# Nirvana supplies the destination of a polemic, not a Buddhist definition

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH03.P026](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH03.P026/#char=462,550): "The Tolstoyan's will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil."

Tibet is a figurative destination: Nietzsche's strenuous ascent supposedly ends in the same immobility as Tolstoy's renunciation. Nothing in the paragraph establishes an actual Tibetan episode or a Tibetan source. The phrase about a land of nothing makes Buddhist release serve as an image of moral vacancy.

A useful check is the *Dhammapada*, chapter XIV, verses 183–85. It combines abstention from evil with cultivating good and purifying the mind; the adjacent verses praise nibbana, patience and disciplined practice. Such discrimination between actions directly qualifies the claim that Buddhist instinct treats every particular action as evil. The [inspected translation is Acharya Buddharakkhita's, published by the Buddhist Publication Society in 1985 and transcribed in 1996](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.14.budd.html). This ancient Pali canonical witness is a comparator, not a reconstruction of Tibetan Buddhism or of Chesterton's sources.

There is also an ironic point of contact with Nietzsche: *The Antichrist*, §20, calls Buddhism nihilistic while preferring its treatment of suffering to Christian explanations through sin. See [§§20–23 in Mencken's later translation](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19322/pg19322-images.html). That makes Chesterton's imagined destination intelligible, but does not demonstrate borrowing. Both polemics require checking against Buddhist sources rather than allowing either writer to define Buddhism for the reader.

## Sources

- [Dhammapada XIV, Buddhavagga, translated Acharya Buddharakkhita (BPS, 1985; online transcription 1996)](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.14.budd.html), Verses 183–85; edition and transcription statement at foot of page
- [Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, translated H. L. Mencken (1918; inspected 1923 pocket edition, second printing 1924)](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19322/pg19322-images.html), §§20–23, especially §20

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