BUDDHISM^ AND '' THE LIGHT OP ASIA." 163 



Yet in all the Buddhist books we have no clear idea of the 

 hereafter of the true disciple. That hereafter was, of course, 

 Nirvana. But what was the Nirvana? It is spoken of 

 under many different aspects, not merely as an emancipa- 

 tion from the doom of re-birth, but as the extinction of 

 suffering, as bliss, as immortality. Certainly it never meant 

 in Buddha's mouth annihilation of being, though it may 

 have meant annihilation of the process of re-births. But it 

 is by no means certain that it originally meant annihilation 

 in any sense. It is true that the idea of annihilation of 

 existence had been discussed quite early in the history of 

 Buddhism ; but this is what Buddha himself is reported to 

 have said about it, " In which way is it, that one speaking 

 truly could say of me ' The Samana Gotama maintains 

 annihilation, and in this doctrine he trains his disciples ? ' 

 I proclaim the annihilation of lust, of ill-will, of delusion ; I 

 proclaim the annihilation of the manifold conditions of heart, 

 which are evil and not good" {Mahdvagga, vi, 31, 7). The 

 fact seems to be that much of Buddha's teaching was often 

 misunderstood and misapplied; and the result probably 

 appears in even the most ancient of the Buddhist wi-itings, 

 in those intricate and perplexing statements as to causation 

 and existence, the nature of tlie self, and the nature of the 

 world. We are forced upon the question as to whether we 

 find in many of the more puzzling passages in even the 

 most authentic and ancient books, the actual original teach- 

 ings of Buddha, or the results of a mystical Buddhism, that 

 may have arisen much in the same way that Christian 

 mysticism arose in the Middle Ages? The character of 

 mysticism indicates that it is everywhere, to a great degree, if 

 not entirely, the result of various natural tendencies of the 

 human mind, especially the tendency to magnify the im- 

 portance and extent of particular lines of thought, until they 

 are forced out of due proportion to the other parts of the 

 system to which they belong, and so throw the whole 

 machinery out of geai', thus frustrating its real functions. 

 The perplexities of Buddhist ontology naturally raise the 

 very important question as to whether they all had their 

 origin in Buddha's own mind, or in the minds of his many 

 biographers and commentators. The consciousness of the 

 difficulty of explaining many of the Buddhist propositions 

 that are laid down in the books was evidently experienced 

 by the wi-iters themselves. Thus the writer of the Maha- 

 vagga describes one of Buddha's early meditations in these 



