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

The practical, as well as the theoretical, part of Buddhism converge towards the idea of an extinction of all the active forces of life in the Abs( - lute. This Absolute, Nirvana, accordingly receives in emotional passages an overwhelming mass of epitheta ornantia among which the term «place of immortality» occurs several times. But what is this immortality? Is it the immortality of Vedic times? The blissful existence among the forefathers in heaven? 1 Or is this hypothetical immortality something like the paradise of Amitabha? Or something like the paradise of later Vishnuism? Not the slightest indication! Because indeed the word occurs only as an epithet of Nirvana — annihilation. There is no deficiency, as we have seen, of para¬ dises in the Buddhist outlook. But Nirvana is beyond all imaginable spheres, it is the absolute limit. The words «immortal place» simply mean changeless, lifeless and deathless, condition, for it is explained as meaning a place where there is neither birth (i. e. rebirth) nor death (i. e. repeated death). 2 * * People enter paradise by being reborn in it, they disappear for ever in Nirvana by being extinct.

1 M. d e 1 a V. P. evidently thinks that all religious development starts with an idea of a surviving immortal Soul, a theory that has been exploded as far as Indian religions are concerned. Dr. Poul Tuxen in the Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabemes Selskab, Hist.-phil. Meddelelser, II, 4, Forestillingen om Sjaelen i Rigveda, has proved that such an idea is quite absent from the Rigveda. In the oldest Upanishads the surviving homunculus is represented as a congeries of 5 elements which dissolve at death and then a new combination of them springs into being. It is not impossible to see in them the forerunners of the Buddhist 5 skandhas. The idea of a Soul, in our acceptation of the term, appears in the metrical Upanishads and is contemporaneous with the rise of Sankhya and Jainism, probably also with some kind of pre- Buddhaic Buddhism, cf. H. Jacobi, Gottesidee, p. 7 ff. and my Central Conception, p. 65 ff.

2 The epithet «place of immortality» is also used in connection with Nirvana in brahmanical systems which adopt a lifeless Nirvana, cf. Vatsyayana, (ed. Vizian.) p. 30. It means a place where there is no death, it does not mean a place where there is eternal life. It is like-

V. Was Buddha an agnostic?

Another additional argument is drawn out of a new interpretation of very well known passages in the Kanon where Buddha is reported to have answered a series of metaphysical questions by sheer silence. It is literally an argument a silentio. Considering these questions more closely, we see that they are metaphysical questions, such as: is the world beginningless or has it a beginning, is it finite or infinite, what is the condition of the Saint after death, this last question meaning, what is the nature of the Absolute. When these questions were addressed to Buddha on a certain occasion by a certain interlocutor, it has once happened that either no answer at all was forthcoming, or it was declared that the questions were futile. Scholars, Indian and European, ancient and modern, did not find much difficulty in harmonizing this occasional «agnosticism)) with the main lines of the teachings of the Pali Kanon. Some scholars went all the length of comparing these reserved questions with a series of topics declared insoluble in modem critical philosophy. There is indeed some similarity. 1