i. 76 ff.

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³ The terminology and idea here are decidedly not Sāṃkhya-Yoga. The relation is real.

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⁴ Sumaṅg. i. 222, not followed by Franke; ‘of mind’, SBB. ii. 88; Buddh. Psych., p. 127. This is borne out by DN. i. 195; below, p. 209, n. 5.

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We need not suppose that all these powers were either claimed or enjoyed by all saints; the last is obviously the essential intuition, but the whole body of the potencies beginning with the celestial ear is given the style of super knowledge (*abhiññā*), and, with the prior members, of aggregate of intuition (*paññā-khandha*) or simply intuition or knowledge (*vijjā*).¹ Or, again, the wisdom of the saint is described as the eye of intuition (*paññā-cakkhu*) which ranks not merely above the heavenly eye—Ānanda had it but not the latter—but also above the eye of the law (*dhamma-cakkhu*), the technical term for entering on the path which leads to liberation.² We need not doubt that the possession of such powers was duly believed in by adepts, nor need we ascribe them to anything more wonderful than the hallucinations ³ which the meditations were certain to produce; that in the east men claim to-day to remember previous births aids in explaining the origin of such ideas; it confers no validity upon them.⁴

Linked texts (9)

Dīghanikāya — Pāli
Majjhimanikāya — Pāli
Aṅguttaranikāya — Pāli
Dhammasaṅgaṇī — Pāli
Milindapañha — Pāli
Theragāthā — Pāli
Itivuttaka — Pāli
Vinayapiṭaka — Pāli
Saṃyuttanikāya — Pāli