We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
To consider the concept of nirvana as a product of Buddhist systematic thought, this chapter depicts the taxonomy within which it occurs as a structured whole, rather than telling the story of how that whole came, historically, to be created. It does however, discuss the evolution of relevant ideas in pre-Buddhist Brahmanism in 1.1.a, and offers a few remarks in 1.2.b about some less than perfectly understood meditative attainments which seem to result from emphases within the tradition which are divergent and perhaps contradictory. In sections 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 I organize the material in my own way, but the aim is to say nothing about the concept of nirvana which is foreign to the texts from which this account is taken. 1.4 and 1.5 revert to an external, etic viewpoint, in the former to dispose of what is prima facie a good question to ask about nirvana (can one “desire” it?), and in the latter to reflect on the relation between what is said and what is left unsaid in ideological discourse.
ACTION, TIME AND CONDITIONING
Time and salvation in pre-Buddhist Brahmanism
In this regard, as in many others, the thought of Buddhism is clearly continuous with that of the pre-Buddhist Brahmanical tradition.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
