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

1 This theory of the double set of elements is very clearly analysed by 0. Rosenberg in his Problems, cf. IX and XVIII. Had M. de la V.-P. devoted to this book all the attention it deserves he never would have maintained that the Nirvana of the Vaibhasikas is a paradise. Judging by his sweeping and unfair remark on p. XXI he has entirely misunderstood this remarkable book.

2 Cf. Ab. Kosa, V. 25, and my Central Conception, p. 89.

3 When pressed to give details about this lifeless condition of dharma-svabhava the Vaibha¬ sikas confess their ignorance, ibid. p. 75 and 90.

KIR VAN A

IX. THE SAUTRANTIKAS matter ( prakrti ), it is eternal, absolute death K The Sankhyas were dualists, and admitted besides eternal Matter eternal Souls, but the latter, as is w r ell known, the Buddhists very energetically denied. Candrakirti refers to the Vaibhasika view in the following way. «If nirvana is a reality perse (bhava), it cannot be a simple extinction. Of course, it has been declared that cons¬ ciousness is extinct ( vimoksa ) in nirvana, just as a light becomes extinct (when fuel is exhausted), but for us extinct life is not an entity (bhava) !» To this (the Vaibhasika) answers. «You must not understand nirvana to be the extinction of passion (and of life), but you must say that the entity (dharma) called nirvana is the thing in which passion (and life) are extinct. The extinction of light is a mere example, and it must be interpreted as pointing to that (inanimate) thing which remains when consciousness is extinct)). 2

We need not insist that the school was atheistic and genuinely denied the reality of a substantial Soul, whereas the Mahasamghikas, Vatsiputriyas, Sautrantikas and Mahayanists denied it one way and admitted it in another. The state of Nirvana, as imagined by the Vaibhasikas, affords some points of similarity with that state of the Universe which modern science imagines will exist when all energies will be worked out, they will exist, siuee energy itself (sc. dharma - svabhava) is eternal, but they will not work. A condi¬ tion in which all energies (samskaras) are extinct cannot be spiritual. 3 Of course simple materialism goes under the name of uccheda - vada , against which Buddha is reported to have made an emphatic protest. But simple materialism in India, as elsewhere, is nirvana at every death ( dehocchedo moksah)* without retribution for one’s deeds in future life. The complicated system of worlds imagined by Buddha, through which the elements composing indi¬ vidual existences are gradually, one after the other, reduced to a state of quiescence and extinction, until in final nirvana all are extinct — is nothing but the realisation of the moral law. The worlds are «produced» by karma , which corresponds to a conception of evolution going on under the influence

1 Or something quite undefinable, nihsatlasattam nihsadasad nirasad avyaktam alingam pradhanam, Vyasa ad Y. S. II. 19.

2 Yasmm sati cctaso vimokso (= nirodho) bhavati, ibid. 525. 9., cp. translation in the

Append. ,

3 European mystics, of course, put all the variety of the Indian speculations about Nir¬ vana into the same bag and declare that, although negative for our reason, it is emotionally very positive indeed,«dem GefQhl nach ein Positivum st&rkster Form», cf. Heiler, op. cit. p. 41, follow¬ ing R. Otto, Das Heilige.

4 Sarvadars., p. 3 (B. Ind.).

of an accumulation of moral merit. 1 Simple materialism leaves no room for the working of this law. But neither does, according to Buddha, an eternal spiritual principle leave room for it. The moral law conduces through a very long process of evolution the living world into a state of final quiescence where there is no life, but something lifeless, inanimate. 2 In this sense the Vaibhasika outlook resembles the materialism of modern science. 3

IX. The SAUTRANTIKAS