APPENDIX

BUDDHISM

A lecture by Jorge Luis Borges

The subject today will be Buddhism. I’m not going into the long story that

began two thousand five hundred years ago in Benares, when a prince of

Nepal – Siddharta or Gautama – who had become Buddha, spun the wheel

of the law, proclaimed the four noble truths and the eightfold path. I will

speak of the essential in this religion, the most prevalent in the world. The

elements of Buddhism have been preserved since the fifth century before

Christ: that is, since the epoch of Heraclites, of Pythagoras, of Xenon, until

our times when Dr. Suzuki expounds it in Japan. The elements are the

same. Now the religion is encrusted with mythology, astronomy, strange

beliefs, magic, but because the subject is complex, I will limit myself to

what the various sects have in common. They may correspond to Hinayana

or the small vehicle. Let us first consider the longevity of Buddhism.

This longevity can be explained for historical reasons, but such reasons are

fortuitous or, rather, they are debatable, fallible. I think there are two

fundamental causes. The first is Buddhism’s tolerance. That strange

tolerance does not correspond, as is the case with other religions, to distinct

epochs: Buddhism was always tolerant.

It has never had recourse to steel or fire, has never thought that steel or fire

were persuasive. When Asoka, emperor of China, became a Buddhist, he

didn’t try to impose his new religion on anybody. A good Buddhist can be

Lutheran, or Methodist, or Calvinist, or Sintoist, or Taoist, or Catholic; he

can be a proselyte to Islam or to Judaism, with complete freedom. But it is

not permissible for a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim to be a Buddhist.

Buddhism’s tolerance isn’t a weakness, but belongs to its nature. Buddhism

was, above all, what we can call a yoga. What is the word yoga? It is the

same word that we use when we say yugo [Spanish for yoke], and which

has it origin in the Latin yugu. A yoke, a discipline which a person imposes

on himself. Then, if we understand what Buddha preached in that first

sermon in the Park of Gazelles in Benares two thousand five hundred years

ago, we will have understood Buddhism. Except that it isn’t a question of

understanding, it’s a question of feeling it deeply, of feeling it in body and

soul; except, also, that Buddhism doesn’t admit the reality of body not of

the soul. I will try to explain that.

Furthermore, there is another reason. Buddhism demands much of our

faith. This is natural, for every religion is an act of faith. Just as one’s

country is an act of faith. What is it, I have often been asked, to be

Argentine? To be Argentine is to feel that we are Argentines. What is it to

be Buddhist? To be Buddhist is, not to understand, for that can be

accomplished in a few minutes, but to feel the four noble truths and the

eightfold path. Let’s not go into the twists and turns of the eightfold path,

for this number obeys the Hindu habit of dividing and sub-dividing, but

into the four noble truths.

There is, furthermore, the legend of Buddha. We may disbelieve this

legend. I have a Japanese friend, a Zen Buddhist, with whom I have had

long and friendly arguments. I told him that I believed in the historic truth

of Buddha. I believed and I believe that two thousand five hundred years

ago there was a Nepalese prince called Siddharta or Gautama who became

the Buddha, that is, the Awoken, the Lucid One – as opposed to us who are

asleep or who are dreaming this long dream which is life. I remember one

of Joyce’s phrases: “History is a nightmare from which I want to awake.”

Well then, Siddharta, at thirty years of age, awoke and became Buddha.

I argued with that friend who was a Buddhist (I’m not sure that I’m a

Christian and am sure that I’m not a Buddhist) and I said to him: “Why not

believe in Prince Siddharta, who was born in Kapilovastu five hundred

years before the Christian era?” He replied: “Because it’s of no importance;

what’s important is to believe in the Doctrine”. He added, I think with more

ingenuity than truth, that to believe in the historical existence of Buddha or

to be interested in it would be like confusing the study of mathematics with

the biography of Pythagoras or Newton. One of the subjects of meditation

which the monks in the monasteries of Japan and China practice is to doubt

the existence of Buddha. It is one of the doubts they must assume in order

to reach the truth.

