The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana — Th. Stcherbatsky (1927)

Nirvana I, Hlnayanistic, a designation of the Absolute as an absolute end of all phenomenal existence, 2, 4; — possibly pre-Buddhistic, 4; unlike a survival in heaven, 23,25: extinction of all active elements (samskara) of life, 28, 197; even the thinnest vestige of life, still existing in cataleptic states, extinct in N., 15. Yoga as the expedient through which a gradual extinction of all active elements, one by one, is attained 4, 8 ff; Protest against annihilation of life as the ultimate goal of life, 58 ff., 186; meaning of N. as immortality, 20, 25, 59; it is a place where there is neither life, nor (repeated) death, 29, 200; a place of eternal death, 26; howfar similar to the materialistic conception, 29; similar to the Nyaya-Vaisegika conception of a « stonelike a condition of the Soul as the absolute end, 26, 59; howfar comparable to the conception of modern science about the absolute end (Entropy), 28, 197 n. 6; the difficulties of giving a clear definition of the Absolute realized in Hinayana, 21; the antinomies, 21 n., 205, 207 n. 9; their solu¬ tion similar to the answer given by Kant, 208, n. 2; the reluctance of the Buddha to go into details when pressed by inquisitive questioners, 21. N. final and non¬ final, 183 ff; their definitions in the Hinayana, ibid. The Vaibha^ikas the only school of later Buddhism which kept faithful to the idea of a lifeless N., 23, 191; their idea of this N. as being a reality (vastu) in the sense of a materialistic, lifeless reality, 26, 27, 28 n. 3, 199 n. 3, 200; their line of argument, 27 ff., 199 n. 3.; the denial of such a N. by the Sautrantikas, 29; definition of the latter presupposes the acceptance of the Mahayanistic idea of dhanna-kaya, 30, 189 n. 2. The moral side of the problem of N., 3. Buddha’s emphatic protest against Materialism in the Indian conception of the term as connoting a denial of moral obligations and of retribu¬ tion, 4, 21, 28, 189; such Materialism is a direct way not to Nirvana, but to hell, 189; N., although extinction of all life, nevertheless a «desirable* aim, contrasted with pheno¬ menal life as the aim to be shunned, 56. The world-process as a process of gradual moral purification and spiritualization of life, 9; which nevertheless leads towards Annihilation of all life, 15. The strangeness, for our habits of thought, of the «desirability* of such a solution, 4; but Buddha finds the conception of an eternal Soul equally strange, 2—3. The

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— 233 — grip of the idea of Quiescence upon the Indian mind, 3—4. The protest of several early schools against a lifeless N., 4, 31. The idea of a surviving consciousness in the VatsIputrlya, Mahasanghika and other schools, 31, 61 n. 5; their line of argument, 31 n. 1. The Sautrantika-school a continuator of this tendency leading to MahaySnism, 24.

Nirvana II, Mahayanistic, a designation of the Absolute harmonizing with a system of philosophical Monism, 35 ff., 41, 47; its identity with the Vedanta conception, 52,204 n.; influence of the Upanishads probable, 50; its contrast with the Pluralism of Hinayana, it is neither an Ens, 190, nor a non-Ens, 193, nor both, 198, nor neither, 201. The last solu¬ tion (neither Ens nor non-Ens) howfar favoured in Mahayana 201 n. 2. N. means non- Plurality 84, non-Duality ( advaita ), 38, 42, 47; extinction of Plurality, 91; no origination 93 ff., 182; no motion, 140; no real extinction 182; but it is the extinction of all construc¬ tions of human (pluralistic) thought, 188, 190. N. inexpressible, 202. N. is this world viewed sub specie aeternitatis 48, 195; thus there is a substantial identity between Nir¬ vana = the Absolute and Samsara = the Phenomenal, 164 n., 205; no line of demarcation between them, 187,205; therefore Nirvana is not a separate reality, 24, 25, 29; such is the meaning of the « denial» of N. 25, 27. Neither the Realists, nor the Materialists, nor the half-realistic Sautrantikas, nor the idealistic Yogacaras conceive N. rightly in a strictly monistic sense, 189. The three and four Nirvanas of the Yogacaras, 183 n. 3; their a altruistic)) (apratisthita, cp. Index 7) N., 185, 204; its seeming contradiction with strict Monism, ibid. The theistic tendencies of the Yogacaras and their artificial constructions, 204 n. 3. The 20 solutions mentioned in the Lankavatara-sutra, a literary composition without any scientific precision, 31 n. 2. History of the Buddhist conception of N. 60 ff.

Nihilism, 5.

Nyaya-Vaise§ika, the Nirvana as taught in the early school similar to the Annihilation in Hinayana, 54, ff.

Obj ect (the) as a condition of mental phenomena, 173.