- We come then to the word by which Buddhism expressed the end of human striving, the issue of all good. This "nirvána," confidently supposed to have been nothingness, how can it have been so to those who conceived it definitely as the eternal fact of the universe; and who affirmed positively all their lives, "nirvána is," striving with all their might to reach it, and to help other men to do the same, by all the love and sacrifice they could devote? I am persuaded that this all-reconciling home - whose depths, filled with the saints of innumerable ages, invited all hearts to the fulfilment of their best desire — better deserves the name of deity than of nonentity; of Life than of "the Void." Grant the passivity of the Oriental ideal; yet ideal it is, or it could never have roused Oriental passivity to such a movement as Buddhism. Ample testimony to the truth that man loves to affirm more than to deny; that in some form he has ever kept his intuition of God.1 1 Hints of this have not wholly failed to strike such writers as Hardwick, who, though seeking for contrasts with what he regards as revelations peculiar to Christianity, admits that northern Buddhism "has retained the lingering idea of some great Being, superior to the highest created entities and the source of ultimate felicity. The very Buddha who persisted in ignoring the Creator was sometimes raised to this dignity, while Nirvâna itself was changed by popular imagination into a paradise." And Müller, a more impartial scholar, who believes that "the feeling of dependence, which is the life-spring of religion, was completely numbed in the early Buddhist metaphysicians," grants that it "returned with increased warmth." Hardwick, II. 95. Müller's Chips, I. 284. NIRVANA. WE may illustrate by this term the practical im possibility of pure negation. Etymology Nirvana a state. at least fails to bear out the confident assurances positive of Burnouf, Koeppen, Weber, and others, that its "extinction of the lamp of existence" means absolute annihilation. Nirvâna is from nir, separation from, and vd, wind.1 The simplest and most natural meaning seems to be, not "blown out," but "no more waving," as from presence of wind, no more restlessness and change. It is familiar to Brahmanical literature as synonymous with words signifying release, emancipation, the highest good. It is similarly defined by the intense longings of devotees, who seek nirvâna as "the further shore;" "the port beyond the ocean of pain;" "the medicine that cures all disease;" "the water that quenches all thirst;" "complete fruition and salvation;"" the city reached by the path of universal knowledge, blessedness, peace."3 Every word that can mean beatitude as a positive state comes to hand 1 Burnouf's Sansk. Dict. Müller, Chips, I. 282. He gives the word the meaning blown out, following Hindu lexicographers. Yet he does not find it used in the sense of annihilation in the older parts of the Buddhist scriptures. Introd. to Dhammapada. Colebrooke defines it as "profound calm." Essays, I. 402. Koeppen, I. 304; Burnouf, 442. in description of this apparent negation. Figurative as they are, these expressions imply that what they describe was an object of supreme desire. It has inspired the imagination; it has allured the affections; it has aroused the moral sense; it has stimulated to incessant watch over the passions. It has translated itself into psalms; it has flowed into mythology; it has planted, and builded, and civilized, in missions that are miracles of zeal and toil. Philosophical treatises distinctly aver that, "to him who attains it, nirvana exists." Indubitably so, we should say, or why should he seek to attain it? Why are millions travelling its salvation? of the Dhamma paths," that shine with the hope of But we can go back to more positive testimony. Testimony The Dhammapada, or "Path of Virtue," is perhaps the oldest record of Buddhist faith. pada. As such it is believed to have come to the hands of Buddhaghosha, a Brahman convert of great learning, in the fifth century, in Ceylon. In his translation of the oldest commentaries on the law, out of Singhalese into Pâli, its sentences are referred directly to Gotama Buddha himself; and the circumstances under which they were uttered given in detail. They formed part of an ancient collection, transmitted, it was believed, by the son of the great Buddhist king, Aśoka, after being established as genuine by the famous council held (B.c. 246) at Pâtaliputra. They are referred to in the monumental inscriptions left by that monarch, the most trustworthy data in Hindu history. The style is plain and direct, the morality free from tech 1 Milinda Praśna, quoted by Müller, Chips, I. 289. D'Alwis (p. 29) regards it as a collection of sentences from the Pitakas, which are compilations, in the main (page 17-18), of Gotama's discourses, by his disciples. |