The following account of NIRVANA is taken from the Pali Sacred Books:—­

   “Again the king of Sagal said to Nagasena:  ’Is the joy of Nirvana
   unmixed, or is it associated with sorrow?’ The priest replied that it
   is unmixed satisfaction, entirely free from sorrow.

“Again the king of Sagal said to Nagasena:  ’Is Nirvana in the east, west, south, or north; above or below?  Is there such a place as Nirvana?  If so, where is it?’ Nagasena:  ’Neither in the east, south, west, nor north, neither in the sky above, nor in the earth below, nor in any of the infinite sakwalas, is there such a place as Nirvana.’  Milinda:  ’Then if Nirvana have no locality, there can be no such thing; and when it is said that any one attains Nirvana, the declaration is false.’  Nagasena:  ’There is no such place as Nirvana, and yet it exists; the priest who seeks it in the right manner will attain it.’  ‘When Nirvana is attained, is there such a place?’ Nagasena:  ’When a priest attains Nirvana there is such a place.’  Milinda:  ’Where is that place?’ Nagasena:  ’Wherever the precepts can be observed; it may be anywhere; just as he who has two eyes can see the sky from any or all places; or as all places may have an eastern side.’”

The Buddhist asserts Nirvana as the object of all his hope, yet, if you ask him what it is, may reply, “Nothing.”  But this cannot mean that the highest good of man is annihilation.  No pessimism could be more extreme than such a doctrine.  Such a belief is not in accordance with human nature.  Tennyson is wiser when he writes:—­

    “Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
    No life that breathes with human breath
    Has ever truly longed for death.

    “’T is LIFE, whereof our nerves are scant,
    O life, not death, for which we pant;
    More life, and fuller, that I want.”

The Buddhist, when he says that Nirvana is nothing, means simply that it is no thing; that it is nothing to our present conceptions; that it is the opposite of all we know, the contradiction, of what we call life now, a state so sublime, so wholly different from anything we know or can know now, that it is the same thing as nothing to us.  All present life is change; that is permanence:  all present life is going up and down; that is stability:  all present life is the life of sense; that is spirit.

The Buddhist denies God in the same way.  He is the unknowable.  He is the impossible to be conceived of.

“Who shall name Him And dare to say, ‘I believe in Him’?  Who shall deny Him, And venture to affirm, ‘I believe in Him not?’"[106]

To the Buddhist, in short, the element of time and the finite is all, as to the Brahman the element of eternity is all.  It is the most absolute contradiction of Brahmanism which we can conceive.

It seems impossible for the Eastern mind to hold at the same time the two conceptions of God and nature, the infinite and the finite, eternity and time.  The Brahmaus accept the reality of God, the infinite and the eternal, and omit the reality of the finite, of nature, history, time, and the world.  The Buddhist accepts the last, and ignores the first.