the footsteps of gautama
TRANSCRIPT
APPENDIX
BUDDHISM
A lecture by Jorge Luis Borges
The subject today will be Buddhism. I’m not going into the long story that
began two thousand five hundred years ago in Benares, when a prince of
Nepal – Siddharta or Gautama – who had become Buddha, spun the wheel
of the law, proclaimed the four noble truths and the eightfold path. I will
speak of the essential in this religion, the most prevalent in the world. The
elements of Buddhism have been preserved since the fifth century before
Christ: that is, since the epoch of Heraclites, of Pythagoras, of Xenon, until
our times when Dr. Suzuki expounds it in Japan. The elements are the
same. Now the religion is encrusted with mythology, astronomy, strange
beliefs, magic, but because the subject is complex, I will limit myself to
what the various sects have in common. They may correspond to Hinayana
or the small vehicle. Let us first consider the longevity of Buddhism.
This longevity can be explained for historical reasons, but such reasons are
fortuitous or, rather, they are debatable, fallible. I think there are two
fundamental causes. The first is Buddhism’s tolerance. That strange
tolerance does not correspond, as is the case with other religions, to distinct
epochs: Buddhism was always tolerant.
It has never had recourse to steel or fire, has never thought that steel or fire
were persuasive. When Asoka, emperor of China, became a Buddhist, he
didn’t try to impose his new religion on anybody. A good Buddhist can be
Lutheran, or Methodist, or Calvinist, or Sintoist, or Taoist, or Catholic; he
can be a proselyte to Islam or to Judaism, with complete freedom. But it is
not permissible for a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim to be a Buddhist.
Buddhism’s tolerance isn’t a weakness, but belongs to its nature. Buddhism
was, above all, what we can call a yoga. What is the word yoga? It is the
same word that we use when we say yugo [Spanish for yoke], and which
has it origin in the Latin yugu. A yoke, a discipline which a person imposes
on himself. Then, if we understand what Buddha preached in that first
sermon in the Park of Gazelles in Benares two thousand five hundred years
ago, we will have understood Buddhism. Except that it isn’t a question of
understanding, it’s a question of feeling it deeply, of feeling it in body and
soul; except, also, that Buddhism doesn’t admit the reality of body not of
the soul. I will try to explain that.
Furthermore, there is another reason. Buddhism demands much of our
faith. This is natural, for every religion is an act of faith. Just as one’s
country is an act of faith. What is it, I have often been asked, to be
Argentine? To be Argentine is to feel that we are Argentines. What is it to
be Buddhist? To be Buddhist is, not to understand, for that can be
accomplished in a few minutes, but to feel the four noble truths and the
eightfold path. Let’s not go into the twists and turns of the eightfold path,
for this number obeys the Hindu habit of dividing and sub-dividing, but
into the four noble truths.
There is, furthermore, the legend of Buddha. We may disbelieve this
legend. I have a Japanese friend, a Zen Buddhist, with whom I have had
long and friendly arguments. I told him that I believed in the historic truth
of Buddha. I believed and I believe that two thousand five hundred years
ago there was a Nepalese prince called Siddharta or Gautama who became
the Buddha, that is, the Awoken, the Lucid One – as opposed to us who are
asleep or who are dreaming this long dream which is life. I remember one
of Joyce’s phrases: “History is a nightmare from which I want to awake.”
Well then, Siddharta, at thirty years of age, awoke and became Buddha.
I argued with that friend who was a Buddhist (I’m not sure that I’m a
Christian and am sure that I’m not a Buddhist) and I said to him: “Why not
believe in Prince Siddharta, who was born in Kapilovastu five hundred
years before the Christian era?” He replied: “Because it’s of no importance;
what’s important is to believe in the Doctrine”. He added, I think with more
ingenuity than truth, that to believe in the historical existence of Buddha or
to be interested in it would be like confusing the study of mathematics with
the biography of Pythagoras or Newton. One of the subjects of meditation
which the monks in the monasteries of Japan and China practice is to doubt
the existence of Buddha. It is one of the doubts they must assume in order
to reach the truth.
