The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana — Th. Stcherbatsky (1927)
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No (real) origination, no (real) annihilation,
How is Nirvana then conceived?
Through what deliverance, through what annihilation?
II.
Should every thing be real in substance,
No (new) creation, no (new) destruction,
How would Nirvana then be reached?
Through what deliverance, through what annihilation?
III.
What neither is released, nor is it ever reached,
What neither is annihilation, nor is it eternality,
What never disappears, nor has it been created,
This is Nirvana. It escapes precision.
IV.
Nirvana, first of all, is not a Kind of Ens,
It would then have decay and death.
There altogether is no Ens
Which is not subject to decay and death.
V.
If Nirvana is Ens,
It is produced by causes,
Nowhere and none the entity exists
Which would not be produced by causes.
VI.
If Nirvana is Ens,
How can it lack substratum,
There whatsoever is no Ens
Without any substratum.
VII.
If Nirvana is not an Ens,
Will it be then a non-Ens?
Wherever there is found no Ens,
There neither is a (corresponding) nou-Ens.
VIII.
Now, if Nirvana is a non-Ens,
How can it then be independent?
For sure, an independent non-Ens
Is nowhere to be found.
IX.
Coordinated here or caused are (separate things),
We call this world Phenomenal;
But just the same is called Nirvana,
When from Causality abstracted.
X.
The Buddha has declared
That Ens and non-Ens should be both rejected.
Neither as Ens nor as a non-Ens
Nirvana therefore is conceived.
mm
If Nirvana were both Ens and non-Ens,
Final Deliverance would be also both,
Reality and unreality together.
This never could be possible!
XII.
If Nirvana were both Ens and non-Ens,
Nirvana could not be uncaused.
Indeed the Ens and the non-Ens
Are both dependent on causation.
XIII.
How can Nirvana represent
An Ens and a non-Ens together?
Nirvana is indeed uncaused,
Both Ens and non-Ens are productions.
XIY.
How can Nirvana represent
(The place) of Ens and of non-Ens together,
As light and darkness (in one spot)
They cannot simultaneously be present.
XV.
If it were clear, indeed,
What an Ens means, and what a non-Ens,
We could then understand the doctrine
About Nirvana being neither Ens nor non-Ens.
XVI.
If Nirvana is neither Ens nor non-Ens,
No one can really understand
This doctrine which proclaims at once
Negation of them both together.
appendix: Nagarjuna’s treatise on relativity 7 7
XVII.
What is the Buddha after his Nirvana?
Does he exist or does he not exist,
Or both, or neither?
We never will conceive it!
XVIII.
What is the Buddha then at lifetime?
Does he exist, or does he not exist,
Or both, or neither?
We never will conceive it!
XIX.
There is no difference at all
Between Nirvana and Samsara.
There is no difference at all
Between Samsara and Nirvana.
XX.
What makes the limit of Nirvana
Is also then the limit of Samsara.
Between the two we cannot find
The slightest shade of difference.
XXI.
(Insoluble are antinomic) views
Regarding what exists beyond Nirvana,
Regarding what the end of this world is,
Regarding its beginning.
XXII.
Since everything is relative (we do not know),
What is finite and what is infinite,
What means finite and infinite at once,
What means negation of both issues?
NIRVANA
XXIII.
What is identity, and what is difference?
What is eternity, what non-eternity,
What means eternity and non-eternity together,
What means negation of both issues?
XXIV.
The bliss consists in the cessation of all thought,
In the quiescence of Plurality.
No (separate) Reality was preached at all,
Nowhere and none by Buddha!
Finished Examination of Nirvana, the twenty fifth chapter of the
Treatise on Relativity.
THE CLEABWORDED
A COMMENT
UPON
NIGARJUNA’S TREATISE ON RELATIVITY
BY
CANDRAKIRTI
THE CLEARWORDED
Dedication
To that Nagarjuna I "bow who has done away all recourse to the abode 2 . 3 . of Duality, 1
Who has emerged out of the ocean-like (all-embracing) Spirit of the 1 . 3 . Supreme Buddha, 2
Who mercifully has explained the deeper meaning of the treasury 3 of 1 . 4 . religion, according to his own conception of it,
Whose pilosophic fire consumes even now the fuel of opposed systems 1 . 5 . and burns down the darkness in the hearts of simple mankind,
Whose words, containing incomparable knowledge, (like) a host of ar- 2 . 1 . rows, completely destroy the army of our foes (and deliver us from the bonds of phenomenal) existence,
Whose words assume the majesty of rule over (the denizens) of all the 2 . 2 . three spheres of existence, 4 the Buddhist converts and the gods.