The other religions demand much more credulity on our part. If we are

Christians we must believe that one of the three persons of the Divinity

condescended to become a man and was crucified in Judea. If we are

Muslims we must believe that there is no other god than God and that

Mohammad is his apostle. We can be good Buddhists and deny that

Buddha existed. Or, rather, we may think, we must think that our belief in

history isn’t important: what is important is to believe in the Doctrine.

Nevertheless, the legend of Buddha is so beautiful that we cannot help but

refer to it.

The French have paid special attention to the study of the legend of

Buddha. Their argument is this: the biography of Buddha is what happened

to one man only over a brief span of time. It could have been this way or

some other. The legend of Buddha, on the other hand, has illuminated and

continues to illuminate millions of people. It is the legend that has inspired

countless paintings, sculptures and poems. Buddhism, in addition to being a

religion, is a mythology, a cosmology, a metaphysical system, or, rather, a

series of metaphysical systems which disagree and are disputable.

The legend of Buddha is illuminating and does not impose itself. In Japan

they insist on the non-historicity of Buddha. But not on the Doctrine. The

legend begins in heaven. There is someone in heaven who for centuries and

centuries, we could literally say for an infinite number of centuries, has

been perfecting himself until he understands that in his next incarnation he

will be the Buddha.

He chooses the continent on which he is to be born. According to Buddhist

cosmogony the world is divided into four triangular continents and in the

center is a mountain of gold: Mount Meru. He will be born in the one

which corresponds to India. He chooses the century in which he will be

born; he chooses the cast, he chooses the mother. Now for the earthly part

of the legend. There is a queen, Maya. Maya means illusion. The queen has

a dream that runs the risk of seeming outlandish to us, but it isn’t for the

Hindus.

Married to King Suddhodana, she dreamed that a white elephant with six

tusks, which roamed the mountains of gold, entered into her left side

without causing her pain. She awakens; the king convenes his astrologers

and they explain to him that the queen will give birth to a son who could be

the emperor of the world or who could be the Buddha, the Awakened, the

Lucid One, the being destined to save all men. Foreseeably, the king

chooses the first destiny: he wants his son to be the emperor of the world.

Let’s go back to the detail about the elephant with six white tusks.

Oldemberg reminds us that the elephant in India is a domestic, everyday

animal. The color white is always a symbol of innocence. Why six tusks?

We must remember (we’ll have to resort to history now and then) that the

number six, which for us is arbitrary and somehow uncomfortable (because

we prefer three or seven), isn’t in India, where they believe that there are

six dimensions in space: up, down, back, forward, right, left. An elephant

with six tusks is not a peculiarity for Hindus.

The king summons the magicians and the queen gives birth without pain. A

fig tree inclines its branches to help her. The child is born on its feet and

takes four steps: to the North, to the South, to the East and to the West, and

says with a lion’s voice: “I am the incomparable; this will be my last birth.”

Hindus believe in an infinite number of previous births. The prince grows

up, he is the best archer, the best horseman, the best swimmer, the best

athlete, the best calligrapher, he confounds all the doctors (here we can

think of Christ and the doctors). At sixteen years of age he marries.

The father knows – the astrologers told him – that his son runs the risk of

being the Buddha, the man who will save all others if he knows four facts,

which are: old age, sickness, death and asceticism. He secludes his son in

the palace, provides him with a harem. (I won’t mention the number of

women because it’s an obvious Hindu exaggeration. But why not say it:

they were eighty-four thousand.)

The prince lives a happy life; he doesn’t know that there is suffering in the

world, because they hide old age, sickness and death from him. On the

predestined day he leaves in his coach through one of the four gates of the

rectangular palace. Let’s say the North gate. He covers a distance and sees

a being different from all those he had seen till then. He is stooped,

wrinkled, has no hair. He can barely walk leaning on a cane. The prince

asks who that man is, if it is a man. The coachman answers that he is an old

man and that we will all be that man if we go on living.

