Rupert Gethin on Buddhist Nirvana

Rupert Gethin on Buddhist Nirvana

“The cessation of suffering: nirvana

In the normal course of events our quest for happiness leads us to attempt to satisfy our desires —

whatever they be. But in so doing we become attached to things that are unreliable, unstable,

changing, and impermanent. As long as there is attachment to things that are unstable, unreliable,

changing, and impermanent there will be suffering — when they change, when they cease to be

what we want them to be. Try as we might to find something in the world that is permanent and

stable, which we can hold on to and thereby find lasting happiness, we must always fail. The

Buddhist solution is as radical as it is simple: let go, let go of everything. If craving is the cause of

suffering, then the cessation of suffering will surely follow from 'the complete fading away and

ceasing of that very craving': its abandoning, relinquishing, releasing, letting go. The cessation of

craving is, then, the goal of the Buddhist path, and equivalent to the cessation of suffering, the

highest happiness, nirvana (Pali nibbana).

Nirvana is a difficult concept, but certain things about the traditional Buddhist understanding of

nirvana are quite clear. Some of the confusion surrounding the concept arises, I think, from a failure

to distinguish different dimensions of the use of the term nirvana in Buddhist literature. I want here

to discuss nirvana in terms of three things: (1) nirvana as, in some sense, a particular event (what

happens at the moment of awakening), (2) nirvana as, in some sense, the content of an experience

(what the mind knows at the moment of awakening), and (3) nirvana as, in some sense, the state or

condition enjoyed by buddhas and arhats after death. Let us examine this more closely.

Literally nirvana means 'blowing out' or 'extinguishing', although Buddhist commentarial writings,

by a play on words, like to explain it as 'the absence of craving'. But where English translations of

Buddhist texts have 'he attains nirvana/parinirvana', the more characteristic Pali or Sanskrit idiom is

a simple verb: 'he or she nirvana-s' or more often 'he or she parinirvana-s' (parinibbayati). What the

Pali and Sanskrit expression primarily indicates is the event or process of the extinction of the 'fires'

of greed, aversion, and delusion. At the moment the Buddha understood suffering, its arising, its

cessation, and the path leading to its cessation, these fires were extinguished. This process is the

same for all who reach awakening, and the early texts term it either nirvana or parinirvana, the

complete 'blowing out' or 'extinguishing' of the 'fires' of greed, aversion, and delusion. This is not a

'thing' but an event or experience.

After a being has, as it were, 'nirvana-ed', the defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion no longer

arise in his or her mind, since they have been thoroughly rooted out (to switch to another metaphor

also current in the tradition). Yet like the Buddha, any person who attains nirvana does not remain

thereafter forever absorbed in some transcendental state of mind. On the contrary he or she

continues to live in the world; he or she continues to think, speak, and act as other people do —

with the difference that all his or her thoughts, words, and deeds are completely free of the

motivations of greed, aversion, and delusion, and motivated instead entirely by generosity,

friendliness, and wisdom. This condition of having extinguished the defilements can be termed

'nirvana with the remainder [of life]' (sopadhisesa-nirvana/sa-upadisesa-nibbana): the nirvana that

comes from ending the occurrence of the defilements (klesa/kilesa) of the mind; what the Pali

commentaries call for short kilesa-parinibbana. This is what the Buddha achieved on the night of his

awakening.

Eventually 'the remainder of life' will be exhausted and, like all beings, such a person must die. But

unlike other beings, who have not experienced 'nirvana', he or she will not be reborn into some new

life, the physical and mental constituents of being will not come together in some new existence,

there will be no new being or person. Instead of being reborn, the person 'parinirvana-s', meaning in

this context that the five aggregates of physical and mental phenomena that constitute a being cease

to occur. This is the condition of 'nirvana without remainder [of life]' (nir-upadhisesa-nirvana/anupadisesa-

nibbana): nirvana that comes from ending the occurrence of the aggregates (skandha/

khandha) of physical and mental phenomena that constitute a being; or, for short, khandhaparinibbana.

Modern Buddhist usage tends to restrict 'nirvana' to the awakening experience and

reserve 'parinirvana' for the death experience.

So far we have considered nirvana from the perspective of a particular experience which has farreaching

and quite specific effects. This is the more straightforward aspect of the Buddhist

tradition's understanding of nirvana, There is, however, a further dimension to the tradition's

treatment and understanding of nirvana. What precisely does the mind experience at the moment

when the fires of greed, hatred and delusion are finally extinguished? At the close of one of the

works of the Pali canon entitled Udana there are recorded several often quoted 'inspired

utterances' (udana) said to have been made by the Buddha concerning nirvana. Here is the first:

"There is, monks, a domain where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no wind, no sphere of infinite space, no sphere of nothingness, no sphere of infinite consciousness, no sphere of neither awareness nor non-awareness; there is not this world, there is not another world, there is no sun or moon. I do not call this coming or going, nor standing, nor dying, nor being reborn; it is without support,without occurrence, without object. Just this is the end of suffering."

