The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE TWO PATHS 40. Know, O beginner, this is the Open PATH, the way to selfish bliss, shunned by the Bodhisattvas of the “Secret Heart,” the Buddhas of Compassion. The words “selfish bliss” must not be taken in a literal sense. It is exceedingly difficult to discuss this question. The Occidental mind finds it difficult even to attach any meaning to the conditions of Nirvana. Partly it is the fault of language, partly it is due to the fact that the condition of Arhat is quite beyond thought. He is beyond the Abyss, and there a thing is only true in so far as it is self-contradictory. The Arhat has no self to be blissful. It is much simpler to consider it on the lines given in my commentary to the last verse. 41. To live to benefit mankind is the first step. To prac- tise the six glorious virtues is the second. 42. To don Nirmanakéya’s humble robe is to forego eter- nal bliss for Self, to help on man’s salvation. To reach Nir- vana’s bliss but to renounce it, is the supreme, the final step —the highest on Renunciation’s Path. All this about Gautama Buddha having renounced Nir- vana is apparently all a pure invention of Mme. Blavatsky, and has no authority in the Buddhist canon. The Buddha is referred to, again and again, as having “passed away by that kind of passing away which leaves nothing whatever behind.” The account of his doing this is given in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta; and it was the contention of the Theosophists that this “great, sublime, Nibbana story” was something peculiar to Gautama Buddha. They began to talk about Parinibbana, super-Nibbana, as if there were 57