The other religions demand much more credulity on our part. If we are
Christians we must believe that one of the three persons of the Divinity
condescended to become a man and was crucified in Judea. If we are
Muslims we must believe that there is no other god than God and that
Mohammad is his apostle. We can be good Buddhists and deny that
Buddha existed. Or, rather, we may think, we must think that our belief in
history isn’t important: what is important is to believe in the Doctrine.
Nevertheless, the legend of Buddha is so beautiful that we cannot help but
refer to it.
The French have paid special attention to the study of the legend of
Buddha. Their argument is this: the biography of Buddha is what happened
to one man only over a brief span of time. It could have been this way or
some other. The legend of Buddha, on the other hand, has illuminated and
continues to illuminate millions of people. It is the legend that has inspired
countless paintings, sculptures and poems. Buddhism, in addition to being a
religion, is a mythology, a cosmology, a metaphysical system, or, rather, a
series of metaphysical systems which disagree and are disputable.
The legend of Buddha is illuminating and does not impose itself. In Japan
they insist on the non-historicity of Buddha. But not on the Doctrine. The
legend begins in heaven. There is someone in heaven who for centuries and
centuries, we could literally say for an infinite number of centuries, has
been perfecting himself until he understands that in his next incarnation he
will be the Buddha.
He chooses the continent on which he is to be born. According to Buddhist
cosmogony the world is divided into four triangular continents and in the
center is a mountain of gold: Mount Meru. He will be born in the one
which corresponds to India. He chooses the century in which he will be
born; he chooses the cast, he chooses the mother. Now for the earthly part
of the legend. There is a queen, Maya. Maya means illusion. The queen has
a dream that runs the risk of seeming outlandish to us, but it isn’t for the
Hindus.
Married to King Suddhodana, she dreamed that a white elephant with six
tusks, which roamed the mountains of gold, entered into her left side
without causing her pain. She awakens; the king convenes his astrologers
and they explain to him that the queen will give birth to a son who could be
the emperor of the world or who could be the Buddha, the Awakened, the
Lucid One, the being destined to save all men. Foreseeably, the king
chooses the first destiny: he wants his son to be the emperor of the world.
Let’s go back to the detail about the elephant with six white tusks.
Oldemberg reminds us that the elephant in India is a domestic, everyday
animal. The color white is always a symbol of innocence. Why six tusks?
We must remember (we’ll have to resort to history now and then) that the
number six, which for us is arbitrary and somehow uncomfortable (because
we prefer three or seven), isn’t in India, where they believe that there are
six dimensions in space: up, down, back, forward, right, left. An elephant
with six tusks is not a peculiarity for Hindus.
The king summons the magicians and the queen gives birth without pain. A
fig tree inclines its branches to help her. The child is born on its feet and
takes four steps: to the North, to the South, to the East and to the West, and
says with a lion’s voice: “I am the incomparable; this will be my last birth.”
Hindus believe in an infinite number of previous births. The prince grows
up, he is the best archer, the best horseman, the best swimmer, the best
athlete, the best calligrapher, he confounds all the doctors (here we can
think of Christ and the doctors). At sixteen years of age he marries.
The father knows – the astrologers told him – that his son runs the risk of
being the Buddha, the man who will save all others if he knows four facts,
which are: old age, sickness, death and asceticism. He secludes his son in
the palace, provides him with a harem. (I won’t mention the number of
women because it’s an obvious Hindu exaggeration. But why not say it:
they were eighty-four thousand.)
The prince lives a happy life; he doesn’t know that there is suffering in the
world, because they hide old age, sickness and death from him. On the
predestined day he leaves in his coach through one of the four gates of the
rectangular palace. Let’s say the North gate. He covers a distance and sees
a being different from all those he had seen till then. He is stooped,
wrinkled, has no hair. He can barely walk leaning on a cane. The prince
asks who that man is, if it is a man. The coachman answers that he is an old
man and that we will all be that man if we go on living.
