a paradise, to be regained by the pious
worshipper of Buddha. But was this the meaning of Buddha himself? In
his 'Four Verities' he does not, indeed, define Nirva_n_a, except by
cessation of all pain; but when he traces the cause of pain, and
teaches the means of destroying not only pain itself, but the cause of
pain, we shall see that his Nirva_n_a assumes a very different
meaning. His 'Four Verities' are very simple. The first asserts the
existence of pain; the second asserts that the cause of pain lies in
sin; the third asserts that pain may cease by Nirva_n_a; the fourth
shows the way that leads to Nirva_n_a. This way to Nirva_n_a consists
in eight things--right faith (orthodoxy), right judgment (logic),
right language (veracity), right purpose (honesty), right practice
(religious life), right obedience (lawful life), right memory, and
right meditation. All these precepts might be understood as part of a
simply moral code, closing with a kind of mystic meditation on the
highest object of thought, and with a yearning after deliverance from
all worldly ties. Similar systems have prevailed in many parts of the
world, without denying the existence of an absolute Being, or of a
something towards which the human mind tends, in which it is absorbed
or even annihilated. Awful as such a mysticism may appear, yet it
leaves still something that exists, it acknowledges a feeling of
dependence in man. It knows of a first cause, though it may have
nothing to predicate of it except that it is [Greek: to kinoun
akineton]. A return is possible from that desert. The first cause may
be called to life again. It may take the names of Creator, Preserver,
Ruler; and when the simplicity and helplessness of the child have
re-entered the heart of man, the name of father will come back to the
lips which had uttered in vain all the names of a philosophical
despair. But from the Nirva_n_a of the Buddhist metaphysician there is
no return. He starts from the idea that the highest object is to
escape pain. Life in his eyes is nothing but misery; birth the cause
of all evil, from which even death cannot deliver him, because he
believes in an eternal cycle of existence, or in transmigration. There
is no deliverance from evil, except by breaking through the prison
walls, not only of life, but of existence, and by extirpating the last
cause of existence. What, then, is the cause of existence? The cause
of existence, says the Buddhist metaphysician, is