nihilated and he is
not miserable. Here the Buddha emphasizes the fact that his teaching is
not a variety of the Brahmanic doctrine about the Atman. Shortly
afterwards in the same sutta he even more emphatically says that he does
not teach annihilation. He teaches that the saint is already in this
life inconceivable (_ananuvejjo_): "And when I teach and explain this
some accuse me falsely and without the smallest ground[523] saying
'Gotama is an unbeliever; he preaches the annihilation, the destruction,
the dying out of real being.' When they talk like this they accuse me of
being what I am not, of saying what I do not say."

Though the Buddha seems to condemn by anticipation the form of the
Vedanta known as the Advaita, this philosophy illustrates the difficulty
of making any statement about the saint after his death. For it teaches
that the saint knows that there is but one reality, namely Brahman, and
that all individual existences are illusion: he is aware that he is
Brahman and that he is not differentiated from the world around him. And
when he dies, what happens? Metaphors about drops and rivers are not
really to the point. It would be more correct to say that nothing at all
has happened. His physical life, an illusion which did not exist for
himself, has ceased to exist for others.

Perhaps he will be nearest to the Buddha's train of thought who attempts
to consider, by reflection rather than by discussion in words, what is
meant by annihilation. By thinking of the mystery of existence and
realizing how difficult it is to explain how and why anything exists, we
are apt to slip into thinking that it would be quite natural and
intelligible if nothing existed or if existing things became nothing.
Yet as a matter of fact our minds have no experience of this nothing of
which we talk and it is inconceivable. When we try to think of
nothingness we really think of space from which we try to remove all
content, yet could we create an absolute vacuum within a vessel, the
interior of the vessel would not be annihilated. The man who has
attained nirvana cannot be adequately defined or grasped even in this
life: what binds him to being is cut[524] but it is inappropriate and
inadequate to say that he has become nothing[525].

CHAPTER XI

MONKS AND LAYMEN

1

The great practical achievement of the Buddha was to found a religious
order which has lasted to the present day. It is known as the Sangha and
its membe