We explain in detail what Nirvana is. Discover all its characteristics and how it is reflected in today’s popular mythology.
What is the Nirvana?
Nirvana is the oldest and most common term used to describe the goal of the Buddhist path. The literal meaning is “to blow away” or “to extinguish”. It is the ultimate spiritual goal of Buddhism and marks the soteriological liberation of saṃsāra rebirth. Nirvana is part of the Third Truth about the “cessation of dukkha” in the Four Noble Truths, and the summum bonum destiny of the Noble Eightfold Path.”.
Within the Buddhist tradition, this term has been commonly interpreted as the extinction of the “three fires”, or “three poisons”, passion (raga), aversion (dvesha) and ignorance (moha or avidyā). When these fires are extinguished, liberation from the cycle of rebirth (saṃsāra) is achieved. Eventually, with the development of Buddhist doctrine, other interpretations were given, such as the absence of the fabric (vana) of the activity of the mind, the elimination of desire and the flight from the forests, cq. the five skandhas or aggregates.
Types of Nirvana
The Buddhist scholastic tradition identifies two types of nirvana: sopadhishesa-nirvana (nirvana with a remainder), and parinirvana or anupadhishesa-nirvana (nirvana without remainder, or final nirvana). The founder of Buddhism, the Buddha, is believed to have attained both states. Nirvana, or liberation from cycles of rebirth, is the highest goal of the Theravada tradition.
In the Mahayana tradition, the highest goal is Buddhahood, in which there is no abiding in Nirvana, but a Buddha continues to be reborn in the world to help liberate beings from saṃsāra by teaching the Buddhist path. We could relate it to other mythologies such as: Norse Mythology, Middle Eastern Mythology, among others.
Etymology
The term nirvana describes a state of freedom from suffering and rebirth, but different Buddhist traditions have interpreted the concept in different ways. The origin is probably pre-Buddhist, and its etymology may not be conclusive for its meaning. The term was a more or less central concept among the Jains, Ajivikas, Buddhists, and certain Hindu traditions, and may have been imported into Buddhism with much of its semantic scope from other sramanic movements.
It has a wide range of meanings, although the literal meaning is “to blow” or “to extinguish.” It refers to both the act and effect of blowing (on something) to extinguish it, but also to the process and result of burning, extinguishing.
The term nirvana in the soteriological sense of “quenched, extinguished” state of liberation does not appear in the Vedas or the pre-Buddhist Upanishads. According to Collins, “Buddhists seem to have been the first to call it nirvana.” However, ideas of spiritual liberation, using different terminology, are found in ancient texts of non-Buddhist Indian traditions, such as in verse 4.4.6 of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad of Hinduism.
Extinction
The prevailing interpretation of nirvana as “extinction” is based on the etymology of nir√vā for “blowing out.” Nir is negative, whereas va is commonly taken to refer to “blowing away.” The term nirvana is part of an extensive metaphorical structure that was probably established at a very early age in Buddhism.
According to Gombrich, the number of three fires alludes to the three fires that a Brahmin had to keep burning, thus symbolizing life in the world, as a family man. The meaning of this metaphor was lost in later Buddhism and other explanations of the word nirvana were sought. Not only passion, hatred and delusion were to be extinguished, but also all aphrodisiacs (asava) or defilements (khlesa)
The “blowing away” does not mean total annihilation, but the extinguishing of a flame that returns and exists in another form. The term nirvana can also be used as a verb: “he or she nirvāṇa-s” or “he or she parinirvānṇa-s” (parinibbāyati).
It has also been interpreted as the extinction of the “three fires,” or “three poisons,” i.e., of passion or sensuality (raga), aversion or hatred (dvesha), and delusion or ignorance (moha or avidyā). Another explanation of nirvana is the absence of the interweaving (vana) of mind activity.
after life?
what happens to that person when he or she dies? It is in connection with the final nirvana that problems of understanding arise. When the flame of craving is extinguished, rebirth ceases, and an enlightened person is not reborn. So what has happened to him? There is no clear answer to this question in the early sources. The Buddha said that asking about the whereabouts of “an enlightened person” after death is like asking where a flame goes when it goes out.
The flame, of course, has gone nowhere. It is simply the combustion process that has ceased. Removing craving and ignorance is like removing the oxygen and fuel that a flame needs to burn. The image of the blowing out of the flame, however, does not suggest that the final nirvana is annihilation. The sources make it very clear that this would be a mistake, as would the conclusion that nirvana is the eternal existence of a personal soul.
Questioning the concept
The Buddha discouraged speculation about the nature of nirvana and emphasized instead the need to strive for its attainment. Those who asked speculative questions were likened to a man wounded by a poisoned arrow who, instead of pulling the arrow, persists in asking for irrelevant information about the man who shot it, such as his name and clan, how far he was standing, and so on.