The prince returns to the palace, perturbed. After six days he leaves again

through the South gate. He sees an even stranger man in a ditch, with the

paleness of a leper and an emaciated face. He asks who that man is, if it is a

man. He is sick, the coachman answers; we will all be that man if we go on

living.

The prince, very worried now, returns to the palace. Six days later he

leaves again and sees a man who seems to be asleep, but whose color is not

of this life. Other men are carrying that man. He asks who he is. The

coachman tells him that he is dead and that we will all be that dead man if

we live long enough.

The prince is desolate. Three horrible truths have been revealed to him: the

truth of old age, the truth of sickness, the truth of death. He leaves a fourth

time. He sees an almost naked man whose face is full of serenity. He asks

who he is. He is told that he is an ascetic, a man who has renounced

everything and has achieved beatitude.

The prince decides to renounce everything; he, who has lived such a rich

life. Buddhism believes that asceticism may be advisable, but only after

having tasted life. It doesn’t believe that anyone should begin by

renouncing anything. It’s necessary to live life to the limit, to the dregs, and

then reject it; but not without knowing it.

The prince decides to be the Buddha. At that moment they bring him news:

his wife, Jasodhara, has given birth to a son. He exclaims: “a link has been

forged.” It is the son who ties him to life. Therefore, they name him Link.

Siddharta is in his harem, he sees all those women who are young and

beautiful and he sees the horrible old people, the lepers. He goes to his

wife’s chamber. She is sleeping. She has the child in her arms. He is about

to kiss her, but he knows that if he kisses her he will not be able to separate

from her, and he leaves.

He looks for teachers. Here we have a part of the biography which may not

be legendary. Why show him as a disciple of teachers who he later

abandons? The teachers teach him asceticism, which he practices for a long

time. Finally, he lies in the middle of a field, his body is motionless and the

gods who see him from the thirty three heavens think he is dead. One of

them, the wisest, says: “No, he isn’t dead; he will be the Buddha.” The

prince wakes up, runs to a nearby stream, takes some nourishment and sits

under the sacred fig tree: the tree of the law, we could say.

A magic interval follows, which is similar to the Gospels: fighting against

the devil. The devil is called Mara. We have already seen the word

nightmare [in English – trans.], demon of the night. The demon feels that

he dominates the world but is now is at risk, so he leaves his palace. The

strings of his musical instruments are broken, the water has dried up in the

cisterns. He prepares his armies, mounts an elephant which is I don’t know

how many meters tall, multiplies his arms, multiplies his weapons and

attacks the prince. The prince is sitting at dusk under the tree of knowledge,

the tree that was born the same time as he.

The demon and his hordes of tigers, lions, camels, elephants, and

monstrous warriors shoot arrows at him. When they reach him they are

flowers. They throw mountains of fire at him, which form a canopy over

his head. The prince meditates, motionless, with his arms crossed. Perhaps

he doesn’t know that they are attacking him. He thinks about life; he is

approaching nirvana, salvation. Before sundown the demon has been

defeated. A long night of meditation follows; after that night Siddharta is

no longer Siddharta. He is the Buddha: he has arrived at nirvana.

He decides to preach the law. He stands up, he is already saved, and wants

to save the rest. He preaches his first sermon in the Park of Gazelles in

Benares. Then another sermon, about fire, in which he says that everything

is burning: souls, bodies, things are on fire. More or les at the same time

Heraclitus of Ephesus said that everything is fire.

His law is not that of asceticism, because for Buddha asceticism is an error.

Man should not give himself up to carnal life because carnal life is low,

ignoble, shameful and painful; he should not practice asceticism either,

which is also ignoble and painful. He preaches a middle way – to use

theological terminology. He has already attained nirvana and lives forty

plus years, which he devotes to preaching. He could have been immortal,

but he chooses the moment of his death once he has many disciples.

