[509] and in that birth attain nirvana. He has broken the fetters
mentioned and also reduced to a minimum the next two, lust and hate. The
Anagamin, or he who does not return, has freed himself entirely from
these five fetters and will not be reborn on earth or any sensuous
heaven but in a Brahma world once only. The fourth route is that of the
Arhat who has completed his release by breaking the bonds called love of
life, pride, self-righteousness and ignorance and has made an end of all
evil and impurity. He attains nirvana here and is no more subject to
rebirth. This simple and direct route is the one contemplated in the
older discourses but later doctrine and popular feeling came to regard
it as more and more unusual, just as saints grow fewer as the centuries
advance further from the Apostolic age. In the dearth of visible Arhats
it was consoling to think that nirvana could be won in other worlds.

The nirvana hitherto considered is that attained by a being living in
this or some other world. But all states of existence whatever come to
an end. When one who has not attained nirvana dies, he is born again.
But what happens when an Arhat or a Buddha dies? This question did not
fail to arouse interest during the Buddha's lifetime yet in the Pitakas
the discussion, though it could not be stifled, is relegated to the
background and brought forward only to be put aside as unpractical. The
greatest teachers of religion--Christ as well as Buddha--have shown little
disposition to speak of what follows on death. For them the centre of
gravity is on this side of the grave not on the other: the all important
thing is to live a religious life, at the end of which death is met
fearlessly as an incident of little moment. The Kingdom of Heaven, of
which Christ speaks, begins on earth though it may end elsewhere. In the
Gospels we hear something of the second coming of Christ and the
Judgment: hardly anything of the place and character of the soul's
eternal life. We only gather that a child of God who has done his best
need have no apprehension in this or another world. Though expressed in
very different phraseology, something like that is the gist of what the
Buddha teaches about the dying Saint. But this reticent attitude did not
satisfy ancient India any more than it satisfies modern Europe and we
have the record of how he was questioned and what he said in reply.
Within certain limits that reply is quite definite. The question, do