This passage refers to the four elements that constitute the physical world and also what the

Buddhist tradition sees as the most subtle forms of consciousness possible, and suggests that there

is a 'domain' or 'sphere' (ayatana) of experience of which these form no part. This 'domain' or

'sphere' of experience is nirvana. It may also be referred to as the 'unconditioned' (asamskrta/

asamkhata) or 'unconditioned realm' (asamskrta-/asamkhatadhatu) in contrast to the shifting,

unstable, conditioned realms of the round of rebirth. For certain Abhidharma traditions, at the

moment of awakening, at the moment of the extinguishing of the fires of greed, hatred, and

delusion, the mind knows this unconditioned realm directly, In the technical terminology of the

Abhidharma, nirvana can be said to be the object of consciousness at the moment of awakening

when it sees the four truths. Thus in the moment of awakening When all craving and attachments

are relinquished, one experiences the profoundest and ultimate truth about the world, and that

experience is not of 'a nothing' —the mere absence of greed, hatred, and delusion— but of what can

be termed the 'unconditioned'.

We can, then, understand nirvana from three points of view: (1) it is the extinguishing of the

defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion; (2) it is the final condition of the Buddha and arhats after

death consequent upon the extinction of the defilements; (3) it is the unconditioned realm known at

the moment of awakening. The critical question becomes the exact definition of the ontological

status of (2) and (3). The earlier tradition tends to shy away from such definition, although, as we

have seen, it is insistent on one point: one cannot say that the arhat after death exists, does not exist,

both exists and does not exist, neither exists nor does not exist. The ontological status of nirvana

thus defies neat categorization and is 'undetermined' (avyakrta/avyakata). None the less the

followers of Sarvastivada Abhidharma argue that nirvana should be regarded as 'real' (dravya),

while followers of the Theravada state that it should not be said to be 'non-existence' (abhava). But

for the Sautrantikas, even this is to say too much: one should not say more than that nirvana is the

absence of the defilements. With the development of the Mahayana philosophical schools of

Madhyamaka and Yogacara we find attempts to articulate the ontology of nirvana in different terms

— the logic of 'emptiness' (sunyata) and non-duality (advaya).

In the face of this some early Western scholarship concluded that there was no consensus in

Buddhist thought on the nature of nirvana, or persisted in arguing either that nirvana was mere

annihilation or that it was some form of eternal bliss. If one examines Buddhist writings one will

find material that can be interpreted in isolation to support the view that nirvana amounts to

annihilation (the five aggregates of physical and mental phenomena that constitute a being are gone

and the arhat is no longer reborn), and material to support the view that it is an eternal reality. But

this is not the point; the Buddhist tradition knows this. The reason why both kinds of material are

there is not because the Buddhist tradition could not make up its mind. For, as we have seen, the

tradition is clear on one point: nirvana, as the postmortem condition of the Buddha and arhats,

cannot be characterized as non-existence, but nor can it be characterized as existence. In fact to

characterize it in either of these ways is to fall foul of one of the two basic wrong views (drsti/ditthi)

between which Buddhist thought tries to steer a middle course: the annihilationist view (ucchedavada)

and the eternalist view (sasvata-/sassata-vada). Thus although the schools of Buddhist thought

may articulate the ontology of nirvana in different terms, one thing is clear, and that is that they are

always attempting to articulate the middle way between existence and non-existence, between

annihilationism and eternalism. And it is in so far as any formulation of nirvana's ontolgy is judged

to have failed to maintain the delicate balance necessary to walk the middle path that it is criticized.

Of course, whether any of Buddhist thought's attempts at articulating the ontology of the middle

way will be judged philosophically successful is another question. And again the tradition seems on

occasion to acknowledge even this. Although some of the things one might say about nirvana will

certainly be more misleading than others, ultimately whatever one says will be misleading; the last

resort must be the 'silence of the Aryas', the silence of the ones who have directly known the

ultimate truth, for ultimately 'in such matters syllables, words and concepts are of no use'.

What remains after all is said —and not said— is the reality of nirvana as the goal of the Buddhist

path conveyed not so much by the attempt to articulate it philosophically but by metaphor. Thus

although strictly nirvana is no place, no abode where beings can be said to exist, the metaphor of

nirvana as the destination at the end of the road remains vivid: 'the country of No-Birth — the city

of Nibbana, the place of the highest happiness, peaceful, lovely, happy, without suffering, without

fear, without sickness, free from old age and death’.” (R. Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism,

1998, p. 74-79)

The quote “in such matters syllables, words and concepts are of no use”, is taken, apparently, form

the Mahayana Vimalakirtinirdesa:

“Etienne Lamotte (trans.), The Teaching of Vimalakirti (Vimalakirtinirdesa), trans. by Sara Boin

(London, I976), 203; Etienne Lamotte (trans.), Le Traite de la graride vertu de sagesse de Nagarjuna

(Mahaprajnaparamitasastra), 5 vols. (Louvain, I944-8o), i. 30 n. 2, iv. 202I-7.”(Gethin, p. 284)