History of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Year: 1922
Total Pages: 2517
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 125 MB

Page 126

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Nibbana
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 (ākāsa) or consciousness (viññāna) attained to a state in which they had a corresponding feeling of infiniteness without having really lost their individuality. This latter interpretation of Nibbāna 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 Tathāgata as existing eternally (sāśvata) or notexisting (aśāśvata) 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 Candrakīrtti 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 wordly stage (samsara) and Nibbāna, for as all appearances are non-essential, they never existed during the samsara so that they could not be annihilated in Nibbāna.
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Upanisads and Buddhism.
The Upanisads had discovered that the true self was ānanda (bliss). We could suppose that early Buddhism tacitly presupposes some such idea. It was probably thought that if there was the self (atta) it must be bliss. The Upaniṣads had asserted that the self (atman) was indestructible and eternal. If we are allowed 2 Brh. IV. 5. 14. Katha. V. 13.
1 Tait. II. 5.