Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s3.1

c11.s3.1

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