[275] Hibbert Lectures (1881), pp. 31, 206. Cf. Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), p. 321.
[276] But this, as we have just seen, is not the Buddhism of the Buddhist world in general. The masses in Buddhist lands have never accepted the doctrine of Nirvana in the sense of extinction of existence. The following conversation between Moncure Conway and a Singhalese priest discloses the meaning of the term to an orthodox Buddhist of Ceylon: “I asked, ‘Have those who are in Nirvana any consciousness?’ I was then informed that there is no Singhalese word for consciousness. Sumangala said, ‘To reach Nirvana is to be no more.’ I pointed to a stone step and said, ‘One is there only as that stone is here?’ ‘Not so much,’ answered the priest; ‘for the stone is actually here, but in Nirvana there is no existence at all’” (My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East (1906), p. 134).
[277] These eight requirements are often condensed into four, and then the formula is called the fourfold path to deliverance.
[278] Cf. Oldenberg, Buddha (1882), p. 211; Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), p. 305.
[279] There is in this teaching respecting desirelessness an apparent inconsistency, for with all other desires suppressed, there remains the desire for Nirvana. But the difficulty here is only apparent. A Buddhist priest, questioned respecting this, replied as follows: “The desire for Nirvana escapes from the mesh that entangles all other desires, because it is not desire for any object at all” (Conway, My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East (1906), p. 134). But all other desires aside from this desire for Nirvana are in a sense sins of covetousness. And this is the cardinal sin in the view of the true Buddhist, for covetousness “is a strong desire for something, and all desire is a hindrance in one’s way to Nirvana.”
[280] This teaching that mental illumination comes through contemplation is the doctrine in general of the religious and moral teachers of the East, and of all mystics. It differs fundamentally from the scientific view, which makes observation and study the means of enlightenment.
[281] Buddhism limits transmigration to the animal creation; Brahmanism, it will be recalled, supposes the soul to transmigrate into vegetable as well as into animal forms.
[282] “To be a true Buddhist, one must renounce, as lust, all desire of evil, which brings evil; and must live without other hope than that of extinguishing all desire and passion, believing that in so doing he will at death be annihilated.”—Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), p. 564.
[283] Dhammapada, vii. 90–99.
[284] But—and differing in this from Dr. Hopkins—Professor Rhys Davids makes this perfection which results in annihilation to consist not in the extinction of every desire, but only of craving desire and evil passions.