The questions in regard to Buddha’s view of soul, immortality, and religion are answered to our mind as clearly in the following passages as Buddha desired they should be.  ’Unwisely does one consider:  “Have I existed in ages past ... shall I exist in ages yet to be, do I exist at all, am I, how am I?  This is a being, whence is it come, whither will it go?” Consideration such as this is walking in the jungle of delusion.  These are the things one should consider:  “This is suffering, this is the origin of suffering, this is the cessation of suffering, this is the way that leads to the cessation of suffering.”  From him that considers thus his fetters fall away’ (Sabb[=a]sava).  In the Vang[=i]sa-sutta Buddha is asked directly:  “Has this good man’s life been vain to him, has he been extinguished, or is he still left with some elements of existence; and how was he liberated?” and he replies:  “He has cut off desire for name and form in this world.  He has crossed completely the stream of birth and death.”  In the Salla-sutta it is said:  “Without cause and unknown is the life of mortals in this world, troubled, brief, combined with pain....  As earthen vessels made by the potter end in being broken, so is the life of mortals.”  One should compare the still stronger image, which gives the very name of nir-v[=a]na (’blowing out’) in the Upas[=i]vam[=a]navapucch[=a]:  “As a flame blown about by wind goes out and cannot be reckoned as existing, so a sage delivered from name and body disappears, and cannot be reckoned as existing.”  To this Upas[=i]va replies:  “But has he only disappeared, or does he not exist, or is he only free from sickness?” To which Buddha:  “For him there is no form, and that by which they say he is exists for him no longer.”  One would think that this were plain enough.

Yet must one always remember that this is the Arhat’s death, the death of him that has perfected himself.[49] Buddha, like the Brahmans, taught hell for the bad, and re-birth for them that were not perfected.  So in the Kok[=a]liya-sutta a list of hells is given, and an estimate is made of the duration of the sinner’s suffering in them.  Here, as if in a Brahman code, is it taught that ’he who lies goes to hell,’ etc.  Even the names of the Brahmanic hells are taken over into the Buddhist system, and several of those in Manu’s list of hells are found here.

On the other hand, Buddha teaches, if one may trust tradition, that a good man may go to heaven.  ’On the dissolution of the body after death the well-doer is re-born in some happy state in heaven’ (Mah[=a]parinibb[=a]na, i. 24).[50] This, like hell, is a temporary state, of course, before re-birth begins again on earth.  In fact, Buddhist and Brahmanic pantheists agree in their attitude toward the respective questions of hell, heaven, and karma.  It is only the emancipated Arhat that goes to Nirv[=a]na.[51]