IV
332 [DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES]
are the plastic forces of the body and speech and mind stilled and quiescent but also vitality is exhausted, heat is quenched and the faculties of sense broken up ; whereas in the almsman in trance vitality persists, heat abides, and the faculties are clear, although respiration, observation and perception are stilled and quiescent.”
This probably is the best and most complete exposition of Death or Annihilation.
There is only one lacuna in this dialogue. MahaKotthita should have asked Sariputta one question. What is heat ?
What answer Sariputta would have given it is not easy to imagine. But there can be no doubt that heat means energy.
Thus amplified, the real answer to the question : What happens when the body dies ? is : The body ceases to produce energy.
But this is only a part of the answer. Because death also means that whatever energy that had escaped from the body joins the general mass of energy playing about in the Universe.
Annihilation has therefore a two-fold aspect. In one of its aspects it means cession of production of energy. In another aspect it means a new addition to the stock of general floating mass of energy.
It is probably because of this two-fold aspect of annihilation that the Buddha said that he was not an absolute annihilationist. He was an annihilationist so far as soul was concerned. He was not an annihilationist so far as matter was concerned.
So interpreted it is easy to understand why the Buddha said that he was not an annihilationist. He believed in the regeneration of matter and not in the rebirth of the soul.
So interpreted, the Buddha’s view is in consonance with science.
It is only in this sense that the Buddha could be said to have believed in rebirth.
Energy is never lost. That is what science affirms. Annihilation in the sense that after death