He dies in a blacksmith’s house. His disciples surround him. They are

desperate. What will they do without him? He tells them that he doesn’t

exist, that he is a man like them, as unreal and mortal as they are, but that

he leaves them his Law. Here we have a great difference with Christ. I

think that Christ said to his disciples that if two are together, he will be

with them. But Buddha tells them: I leave you my Law. That is, he set in

motion the wheel of the law in the first sermon. The history of Buddhism

will come later. It has many parts: Lamaism, magic Buddhism, Mahayana

or the great vehicle, which follows Hinayana or the little vehicle, Zen

Buddhism of Japan.

It seems to me that if there are two Buddhisms that are similar, that are

almost identical, they are the one which Buddha preached and the one

which is taught now in China and Japan, Zen Buddhism. The rest are

mythological incrustations, fables. Some of these fables are interesting. It is

known that Buddha could perform miracles, but as was the case with Jesus

Christ, he disliked miracles, he disliked performing them. I’ll tell you a

story now – of the sandalwood bowl.

A merchant in a city of India has a piece of sandalwood carved in the form

of a bowl. He places it at the top of a series of bamboo canes, a kind of

very high soaped pole. He says that he’ll give the sandalwood bowl to

whoever can reach it. Heretical teachers try in vain. They want to bribe the

merchant to say that they reached it. The merchant refuses and one of the

Buddha’s minor disciples comes along. His name is not mentioned except

in this episode. The disciple rises up in the air, circles the bowl six times,

takes the bowl and delivers it to the merchant. When the Buddha hears of

it, he expels him from the order for having performed something so trivial.

But the Buddha also performed miracles. For example this, a miracle of

courtesy. The Buddha must cross the desert at midday. The gods, from their

thirty-three circles, each throws down a parasol to him. The Buddha, not

wishing to offend any of the gods, multiplies himself into thirty-three

Buddhas, so that each of the gods sees, from above, a Buddha protected by

the parasol which he threw him.

Among the deeds of the Buddha, one is illuminating: the parable of the

arrow. A man has been wounded in battle and he doesn’t want them to

remove the arrow. First he wants to know the name of the archer and what

cast he belongs to, the material of the arrow, where the archer was, the

length of the arrow. While they are discussing these questions, he dies. “I,

however,” says the Buddha, “teach how to pull out the arrow.” What is the

arrow? It is the universe. The arrow is the idea of the I, of everything we

have stuck in us. The Buddha says that we must not waste time on useless

questions. For example: Is the universe finite or infinite? Will the Buddha

live after nirvana or not? That is all useless, what is important is that we

pull out the arrow. It’s about an exorcism, about a law of salvation.

The Buddha says: “Just as the vast ocean has only one taste, the taste of

salt, the taste of the law is the taste of salvation.” The law he teaches is a

vast as the sea, but has only one taste: the taste of salvation. Of course

those who followed have gotten lost (or perhaps have gained) much in

metaphysical disquisitions. That is not the goal of Buddhism. A Buddhist

may profess and religion as long as he follows that law. What is important

is salvation and the four noble truths: suffering, the origin of suffering, the

healing of suffering and the means for healing. At the end is nirvana. The

order of the truths doesn’t matter. It has been said that it corresponds to an

ancient medical tradition: illness, diagnosis, treatment and cure. The cure,

in this case, is nirvana.

Now we come to the hard part. That which our western minds tend to

reject: transmigration, which for us is above all a poetic concept. What

transmigrates isn’t the soul, because Buddhism denies the soul’s existence,

but karma, which is a kind of mental organism that transmigrates infinite

times. In the west this idea is associated with various thinkers, above all

Pythagoras. Pythagoras recognized the shield with which he fought in the

battle of Troy, when he had another name. In Book Ten of The Republic by

Plato is the dream of Er. That soldier sees the souls who, before drinking in

the River of Forgetting, choose their destiny. Agamemnon chooses to be an

eagle, Orpheus a swan and Ulysses – who was once called Nobody –

chooses to be the most modest and most unknown of men.

