Here, again, it is impossible to do anything like justice to the whole problem with the chess-moves of a profound play of thought: only a witticism meets the case. All this ingenious logic that would fain take the measure of actuality with the laws of identity and contradictories as with some yard-stick, which advances against truth with the apparently irresistible demonstrating force of its “aut ... aut,” resembles nothing so much as those ingenious questions with which the child is wont to tease the grown-up person as to the nature and dwelling-place of Santa Claus. Another child would be able to answer these questions with an equal ingenuity; the grown-up person is powerless to meet them. In the same way the scholars of the west would be perfectly capable of meeting and satisfying the questions of a Vacchagotta with equal “acuteness of logic.” The Buddha cannot do it. All he can do is to try to sweep away the accumulated rubbish of misunderstood concepts, and on the thus cleared foundation, cause a new clean structure of thought to arise, the essence whereof resides in comprehending that such a thing as the foregoing question refers to has no existence, neither abstractly nor actually; hence, that the question is in itself devoid of meaning. This is the whole secret here lying hidden. The interpretation given by Oldenburg to the words of the nun Khemā, are based upon a complete misunderstanding of the entire Buddha-thought, as is everything else he says concerning the final goal of Buddhism. But that pertains properly to the Nibbāna teaching. Buddhism is the doctrine of actuality, and its value as a view of the world from the standpoint of epistemology, lies in the fact that it teaches us to accept actuality as actuality. To this idea it is itself a martyr, inasmuch as its own teaching here is nothing ideally fixed and fast, but only an incitation to experience it in one’s own self; it is “a raft, designed for escape; not designed for retention.” Hence, is it said in the powerful Dhātuvibhañga Sutta--Sutta CXL., _Majjhima Nikāya_--“‘I am,’ monk, is a believing. ‘Such am I,’ is a believing. ‘I shall be,’ is a believing. ‘I shall not be,’ is a believing. ‘I shall have a form,’ is a believing. ‘I shall be formless,’ is a believing. ‘I shall have perception,’ is a believing. ‘I shall be devoid of perception,’ is a believing. To entertain believings is to be ill. To entertain believings is to be infirm. To entertain believings is to be sick. When, however, all entertaining of believings is overcome, then is one called a right thinker.” * * * * * And now it may be objected:-- “If there are no concepts, _i.e._ things conceived, at all, but only an individual conceiving, an external, self-renewing reaction to the external world, how is the possibility of our various experiences to be explained?” To this the reply is:--