erly
be applied to the infinite, innumerable and immeasurable.

The point which is clearest in the Buddha's treatment of this question
is that whatever his disciples may have thought, he did not himself
consider it of importance for true religion. Speculation on such points
may be interesting to the intellect but is not edifying. It is a jungle
where the traveller wanders without advancing, and a puppet-show, a vain
worldly amusement which wears a false appearance of religion because it
is diverting itself with quasi-religious problems. What is the state of
the saint after death, is not as people vainly suppose a question
parallel to, am I going to heaven or hell, what shall I do to be saved?
To those questions the Buddha gives but one answer in terms of human
language and human thought, namely, attain to nirvana and arhatship on
this side of death, if possible in your present existence; if not now,
then in the future good existences which you can fashion for yourself.
What lies beyond is impracticable as a goal, unprofitable as a subject
of speculation. We shall probably not be transgressing the limits of
Gotama's thought if we add that those who are not arhats are bound to
approach the question with misconception and it is a necessary part of
an Arhat's training to get rid of the idea "I am[518]." The state of a
Saint after death cannot be legitimately described in language which
suggests that it is a fuller and deeper mode of life[519]. Yet it is
clear that nearly all who dispute about it wish to make out that it is a
state they could somehow regard with active satisfaction. In technical
language they are infected with aruparago, or desire for life in a
formless world, and this is the seventh of the ten fetters, all of which
must be broken before arhatship is attained. I imagine that those modern
sects, such as the Zen in Japan, which hold that the deepest mysteries
of the faith cannot be communicated in words but somehow grow clear in
meditation are not far from the master's teaching, though to the best of
my belief no passage has been produced from the Pitakas stating that an
arahat has special knowledge about the avyakatani or undetermined
questions.

Almost all who treat of nirvana after death try to make the Buddha say,
is or is not. That is what he refused to do. We still want a plain
answer to a plain question and insist that he really means either that
the saint is annihilated or enters on an infinite existe