The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana — Th. Stcherbatsky (1927)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
Answer. The resistent stuff is necessary as a support for the sense faculties, as a sup¬ port for the bodies and as clothes for them. But for the fragrant and savoury stuffs there is no necessity, because there is no physical food. Therefore, since the instinct for such food is absent, neither do the corresponding stuffs exist, (i. e., they are not produced by karma). The case of the resistent stuff is different.
Opinion of Srflabha. If somebody here (on earth) by concentrated meditation reaches extasy, he continues to see colours, to hear sounds and his sense of touch is agreeably affected by some special tangible stuff which is produced simultaneously with the production in him of a high degree of levitation (prasrabdhi), but odours and tastes are in abeyance. For this rea¬ son, when beings are reborn in these worlds of trance, the first three sense data exist, hut smells and tastes are absent.»
It is seen out of this passage that the conditions of life in the sphere of ethereal bodies are imagined by transferring personal mystic experiences into a separate plane of existence.
A very interesting discussion then follows about that driving force of nature called karma which, in this connection, corresponds to our concep¬ tion of evolution, or elan vital. 2
It produces, according to a regular plan and answering to necessities, all the varieties of life in the plane of gross bodies and mutatis mutandis in the imagined planes of existance constructed according to mystic experiences.
1 Cp. the tables in Central Conception, p. 97.
2 What confusion arises from a wrong translation of the term karma appears clearly from M. de la V. P.’s translation of this passage, Ab. Kosa II. 30, p. 56. «Quelle est la cause de la naissance d’un organe, sinon un certain acte commande par un d6sir relatif a cet organe». This can only mean that there has been, once upon a time, a man who evidently did not possess this organ, or did possess no organs at all, but he manifested a desire to possess some and com¬ mitted an action in consequence. After that all men, who peacefully existed without any organs at all, suddenly acquired them! No wonder that Indian philosophy, when presented in such a garb, ceases to be attractive. About Karma in Buddhism cp. 0 Rosenberg, Problems, XVI.
Such is the theory of Yoga in Hlnayana. It is quite different in Mahayana where the philosophic foundation is different. All the devices which are employed for helping the mind to concentrate upon a single point are more or less the same in all philosophic systems. There is absolutely nothing Buddhistic in them. 1 The psychlogical fact of concentration which is at the bottom of them is a very simple one. 2 When carried on systematically they induce special mystic states of mind. Patanjali has given their ex¬ planation according to the principles of Sankhya philosophy. In Hlnayana Buddhism they are explained in a manner fitting the system of radical plu¬ ralism, i. e., that theory of separate elements (i dharma ) which has been es¬ tablished with a view to their gradual extinction in Nirvana. Very charac¬ teristic for Buddhism is the system of heavens or paradises in which, at their middle and highest stages, imaginary beings are lodged, who are also called gods, but are nothing but born mystics, beings in whom the condition of trance is a natural one. This distinguishes Buddhism from all other reli¬ gions and philosophical systems. 3 It is also inseparable from the conception of the Hlnayanist Nirvana, or the so called Nirvana of the Sravakas. Ac¬ cording to the teaching of some schools the highest cataleptic states of trance are eternal ( asamskrta ), i. e., the/ 7 do not differ from Nirvana. 4 * * But, according to the majority of schools, Nirvana is beyond even that. It is the absolute limit of life, the extinction even of this kind of the thinnest ves¬ tige of consciousness which is still left in the highest of all imaginable worlds of cataleptic trance.