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The History of Buddhist Thought c18: Chapter X. Release and Nirvāṇa

The History of Buddhist Thought c18

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Chapter X. Release and Nirvāṇa

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THE prevalence in Indian religions of a doctrine of release (*moksha, vimukti*) from the ills of existence was a natural result of the conception of the universe as a world of change and rebirth. Each school had its own special teaching, and the Buddhist doctrine stands out in its originality and in the ethical character of the whole scheme. The disciple advances not by accumulating good deeds, but by quenching those tendencies which lead him to do evil. The perfected monk reaches a stage not beyond good and evil, but a state in which his moral training is so perfected that it is impossible for him to commit murder, theft, lying, and other sins.¹ Its greatest contrast is perhaps with Jainism, to which in externals it has many resemblances. The Jain doctrine, says Jacobi, is that “liberated souls will be embodied no more; they have accomplished absolute purity; they dwell in the state of perfection at the top of the universe, and have no more to do with worldly affairs; they have reached *nirvāṇa* (*nivṛti*, or *mukti*). Metaphysically the difference between the mundane (the still transmigrating) and the liberated soul consists in this, that the former is entirely filled with subtle matter, as a bag is filled with sand, while the latter is absolutely pure and free from any material alloy.”²

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¹ *Dīgha*, iii, 235.

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² *ERE.*, vii, 468.

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The Buddhist view has rather a resemblance to the doctrine of the Upanishads in that release depends upon a certain kind of knowledge. But in the Upanishads it is the knowledge of an existing fact, the fact, expressed in the most varied ways that the self is identical with Brahma. The Brahma-knowers become “plunged in Brahma”, “the self enters the Brahma-abode”, or “enters the all”; “it becomes one in the imperishable,” and “goes to the divine Person”. When in Buddhism the doctrine that the world and the self are the same is touched upon, it is not rejected as false, but put aside as a useless view.

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In some respects Buddhism has a closer relation to the doctrine of Sānkhya and Yoga. Sānkhya, like Buddhism, emphasizes the existence of pain, and teaches that release from pain is brought about by dissociation from any contact with the world of change. This is produced by knowledge, but it is the knowledge that the purusha, the imperishable self, is already absolutely distinct and separate.

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For Buddhism final release is brought about by a process of training of the self, in which it is released by stages from the bonds or fetters that hinder complete insight. The disciple, when he begins to meditate (p. 46), devotes himself to purifying his mind from the five hindrances, sensual passion or longing for the world, malice, sloth and torpor, distraction and agitation, and doubt. He is like a man freed from a debt, or recovered from sickness, or loosed from the bonds of prison, or as a freed slave. There is also a list of ten fetters, which are fitted into the scheme of the four stages of the Path. The first five are the lower fetters: belief in a permanent individuality, doubt, belief in mere morality and rites, sensual passion, malice; and the five higher: desire for existence in the world of form (which here includes everything below the formless world), desire for existence in the formless world, pride, distraction, and ignorance.¹ Other forms of the ten fetters exist, and they appear to be a later formulation than the fundamental division of the three āsavas: sensual desire, desire for existence (two forms of craving or grasping), and ignorance. Still another arrangement of those qualities of character which have to be eradicated exists in the certainly later list of the kilesas, usually translated depravities: greed, hatred, stupidity, pride, false views, doubt, sloth, distraction, shamelessness, recklessness.² The first three also occur independently as the three roots of demerit or bad action. Greed (lobha) is a positive form of craving and is correlative to hatred (dosa), the hostility to what is unpleasant. Stupidity or dullness of mind (moha) equally leads to unmeritorious actions. It is these roots that have to be destroyed, not the mere avoidance of bad karma which they produce.

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¹ Dīgha, iii, 234; another list at Dhsang., 1113; in the latter the sixth and seventh are combined in bhavarāga, desire for existence in any form. This is really the second āsava.

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² Dhsang., 1548; a list of eight, Mahānidd., 258; of twelve 386; of six Dhsang., 67.

