ABSTRACT
The supposition that the Buddha banned certain questions because they are not conducive to liberation does not get to the root of the matter, for a very obvious reason: a merely pragmatic discouragement of speculation would be ineffective. In 1964 discussion the author took a position not unlike that of Kulatissa Nanda Jayatilleke in his famous Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, namely a kind of Wittgensteinian interpretation of the undetermined questions. The Theravadin list of these includes, of course, questions about the finitude of the cosmos as to space and time, about the identity or otherwise of the jiva or soul and the body, and about the existence or otherwise of the Tathagata. There are no doubt religious reasons for the philosophical position of the Mahayana as against the Theravada. In the Theravadin context nibbana (nirvana) is transcendent. Devotional Buddhism personalized the character of transcendent Buddhas. But it also contributed to the idea that the ultimate is somehow pervasive.
