. With the cessation of desire all
ignorance, antipathy and grasping cease and consequently there
is nothing which can determine rebirth. An arhat may suffer the
effects of the deeds done by him in some previous birth just as
Moggallana did, but in spite of the remnants of his past karma
an arhat was an emancipated man on account of the cessation of
his desire [Footnote ref 1].

Kammas are said to be of three kinds, of body, speech and
mind (_kayika_, _vacika_ and _manasika_). The root of this kamma
is however volition (_cetana_) and the states associated with it
[Footnote ref 2]. If a man wishing to kill animals goes out into
the forest in search of them, but cannot get any of them there
even after a long search, his misconduct is not a bodily one, for
he could not actually commit the deed with his body. So if he gives
an order for committing a similar misdeed, and if it is not actually
carried out with the body, it would be a misdeed by speech (_vacika_)
and not by the body. But the merest bad thought or ill will alone whether
carried into effect or not would be a kamma of the mind (_manasika_)
[Footnote ref 3]. But the mental kamma must be present as the root of
all bodily and vocal kammas, for if this is absent, as in the case
of an arhat, there cannot be any kammas at all for him.

Kammas are divided from the point of view of effects into
four classes, viz. (1) those which are bad and produce impurity,
(2) those which are good and productive of purity, (3) those
which are partly good and partly bad and thus productive of
both purity and impurity, (4) those which are neither good nor
bad and productive neither of purity nor of impurity, but which
contribute to the destruction of kammas [Footnote ref 4].

Final extinction of sorrow (_nibbana_) takes place as the natural
result of the destruction of desires. Scholars of Buddhism have
tried to discover the meaning of this ultimate happening, and
various interpretations have been offered. Professor De la Vallee
Poussin has pointed out that in the Pali texts Nibbana has
sometimes been represented as a happy state, as pure annihilation,
as an inconceivable existence or as a changeless state [Footnote ref 5].

__________________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: See _Kathavatthu_ and Warren's _Buddhism in Translations_, pp,
221 ff.]

[Footnote 2: _Atthasalini_, p. 88.]

[Footnote 3: See _Atthasalini_, p. 90.]

[Footnote 4: See