While the ideal of Arhatship was no doubt the entering into Nirvana that leaves nothing behind (_anupādhiśesha_), whatever this may mean, it did not ignore the significance of Enlightenment, no, it could not do so very well without endangering its own reason of existence. For Nirvana was nothing else in its essence than Enlightenment, the content was identical in either case. Enlightenment was Nirvana reached while yet in the flesh, and no Nirvana was ever possible without obtaining Enlightenment. The latter may have a more intellectual note in it than the former, which is a psychological state realised through Enlightenment. Bodhi is spoken of in the so-called primitive Buddhism just as much as Nirvana. So long as passions (_kleśa_) were not subdued, and the mind still remained enshrouded in ignorance, no Buddhists could ever dream of obtaining a Moksha (deliverance) which is Nirvana, and this deliverance from Ignorance and passions was the work of Enlightenment. Generally Nirvana is understood in its negative aspect as the total extinction of everything, body and soul, but in the actuality of life no such negativist conception could ever prevail, and the Buddha never meant Nirvana to be so interpreted. If there were nothing affirmative in Nirvana, the Mahayanists could never have evolved the positive conception of it later. Though the immediate disciples of the Buddha were not conscious of this, there was always the thought of Enlightenment implied in it. Enlightenment attained by the Buddha after a week’s meditation under the Bodhi-tree could not be of no consequence to his Arhat-disciples, however negatively the latter tended to apply this principle to the attainment of their life-object.