The prince returns to the palace, perturbed. After six days he leaves again
through the South gate. He sees an even stranger man in a ditch, with the
paleness of a leper and an emaciated face. He asks who that man is, if it is a
man. He is sick, the coachman answers; we will all be that man if we go on
living.
The prince, very worried now, returns to the palace. Six days later he
leaves again and sees a man who seems to be asleep, but whose color is not
of this life. Other men are carrying that man. He asks who he is. The
coachman tells him that he is dead and that we will all be that dead man if
we live long enough.
The prince is desolate. Three horrible truths have been revealed to him: the
truth of old age, the truth of sickness, the truth of death. He leaves a fourth
time. He sees an almost naked man whose face is full of serenity. He asks
who he is. He is told that he is an ascetic, a man who has renounced
everything and has achieved beatitude.
The prince decides to renounce everything; he, who has lived such a rich
life. Buddhism believes that asceticism may be advisable, but only after
having tasted life. It doesn’t believe that anyone should begin by
renouncing anything. It’s necessary to live life to the limit, to the dregs, and
then reject it; but not without knowing it.
The prince decides to be the Buddha. At that moment they bring him news:
his wife, Jasodhara, has given birth to a son. He exclaims: “a link has been
forged.” It is the son who ties him to life. Therefore, they name him Link.
Siddharta is in his harem, he sees all those women who are young and
beautiful and he sees the horrible old people, the lepers. He goes to his
wife’s chamber. She is sleeping. She has the child in her arms. He is about
to kiss her, but he knows that if he kisses her he will not be able to separate
from her, and he leaves.
He looks for teachers. Here we have a part of the biography which may not
be legendary. Why show him as a disciple of teachers who he later
abandons? The teachers teach him asceticism, which he practices for a long
time. Finally, he lies in the middle of a field, his body is motionless and the
gods who see him from the thirty three heavens think he is dead. One of
them, the wisest, says: “No, he isn’t dead; he will be the Buddha.” The
prince wakes up, runs to a nearby stream, takes some nourishment and sits
under the sacred fig tree: the tree of the law, we could say.
A magic interval follows, which is similar to the Gospels: fighting against
the devil. The devil is called Mara. We have already seen the word
nightmare [in English – trans.], demon of the night. The demon feels that
he dominates the world but is now is at risk, so he leaves his palace. The
strings of his musical instruments are broken, the water has dried up in the
cisterns. He prepares his armies, mounts an elephant which is I don’t know
how many meters tall, multiplies his arms, multiplies his weapons and
attacks the prince. The prince is sitting at dusk under the tree of knowledge,
the tree that was born the same time as he.
The demon and his hordes of tigers, lions, camels, elephants, and
monstrous warriors shoot arrows at him. When they reach him they are
flowers. They throw mountains of fire at him, which form a canopy over
his head. The prince meditates, motionless, with his arms crossed. Perhaps
he doesn’t know that they are attacking him. He thinks about life; he is
approaching nirvana, salvation. Before sundown the demon has been
defeated. A long night of meditation follows; after that night Siddharta is
no longer Siddharta. He is the Buddha: he has arrived at nirvana.
He decides to preach the law. He stands up, he is already saved, and wants
to save the rest. He preaches his first sermon in the Park of Gazelles in
Benares. Then another sermon, about fire, in which he says that everything
is burning: souls, bodies, things are on fire. More or les at the same time
Heraclitus of Ephesus said that everything is fire.
His law is not that of asceticism, because for Buddha asceticism is an error.
Man should not give himself up to carnal life because carnal life is low,
ignoble, shameful and painful; he should not practice asceticism either,
which is also ignoble and painful. He preaches a middle way – to use
theological terminology. He has already attained nirvana and lives forty
plus years, which he devotes to preaching. He could have been immortal,
but he chooses the moment of his death once he has many disciples.
