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Nirvana (Sanskrit, also nirvāṇa; Pali: nibbana, nibbāna ) is the earliest and most common term used to describe the goal of the Buddhist path.[1] The literal meaning of the term in Sanskrit is "to be blown out" or "to be extinguished". Within the Buddhist tradition, this term is typically glossed as the extinction of craving (tanha), or more broadly, the extinction of the fires of attachment (raga), aversion (dvesha) and ignorance (moha or avidyā).[1] In the Buddhist view, when these fires are extinguished, suffering (dukkha) comes to an end, and one is released from the cycle of rebirth (saṃsāra).
Buddhist tradition distinguishes between the experience of someone who reaches nirvana during their lifetime (sopadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa) and the experience of nirvana after death (nir-upadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa). The experience of nirvana-in-this-lifetime is described as a transformed state of mind that is free from negative mental states, peaceful, happy, and non-reactive. The experience of nirvana-after-death (commonly referred to as paranirvana) is said to be beyond words or description.
The two main traditions of Buddhism, the Theravada and Mahayana, differ in their presentations of nirvana. The Theravada tradition emphasizes the cessation of suffering and liberation from samsara. The Mahayana tradition emphasizes two stages of nirvana: the first stage is described (using similar language to the Theravada tradition) as the cessation of suffering and liberation from samsara; the next and final stage is referred to as the nonabiding (apratiṣṭhita) nirvana, or buddhahood, that transcends both samsara and the limited nirvana of the first stage.
In Buddhism, Nirvana is the ultimate goal of the spiritual path.[1] Joseph Goldstein explains:[2]
Contemporary translator Bhikkhu Bodhi states:[web 2]
In the Buddhist tradition, nirvana is described as the extinguishing of the fires that cause suffering. These fires are typically identified as the fires of attachment (raga), aversion (dvesha) and ignorance (moha or avidya).[3]
For example, Rupert Gethin states:[9]
Contemporary Buddhist scholar Ajahn Sucitto emphasizes that when these fires are extinguished, the mind is freed. Ajahn Sucitto states:[11]
In the Buddhist view, when the fires of attachment (raga), aversion (dvesha) and ignorance (moha or avidya) are extinguished, suffering (dukkha) comes to an end. The cessation of suffering is described as complete peace. Bhikkhu Bodhi states:[12]
In the Buddhist view, the fires of attachment (raga), aversion (dvesha) and ignorance (moha or avidya) are the forces which propel the cycle of rebirth (samsara). When these fires are extinguished, freedom from rebirth is attained.[4]
Bhikkhu Bodhi states:[13]
Paul Williams states:[10]
In the Buddhist tradition, a distinction is made between a person's experience of nirvana during their life and after their death. These two aspects of nirvana are described as:[5]
In the Buddhist tradition, it is believed that a practitioner can achieve nirvana during their life, or at the moment of death. When a practitioner experiences nirvana during their life, this experience is referred as nirvana-in-this-life, or more traditionally, "nirvana with remainder" (Pali: sa-upādisesa-nibbāna; Sanskrit: sopadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa).
Contemporary scholar Rupert Gethin explains:[18]
The experience of nirvana-in-this-life is said to result in a transformed mind that has the following qualities:
The experience of nirvana-in-this-life is said to be free from all negative mental states. For example, Walpola Rahula states that one who has achieved nirvana is "free from all ‘complexes’ and obsessions, the worries and troubles that torment others."[19]
Damien Keown states:[20]
Rupert Gethin states:[18]
Contemporary Buddhist teacher Ajahn Sucitto states:[11]
Anam Thubten states:[21]
Nirvana is described as a state of perfect peace that comes when all negative mental states are eliminated.[7] For example, Walpola Rahula states:[19]
In the state of nirvana, the mind is no longer reactive. Phillip Moffitt states:[25]
Ringu Tulku explains:[23]
Ajahn Sucitto states "qualities like calm, clarity, and kindness are all enhanced [...] the tinder and the sparkiness of the heart are removed."[11]
In the Buddhist view, when an ordinary person dies and their physical body disintegrates, the person's consciousness passes onto a new birth; and the person is reborn in one of the six realms of samsara. However, when a person attains nirvana, they are liberated from ordinary rebirth. When such a person dies, their physical body disintegrates and their consciousness is said to be completely liberated. They are not reborn in the ordinary sense. Their consciousness does not take rebirth into a physical form.
