Leszek Kolakowski: “Both Buddhism and Christianity suggest that the ultimate liberation of the soul is also perfect serenity: total peace of the spirit. And perfect serenity is tantamount to perfect immutability … like the happiness of a stone. Do we really want to say that a stone is the perfect embodiment of salvation and Nirvana? … We are told that Nirvana entails the abandonment of the self. This might be taken to suggest that there can be … happiness without a subject – just happiness, unrelated to anyone’s being happy. Which seems absurd.”