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With the destruction of all these, whether called fetters, depravities, or āsavas, the disciple is released (vimutta). He is released with complete freedom from grasping, knowing that all compounds are impermanent, all compounds are painful, all things are without a self, and that everything which has an origin has also a cessation.” 1 This is the emancipation of full knowledge (paññā), in which with the destruction of the āsavas all false views are destroyed, and with the knowledge of the Truths he has come to know things as they are. He is also said to be emancipated with release of heart or mind.² This is the actual experience of release obtained by the attainment of the trances or the eight releases. He is then said to be released in two ways (ubhato-bhāgavimutta), with the actual knowledge of his state, and with the ecstatic experience of being free from all bonds.³

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² Ceto; this includes the emotions, but does not, like “ heart ”, exclude the intellect.

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³ Majjh., i, 477; Pugg., 14. The fall of Godhika from his state of “ temporary release ” is said to have been the fall from this ecstatic state; see p. 131.

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The counterpart of full knowledge is release, and the counterpart of release is nibbāna, Nirvāṇa. This is said to have been the answer given by the nun Dhammadinnā to the layman Visākha (Majjh., i, 304). When he asked what was the counterpart to Nirvāṇa, she said, “ you push your questions too far, Visākha. The religious life is plunged in Nirvāṇa, its aim is Nirvāṇa, its end is Nirvāṇa. If you wish, go and ask the Lord, and as he explains it, thus bear it in mind.” The layman did so, and the Lord replied, “ the nun Dhammadinnā is learned, she is of great wisdom. If you had asked me the question, I should have explained it as she did. That, indeed, is the answer. Thus bear it in mind.”

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Nirvāṇa is the final state that the disciple reaches with the completion of the course of his training:

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The bhikkhu, filled with wisdom here,
In lust, desire, delighting not,
Repose, the immortal, has attained,
The unchangeable Nirvāṇa-state.

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The term nirvāṇa 4 was correctly explained by Colebrooke a century ago: “Both these sects (Buddhists and Jains) propose, for the grand object to which man should aspire, the attainment of a final happy state, from which there is no return. All concur in assigning to its attainment the same term, mukti, or moksha, with some shades of difference in the interpretation of the word: as emancipation, deliverance from evil; liberation from worldly bonds; relief from further transmigration, etc. . . .

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¹ Mahānidd., 283.

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⁴ A misconception (not found in Childers) has arisen about the distinction between nirvāṇa and parinirvāṇa. The latter is supposed to be the nirvāṇa reached at death, “ complete nirvāṇa.” But there is not the slightest evidence for this distinction. It has already been explained from the grammatical point of view (I think by E. Kuhn). Pari- compounded with a verb converts

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“The term which the Bauddhas, as well as Jainas, more particularly affect, and which, however, is also used by the rest, is nirvāṇa, profound calm. In its ordinary acceptation, as an adjective, it signifies extinct, as a fire which is gone out; set, as a luminary which has gone down; defunct, as a saint who has passed away; its etymology is from vā, to blow as wind, with the preposition nir used in a negative sense: it means calm and unruffled. The notion which is attached to the word, in the acceptation now under consideration, is that of perfect apathy . . . Perpetual uninterrupted apathy can hardly be said to differ from eternal sleep. The notion of it as of a happy condition seems to be derived from the experience of ecstacies, or from that of profound sleep from which a person awakes refreshed. The pleasant feeling is referred back to the period of actual repose . . . the vedānta considers the individual soul to be temporarily, during the period of profound sleep, in the like condition of reunion with the Supreme, which it permanently arrives at on its final emancipation from body.

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“This doctrine is not that of the Jainas nor Bauddhas. But neither do they consider the endless repose allotted to their perfect saints as attended with a discontinuance of individuality. It is not annihilation, but unceasing apathy,

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the verb from the expression of a state to the expression of the achievement of an action: nirvāṇa is the state of release; parinirvāṇa is the attaining of that state. The monk parinirvāti “attains Nirvāṇa” at the time of enlightenment as well as at death. The P.T.S. Dictionary defines parinibbāna as “complete Nirvāṇa”, but immediately goes on to show that the same term is used of both kinds. Nirvāṇa at death is when a Buddha or an arahat anupādisesāya nibbānadhātuyā parinibbāyati “attains nirvāṇa with the nirvāṇa-element which is without a substrate of rebirth” (Dīgha, ii, 136). The word nibbāna is used in this definition of “final Nirvāṇa”. The nirvāṇa attained during life (at enlightenment) is defined in the same words except that saupādisesāya is used, “he attains nirvāṇa with the nirvāṇa-element which is with a substrate of rebirth.” When Buddha’s attainment of nirvāṇa is referred to, especially in the later literature, the nirvāṇa at death is generally meant, but if the distinction is expressed it is always by saupādisesa and anupādisesa (Skt. sopadhiśeṣa and nirupadhiśeṣa). See p. 131.

