_Atthasalini_, p. 89.]

[Footnote 5: Prof. De la Vallae Poussin's article in the _E. R.E._ on
Nirva@na. See also _Cullavagga_, IX. i. 4; Mrs Rhys Davids's _Psalms
of the early Buddhists_, I. and II., Introduction, p. xxxvii; _Digha_,
II. 15; _Udana_, VIII.; _Sa@myutta_, III. 109.]

109

Mr Schrader, in discussing Nibbana in _Pali Text Society Journal_,
1905, says that the Buddha held that those who sought to become
identified after death with the soul of the world as infinite space
(_akasa_) or consciousness (_vinnana_) attained to a state in which
they had a corresponding feeling of infiniteness without having
really lost their individuality. This latter interpretation of
Nibbana seems to me to be very new and quite against the spirit
of the Buddhistic texts. It seems to me to be a hopeless task
to explain Nibbana in terms of worldly experience, and there
is no way in which we can better indicate it than by saying that
it is a cessation of all sorrow; the stage at which all worldly
experiences have ceased can hardly be described either as positive
or negative. Whether we exist in some form eternally or do not
exist is not a proper Buddhistic question, for it is a heresy to
think of a Tathagata as existing eternally (_s'as'vata_) or not-existing
(_as'as'vata_) or whether he is existing as well as not
existing or whether he is neither existing nor non-existing. Any
one who seeks to discuss whether Nibbana is either a positive
and eternal state or a mere state of non-existence or annihilation,
takes a view which has been discarded in Buddhism as heretical.
It is true that we in modern times are not satisfied with it, for
we want to know what it all means. But it is not possible to
give any answer since Buddhism regarded all these questions as
illegitimate.

Later Buddhistic writers like Nagarjuna and Candrakirtti
took advantage of this attitude of early Buddhism and interpreted
it as meaning the non-essential character of all existence.
Nothing existed, and therefore any question regarding the existence
or non-existence of anything would be meaningless. There
is no difference between the worldly stage (_sa@msara_) and Nibbana,
for as all appearances are non-essential, they never existed during
the sa@msara so that they could not be annihilated in Nibbana.

Upani@sads and Buddhism.

The Upani@sads had discovered that the true self was ananda
(bliss) [Footnote ref 1]. We could suppose that early Buddhism tacitly