Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s3.5

c11.s3.5

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.