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which they understand to be the extinction (*nirvāṇa*) of their saints.” ¹

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¹ *Trans. RAS.*, 1827, p. 566. (*Misc. Essays*, ed. 1873, p. 424.)

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It need not be said that the etymological analysis of a word common to several religions will not decide its meaning for Buddhism. Even if the idea of annihilation is present in *nirvāṇa*, there is nothing to imply the annihilation of the individual, and it is used by sects for whom this meaning would be impossible. It is not found in the early Upanishads, and probably did not originate in brahminical circles. In Jainism it is the usual word for the state of the released disciple, who is in no wise annihilated. As Jainism is older than Buddhism, it is unlikely that the word was borrowed from the latter, and the Buddhists may have taken it over from the Jains with the already established meaning of final release.

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Colebrooke’s view was first discussed by Burnouf,² but as he had to depend chiefly on Tibetan translations the question was not much advanced. He assumed that extinction meant the extinction of the individual. The problem has been much discussed since, sometimes with an evident bias showing the influence of the writer’s own views of the nature of human destiny. Another unfortunate fact has been the habit of speaking of the passages in the Scriptures as the *ipsissima verba* of Buddha without testing the assumption, in spite of the emphatic words of Franke that “it is given as yet to no mortal man to demonstrate that any one Buddhist sentence was spoken during the lifetime of the Founder.” ³

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² *Introd.*, pp. 18, 589.

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³ “The Buddhist Councils at Rājagaha and Vesālī,” transl. by Mrs. Rhys Davids, *JPTS.*, 1908, p. 20.

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Oldenberg found a large number of passages bearing on the subject, but the most decisive of these are attributed to disciples, not to Buddha himself. They are interpretations which even his followers did not venture to ascribe to the Master. What we learn from them in the first place is the doctrine which had become established in the community. Whether it was the original doctrine, or whether the disciples had forgotten or actually effaced an earlier teaching rests on complex considerations.

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The literal meaning of *nirvāṇa* does not help us. It means “blowing out” as of a lamp, and the verb is used literally of the extinguishing of a light, but this is not a prominent notion in the treatment of the subject, and the meaning has been modified by its being connected with another verb, for the participle is formed from *nir-vṛ* or *ni-vṛ*, meaning tranquil, happy, ceased, and *parinirvṛta* in its technical sense is " having attained nirvāṇa ". In any case it does not assert the annihilation of the individual. Buddhist polemics are continually directed against two views, that of permanence (*sassata*) and that of annihilation (*uccheda*). They are prominent in the *Brahmajāla-sutta*, and are elsewhere attributed to the teachers Pakudha and Ajita Kesakambalin respectively (pp. 72, 73). The Buddhist attitude to these views is expressed in the list of undetermined questions (*avyākṛtavastūni*) :

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(1) Whether the universe is eternal or not.
(2) Whether the universe is finite or not.
(3) Whether that which is the vital principle (*jīva*) is the body.
(4) Whether after death a Tathāgata (a released person) exists or not, whether he exists and does not exist, whether he is neither existent nor non-existent.¹

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¹ *Majjh.*, i, 157, etc.; *Mvyut.*, 206; *Dhs.*, 137; they are four in number, but with their different modes of stating them they amount to fourteen.

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The first two of these views are given in the *Brahmajāla-sutta*, and the first is there combined with the doctrine that also the self is eternal. In this list the question about the self is included in the third and fourth views, but is stated in quite different language. The assertion that the vital principle is the same as the body would involve the doctrine of annihilation as stated by Ajita, that both fools and wise at the dissolution of the body are cut off and destroyed. But here the word for body is neither the usual *kāya* nor *rūpa*, but *sarīra*. The word for the spiritual part is also different, *jīva* merely meaning life. The phrase *tam jīvam tam sarīram* looks like the statement of a tenet expressed in the words of the teacher who held it. It occurs separately in the *Jāliya-sutta* (*Dīgha*, i, 159), where it was put as a question to Buddha by two wandering ascetics. Their purpose, according to Buddhaghosa, was to get either a positive or a negative answer, and thus to accuse him of annihilationism or eternalism. His reply is to describe the attaining of the four trances and enlightenment, and to conclude that for one who thus knows and thus perceives it is not fitting for him to say either.

