Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c8.s3.15

c8.s3.15

A further argument can be derived from the simile of the flame applied early and frequently to the passing away of the enlightened one. ‘As the flame’, the Suttanipāta² tells us, ‘blown down by the vehemence of the wind goes out, and can be named no more, even so the sage, liberated from individuality, goes out and can be named no more.’ In the Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya³ we have a complete working out of the idea; the flame ceases to appear when the fuel is consumed; similarly, when the different constituents of the enlightened one disappear, the fuel of the Tathāgata’s fire is consumed. But the Tathāgata, liberated from these constituents of spirit and material form, is deep, unmeasurable, difficult to fathom, like the great ocean. The comparison is indeed significant, for there is no doubt that the Indian idea of the extinction of fire was not that which occurs to us of utter annihilation, but rather that the flame returns to the primitive, pure, invisible state of fire in which it existed prior to its manifestation in the form of visible fire. This view is expressly attested in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad,¹ which can reasonably be regarded as good evidence for the period of the coming into existence of the Canon. The same Upaniṣad contains, also, the comparison of the supreme self with a fire, the fuel of which has been consumed, showing emphatically that the extinction of the fuel has nothing to do with the destruction of the fire, though it ceases to be visible, and the Maitreyī Upaniṣad,² a text of the Yoga philosophy, with which Buddhism has much in common, applies the simile to the action of the thinking principle: ‘As fire for want of fuel comes to rest in its own place of birth, so, through the cessation of its motions, the thinking principle comes to rest in its own birthplace.’