Contemporary scholar Rupert Gethin explains:[26]
The experience of nirvana-after-death (paranirvana) is said to be beyond words or description. Walpola Rahula explains:[27]
In the Buddhist view, there are no words to describe the experience of nirvana-after-death. Walpola Rahula explains:[28]
When a person who has reached nirvana dies, their physical existence is compared to a fire that has gone out. Walpola Rahula explains:[28]
According to the Visuddhimagga, nirvana is achieved after a long process of committed application to the path of purification (Pali: Vissudhimagga). The Buddha explained that the disciplined way of life he recommended to his students (dhamma-vinaya) is a gradual training extending often over a number of years. To be committed to this path already requires that a seed of wisdom is present in the individual. This wisdom becomes manifest in the experience of awakening (bodhi). Attaining nibbāna, in either the current or some future birth, depends on effort, and is not pre-determined.[29]
In the Visuddhimagga, Ch. I, v. 6 (Buddhaghosa and Ñāṇamoli, 1999, pp. 6–7.), Buddhaghosa identifies various options within the Pali canon for pursuing a path to nirvana,[10] including:
Depending on one's analysis, each of these options could be seen as a reframing of the Buddha's Threefold Training of virtue, mental development[16] and wisdom.
The Theravada tradition identifies four progressive stages culminating in full enlightenment as an Arahat. These four stages are:
The final stage, the arhat, is a fully awakened person. The arhat has abandoned all ten fetters and, upon death will never be reborn in any plane or world, having wholly escaped saṃsāra.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu notes that individuals up to the level of non-returning may experience nirvāna as an object of mental consciousness.[35][17] Certain contemplations with nibbana as an object of samādhi lead, if developed, to the level of non-returning.[36] At that point of contemplation, which is reached through a progression of insight, if the meditator realizes that even that state is constructed and therefore impermanent, the fetters are destroyed, arahantship is attained, and nibbāna is realized.[37]
The Buddha's teachings in the Pāli Canon present nirvāṇa as a radical reordering of consciousness.[38] This reordering is made possible through the threefold training (Noble Eightfold Path). It is concerned with performing wholesome actions (Pali: kusala kamma) with positive results and finally allows the cessation of the origination of worldly activities altogether with the attainment of nibbāna. Part of it is cultivation of special states of absorbed concentration called jhānas. These are states of deep relaxation in which a high degree of mental alertness and concentration is present. The jhanas in turn are made possible by a training in the establishing of mindfulness.
With nirvāṇa the consciousness is released, and the mind becomes aware in a way that is totally unconstrained by anything in the conditioned world. The Buddha describes this in a variety of passages. One way is as "Consciousness without feature, without end, luminous all around."[39][40]
In one interpretation, the "luminous consciousness" is identical with nirvāṇa.[41][42] Others disagree, finding it to be not nirvāṇa itself, but instead to be a kind of consciousness accessible only to arahants.[43][44] A passage in the Majjhima Nikaya likens it to empty space.[45]
Ajahns Pasanno and Amaro, contemporary vipassana-teachers write that what is referred to with the use of the word "viññana" (consciousness) is the quality of awareness, and that the use of the term "viññana" must be in a broader way than it usually is meant.[46][18]
This "non-manifestive consciousness" differs from the kinds of consciousness associated to the six sense media, which have a "surface" that they fall upon and arise in response to.[39] According to Peter Harvey, the early texts are ambivalent as to whether or not the term "consciousness" is accurate.[47] In a liberated individual, this is directly experienced, in a way that is free from any dependence on conditions at all.[39][48]
For liberated ones the luminous, unsupported consciousness associated with nibbana is directly known without mediation of the mental consciousness factor in dependent co-arising, and is the transcending of all objects of mental consciousness.[35][37] It differs radically from the concept in the pre-Buddhist Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita of Self-realization, described as accessing the individual's inmost consciousness, in that it is not considered an aspect, even the deepest aspect, of the individual's personality, and is not to be confused in any way with a "Self".[49] Furthermore, it transcends the sphere of infinite consciousness, the sixth of the Buddhist jhanas, which is in itself not the ending of the conceit of "I".[50]
Nagarjuna alluded to a passage regarding this level of consciousness in the Dighanikaya[51] in two different works. He wrote that
The Sage has declared that earth, water, fire, and wind, long, short, fine and coarse, good, and so on are extinguished in consciousness ... Here long and short, fine and coarse, good and bad, here name and form all stop.[52]
A related idea, which finds support in the Pali Canon and the contemporary Theravada practice tradition despite its absence in the Theravada commentaries and Abhidhamma, is that the mind of the arahant is itself nibbana.[53][19]
The Buddha explains the unique character of nibbāna as being due to the mind having become unconditioned (asankhata) which is to say free from the conditions formerly obscuring it by the volitional formations.