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The doctrine of annihilationism as put by Ajita implies annihilation at death, but other forms of the doctrine in the *Brahmajāla-sutta* admit the existence of a finer self, which yet is finally annihilated. For Buddhism neither of these points is fundamental. Perhaps more than any other Indian religion it held views about the departed resembling those of the modern spiritualists. The Scriptures are full of stories of the materialization of dead persons, and of individuals with special powers of communicating with them. And if these stories do not belong to the earliest stages of the Doctrine, it is all the more clear that they were told by the same persons who refused to recognize the eternity of the self. The fundamental question is whether a Tathāgata¹ exists after death; and that is put aside in the fourth undetermined question: every possible way of asserting it or denying it is stated and rejected.

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¹ It is clear that this term here applies not merely to a Buddha, but to anyone who has attained final release. Buddhaghosa commenting on *Dīgha*, i, 27, takes Tathāgata in the sense of *satta*.

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It is evident from the *Sutta of the simile of the snake* (*Majjh.*, i, 139) that the Buddhists were accused of nihilism, not merely on account of any denial like that of Ajita’s, but because their doctrine of release was held to imply it. Buddha is there made to say that not all the gods with Indra, Brahmā, and Pajāpati are able to track out a monk with mind released and say, “there rests the consciousness of a Tathāgata.” Then follows a repudiation of the charge of annihilationism: “some ascetics and brahmins accuse me wrongly, baselessly, falsely, and groundlessly, saying that the ascetic Gotama is a nihilist, and preaches the annihilation, destruction, and non-existence of an existent being. That is what I am not and do not affirm. Both previously and now I preach pain and the cessation of pain.”

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Here the charge of annihilationism is simply denied. In a discourse attributed to Sāriputta it is discussed and refuted. The elder Yamaka had formed the view, “thus do I understand the doctrine taught by the Lord, that a monk in whom the āsavas are destroyed is annihilated and destroyed with the dissolution of the body, and does not exist after death.” Yamaka is made to admit that the body and all the other constituents of the individual are impermanent, and that, therefore, he cannot say of any one of them, “ this is mine, I am this, this is my self.” “ What do you think, friend Yamaka, is a Tathāgata the body ? ” “ No, friend.” (And so of feeling, perception, the aggregates, and consciousness.) “ Do you look on a Tathāgata as existing in body, etc. ? ” “ No, friend.” “ Do you look on a Tathāgata as existing apart from body, etc.—or as consisting of them—or as existing without any of them ? ” To all these questions Yamaka answers no. No loophole is left for asserting the existence of a self either within or beyond the five constituents. The conclusion is that “ a Tathāgata cannot be held to be perceived as existing even in this life in truth and reality.” ¹

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¹ Samy., iii, 109.

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The undetermined questions are often made the basis of a discourse, in which Buddha gives reasons for refusing to answer them. He declares that it is not on the truth of any of these alternatives that the practice of the religious life depends. “ There is still birth, there is old age, there is death, grief, lamentation, suffering, sorrow, and despair, of which I preach the destruction even in this present life. Therefore, bear in mind what I have not determined as being undetermined . . . And why have I not determined them ? Because they are not useful, do not belong to the principle of the religious life, and do not tend to revulsion, absence of passion, cessation, tranquillity, insight, enlightenment, Nirvāṇa.” ²

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² Majjh., i, 431.

