ABSTRACT
Summaries of the Buddha’s teachings rarely convey how much use he made of simile and metaphor. Many people know that nirvaja/nibbana means ‘going out’ (like a flame), but probably few of them know, or perhaps even ask themselves, what is going out. The Buddha had a simple, urgent message to convey, and was ingenious in finding ever new terms and analogies by which to convey it. The suttas are full of his inventiveness. When he resorted to figurative or other indirect modes of expression, this is called pariyaya, literally ‘a way round’; it is ‘a way of putting things’. The systematised presentation of the doctrine in the abhidhamma contrasted itself with teaching by pariyaya. The P.E.D., s.v. pariyaya, says: ‘in Abhidhamma terminology, specifically: pariyayena, the mode of teaching in the Suttanta, ad hominem, discursively, applied method, illustrated discourse, figurative language as opposed to the abstract, general statements of Abhidhamma nippariyayena.’
