Table of Contents
Introduction 1
What is this book, and who is it for? 1
The discourse of felicity: imagining happiness 3
The Pali imaginaire 4
Eu-topia and ou-topia 7
Notes on the words 'Theravada' and 'religion' 8
1 Systematic and narrative thought: eternity and closure in structure and story 12
Closure in systematic thought 16
Closure in narrative thought 19
2 Nirvana as a concept 29
Action, conditioning, time, and timelessness 29
Nirvana in life and after death 39
Nirvana exists 47
Can one desire nirvana? 55
Silence and the production of meaning 58
3 Nirvana as an image 61
The words (pari)nirvana and (pari)nibbana; other referring terms and definite descriptions 63
Two aporias: consciousness and happiness 69
Imagery and expressibility 78
Appendix: happiness in meditation 94
4 Nirvana, time, and narrative 100
The myth of 'the Myth of the Eternal Return' 100
Individual versus collective time: can history end? Was Gotama unique? 105
The sense of an ending 110
Ending(s) in narrated time (erzählte Zeit)1: non-repetitive time 112
Ending(s) in narrated time (erzählte Zeit)2: repetitive time 114
Ending as an event in the time of narration (Erzählzeit) 122
5 Past and future Buddhas 126
Vamsa as a genre 136
Voice and temporal perspective in the Chronicle of Buddhas: repetitive and non-repetitive time interwoven 139
The Story of the Elder Maleyya and The History of the Future: unprecedented well-being 148
Appendix 1 Selections from the Buddhavamsa 153
Appendix 2 The Anagatavamsa 172
Conclusion: modes of thought, modes of tradition 185
Notes 189
Index 194
