Somewhere in COLDNESS Lies Nibbāna: Lexical Manifestations of COLDNESS

This paper starts with an investigation of three coldness-related tactile words, viz. Open image in new window han2 ‘cold’, Open image in new window leng3 ‘cold’ and Open image in new window liang2 ‘cool’, in their synaesthetic and metaphorical uses in Modern Chinese. It is found that Open image in new window leng3 ‘cold’ is most versatile whereas Open image in new window liang2 ‘cool’ is most inert with regard to their synaesthetic and metaphorical mappings, with Open image in new window han2 ‘cold’ standing in the middle. Moreover, Open image in new window han2 ‘cold’ tends to be object-oriented, while Open image in new window liang2 ‘cool’ is likely to be subject-oriented, with Open image in new window leng3 ‘cold’ allowing both subject- and object-oriented readings. We further conduct a study on the uses of these three tactile words in Buddhist texts of Āgamas, finding that Open image in new window liang2 ‘cool’ was consistently employed to refer the nibbānic status. Apart from it, two counts of Open image in new window leng3 ‘cold’ exhibit the nibbānic meaning. However, Open image in new window han2 ‘cold’ is never attested in this philosophical meaning. It is interesting to note that a kind of tactile feeling is associated with nibbāna, even though nibbānic experience is supposed to transcend sensory experience. This finding, together with some other findings with regard to the relation between sensory expressions and nibbāna, can shed light on the linguistc expressions of the inexpressible nibbāna.