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 Tathagata as existing eternally (s’as’vata) or not-existing (as’as’vata) 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 Candrakirtti 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 worldly stage (sa@msara) and Nibbana, for as all appearances are non-essential, they never existed during the sa@msara so that they could not be annihilated in Nibbana.

Upani@sads and Buddhism.

The Upani@sads had discovered that the true self was ananda (bliss) [Footnote ref 1].  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 Upani@sads had asserted that the self(atman) was indestructible and eternal [Footnote ref 2].  If we are allowed

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[Footnote 1:  Tait, II.5.]

[Footnote 2:  B@rh.  IV. 5. 14.  Ka@tha V. 13.]

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to make explicit what was implicit in early Buddhism we could conceive it as holding that if there was the self it must be bliss, because it was eternal.  This causal connection has not indeed been anywhere definitely pronounced in the Upani@sads, but he who carefully reads the Upani@sads cannot but think that the reason why the Upani@sads speak of the self as bliss is that it is eternal.  But the converse statement that what was not eternal was sorrow does not appear to be emphasized clearly in the Upani@sads.  The important postulate of the Buddha is that that which is changing is sorrow, and whatever is sorrow is not self [Footnote ref 1].  The point at which Buddhism parted from the Upani@sads lies in the experiences of the self.  The Upani@sads doubtless considered