He dies in a blacksmith’s house. His disciples surround him. They are
desperate. What will they do without him? He tells them that he doesn’t
exist, that he is a man like them, as unreal and mortal as they are, but that
he leaves them his Law. Here we have a great difference with Christ. I
think that Christ said to his disciples that if two are together, he will be
with them. But Buddha tells them: I leave you my Law. That is, he set in
motion the wheel of the law in the first sermon. The history of Buddhism
will come later. It has many parts: Lamaism, magic Buddhism, Mahayana
or the great vehicle, which follows Hinayana or the little vehicle, Zen
Buddhism of Japan.
It seems to me that if there are two Buddhisms that are similar, that are
almost identical, they are the one which Buddha preached and the one
which is taught now in China and Japan, Zen Buddhism. The rest are
mythological incrustations, fables. Some of these fables are interesting. It is
known that Buddha could perform miracles, but as was the case with Jesus
Christ, he disliked miracles, he disliked performing them. I’ll tell you a
story now – of the sandalwood bowl.
A merchant in a city of India has a piece of sandalwood carved in the form
of a bowl. He places it at the top of a series of bamboo canes, a kind of
very high soaped pole. He says that he’ll give the sandalwood bowl to
whoever can reach it. Heretical teachers try in vain. They want to bribe the
merchant to say that they reached it. The merchant refuses and one of the
Buddha’s minor disciples comes along. His name is not mentioned except
in this episode. The disciple rises up in the air, circles the bowl six times,
takes the bowl and delivers it to the merchant. When the Buddha hears of
it, he expels him from the order for having performed something so trivial.
But the Buddha also performed miracles. For example this, a miracle of
courtesy. The Buddha must cross the desert at midday. The gods, from their
thirty-three circles, each throws down a parasol to him. The Buddha, not
wishing to offend any of the gods, multiplies himself into thirty-three
Buddhas, so that each of the gods sees, from above, a Buddha protected by
the parasol which he threw him.
Among the deeds of the Buddha, one is illuminating: the parable of the
arrow. A man has been wounded in battle and he doesn’t want them to
remove the arrow. First he wants to know the name of the archer and what
cast he belongs to, the material of the arrow, where the archer was, the
length of the arrow. While they are discussing these questions, he dies. “I,
however,” says the Buddha, “teach how to pull out the arrow.” What is the
arrow? It is the universe. The arrow is the idea of the I, of everything we
have stuck in us. The Buddha says that we must not waste time on useless
questions. For example: Is the universe finite or infinite? Will the Buddha
live after nirvana or not? That is all useless, what is important is that we
pull out the arrow. It’s about an exorcism, about a law of salvation.
The Buddha says: “Just as the vast ocean has only one taste, the taste of
salt, the taste of the law is the taste of salvation.” The law he teaches is a
vast as the sea, but has only one taste: the taste of salvation. Of course
those who followed have gotten lost (or perhaps have gained) much in
metaphysical disquisitions. That is not the goal of Buddhism. A Buddhist
may profess and religion as long as he follows that law. What is important
is salvation and the four noble truths: suffering, the origin of suffering, the
healing of suffering and the means for healing. At the end is nirvana. The
order of the truths doesn’t matter. It has been said that it corresponds to an
ancient medical tradition: illness, diagnosis, treatment and cure. The cure,
in this case, is nirvana.
Now we come to the hard part. That which our western minds tend to
reject: transmigration, which for us is above all a poetic concept. What
transmigrates isn’t the soul, because Buddhism denies the soul’s existence,
but karma, which is a kind of mental organism that transmigrates infinite
times. In the west this idea is associated with various thinkers, above all
Pythagoras. Pythagoras recognized the shield with which he fought in the
battle of Troy, when he had another name. In Book Ten of The Republic by
Plato is the dream of Er. That soldier sees the souls who, before drinking in
the River of Forgetting, choose their destiny. Agamemnon chooses to be an
eagle, Orpheus a swan and Ulysses – who was once called Nobody –
chooses to be the most modest and most unknown of men.
