The Tree of Enlightenment

ticularly interested here. ese are questions that do not deserve
an answer; the famous inexpressible propositions to which the
Buddha remained silent fall into this category. Traditionally,
there are fourteen unanswerable questions. We find them, for
instance, in the Chulamalunkya Sutta. ese fourteen questions
are grouped into three categories:
e first category contains eight questions that concern the
absolute or final nature of the world: Is the world eternal or not
eternal, or both or neither; finite or not finite, or both or neither?
You can see that this category includes two sets of questions,
and that both sets refer to the world. e first set refers to
the existence of the world in time, and the second to the existence
of the world in space.
e second category contains four questions: Does the
Tathagata exist after death or not, or both or neither? ese questions
refer to the nature of nirvana, or ultimate reality.
e third category contains two questions: Is the self identical
with or different from the body? While the first category of
questions refers to the world and the second to what is beyond
the world, this last refers to personal experience. Do we die with
our bodies, or are our personalities altogether different from and
independent of our bodies?
e Buddha remained silent when asked these fourteen questions.
He described them as a net and refused to be drawn into
such a net of theories, speculations, and dogmas. He said that it
was because he was free of the bondage of all theories and dogmas
that he had attained liberation. Such speculations, he said,
are attended by fever, unease, bewilderment, and suffering, and
it is by freeing oneself of them that one achieves liberation.
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