There’s a passage in Empedocles of Agrigenta in which he remembers his

past lives: “I was a maiden, I was a branch, I was a deer and I was a mute

fish that springs from the sea.” Caesar attributes this doctrine to the Druids.

The Celtic poet Taliesi says there is no form in the universe that hasn’t

been his: “I have been a chief in battle, I have been a sword in hand, I have

been a bridge that crosses sixty rivers, I have been bewitched in the water’s

foam, I have been a star, I have been a light, I have been a tree, I have been

a word in a book, I have been a book in the beginning.” There’s a poem by

Ruben Darío, perhaps his most beautiful, which starts thus: “I was a soldier

who slept in the bed / of Cleopatra the queen…”

Transmigration has been an important theme in literature. We also find it in

the mystics. Plotin says that passing from one life to another is like

sleeping in different beds in different rooms. I think we have all had the

sensation of having lived a similar moment in a past life. In a beautiful

poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sudden Light, we read, “I have been here

before…” It is directed to a woman whom he has possessed or is going to

possess and he tells her: “You have been mine an infinite number of times

and will continue being mine infinitely.” This leads us to the doctrine of

cycles, which is so close to Buddhism and which St. Augustine refuted in

The City of God.

The Hindu doctrine that the universe consists of an infinite number of

cycles which are measured in calpas had come to the notice of the Stoics

and the Pythagoreans. The calpa transcends man’s imagination. Imagine a

wall of iron. It is sixteen miles high and every six hundred years an angel

brushes it with a very fine cloth from Benares. When the cloth has worn

down the wall which is sixteen miles high, the first day of one of the calpas

will have passed and the gods also last as long as the calpas last and then

die.

The history of the universe is divided into cycles and in these cycles there

are long eclipses during which there is nothing or in which only the words

of the Veda remain. Those words are archetypes which serve to create

things. La divinity Brahma also dies and is reborn. There is a quite pathetic

moment when Brahma is in his palace. He has been reborn after one of the

calpas, after one of the eclipses. He walks through the rooms, which are

empty. He thinks of other gods. The other gods appear at his command, and

they think that Brahma has created them because they were there before.

Let’s pause at this vision of the history of the universe. There is no God in

Buddhism; or there could be a God, but it isn’t the essential thing. What is

essential is that we believe that our destiny has been predetermined by our

karma or karman. If I was to be born in Buenos Aires in 1899, if I was to

be blind, if I am to be giving this lecture to you tonight, it is all the result of

my previous life. There isn’t a single event in my life which hasn’t been

predetermined by my previous life. This is what is called karma. Karma, as

I have already said, is like a mental structure, an extremely fine mental

structure.

We are weaving and inter-weaving in every moment of our lives. For not

only our volitions, our deeds, our semi-dreams, our sleep, our semi-waking

are woven: we are perpetually weaving that thing [karma]. When we die

another being is born who inherits our karma.

Schopenhauer’s disciple Deussen, who loved Buddhism, relates that he met

a blind beggar in India, and took pity on him. The beggar said to him: “If I

was born blind, it is because of the faults committed in my previous life; it

is just that I am blind.” People accept pain. Gandhi was opposed to building

hospitals saying that hospitals and charitable works simply delay the

payment of a debt, that one should not help others: if the others suffer they

must suffer because it is a fault they must pay and if I help them I am only

delaying their payment.

Karma is a cruel law, but it has a curious mathematical consequence: if my

present life is determined by my previous one, that previous one was

determined by another; and that other, by another, and so on without end.

That is: the letter z was determined by the y, the y by the x, the x by the w,

the w by the v, except that this alphabet has an end but no beginning.

Buddhists and Hindus, in general, believe in a real infinity; they believe

that to arrive at this moment an infinite time has passed, and that when I

say infinite I don’t mean undefined, innumerable, I mean strictly infinite.

Of the six destinies permitted to man (someone can be a demon, can be a

plant, can be an animal), the most difficult is to be a human being, and we

must take advantage of it in order to save ourselves.