There’s a passage in Empedocles of Agrigenta in which he remembers his
past lives: “I was a maiden, I was a branch, I was a deer and I was a mute
fish that springs from the sea.” Caesar attributes this doctrine to the Druids.
The Celtic poet Taliesi says there is no form in the universe that hasn’t
been his: “I have been a chief in battle, I have been a sword in hand, I have
been a bridge that crosses sixty rivers, I have been bewitched in the water’s
foam, I have been a star, I have been a light, I have been a tree, I have been
a word in a book, I have been a book in the beginning.” There’s a poem by
Ruben Darío, perhaps his most beautiful, which starts thus: “I was a soldier
who slept in the bed / of Cleopatra the queen…”
Transmigration has been an important theme in literature. We also find it in
the mystics. Plotin says that passing from one life to another is like
sleeping in different beds in different rooms. I think we have all had the
sensation of having lived a similar moment in a past life. In a beautiful
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sudden Light, we read, “I have been here
before…” It is directed to a woman whom he has possessed or is going to
possess and he tells her: “You have been mine an infinite number of times
and will continue being mine infinitely.” This leads us to the doctrine of
cycles, which is so close to Buddhism and which St. Augustine refuted in
The City of God.
The Hindu doctrine that the universe consists of an infinite number of
cycles which are measured in calpas had come to the notice of the Stoics
and the Pythagoreans. The calpa transcends man’s imagination. Imagine a
wall of iron. It is sixteen miles high and every six hundred years an angel
brushes it with a very fine cloth from Benares. When the cloth has worn
down the wall which is sixteen miles high, the first day of one of the calpas
will have passed and the gods also last as long as the calpas last and then
die.
The history of the universe is divided into cycles and in these cycles there
are long eclipses during which there is nothing or in which only the words
of the Veda remain. Those words are archetypes which serve to create
things. La divinity Brahma also dies and is reborn. There is a quite pathetic
moment when Brahma is in his palace. He has been reborn after one of the
calpas, after one of the eclipses. He walks through the rooms, which are
empty. He thinks of other gods. The other gods appear at his command, and
they think that Brahma has created them because they were there before.
Let’s pause at this vision of the history of the universe. There is no God in
Buddhism; or there could be a God, but it isn’t the essential thing. What is
essential is that we believe that our destiny has been predetermined by our
karma or karman. If I was to be born in Buenos Aires in 1899, if I was to
be blind, if I am to be giving this lecture to you tonight, it is all the result of
my previous life. There isn’t a single event in my life which hasn’t been
predetermined by my previous life. This is what is called karma. Karma, as
I have already said, is like a mental structure, an extremely fine mental
structure.
We are weaving and inter-weaving in every moment of our lives. For not
only our volitions, our deeds, our semi-dreams, our sleep, our semi-waking
are woven: we are perpetually weaving that thing [karma]. When we die
another being is born who inherits our karma.
Schopenhauer’s disciple Deussen, who loved Buddhism, relates that he met
a blind beggar in India, and took pity on him. The beggar said to him: “If I
was born blind, it is because of the faults committed in my previous life; it
is just that I am blind.” People accept pain. Gandhi was opposed to building
hospitals saying that hospitals and charitable works simply delay the
payment of a debt, that one should not help others: if the others suffer they
must suffer because it is a fault they must pay and if I help them I am only
delaying their payment.
Karma is a cruel law, but it has a curious mathematical consequence: if my
present life is determined by my previous one, that previous one was
determined by another; and that other, by another, and so on without end.
That is: the letter z was determined by the y, the y by the x, the x by the w,
the w by the v, except that this alphabet has an end but no beginning.
Buddhists and Hindus, in general, believe in a real infinity; they believe
that to arrive at this moment an infinite time has passed, and that when I
say infinite I don’t mean undefined, innumerable, I mean strictly infinite.
Of the six destinies permitted to man (someone can be a demon, can be a
plant, can be an animal), the most difficult is to be a human being, and we
must take advantage of it in order to save ourselves.
