Before proceeding further, let us see what the Mahâyâna tradition says concerning this point. The tradition varies in this case as in many others. According to Beal’s Romantic History of Buddha, which is a translation of a Chinese version of the Buddhacarita (Fo pen hing ching),[139] Buddha is reported to have exclaimed this:

“Through ages past have I acquired continual merit,
That which my heart desired have I now attained,
How quickly have I arrived at the ever-constant condition,
And landed on the very shore of Nirvâna.
The sorrows and opposition of the world,
The Lord of the Kâmalokas, Mâra Pisuna,
These are unable now to affect, they are wholly destroyed;
By the power of religious merit and of wisdom are they cast away.
Let a man but persevere with unflinching resolution,
And seek Supreme Wisdom, it will not be hard to acquire it;
When once obtained, then farewell to all sorrows,
All sin and guilt are forever done away.”[140]

Viewing the significance of Buddhism in this light, it is evident that Buddha did not emphasise so much the doctrine of Nirvâna in the sense of a total abnegation of human aspirations as the abandonment of egoism and the practical regulation of our daily life in accordance with this view. Nirvâna in which all the passions noble and base are supposed to have been “blown out like a lamp” was not the most coveted object of Buddhist life. On the contrary, Buddhism advises all its followers to exercise most strenuously all their spiritual energy to attain perfect freedom from the bondage of ignorance and egoism; because that is the only way in which we can conquer the vanity of worldliness and enjoy the bliss of eternal life. The following verse from the Visuddhi Magga (XXI) practically sums up the teaching of Buddhism as far as its negative and individual phase is concerned:

“Behold how empty is the world,
Mogharâja! In thoughtfulness
Let one remove belief in self,
And pass beyond the realm of death.
The king of death will never find
The man who thus the world beholds.”[141]

Nirvâna is Positive.

It is not my intention here to investigate the historical side of this question; we are not concerned with the problem of how the followers of Buddha gradually developed the positive aspect of Nirvâna in connection with the practical application of his moral and religious teachings; nor are we engaged in tracing the process of evolution through which Buddha’s noble resolution to save all sentient beings from ignorance and misery was brought out most conspicuously by his later devotees. What I wish to state here about the positive conception of Nirvâna and its development is this: The Mahâyâna Buddhism was the first religious teaching in India that contradicted the doctrine of Nirvâna as conceived by other Hindu thinkers who saw in it a complete annihilation of being, for they thought that existence is evil, and evil is misery, and the only way to escape misery is to destroy the root of existence, which is nothing less than the total cessation of human desires and activities in Nirvânic unconsciousness. The Yoga taught self-forgetfulness in deep meditation; the Samkhya, the absolute separation of Puruṣa from Prakṛti, which means undisturbed self-contemplation; the Vedânta, absorption in the Brahma, which is the total suppression of all particulars; and thus all of them considered emancipation from human desires and aspirations a heavenly bliss, that is, Nirvâna. Metaphysically speaking, they might have been correct each in its own way, but, ethically considered, their views had little significance in our practical life and showed a sad deficiency in dealing with problems of morality.

The Buddha was keenly aware of this flaw in their doctrines. He taught, therefore, that Nirvâna does not consist in the complete stoppage of existence, but in the practise of the Eightfold Path. This moral practise leads to the unalloyed joy of Nirvâna, not as the tranquillisation of human aspirations, but as the fulfilment or unfolding of human life. The word Nirvâna in the sense of annihilation was in existence prior to Buddha, but it was he who gave a new significance to it and made it worthy of attainment by men of moral character. All the doctrinal aspects of Nirvâna are later additions or rather development made by Buddhist scholars, according to whom their arguments are solidly based on some canonical passages. Whatever the case may be, my conviction is that those who developed the positive significance of Nirvâna are more consistent with the spirit of the founder than those who emphasised another aspect of it. In the Udâna we read (IV., 9):

“He whom life torments not,
Who sorrows not at the approach of death,
If such a one is resolute and has seen Nirvâna,
In the midst of grief, he is griefless.
The tranquil-minded Bhikkhu, who has uprooted the thirst for existence,
By him the succession of births is ended,
He is born no more.”[142]

According to the Mahâyânistic conception Nirvâna is not the annihilation of the world and the putting an end to life; but it is to live in the whirlpool of birth and death and yet to be above it. It is affirmation and fulfilment, and this is done not blindly and egoistically, for Nirvâna is enlightenment. Let us see how this is.

The Mahâyânistic Conception of Nirvâna.