Buddha imagines a tortoise at the bottom of the sea and a bangle that floats.

Every six hundred years the tortoise lifts its head out of the water and it

would be very seldom that its head enters the bangle. Well, says Buddha, as

infrequently as that happens with the tortoise and the bangle is the fact that

we are humans. We must take advantage of being humans to reach nirvana.

What is the cause of suffering, the cause of life, if we deny the concept of a

God, if there is no personal god who creates the universe? This concept is

what Buddha calls Zen. The word Zen may seem strange to us, but we will

compare it with other words we know.

Let’s think for example in Schopenhauer’s Will. Schopenhauer conceives

of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and

Representation [mental picture]. There is a Will which incarnates in each

one of us and produces that representation which is the world. We find this

in other philosophers by a different name. Bergson speaks of the élan vital;

Bernard Shaw of the “life force”, which is the same. But there is a

difference: for Bergson and Shaw the élan vital are forces which must

prevail, we must continue dreaming the world, creating the world. For

Schopenhauer, for gloomy Schopenhauer, and for the Buddha, the world is

a dream, we must stop dreaming it and we can achieve this by means of

long exercises. At first we have suffering, which is Zen. And Zen produces

life and life is, necessarily, misfortune; because what is living? Living is

being born, growing old, being ill, dying, along with other evils, among

which is a very pathetic one, which for the Buddha is one of the most

pathetic: not being with those we love.

We have to renounce passion. Suicide doesn’t help because it’s a

passionate act. A person who commits suicide is always in the world of

dreams. We must come to understand that the world is an apparition, a

dream, that life is a dream. But we must feel this profoundly, achieve it

through meditation exercises. In Buddhist monasteries one of the exercises

is this: the neophyte has to live every moment of his life completely

immersed in it. He must think: “It is now midday, I am now crossing the

courtyard, I will now meet the superior,” and at the same moment he must

think that midday, the courtyard and the superior are unreal, are as unreal

as he and his thoughts. Because Buddhism negates the I.

One of the greatest disillusions is the I. Buddhism agrees on this with

Hume, with Schopenhauer and with our Macedonio Fernández. There is no

subject, what there is, is a series of mental states. If I say “I think”, I am

incurring in error, because I suppose a constant subject and then an act of

this subject. This is not so. Hume points out we should not say “I think”,

but “it thinks”, like “it’s raining”. When we “it’s raining”, we are not

thinking that the rain is carrying out an action; no, something is happening.

In the same way, just as we say it’s hot, it’s cold, it’s raining, we must say:

it thinks, it suffers, and avoid the subject.

In Buddhist monasteries the neophytes are subjected to a very hard

discipline. They can leave the monastery whenever they wish. They don’t

even write down their names – María Kodama tells me. The neophyte

enters the monastery and is subjected to very hard tasks. He sleeps and

after a quarter of an hour they wake him up; he must wash, he must sweep

up; if he falls asleep they punish him physically. Thus he must think at all

times not of his faults, but of the unreality of everything. He has to perform

a continuous exercise of unreality.

We now come to Zen Buddhism and to Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma was

the first missionary, in the sixth century. He goes from India to China and

meets with an emperor who had promoted Buddhism and enumerates the

monasteries and sanctuaries and the number of Buddhist neophytes.

Bodhidharma tells him: “All that belongs to the world of illusion; the

monasteries and the monks are as unreal as you and I.” Then he meditates

and leans against a wall.

The doctrine arrives in Japan and divides into various sects. The most

famous is Zen. In Zen a procedure has been discovered to achieve

illumination. It is only effective after years of mediation. You arrive

abruptly; it is not a series of syllogisms. One must suddenly intuit the truth.

The procedure is called satori and consists of an abrupt act, which is

beyond logic.