The sankharas are the ultimate cause for the material incarnation of sentient beings. According to the Buddha, during the course of many repeated incarnations these deeply buried structures (also referred to in Yogacara as karmic 'seeds'; Sanskrit: bīja) are either strengthened by indulgence in worldly activities (a person doing so is described as a Puthujjana) or weakened by following the Buddhist path. By uprooting the sanskara (volitional dispositions) one is no longer subject to further rebirth in samsāra.
The ultimate state of nirvana is described by the Buddha as "deathlessness" (Pali: amata or amāravati).
A liberated person performs neutral actions (Pali: kiriya kamma) producing no karmic results or fruit (vipaka), but nonetheless preserves a particular individual personality. This is the result of the traces of his or her karmic heritage. [58] In Theravada the arahant abiding in nirvāṇa is "the ideal personality, the true human being".[59]
The Mahayana (Great Vehicle) tradition emphasizes two levels of nirvana:
Note that some texts present the Mahayana path in three stages, where the first stage indicates a level of understanding or ethical conduct for non-Buddhists, and the second two stages are as indicated above.[20]
In the Mahayana tradition, the path of the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, is distinguished from the path of the Hinayana, or Lesser Vehicle. The Hinayana path is typically described as consisting of two subdivisions: the path of the sravaka (listener, hearer, or disciple) and the path of the pratyeka-buddha (solitary realizer). While the Hinayana path is sometimes equated with the modern day Theravada tradition, the terms are not synonymous. As Walpola Rahula notes, the modern-day Theravada formed separately from the Hinayana traditions referred to in the Mahayana texts.[21]
From the Mahayana point of view, the nirvana of the Lesser Vehicle is a form of liberation or awakening, but it is not the final goal of the path. Contemporary scholar Rupert Gethin explains:[61]
From the point of view of the Mahayana tradition, only by following the Mahayana path can one attain the highest level of realization, which is the nonabiding (apratiṣṭhita) nirvana, or buddhahood, that transcends both samsara and the limited nirvana of the Lesser Vehicle.[24]
Contemporary translator Douglas Duckworth presents the Mahayana point of view:[68]
The Mahayana commentary the Abhisamayalamkara presents the path of the bodhisattva as a progressive formula of Five Paths (pañcamārga). A practitioner on the Five Paths advances through a progression of ten stages, referred to as the bodhisattva bhūmis (grounds or levels).
From the Mahayana point of view, an arhat who has achieved the nirvana of the Lesser Vehicle will still have certain subtle obscurations that prevent the arhat from realizing complete omniscience. When these final obscurations are removed, the practitioner will attain nonabiding nirvana and achieve full omniscience [25]
The end stage practice of the Mahayana removes the imprints of delusions, the obstructions to omniscience, which prevent simultaneous and direct knowledge of all phenomena. Only Buddhas have overcome these obstructions, according to Mahayana Buddhism, and, therefore, only Buddhas have omniscience knowledge.
