The Buddha, the “fulfilled” and the fulfiller, makes no affirmation on this point. He refuses to assert that unity exists or that it does not exist, that he who has passed all the tests of absorption exists after death in unity or that he does not exist in unity. This refusal, this “noble silence”, is explained in two ways: one, theoretical, because fulfilment is beyond the categories of thought and expression; and too, practical, because disclosure of the existence of fulfilment does not establish a true life of salvation. Combination of the two explanations indicates the truth that he who treats what is as an object of assertion pulls it into division, into the antithetics of the world of It, where there is no life of salvation. “If, O monk, the opinion dominates that soul and body are one in being, there is no life of salvation; if, O monk, the opinion dominates that the soul is one and the body another, then too there is no life of salvation”. In the mystery that is observed as in the reality that is lived, “It is thus” and “It is not thus”, being and non-being, do not reign; but “thus and otherwise”, being and non-being at once, the unfathomable—this reigns. The primal condition of salvation is undivided confrontation of the undivided mystery. It is certain that the Buddha is of those who have known this. Like all true teachers he does not wish to impart an opinion, but to teach the way. He denies only one assertion, that of the “fools”, who say there is no action, no deed, no power, and says “Men can walk in the way”. He ventures only one assertion, which is decisive: “There is, O Monks, an Unborn, neither become nor created nor formed”. If there were not this, there would be no goal; there is this, the way has a goal.
Loyal to the truth of our meeting, we can follow the Buddha as far as this, but a step further would be disloyalty to the reality of our life.
For we know, from the truth and reality that we do not extract from ourselves but which is given for us to share in, that if the goal described by the Buddha is only one of the goals, then it cannot ha ours, and if it is the goal, then it is falsely described; and also, if it is one of the goals, the way may lead as far as it, and if it is the goal, the way leads, at most, nearer to it.
The Buddha describes as the goal the “cessation of pain”, that is of becoming and passing away—release from the cycle of births. “Henceforth there is no return” is the formula of the man who has freed himself from the appetite for living and thus from the necessity to become ever anew. We do not know if there is a return; we do not extend beyond this life the lines of this time-dimension in which we live, and do not seek to expose what will be disclosed to us in its own time and disposition. But if we did know that there is a return we would not seek to escape it, and we would long not indeed for gross being but for the power to speak, in each existence in its own way and language, the eternal I that passes away, and the eternal Thou that does not pass away.