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The Path Becomes a Non-path
405
liberated ascetic.48 Sometimes it is not specifically named, but allusion to the boundless happiness of the siddhas allows it to be understood.49 When a text ventures to describe the happiness which reigns in what is called nirvāṇapura, the city of nirvāṇa,50 it uses once again words that impart the idea of the infinite, the unattainable, to indicate thus that these words are very inadequate and that one must "break the sense-barrier", if one is to have even a merely approximative notion of this incomprehensible happiness. It is said also that, like a merchant, the muni, on arrival in this city, exchanges the Three Jewels for this happiness which is "endless, untouched by affliction, natural to the state of the siddha, incomparable and imperishable."51
It is no easier to convey an idea of the siddha than of nirvāṇa, even if this word has been, is, and will be used continuously over the centuries, for the siddha is the parameșthin par excellence, one whose perfection is always extolled to gain encouragement to persevere in imitation of him and, equally, because the utterance of the word has always a beneficial and salutary effect. Siddha means: perfect, accomplished and, thence, he who has reached the heights of perfection, the eternally blessed. The Acārānga-sūtra has perhaps the most fitting approach, when it describes the ineffable reality of the paramātman state by a negative approach, that of apophatism, affirming that the siddha is totally beyond anything that men know; he is:
.neither long, nor small, nor round, nor triangular, nor quadrangular, nor circular, neither black, nor blue, nor red, nor yellow, nor white; nor sweet-smelling nor bad-smelling, nor
48 Ibid., XXIX, 41; 58; 73; XXXV, 21.
49 Ibid., XXIX, 38; XXXVI, 21.
50 Cf. DhyanSat 60.
Si tattha ya tirayaņaviņiogamaiyamegaṁtiyaṁ nirābāham
sábhāviyaṁ niruvamaṁ jaha sokkhaṁ akkhyaṁ uveřti. DhyanSat 61.
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