nce. But the
true analogues to this question are the other insoluble questions, for
instance, is the world infinite or finite in space? This is in form a
simple physical problem, yet it is impossible for the mind to conceive
either an infinite world or a world stopping abruptly with not even
space beyond. A common answer to this antinomy is that the mind is
attempting to deal with a subject with which it is incompetent to deal,
that the question is wrongly formulated and that every answer to it thus
formulated must be wrong. The way of truth lies in first finding the
true question. The real difficulty of the Buddha's teaching, though it
does not stimulate curiosity so much as the question of life after
death, is the nature and being of the saint in this life before death,
raised in the argument with Yamaka[520].

Another reason for not pressing the Buddha's language in either
direction is that, if he had wished to preach in the subtlest form
either infinite life or annihilation, he would have found minds
accustomed to the ideas and a vocabulary ready for his use. If he had
wished to indicate any form of absorption into a universal soul, or the
acquisition by the individual self of the knowledge that it is identical
with the universal self, he could easily have done so. But he studiously
avoided saying anything of the kind. He teaches that all existence
involves suffering and he preaches escape from it. After that escape the
words being and not being no longer apply, and the reason why some
people adopt the false idea of annihilation is because they have
commenced by adopting the false alternative of either annihilation or an
eternal prolongation of this life. A man makes[521] himself miserable
because he thinks he has lost something or that there is something which
he cannot get. But if he does not think he has lost something or is
deprived of something he might have, then he does not feel miserable.
Similarly, a man holds the erroneous opinion, "This world is the self,
or soul and I shall become it after death and be eternal, and
unchanging." Then he hears the preaching of a Buddha and he thinks "I
shall be annihilated, I shall not exist any more," and he feels
miserable. But if a man does not hold this doctrine that the soul is
identical with the universe and will exist eternally--which is just
complete full-blown folly[522]--and then hears the preaching of a Buddha
it does not occur to him to think that he will be an