In keeping with this reluctance on the part of the Buddha to elaborate on the question, early sources describe nirvana in predominantly negative terms. These range from “the absence of desire” and “the extinction of thirst” to “the blowing away” and “cessation.” A smaller number of positive epithets are also found, including “the auspicious,” “the good,” “purity,” “peace,” “truth,” and “the farthest shore.”
Certain passages suggest that nirvana is a transcendent reality that is unborn, unoriginated, uncreated and unformed. It is difficult to know what interpretation to give to these formulations. In the last analysis, the nature of ultimate nirvana remains an enigma apart from those who experience it. What we can be sure of, however, is that it signifies the end of suffering and rebirth.
Metaphysical place or transcendent consciousness
Peter Harvey has defended the idea that nirvana in the Palisuttas refers to a kind of transformed, transcendent awareness or insight (viññana) that has “stopped” (nirodhena). According to Harvey, this nirvanic consciousness is said to be “objectless,” “infinite” (anantam), “unsupported” (appatiṭṭhita) and “unmanifest” (anidassana), as well as “beyond time and spatial location.”
Rune Johansson’spsychology of nirvana also argued that nirvana could be seen as a transformed state of mind. In the cosmology of Jainism, another sramana tradition like Buddhism, liberated beings inhabit an actual place (loka) associated with nirvana. Some scholars have argued that originally, Buddhists held a similar view.
Stanislaw Schayer, a Polish scholar, argued in the 1930s that the nikayas retained elements of an archaic form of Buddhism close to Brahmanic beliefs and survived in the Mahayana tradition. Contrary to popular opinion, the Theravada and Mahayana traditions may be “divergent but equally reliable records of a pre-canonical Buddhism now lost forever.”
Nirvana with and without fuel residue
There are two stages in nirvana, one in life and one in death; the first is vague and general, the second is precise and specific. Nirvana in life marks the life of a monk who has achieved complete liberation from desire and suffering but still has body, name and life. Nirvana after death, also called nirvana without substratum, is the complete cessation of everything, including consciousness and rebirth. This main distinction is between the extinction of the fires during life, and the final “bursting forth” at the moment of death.
Anatta, Sunyata
Nirvana is also described in Buddhist texts as identical with anatta (anatman, non-self, lack of self). Anatta means that there is no permanent self or soul in any being or permanent essence in any thing. This interpretation asserts that all reality is of dependent origin and a worldly construct of every human mind, thus ultimately an illusion or ignorance. In Buddhist thought, this must be overcome, Martin Southwold asserts , through “the realization of anatta, which is nirvana.”
Nirvana in some Buddhist traditions is described as the realization of sunyata (emptiness or nothingness). The Madhyamika Buddhist texts call it the midpoint of all dualities (Middle Way), where all subject-object discriminations and polarities disappear, there is no conventional reality, and the only ultimate reality of emptiness is all that remains.
Synonyms and metaphors
A commonly used metaphor for nirvana is that of a flame going out for lack of fuel: Just as an oil lamp burns because of the oil and wick, but when the oil and wick run out, and there are no others, it goes out for lack of fuel (anaharo nibbayati), so the monk knows that after the breakdown of his body, when life is exhausted, all the feelings that rejoice here will grow cold.
Collins argues that the Buddhist view of awakening inverts the Vedic view and its metaphors. Whereas in the Vedic religion, fire is seen as a metaphor for good and life, Buddhist thought uses the metaphor of fire for the three poisons and for suffering. This can be seen in the Adittapariyaya Sutta commonly called “the fire sermon” as well as in other similar Buddhist texts. The fire sermon describes the end of the “fires” with a refrain that is used throughout the early texts to describe nibbana:
Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is completely liberated. With complete liberation, there is knowledge, ‘Fully liberated.’ He discerns that’ The birth is over, the holy life fulfilled, the task accomplished. There is nothing more for this world.
Meaning
In the Dhammacakkapavattanasutta, the third noble truth of cessation (associated with nirvana) is defined as: “Steven Collins lists some examples of synonyms used in Pali texts for nibbana: the end, (the place, the state) without corruptions, the truth, the beyond (the shore), the subtle, very difficult to see, without decay, firm, not susceptible to dissolution, incomparable, without differentiation, peaceful, deathless, excellent, auspicious, rest, the destruction of craving, wonderful, without affliction, whose nature is to be free from affliction.
Nibbana presumably here in one or more creative etymology,= e.g., non-forestal, untroubled, dispassion, dispassion, purity, freedom, without attachment, the island, refuge (cave), protection, shelter, refuge, ultimate end, subduing of pride (or “intoxication”), removal of thirst, destruction of attachment, cutting of the round (of rebirth), emptiness, very difficult to obtain, where there is no becoming, no disgrace, where there is nothing done, free from sorrow, without danger, whose nature is to be without danger, profound, difficult to see, superior, unsurpassed (without superior), unequaled, incomparable, above all, best, without strife, clean, flawless, stainless, bliss, immeasurable, (a firm) foothold, possessing nothing.
