must
conceive it in every possible way. However closely the result
resembles the vulgar notion of annihilation, the difference in
method of approach and the difference to the contemplator's
feeling are immense. The Buddhist apprehends Nirwana as infinitude
in absolute and eternal equilibrium: the atheist finds Nirwana in
a coffin. That is thought of with rapture, this, with horror.

It should be noticed, before we close this chapter, that some of
the Hindus give a spiritual interpretation to all the gross
physical details of their so highly colored and extravagant
mythology. One of their sacred books says, "Pleasure and pain are
states of the mind. Heaven is that which delights the mind, hell
is that which gives it pain. Hence vice is called hell, and virtue
is called heaven." Another author says, "The fire of the angry
mind produces the fire of hell, and consumes its possessor. A
wicked person causes his evil deeds to impinge upon himself, and
that is hell." The various sects of mystics, allied in faith and
feeling to the Sufis, which are quite numerous in the East, agree
in a deep metaphorical explanation of the vulgar notions
pertaining to Deity, judgment, heaven, and hell.

In conclusion, the most remarkable fact in this whole field of
inquiry is the contrast of the Eastern horror of individuality and
longing for absorption with the Western clinging to personality
and abhorrence of dissolution.48 The true Orientalist, whether
Brahman, Buddhist, or Sufi, is in love with death. Through this
gate he expects to quit his frail and pitiable consciousness,
losing himself, with all evil, to be born anew and find himself,
with all good, in God. All sense, passion, care, and grief shall
cease with deliverance from the spectral semblances of this false
life. All pure contemplation, perfect repose, unsullied and
unrippled joy shall begin with entrance upon the true life beyond.
Thus thinking, he feels that death is the avenue to infinite
expansion, freedom, peace, bliss; and he longs for it with an
intensity not dreamed of by more frigid natures. He often compares
himself, in this world aspiring towards another, to an enamored
moth drawn towards the fire, and he exclaims, with a sigh and a
thrill,

46 Not disgust, but wonder and awe, fathomless intellectual
emotion, at so unparalleled a phenomenon of our miraculous human
nature.

47 Buddhism and Buddhist Pilgrims, p. 19.

48 Burnouf, Le Bhagavata Purana, tome i. livre