The History of Buddhist Thought c25.53

c25.53

Nāgārjuna discusses the question of Nirvāṇa in full in chapter 25. "If everything is void, there is no origination and no passing away; of what is there Nirvāṇa either by abandonment or by cessation?" The commentator first gives a fair statement of the Hīnayāna view. "Now with regard to this the Lord has described a twofold Nirvāṇa of individuals who have practised the religious life, followed the teaching of Buddha, acquired the greater and lesser doctrines, namely, Nirvāṇa with the remainder of a substratum of rebirth (*upadhi*) and Nirvāṇa without a remainder. The first is understood as due to complete abandonment of the depravities, ignorance, passion, etc. . . . It is like a village in which all the gangs of robbers have been destroyed.¹ But the Nirvāṇa in which even the mere skandhas no longer exist is Nirvāṇa without such a remainder.² It is like a village which, after the gangs of robbers have been destroyed, has itself been annihilated."