In some Mahayana/Tantric texts, nirvana is described as purified, non-dualistic 'superior mind'. For example, the Samputa Tantra states:
Undefiled by lust and emotional impurities, unclouded by any dualistic perceptions, this superior mind is indeed the supreme nirvana.'[70]
The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, which has as one of its main topics precisely the realm or dhatu of nirvana, has the Buddha speak of four attributes which make up nirvana. Writing on this Mahayana understanding of nirvana, William Edward Soothill and Lewis Hodous state:
‘The Nirvana Sutra claims for nirvana the ancient ideas of permanence, bliss, personality, purity in the transcendental realm. Mahayana declares that Hinayana, by denying personality in the transcendental realm, denies the existence of the Buddha. In Mahayana, final nirvana is both mundane and transcendental, and is also used as a term for the Absolute.[71]
Kosho Yamamoto, translator of the full-length Nirvana Sutra, expresses the view that the non-Self doctrine of the Buddha's earlier teaching phase is an expedient only and that in the Nirvana Sutra a hidden teaching on the True Self is disclosed by the Buddha:
He [the Buddha] says that the non-Self which he once taught is none but of expediency ... He says that he is now ready to speak about the undisclosed teachings. Men abide in upside-down thoughts. So he will now speak of the affirmative attributes of nirvana, which are none other than the Eternal, Bliss, the Self and the Pure.[72]
According to some scholars, the language used in the Tathāgatagarbha genre of sutras can be seen as an attempt to state orthodox Buddhist teachings of dependent origination using positive language instead. Yamamoto points out that this ‘affirmative’ characterization of nirvana pertains to a supposedly higher form of nirvana—that of ‘Great Nirvana’. Speaking of the 'Bodhisattva Highly Virtuous King' chapter of the Nirvana Sutra, Yamamoto quotes the scripture itself:
What is nirvana? ...this is as in the case in which one who has hunger has peace and bliss as he has taken a little food.[73]
Yamamoto continues with the quotation, adding his own comment:
But such a nirvāna cannot be called “Great Nirvāna”". And it [i.e. the Buddha’s new revelation regarding nirvana] goes on to dwell on the “Great Self”, “Great Bliss”, and “Great Purity”, all of which, along with the Eternal, constitute the four attributes of Great Nirvana.[74]
Some Mahayana traditions see the Buddha in almost docetic terms, viewing his visible manifestations as projections from within the state of nirvana. According to Etienne Lamotte, Buddhas are always and at all times in nirvana, and their corporeal displays of themselves and their Buddhic careers are ultimately illusory. Lamotte writes of the Buddhas:
They are born, reach enlightenment, set turning the Wheel of Dharma, and enter nirvana. However, all this is only illusion: the appearance of a Buddha is the absence of arising, duration and destruction; their nirvana is the fact that they are always and at all times in nirvana.’[75]
Within the Buddhist tradition, there are many discourses (Pali: suttas)—the written records of the teaching of the Buddha—in which the Buddha explains the meaning of nirvana (Pali: nibbana).
The Samyutta Nikaya 31,1 states:[76]
The following quotes from the Pali suttas refer to nirvana (Pali: nibbana) as the extinction of thirst (taṇhā):[77]
The Sutta-nipata states:
Majjhima Nikaya 2-Att. 4.68 states:
The liberated mind (citta) that no longer clings' means nibbāna.
In the Dhammapada, the Buddha describes nirvāṇa as "the highest happiness",[78] an enduring happiness qualitatively different from the limited, transitory happiness derived from impermanent things.
In the Yamaka Sutta (SN 22.58), the monk Sariputta clarifies the experience of Nirvana-after-death. As the sutra begins, a monk named Yamaka has the mistaken impression that a person who attains nirvana "does not exist" after death. Sariputta explains that this is not the correct view; the correct view is that nirvana-after-death is outside of all conceivable experience. Through a series of questions, Sariputta leads the monk Yamaka to admit that he cannot pin down the experience of an arahant after death. Yamaka comes to realize that the only accurate statement that can be made about nirvana-after-death is "That which is stressful (dukkha; suffering) has ceased and gone to its end."[web 4]
In the Nibbana Sutta (Udana 8.1), the Buddha states:[web 5]
In the Aggivacchagotta Sutta, the Buddha discusses the experience of a buddha after their death. (This state is described as nirvana-after-death or paranirvana.) In the sutta, the Buddha states that the experience of such a person can not cannot be described in any of the following ways: as being reborn after death, not being reborn, being and not being reborn, or neither being nor not being reborn.
The Buddha concludes by comparing the physical form and consciousness of the Tathagata to a fire that has gone out. The sutta states:[79][web 6]
Smith and Novak state:[6]
Bhikkhu Bodhi states:[80]
Rupert Gethin states:[9]
Advaita Vedanta scholar T. K. Parthasarathy suggests an alternate interpretation of the Sanskrit roots:[81]
Moksha is a Sankrit term that is also used to indicate liberation. It is most commonly used in the Hindu tradition.
This term is also used in some Buddhist traditions to denote aspects of liberation. For example, the Soka Gakkai Dictionary of Buddhism provides the following definition for the term vimoksha (identified as a synonym for moksha):
Gautama Buddha, Tibetan Buddhism, Sīla, Mahayana, Hinduism
Sri Lanka, Buddhism, Sanskrit, Indo-Aryan languages, Devanāgarī
Buddhism, India, Pali, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar
Hinduism, Yoga, Buddhism, Hindu philosophy, Gautama Buddha
Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, Tibetan Buddhism, Śīla, Pali
Māna, Śīla, Dāna, Gautama Buddha, Buddhism
Epistemology, Buddhism, Metaphysics, Gautama Buddha, Nirvana
Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, Śīla, Nirvāṇa, Yoga