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

1 The higher planes of these carnal gods however are morally purer than the lower ones, they gradually approach to the still higher moral standard of the worlds of trance, cp. Ab. Kosa, III. 70.

2 Ab. Kosa, I. 30, III. 39.

3 They have, as a monk in Mongolia expressed himself in a conversation with me, tele¬ scopes and telephones.

4 Ab. Kosa, III. 70.

NIRVANA

are delicate. The birth of a new being is quite free from all pain and filtb. The new born child does not come out of the matrix of a female, it is apparitional ( upapaduka ). Those who happen to be nearest to the place of his birth are his parents. 1 No government, 2 3 of course, is needed in such a community, because there are no crimes, no gross passions. Total absence of passion would mean total absence of volitions, and this, according to the Indian conception, would stop life altogether, it would be Nirvana. But all feelings have a mild form. The feeling of hatred ( ; protigha ) is totally absent. Other feelings are veiled indifference (nivrio-avyakrta)?

The imagination of the man who has drawn this picture, whether it be Buddha or another, seems to have been guided by the idea that manual work is the curse of humanity. Therefore a state is imagined where there is no need for it, because food, clothes and homes are naturally provided. The other debasing feature of mankind, the gross sexuality of love, is quite absent. Thus from the three incentives of human action on earth, wealth, love and duty ( artha-kama-dharma ) the last alone continues its unimpeded sway in the mystic’s worlds. However there is no absolute equality between the denizens. There are lofty and ordinary characters. The quality of being a «worldling» ( prthag-jana) can occasionally appear in these regions. At least some of the schools are quarrelling about this question. 4 The details of this picture have given rise to a great deal of controversy, and even now we can come across Buddhist monks who will, with extraordinary vivacity, debate some of the moot points.

The Abhidharma discusses the question, whether in order to possess all the supernatural forces existing in the mystic worlds it is a necessary eondiion to be born in them or whether it is possible to possess them even while living here on earth, in the realm of gross bodies. We find the following answer. 5

«There are beings living here on earth in the realm of gross bodies ( kama-dhatu ), and there are others living in the first, second and higher worlds of ethereal bodies ( prathamadhyanadi). They are all possessors of a body, of a faculty of vision and of corresponding visible

1 Ibid. III. 71.

2 Ibid. III. 98.

3 A full account of the Buddhist heavens and their denizens is given in prof. H. Ivirfel, Die Kosmographie der Inder (Bonn, 1920), p. 190 ff, but their connection with the degrees of absorption in yoga meditation is mentioned only in regard to the 4 samapattis on p. 198. Cp. also B. C. Law, Heaven and Hell (Calcutta, 1925).

4 The Vatsiputrlyas explained the fact that a person having reached in a higher world the condition of a Saint (arya) could sometimes nevertheless fall back into ordinary humanity and become again a common worldling, by the circumstance that some element of this common woTldliness ( prthagjanatva ) was left dormant in him, it had not been quite eradicated at the time when he became a Saint, cp. Ab. Kosabh. I. 40, II. 40.

5 Condensed from Ab. Kosabh. pp. 88. 14—90. 7 (B. B. XX.), cp. M. de la V. P.’s transl. pp. 93. ff.

II. YOGA objects. Is it a necessary rule that body, sight and object should all belong to the same plane of existence or are such beings possible whose sight and objects are those of another world than their body? We answer, that different combinations of each element are possible.