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When the wanderer Vacchagotta asks where a monk whose mind is released is reborn, and declares himself dissatisfied with the reply that it does not fit the case to say that he is reborn or not reborn, or both reborn and not reborn, or neither reborn nor not reborn, Buddha declares : “ profound is this Doctrine, hard to see, hard to comprehend, calm, excellent, beyond the sphere of reasoning, subtle, intelligible only to the wise. For you it is hard to understand, who hold other views, another faith, other inclinations, another discipline, and another teacher. Therefore, I will question you in turn, and do you answer as you think fit. If a fire were burning before you, would you know it ? I should. If one asked you on account of what the fire burns what would you answer ? I should say the fire burns on account of the fuel of grass and sticks. If the fire were extinguished, would you know it was extinguished ? I should. If one asked you in what direction it had gone, east, west, north, or south, what would you answer ? It does not fit the case, for the fire was burning on account of the fuel of grass and sticks, and through consuming this it is without food, and is what is called extinct. Even so, Vacchagotta, the body (with feeling, perception, aggregates, and consciousness) by which one might define a Tathāgata is passed away, cut off at the root, uprooted like a palm-tree, made non-existent, not liable to arise again in the future. A Tathāgata released from what is called body, etc., is profound, immeasurable, hard to fathom, like the great ocean. It does not fit the case to say that he is reborn or not reborn or reborn and not reborn or neither reborn nor not reborn.” 1

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In spite of this repeated refusal to make any assertion one way or the other, Oldenberg came to the conclusion that it was a mere shirking of the question in order not to shock a weak-minded hearer.² He quoted another legend of Vacchagotta, who came and asked Buddha whether the ātman exists, and then whether it is non-existent. In each case Buddha remained silent. After Vacchagotta had gone, Ānanda asked Buddha why he did not reply. “ If, Ānanda, when Vacchagotta asked, ‘ is there an ātman ? ’ I had said, ‘ there is an ātman,’ then I should have been one of those ascetics and brahmins who hold the doctrine of eternalism. But if I had replied ‘ there is no ātman ’, then I should have been one of those who hold the doctrine of annihilation. And if, when Vacchagotta asked ‘ is there an ātman ’ ? I had replied, ‘ there is an ātman,’ would it have been in accordance with the knowledge that all things are without ātman ? ” “ No, Lord.” “ If I had said, ‘ there is no ātman,’ the bewildered Vacchagotta would have become still more bewildered, thinking, ‘ then did my ātman exist before, and now it does not exist ? ’ ” 3

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² Buddha, 1st ed., Engl. tr., p. 272.

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Oldenberg’s conclusion was, “ through the shirking of the question as to the existence or non-existence of the ego, is heard the answer, to which the premises of the Buddhist teaching tended : The ego is not. Or, what is equivalent : The Nirvâna is annihilation.”

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¹ Majjh., i, 486.

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³ Samy., iv, 400.

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It is certain, however, that this is a conclusion which the Buddhists never drew. In this very sutta annihilationism is rejected. It is not really to the point to say that the Buddhist premises tended to this conclusion. The only real question is what conclusion did the Buddhists draw and what for them was the logical inference. Existence (*bhava*) for them depended upon knowledge obtained through the six senses, except the knowledge of the permanent attained at enlightenment. They recognized the individual as consisting of elements perceptible to the senses. They had before them the question as to what becomes of him when everything that can be predicated of him is withdrawn. What the clairvoyants and spiritualists can tell us of discarnate spirits is of no help here. That is merely about existence in another plane of the universe. The Buddhists had reached the conception of a state of which neither existence nor non-existence as we know it could be asserted. They were not left in suspense that the answer might be one way or the other. The question was put in such a way that they rested certain that an answer was neither useful nor possible.

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This state is described with a wealth of epithets as, “the harbour of refuge, the cool cave, the island amidst the floods, the place of bliss, emancipation, liberation, safety, the supreme, the transcendental, the uncreated, the tranquil, the home of ease, the calm, the end of suffering, the medicine for all evil, the unshaken, the ambrosia, the immaterial, the imperishable, the abiding, the further shore, the unending, the bliss of effort, the supreme joy, the ineffable, the detachment, the holy city.”¹ These are names of Nirvāṇa used by those who have realized it in this life, and in whom there is still a “substratum of existence” as we know it. What when that substratum is withdrawn? Then everything is withdrawn by which anything can be asserted. He who is released is “profound, immeasurable, hard to fathom, like the great ocean”. And if the disciples refused to assert anything, they were not agnostics or eel-wrigglers, but were merely thinking clearly and refusing to express the inexpressible. It does not fit the case to assert existence or non-existence when its object has been explained as being of quite a different kind from that about which assertion is possible.