We always think in terms of subject, object, cause, effect, logic, illogic,

something and its opposite; we must surpass these categories. According to

the Zen doctors, we must arrive at the truth through a brusque intuition, by

means of an illogical answer. The neophyte asks the teacher what is

Buddha. The teacher answers: “The cypress is the orchard.” A completely

illogical answer which can awaken the truth. The neophyte asks why

Bodhidharma came from the west. The teacher may reply: “Three pounds

of linen.” These words do not involve an allegorical meaning; they are an

absurd reply to awaken, suddenly, intuition. It could also be a blow. The

disciple may ask something and the teacher answers with a blow. There is a

story – of course it must be legendary – about Bodhidharma.

A disciple accompanied Bodhidharma and asked him questions and

Bodhidharma never answered. The disciple tried to meditate and after a

while he cut off his left arm and came before the teacher as proof that he

wanted to be his disciple. He mutilated himself deliberately as proof of his

intention. The teacher, not paying attention to the act which, after all, was a

physical act, an illusion, said: “What do you want?” The disciple answered:

“I have been seeking my mind for a long time, and have not found it.” The

teacher summed up: “You haven’t found it because it doesn’t exist.” At that

moment the disciple understood the truth, understood that the I doesn’t

exist, understood that everything is unreal. Here we have, more or less, the

essential in Zen Buddhism.

It’s very difficult to describe a religion, especially one which one doesn’t

profess. I think it is important that we don’t conceive of Buddhism as a set

of legends, but as a discipline; a discipline which is within our reach and

doesn’t demand asceticism of us. It also doesn’t allow us to abandon

ourselves to the licenses of carnal life. What it asks of us is meditation, a

meditation which isn’t about our faults, about our past life.

One of the themes of Zen Buddhist meditation is to think that our past life

was illusory. If I were a Buddhist monk I would think at this moment that I

have begun to live now, that the past life of Borges was a dream, that the

entire universal history was a dream. By means of intellectual meditation

we gradually liberate ourselves from the Zen. Once we understand that the

I doesn’t exist, we cannot think that the I can be happy or that it is our duty

to make it happy. We achieve a state of calm. This doesn’t mean that

nirvana is equivalent to the sensation of thought and a proof of this would

be in the legend of the Buddha. The Buddha under the sacred fig tree

achieves nirvana and nevertheless continues living and preaching the law

for many years.

What does it mean to achieve nirvana? Simply that our acts no longer cast

shadows. While we are in this world we are subject to karma. Every one of

our acts interweaves that mental structure called karma. When we have

achieved nirvana our acts no longer cast shadows, we are free. Saint

Augustine said that once we are saved we no longer have reason to think

about good or about evil. We will continue doing the good, without

thinking about it.

What is nirvana? Much of the attention that Buddhism has aroused in the

west is due to this beautiful word. It seems impossible that the word

nirvana doesn’t involve something precious. What is nirvana literally? It is

extinction, snuffing out. It has been conjectured that when someone

achieves nirvana, they are snuffed out. But when they die it is the great

nirvana, and then extinction. On the other hand, an Austrian orientalist

notes that the Buddha used the physics of his time, and the idea of

extinction wasn’t the same as it is now: because it was thought that a flame,

upon being snuffed out, doesn’t disappear. It was thought that the flame

continued living, that it persisted in a different state, and that nirvana

doesn’t necessarily signify extinction. In can be that we continue in a

different way. In a way inconceivable for us. In general the metaphors of

the mystics are prophetic ones, but those of the Buddhists are different.

When they speak of nirvana they don’t speak of the wine of nirvana or the

rose of nirvana or the embrace of nirvana. Rather do they compare it to an

island. To a firm island in the midst of storms. They compare it to a tall

tower; it can also be compared to a garden. It’s something which exists on

its own, independent of us.

What I have said today is fragmentary. It would have been absurd for me to

have expounded on a doctrine to which I have dedicated many years – and

of which I have understood little, really – with a wish to show a museum

piece. Buddhism is not a museum piece for me: it is a path to salvation. Not

for me, but for millions of people. It is the most widely held religion in the

world and I believe that I have treated it with respect when explaining it

tonight.