to this class are:  Is the world eternal or not:  Is the world infinite or not:  Is the soul[511] the same as the body or different from it?  It is categorically asserted that none of these questions admit of a reply:  thus it is not right to say that (a) the saint exists after death, (b) or that he does not exist, (c) or that he both does and does not exist, (d) or that he neither exists nor does not exist.  The Buddha’s teaching about these problems is stated with great clearness in a Sutta named after Malunkyaputta[512], an enquirer who visits him and after enumerating them says frankly that he is dissatisfied because the Buddha will not answer them.  “If the Lord answers them, I will lead a religious life under him, but if he does not answer them, I will give up religion and return to the world.  But if the Lord does not know, then the straightforward thing is to say, I do not know.”  This is plain speaking, almost discourtesy.  The Buddha’s reply is equally plain, but unyielding.  “Have I said to you, come and be my disciple and I will teach you whether the world is eternal or not, infinite or not:  whether the soul is identical with the body, or separate, whether the saint exists after death or not?” “No, Lord.”  “Now suppose a man were wounded by a poisoned arrow and his friends called in a physician to dress his wound.  What if the man were to say, I shall not have my wound treated until I know what was the caste, the family, the dwelling-place, the complexion and stature of the man who wounded me; nor shall I let the arrow be drawn out until I know what is the exact shape of the arrow and bow, and what were the animals and plants which supplied the feathers, leather, shaft and string.  The man would never learn all that, because he would die first.”  “Therefore” is the conclusion, “hold what I have determined as determined and what I have not determined, as not determined.”

This sutta may be taken in connection with passages asserting that the Buddha knows more than he tells his disciples.  The result seems to be that there are certain questions which the human mind and human language had better leave alone because we are incapable of taking or expressing a view sufficiently large to be correct, but that the Buddha has a more than human knowledge which he does not impart because it is not profitable and overstrains the faculties, just as it is no part of a cure that the patient should make an exhaustive study of his disease.

With reference to the special question of the existence of the saint after death, the story of Yamaka[513] is important.  He maintained that a monk in whom evil is destroyed (khinasavo) is annihilated when he dies, and does not exist.  This was considered a grave heresy and refuted by Sariputta who argues that even in this life the nature of a saint passes understanding because he is neither all the skandhas taken together nor yet one or more of them.