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¹ Rhys Davids, *Early Buddhism*, p. 72.

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There are two collections of verses attributed to several hundreds of monks and nuns, all of whom were held to have attained enlightenment. They contain no more guessing or theorizing about the ineffable and inexpressible than the words attributed to Buddha himself. As Mrs. Rhys Davids says of the nuns, “ their verses do not seem to betray anything that can be construed as a consciousness that hidden glories, more wonderful than the brief span of ‘cool’ and calm that they now know as Arahants, are awaiting them.”¹

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¹ *Psalms of the Sisters*, Introd., xxxi.

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Two of the “fervent utterances” in the *Udāna* (viii, 1-3) have been held to be assertions of such hidden glories after death:

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There is the stage (*āyatana*), where there is neither earth nor water, nor fire, nor wind, nor the stage of the infinity of space, nor the stage of nothingness, nor the stage of neither consciousness nor non-consciousness, neither this world, nor the other world, nor sun and moon. There, monks, I say there is neither coming nor going, nor staying nor passing away, nor arising; without support or going on or basis is it. This is the end of pain.

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There is an unborn, an unbecome, an unmade, an uncompounded; if there were not, there would not be an escape from the born, the become, the made, the compounded. But because there is an unborn, an unbecome, an unmade, an uncompounded, therefore there is an escape from the born, the become, the unmade, and the uncompounded.

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This is a description in entirely negative terms of the Nirvāṇa which every arahat attained, an emphatic assertion of what was to him the only reality. But of the state that the arahat may reach after death there is not a word.

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Oldenberg’s view may be taken as representative of those investigators who would commit the Buddhists, in spite of all their efforts, to a one-sided dogmatism, and make them assert not what they themselves inferred, but what others thought they should do.² But Oldenberg later came to a different conclusion. He pointed out that there is a change of standpoint from the view that the question *ought* not to be answered to the view that it *could* not be answered. (This merely means that different disciples discussed it in different ways.) The nun Khemā (again a disciple is expounding) says that the Lord has not explained it, just as no one can measure the water of the ocean, for, “freed from the designation of body (and the other constituents)

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² The chief representatives of the annihilation view are Childers (*Pāli Dict.*, s.v.) and J. D’Alwis, *Buddhist Nirvāṇa*, Colombo, 1871.

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a Tathāgata is profound, immeasurable, hard to fathom, like the great ocean.”¹ Does the idea, says Oldenberg, which Buddhism had about that Beyond imply an absolutizing of individual being as in later Sānkhya, or had they floating in their minds a universal, absolute being in which the secret of achievement is realized? “From the way in which Buddhism treats this class of problems, or rather refuses to treat them, it follows that the ideas here in question can only be traced through a haze. But the traces that can be made out indicate rather that a universal being reaching far beyond the limits of the individual floated in their minds: an absolute, naturally not as *Weltgrund*, because in fact they had no impulse to ask about a *Weltgrund*, either openly or covertly, but an absolute as final highest goal.” This is a withdrawal of the charge that if Buddha had drawn the last conclusion of his own principles, he would have arrived at annihilation.

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¹ *Lehre der Up.*, p. 309.

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Dr. F. O. Schrader has attacked “the nihilistic conception of Parinibbānam” and defended “the assertion to the contrary”, but without stating clearly what he means by this.² He says quite naively, “I cannot here explain the reasons why, to my way of thinking, philosophy is forced to accept the metaphysical conception of the Absolute One.” Not only that, but he is also certain that Buddha accepted it. “It was the Buddha, without any doubt, who banished out of the world the last glitter of immutability, and liberated, on the other hand, from the last terrestrial feature it still possessed, viz. consciousness, the notion of the Absolute.” With such premises much can be proved.

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² “On the problem of Nirvāṇa,” *JPTS.*, 1905, p. 157.

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One of Dr. Schrader’s conclusions is that “it is beyond doubt that in Buddha’s opinion there rests of the *parinibbuto* (one who has attained Nirvāṇa) not the slightest shade of individuality”. It need hardly be said that this is only Dr. Schrader’s “way of thinking”, but it does involve a question more than once touched upon by the commentators. Already in the Upanishads it was a problem whether the liberated ātman knew that it was liberated. Indra was told that when one is asleep, composed, and knows no dream, that is the ātman. With this answer he was dissatisfied, for “such a one does not know with the thought, ‘I am he,’

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so that he becomes one who has gone to destruction ”. He went back to know more, but after five more years of study all he learnt was that while one is in the body there is no freedom from pleasure and pain; when he is without the body he is not touched by pleasure and pain.¹

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¹ *Chānd. Up.*, viii, 11, 12.

