In the Samyutta-Nikaya[517] the Buddha’s statement that the saint after death is deep and immeasurable like the ocean is expanded by significant illustration of the mathematician’s inability to number the sand or express the sea in terms of liquid measure.  It is in fact implied that if we cannot say he is, this is only because that word cannot properly be applied to the infinite, innumerable and immeasurable.

The point which is clearest in the Buddha’s treatment of this question is that whatever his disciples may have thought, he did not himself consider it of importance for true religion.  Speculation on such points may be interesting to the intellect but is not edifying.  It is a jungle where the traveller wanders without advancing, and a puppet-show, a vain worldly amusement which wears a false appearance of religion because it is diverting itself with quasi-religious problems.  What is the state of the saint after death, is not as people vainly suppose a question parallel to, am I going to heaven or hell, what shall I do to be saved?  To those questions the Buddha gives but one answer in terms of human language and human thought, namely, attain to nirvana and arhatship on this side of death, if possible in your present existence; if not now, then in the future good existences which you can fashion for yourself.  What lies beyond is impracticable as a goal, unprofitable as a subject of speculation.  We shall probably not be transgressing the limits of Gotama’s thought if we add that those who are not arhats are bound to approach the question with misconception and it is a necessary part of an Arhat’s training to get rid of the idea “I am[518].”  The state of a Saint after death cannot be legitimately described in language which suggests that it is a fuller and deeper mode of life[519].  Yet it is clear that nearly all who dispute about it wish to make out that it is a state they could somehow regard with active satisfaction.  In technical language they are infected with aruparago, or desire for life in a formless world, and this is the seventh of the ten fetters, all of which must be broken before arhatship is attained.  I imagine that those modern sects, such as the Zen in Japan, which hold that the deepest mysteries of the faith cannot be communicated in words but somehow grow clear in meditation are not far from the master’s teaching, though to the best of my belief no passage has been produced from the Pitakas stating that an arahat has special knowledge about the avyakatani or undetermined questions.

Almost all who treat of nirvana after death try to make the Buddha say, is or is not.  That is what he refused to do.  We still want a plain answer to a plain question and insist that he really means either that the saint is annihilated or enters on an infinite existence.  But the true analogues to this question are the other insoluble questions, for instance, is the world infinite or finite in space?  This is in form a simple physical problem, yet it