Buddha imagines a tortoise at the bottom of the sea and a bangle that floats.
Every six hundred years the tortoise lifts its head out of the water and it
would be very seldom that its head enters the bangle. Well, says Buddha, as
infrequently as that happens with the tortoise and the bangle is the fact that
we are humans. We must take advantage of being humans to reach nirvana.
What is the cause of suffering, the cause of life, if we deny the concept of a
God, if there is no personal god who creates the universe? This concept is
what Buddha calls Zen. The word Zen may seem strange to us, but we will
compare it with other words we know.
Let’s think for example in Schopenhauer’s Will. Schopenhauer conceives
of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and
Representation [mental picture]. There is a Will which incarnates in each
one of us and produces that representation which is the world. We find this
in other philosophers by a different name. Bergson speaks of the élan vital;
Bernard Shaw of the “life force”, which is the same. But there is a
difference: for Bergson and Shaw the élan vital are forces which must
prevail, we must continue dreaming the world, creating the world. For
Schopenhauer, for gloomy Schopenhauer, and for the Buddha, the world is
a dream, we must stop dreaming it and we can achieve this by means of
long exercises. At first we have suffering, which is Zen. And Zen produces
life and life is, necessarily, misfortune; because what is living? Living is
being born, growing old, being ill, dying, along with other evils, among
which is a very pathetic one, which for the Buddha is one of the most
pathetic: not being with those we love.
We have to renounce passion. Suicide doesn’t help because it’s a
passionate act. A person who commits suicide is always in the world of
dreams. We must come to understand that the world is an apparition, a
dream, that life is a dream. But we must feel this profoundly, achieve it
through meditation exercises. In Buddhist monasteries one of the exercises
is this: the neophyte has to live every moment of his life completely
immersed in it. He must think: “It is now midday, I am now crossing the
courtyard, I will now meet the superior,” and at the same moment he must
think that midday, the courtyard and the superior are unreal, are as unreal
as he and his thoughts. Because Buddhism negates the I.
One of the greatest disillusions is the I. Buddhism agrees on this with
Hume, with Schopenhauer and with our Macedonio Fernández. There is no
subject, what there is, is a series of mental states. If I say “I think”, I am
incurring in error, because I suppose a constant subject and then an act of
this subject. This is not so. Hume points out we should not say “I think”,
but “it thinks”, like “it’s raining”. When we “it’s raining”, we are not
thinking that the rain is carrying out an action; no, something is happening.
In the same way, just as we say it’s hot, it’s cold, it’s raining, we must say:
it thinks, it suffers, and avoid the subject.
In Buddhist monasteries the neophytes are subjected to a very hard
discipline. They can leave the monastery whenever they wish. They don’t
even write down their names – María Kodama tells me. The neophyte
enters the monastery and is subjected to very hard tasks. He sleeps and
after a quarter of an hour they wake him up; he must wash, he must sweep
up; if he falls asleep they punish him physically. Thus he must think at all
times not of his faults, but of the unreality of everything. He has to perform
a continuous exercise of unreality.
We now come to Zen Buddhism and to Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma was
the first missionary, in the sixth century. He goes from India to China and
meets with an emperor who had promoted Buddhism and enumerates the
monasteries and sanctuaries and the number of Buddhist neophytes.
Bodhidharma tells him: “All that belongs to the world of illusion; the
monasteries and the monks are as unreal as you and I.” Then he meditates
and leans against a wall.
The doctrine arrives in Japan and divides into various sects. The most
famous is Zen. In Zen a procedure has been discovered to achieve
illumination. It is only effective after years of mediation. You arrive
abruptly; it is not a series of syllogisms. One must suddenly intuit the truth.
The procedure is called satori and consists of an abrupt act, which is
beyond logic.
