Mr Schrader, in discussing Nibbâna in _Pali Text Society Journal_, 1905, says that the Buddha held that those who sought to become identified after death with the soul of the world as infinite space (_âkâsa_) or consciousness (_viññâna_) attained to a state in which they had a corresponding feeling of infiniteness without having really lost their individuality. This latter interpretation of Nibbâna seems to me to be very new and quite against the spirit of the Buddhistic texts. It seems to me to be a hopeless task to explain Nibbâna in terms of worldly experience, and there is no way in which we can better indicate it than by saying that it is a cessation of all sorrow; the stage at which all worldly experiences have ceased can hardly be described either as positive or negative. Whether we exist in some form eternally or do not exist is not a proper Buddhistic question, for it is a heresy to think of a Tathâgata as existing eternally (_s'âs'vata_) or not-existing (_as'âs'vata_) or whether he is existing as well as not existing or whether he is neither existing nor non-existing. Any one who seeks to discuss whether Nibbâna is either a positive and eternal state or a mere state of non-existence or annihilation, takes a view which has been discarded in Buddhism as heretical. It is true that we in modern times are not satisfied with it, for we want to know what it all means. But it is not possible to give any answer since Buddhism regarded all these questions as illegitimate. Later Buddhistic writers like Nâgârjuna and Candrakîrtti took advantage of this attitude of early Buddhism and interpreted it as meaning the non-essential character of all existence. Nothing existed, and therefore any question regarding the existence or non-existence of anything would be meaningless. There is no difference between the worldly stage (_sa@msâra_) and Nibbâna, for as all appearances are non-essential, they never existed during the sa@msâra so that they could not be annihilated in Nibbâna. Upani@sads and Buddhism. The Upani@sads had discovered that the true self was ânanda (bliss) [Footnote ref 1]. We could suppose that early Buddhism tacitly presupposes some such idea. It was probably thought that if there was the self (_attâ_) it must be bliss. The Upani@sads had asserted that the self(_âtman_) was indestructible and eternal [Footnote ref 2]. If we are allowed __________________________________________________________________________ [Footnote 1: Tait, II.5.] [Footnote 2: B@rh. IV. 5. 14. Ka@tha V. 13.] 110