The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana c8.9

c8.9

The picture of the universe which suggested itself to the mental eye of the Buddha, represented thus an infinite number of separate evanescent entities in a state of beginningless commotion, but gradually steering to quiescence and to an absolute annihilation of all life, when all its elements have been, one after another, brought to a standstill. This ideal received a multitude of designations among whom the name of Nirvāna was the most appropriate to express annihilation. The term was probably pre-Buddhistic and was formerly applied to the Brahmanical ideal of the dissolution of the individual in the universal whole (brahma-nirvāṇa)¹.