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Buddhism makes no such confident assertion as this, nor any positive statement at all about the final state of the released. The commentators, however, speak of the last consciousness and the last thought. It is in the form of consciousness that the individual exists when transmigration takes place. The story is told of Godhika (*Samy.*, i, 109), who attained temporary release ² six times, but fell away. On attaining it the seventh time he cut his throat. When Buddha and his monks came to see him, a dark cloud was moving in all directions. “ That,” said Buddha, “ is Māra the wicked looking to see where Godhika’s consciousness has become established; but Godhika has attained Nirvāṇa with consciousness not established anywhere.” This does not tell anything positive about the state of Nirvāṇa, but it illustrates the doctrine that consciousness with all the other constituents of the individual “ stops ” (*nirujjhati*) with the death of the arahat.

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² *Samayavimutti*, *Kathāv*, i, 86; *Mvyut.*, 46; this, according to the commentators, was release of mind obtained by practice of the trances, and Godhika, through sickness, could not maintain his state of trance. The *Abhidharmakośa* (vi, 58) also discusses the case of Godhika, and says that, although he fell from his state of temporary release, he did not fall from his state of arahat.

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Psychological theorizings such as these do not tell us anything more about the fundamental question. The list of undetermined questions remained established like a creed throughout the history of Buddhism. The distinction of two kinds of Nirvāṇa is probably such a development. It is one which would raise itself as a problem after Buddha’s death. In *Dhammapada* 89 there is a reference to “ those who have attained Nirvāṇa in the world with the destruction of the āsavas ”.³ The commentator here explains “ attained Nirvāṇa ” as attained by the two attainings of Nirvāṇa (*dvīhi parinibbānehi*), (1) that which is with a remainder of substrate of rebirth after reaching arahatship and getting rid of the course of the depravities, and (2) that which is without a remainder of substrate of rebirth with the cessation of the last thought and getting rid of the course of the khandhas. What is to be understood by this substrate of rebirth has been disputed, for in Pāli the term is upādi and in Sanskrit upadhi.¹ It is now generally agreed to be a collective name for the khandhas, the elements constituting the individual, which at death, unless dispersed by knowledge of the truths, continue their existence in a new birth. The form that they have at the moment of conception is consciousness (viññāṇa, citta), and with enlightenment it is said to cease. It is not said to be annihilated, but it stops or ceases (nirujjhati) to transmigrate. What that implies may be still further argued, but it is known only to the arahat.

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³ *Khīṇāsavā* . . . *loke parinibbutā*; here, again, the word supposed to describe final Nirvāṇa is used of the living monk.

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¹ See PTS. Dict., s.v., and H. O. Lovejoy, “The Buddhist technical terms upādāna and upādisesa,” JAOS., 1898, pt. ii, p. 126.

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In these discussions by Sāriputta, Dhammadinnā, Khemā, and other disciples is it possible to distinguish any primitive teaching? They had before them a conception clearly separated out from two rival theories, the theory that there was something in the world of sense absolutely permanent and eternal, which they found to be contradicted by experience, and on the other hand the theory of annihilation, which contradicted their own theory of moral equity. Between these two they were not in a position of suspense. They knew that there was a state to be attained, which they defined only negatively, the goal of the Eightfold Path, the end of the disciple’s training in morality, concentration, and full knowledge.

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Doubtless all this was not explicit in the earliest teaching. We have the direct evidence of the various efforts of disciples to state it convincingly, and to restate it in opposition to rival theories. But even the earliest teaching about the self was subordinate to the teaching about the final end. Rival theories of the self were rejected because they were in conflict with the ideal of the goal. This ideal involved a system of discipline differing from all other Indian systems, and evidently due to the genius of one man. On this was based a system of moral and mental training directed to one goal. The teaching about that goal, we also have reason to believe, was due to one mind, the mind that taught the way to it.

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