“The very nature of phenomena demonstrates that they must have had a beginning, and that they must have an end.”—_Lay Sermons_. Huxley. [2] By adopting the term _Mieh-Tu_, Chinese Buddhists appear well prepared to refute a prevalent notion that their concept of deliverance is equivalent to annihilation. _Mieh_ usually means annihilation, but _Tu_—to cross over in safety, is the antithesis of annihilation. After due consideration of the significance of the terminology, perhaps it will be generally conceded that English renderings of _Mieh-Tu_ as Deliverance or Salvation, are not without some degree of justification. “All these I command and exhort to enter on the state of the unsurpassed Nirvana (Pari Nirvana), and for ever to free themselves from the conditions of being to which they severally belong.”—_Kin-Kong-King_. Beal. [3] “The dewdrop slips into the shining sea.”—_Light of Asia_. Sir Edwin Arnold. “The dewdrop re-becomes the shining sea.”—_Chioh-Hsien_ (a Chinese monk). “The popular exoteric systems agree in defining Nirvana negatively as a state of absolute exemption from the circle of transmigration as a state of entire freedom from all forms of materiality, from all passion and exertion, mentally and emotionally, a state of indifference therefore alike to joy and pain. Positively they define Nirvana as the highest stage of spiritual liberty and bliss, as absolute immortality through absorption of the soul into itself. Individuality is preserved, and Buddhas who have entered Nirvana occasionally reappear again to intervene on behalf of the faithful.”—_Handbook of Chinese Buddhism_. Eitel. [4] The able commentator _Ti-Ching_ observes that many people, like Ananda—a favourite disciple of Buddha—are in error when they suppose their minds to be located within their material bodies. This interesting aspect of Buddhist psychology is made tolerably clear in the familiar narrative known generally as _The Enlightenment of Ananda_. Therein the Lord Buddha endeavours to prove that as objects within ourselves are invisible, the illuminating mind cannot be asserted to inhabit exclusively our material bodies. He also indicates that it cannot be affirmed to occupy any appointed sphere outside ourselves, it being usually understood that we observe only those objects by which we are environed. The Lord Buddha also controverts the theory, enunciated by Ananda, that the mind is secreted somewhere within the organs of sense; which assumption is based upon a notion that the seeing eye, and differentiating mind, are mysteriously correlated.