We always think in terms of subject, object, cause, effect, logic, illogic,
something and its opposite; we must surpass these categories. According to
the Zen doctors, we must arrive at the truth through a brusque intuition, by
means of an illogical answer. The neophyte asks the teacher what is
Buddha. The teacher answers: “The cypress is the orchard.” A completely
illogical answer which can awaken the truth. The neophyte asks why
Bodhidharma came from the west. The teacher may reply: “Three pounds
of linen.” These words do not involve an allegorical meaning; they are an
absurd reply to awaken, suddenly, intuition. It could also be a blow. The
disciple may ask something and the teacher answers with a blow. There is a
story – of course it must be legendary – about Bodhidharma.
A disciple accompanied Bodhidharma and asked him questions and
Bodhidharma never answered. The disciple tried to meditate and after a
while he cut off his left arm and came before the teacher as proof that he
wanted to be his disciple. He mutilated himself deliberately as proof of his
intention. The teacher, not paying attention to the act which, after all, was a
physical act, an illusion, said: “What do you want?” The disciple answered:
“I have been seeking my mind for a long time, and have not found it.” The
teacher summed up: “You haven’t found it because it doesn’t exist.” At that
moment the disciple understood the truth, understood that the I doesn’t
exist, understood that everything is unreal. Here we have, more or less, the
essential in Zen Buddhism.
It’s very difficult to describe a religion, especially one which one doesn’t
profess. I think it is important that we don’t conceive of Buddhism as a set
of legends, but as a discipline; a discipline which is within our reach and
doesn’t demand asceticism of us. It also doesn’t allow us to abandon
ourselves to the licenses of carnal life. What it asks of us is meditation, a
meditation which isn’t about our faults, about our past life.
One of the themes of Zen Buddhist meditation is to think that our past life
was illusory. If I were a Buddhist monk I would think at this moment that I
have begun to live now, that the past life of Borges was a dream, that the
entire universal history was a dream. By means of intellectual meditation
we gradually liberate ourselves from the Zen. Once we understand that the
I doesn’t exist, we cannot think that the I can be happy or that it is our duty
to make it happy. We achieve a state of calm. This doesn’t mean that
nirvana is equivalent to the sensation of thought and a proof of this would
be in the legend of the Buddha. The Buddha under the sacred fig tree
achieves nirvana and nevertheless continues living and preaching the law
for many years.
What does it mean to achieve nirvana? Simply that our acts no longer cast
shadows. While we are in this world we are subject to karma. Every one of
our acts interweaves that mental structure called karma. When we have
achieved nirvana our acts no longer cast shadows, we are free. Saint
Augustine said that once we are saved we no longer have reason to think
about good or about evil. We will continue doing the good, without
thinking about it.
What is nirvana? Much of the attention that Buddhism has aroused in the
west is due to this beautiful word. It seems impossible that the word
nirvana doesn’t involve something precious. What is nirvana literally? It is
extinction, snuffing out. It has been conjectured that when someone
achieves nirvana, they are snuffed out. But when they die it is the great
nirvana, and then extinction. On the other hand, an Austrian orientalist
notes that the Buddha used the physics of his time, and the idea of
extinction wasn’t the same as it is now: because it was thought that a flame,
upon being snuffed out, doesn’t disappear. It was thought that the flame
continued living, that it persisted in a different state, and that nirvana
doesn’t necessarily signify extinction. In can be that we continue in a
different way. In a way inconceivable for us. In general the metaphors of
the mystics are prophetic ones, but those of the Buddhists are different.
When they speak of nirvana they don’t speak of the wine of nirvana or the
rose of nirvana or the embrace of nirvana. Rather do they compare it to an
island. To a firm island in the midst of storms. They compare it to a tall
tower; it can also be compared to a garden. It’s something which exists on
its own, independent of us.
What I have said today is fragmentary. It would have been absurd for me to
have expounded on a doctrine to which I have dedicated many years – and
of which I have understood little, really – with a wish to show a museum
piece. Buddhism is not a museum piece for me: it is a path to salvation. Not
for me, but for millions of people. It is the most widely held religion in the
world and I believe that I have treated it with respect when explaining it
tonight.