The Equinox (Volume I, Number III)

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING he both exist and not exist after death?” ‘“Does he neither exist nor not exist after death?” . . . Because “the Blessed Buddhas lift not up their voice without a reason and without an object.”* But in spite of their being no sow/ “in the highest sense,” j Gotama had to postulate some vehicle which would transmit the sorrow of one generation to another, of one instant of time to the next; and, not being able to use the familiar idea of Atman, he instead made that of Karma doa double duty. ‘He does not die until that evil Karma is exhausted,” says Nagasena.{ Now this brings us to an extraordinary complex question, namely the Jractical difference between the Karma minus Atman of the Buddhists and the Karma plus Atman of the later Vedantists? The Brahman’s idea, at first, was of one complete whole, this, as the comment supplanted the text, got frayed into innumerable units or Atmans, which, on account of Karma, were born again and again until Karma was used up and the individual Atman went back to the universal Atman. Buddha erasing the Atman, though he refused to discuss the Begin- ning, postulates Nibbana as the end, which fact conversely also postulates the Beginning as Nibbana. Therefore we have all things originating from an x sign, Atman, Nibbana, God, Ain or First Cause, and eventually returning to this primordial Equilibrium. The difficulty which now remains is the bridging over of this divided middle. To Gotama there is no unit, and existence fer se is Ignorance caused as it were by a bad dream in the head of the undefinable Nibbana; which itself, however, * “The Questions of King Milinda,” iv, 2, 5. + Lbid,, iii, 5, 6. t Lbid,, iii, 4, 4. 133