and transitory; 2nd. That all existence is the result of passion; 3rd. That,
therefore, the extinction of passion is the one means of escape from existence
and from the misery necessarily attendant upon it; 4th. That all obstacles to this
existence must be swept away.
But what is meant by existence? That separation from the general Being of the
world which is involved in individual life, and in the opposition of the subject
which thinks, and the object which is thought about. And what is meant by its
extinction? Not so much annihilation, as the becoming one with nature, wherein
that form of consciousness which separates subject and object is set aside. This
extinction Buddha called Nirvâna, or “the blowing out of the lamp;” it does not
necessarily mean the annihilation of consciousness altogether, but only of a
finite form of it, which may be as the light of a lamp compared with the light of
day.
Buddha’s doctrine has been stigmatised as Atheism and Nihilism, and was
unquestionably liable on its metaphysical side to both charges. It was Atheistic,
not because it denied, for it simply ignored, the existence of such gods as Indra
and Brahma, but because, like the Sankhya philosophy, it admitted but one
subjective Self, and considered creation as an illusion of that Self, imaging itself
for a while in the mirror of Nature. If there were no reality in nature, there would
be no real Creator.
Says Max Müller,[10] stating with his usual clearness a problem which has
perplexed most students of the history of religion: “How a religion which taught
the annihilation of all existence, of all thought, of all individuality and
personality, as the highest object of all endeavours, could have laid hold of the
minds of millions of human beings, and how at the same time, by enforcing the
duties of morality, justice, kindness, and self-sacrifice, it could have exercised a
decided beneficial influence, not only on the natives of India, but on the lowest
barbarians of Central Asia, is one of the riddles which no philosophy yet has
been able to solve. The morality which it teaches is not a morality of expediency
and rewards. Virtue is not enjoined because it necessarily leads to happiness. No;
virtue is to be practised, but happiness is to be shunned, and the only reward for
virtue is, that it subdues the passions, and thus prepares the human mind for that
knowledge which is to end in complete annihilation.”
Probably no religious system has ever attained a wide-spread influence over the
minds of men which has held out so few of those inducements most alluring to
human nature. The idea of complete annihilation might recommend itself to a