liberation from corporeality, from sensation, from perception, from mentation, from consciousness, therefore creatures do liberate themselves from corporeality, from sensation, from perception, from mentation, from consciousness." 131 But this insight, fundamental as it is, is not yet sufficient. For now the other great question arises: How can this liberation be realized? How can we vanquish our personality and the whole world and reach that realm, our own proper realm, "where there is neither birth nor sickness nor becoming old nor dying, nor woe, sorrow, suffering, grief and despair," and so, putting this statement to the test, by visible evidence prove ourselves to be beyond the world and all its suffering? It is clear that if the Buddha is able to answer exhaustively this question also, he has indeed bestowed upon mankind the greatest benefit that can ever be bestowed upon it. Whether he succeeded, let what follows, show. As GENERAL INTRODUCTION s we have amply shown, the problem of the annihilation of suffering coincides with that of the conquest of our personality through which alone we are joined to the world and thereby to suffering, nay, wherein alone we even experience the world and thereby suffering. In the same measure in which I succeed in liberating myself from my personality, in outgrowing it, I also outgrow the world and its sufferings; and after having entirely freed myself from the components of my personality, I look down upon it as upon something entirely alien to me, and thereby in the same manner upon the world and upon suffering. All of them, then, have nothing more to do with me, for I have withdrawn myself from them. I am indeed still in the world, but I am no longer of the world. I tower above it, and look towards the approaching decay of my personality with cool indifference. It affects me equally as little as it affects Himālaya, the king of mountains, when the wreaths of mist floating around him far beneath dissolve and vanish, whereby he, on the contrary, only stands out all the more clearly, in all his stainless purity. "Just as, O Brahmin, the blue, red or white lotusflower, originated in the water, grown up in the water, stands there towering above the water, untouched by the water: just so, Brahmin, I am born within the world, grown up within the world, but I have vanquished the world, and unspotted by the world I remain." 132 |