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

3 Vatsyayana says that duhkha means janma (ad N. S., 1.1. 22) and Vacaspati explains, duhkhaSabdena sarve Sarirddaya ucyante, and warns against confounding it with suffering, mukhyam era duhkham iti bhramo ma bhut; the same is pressed by Jayanta, na ca mukhyam safely applied in our language, if we are to escape confusion. Bliss itself is entered into the classification of existence ( duhkha ), as one of its 21 items. And this is quite natural because there is no eternal bliss neither in early Bud¬ dhism nor in Nyaya-Vaisesika, if the «super-bliss» of disappearing into an eternal senseless condition be excepted. The classification into 21 items is but a slight modification of the Buddhist classification into 16 component parts of existence (dhatu ). 1 The reason why this term has been chosen as a desi¬ gnation of phenomenal life is that philosophy seeks a way out of it. Philo¬ sophy is the science of the Absolute, of Nirvana. For every philosopher all phenomenal life is something that must be shunned, it is heya. The analysis of existence into its elements, as has been stated above, is undertaken in order to determine the means by which all the forces of life must gradually, one after the other, be brought to a standstill.

It is likewise a general feature of all Indian systems that they assume the existence of a central force which keeps life going in this world, nay in all the imaginable worlds. This general force (karma) is resolved into the special ones, termed illusion, desire and aversion. They produce germs of future actions and until they are neutralized by corresponding methods, they will always produce a continuation of life. Illusion is neutralized by philo¬ sophic insight, but the decisive and final step which stops empirical life for ever and transfers the individual into the Absolute is achieved by Yoga, i. e„ bv that mystical power which is produced by absorption in intense con¬ centrated meditation. These conceptions represent a characteristic Indian habit of thought. We meet them everywhere. Their origin is certainly not to be sought for in the Yoga system of Patanjali which has been proved to be a very late production, about 800 years later than the origin of Buddhism. Their most primitive and crude form appears in the Jaina system. The defi¬ cit duhkham bddhandsvabhdvam aramrsyate. kim tu tatsddhanam tadanusaktam ca sarvatn era. (Nyayamanjari, Viziau., p. 507). Cf. Ab. Koga, VI, 3, and Madhy. vrtti, p. 127, ihahi pahcopadana-skandha, duhkham ity ucyate. Exactly the same definition in Sam yutta N., Ill, 47. It is a technical term, the equivalent of the first afya-satya and of the sdsrava-dharmdh; a suffering » is duhkha-vedand, a quite different thing, it has an other place in the system under vedana-skandha. To confound them is a mistake, just as to confound rupa-ayatana with rupaskandha (the latter includes 10 dyatanas ), or the 3 dhdtus with the 18 dhdtus , or the 6 indriyas with the 22 indriyas , or the 75 dharmas with the 64 dharmdh, etc. Cf. M. C. Rhys Davids, B. Psych., p. 83.

1 Another classification of every thing cognizable into 12 prameyas, cf. Nyayasutra, I. 1. 9, corresponds, to a certain extent, to the Buddhist classification into 12 dyatanas.

XX. NYAYA-VAISESIKA