from fear, where birth or death is not, that is Nirwana." "Nirwana
puts an end to coming and going, and there is no other happiness."
"It is a calm wherein no wind blows." "There is no difference in
Nirwana." "It is the annihilation of all the principles of
existence." "Nirwana is the completion and opposite shore of
existence, free from decay, tranquil, knowing no restraint, and of
great blessedness." "Nirwana is unmixed satisfaction, entirely
free from sorrow." "The wind cannot be squeezed in the hand, nor
can its color be told. Yet the wind is. Even so Nirwana is, but
its properties cannot be told." "Nirwana, like space, is
causeless, does not live nor die, and has no locality. It is the
abode of those liberated from existence." "Nirwana is not, except
to the being who attains it."36

34 Life of Gotama in Journal of the American Oriental Society,
vol. iii.

35 Symbolik and Mythologie, th. ii. abth. 2, s. 407.

36 For these quotations, and others similar, see Hardy's valuable
work, "Eastern Monachism," chap. xxii., on "Nirwana, its Paths and
Fruition."

Some scholars maintain that the Buddhist Nirwana is nothing but
the atheistic Annihilation. The subject is confessedly a most
difficult one. But it seems to us that the opinion just stated is
the very antithesis of the true interpretation of Nirwana. In the
first place, it should be remembered that there are various sects
of Buddhists. Now, the word Nirwana may be used in different
senses by different schools.37 A few persons a small party,
represented perhaps by able writers may believe in annihilation in
our sense of the term, just as has happened in Christendom, while
the common doctrine of the people is the opposite of that. In the
second place, with the Oriental horror of individuated existence,
and a highly poetical style of writing, nothing could be more
natural, in depicting their ideas of the most desirable state of
being, than that they should carry their metaphors expressive of
repose, freedom from action and emotion, to a pitch conveying to
our cold and literal thought the conceptions of blank
unconsciousness and absolute nothingness.

Colebrooke says, "Nirwana is not annihilation, but unceasing
apathy. The notion of it as a happy state seems derived from the
experience of ecstasies; or else the pleasant, refreshed feeling
with which one wakes from profound repose is referred to the
period of actual sleep."38 A Buddhist author speculates thus:
"