A Verb for Nirvana

Hey, everybody, I have no respect for cultures!

In the days of the Buddha, nirvana (Pali nibbana) had a verb of its own: nibbuti. It meant to "go out" as a flame goes out.

Fire was thought to be in a state of being trapped (bound) as it burned — clinging to and bound by the fuel it was consuming (burning). To go out was seen as being unbound, released, freed.

To go out could, therefore, be called "unbinding," although that sounds very clumsy. Sometimes another verb was used, pari-nibbuti, using the intensifier pari- to mean "total" or "all-around," indicating that once unbound, unlike fire unbound, one would never again be attached or trapped.

• [Nirvana (nibbana) is experienced while alive by enlightened people, reexperiencing the bliss over and again many times, whereas pari-nibbana (pari-nirvana) is "final" or complete nirvana, gone out for good.]

The Buddha reclines into final nirvana (Burma)

Now that nirvana has become an English word, it should have its own English verb to convey the sense of "being unbound" (liberated, freed, emancipated) as well.

At present, we say that a person "reaches" nirvana or "enters" nirvana, implying that nirvana is a place where one goes.

Nirvana is not a place (not the Christian equivalent of heaven, seventh heaven or, worse yet, nothingness).

Nirvana is realized, touched, glimpsed when the mind stops defining itself in terms of place: here, there, or between here and there.

This may seem like a hairsplitter's problem, a hobby for word-choppers problem — but what can a verb do to our practice?

The idea of nirvana as a place has created severe misunderstandings in the past, and it could easily create misunderstandings in the future.

There was a time when sophists and philosophers in proto-India reasoned that if nirvana is one place and samsara (the "endless wandering" or "Wheel of Life and Death") is another, then entering into nirvana leaves one stuck: Our range of movement has been limited, for we cannot get back to this miserable (impermanent, unfulfilling, impersonal) samsara.

To solve this imaginary problem they invented what they thought was a NEW kind of nirvana: an unestablished one in which one could be in both places — nirvana and samsara — at once.

• [This is in a sense possible because when an arhat, a fully enlightened person, experiences nirvana, that person does so in the midst of samsara but now is no longer bound by samsara after it runs its course in this very life. When this revolving record comes to a stop, there will be no more revolving like before. This is bliss, this is peace, this is being unbound, but one might imagine that samsara is everything and, therefore, nirvana must be nothing. This is completely mistaken, as enlightened persons know directly. However, how can anyone explain to those still craving and clinging to sensual pursuit, to the idea (wrong view) of annihilation, or to the wrong view of eternal wandering on?

Simplified depiction of six (of 31) planes of rebirth

However, these sophisticated philosophers misunderstood two important points about the Buddha's teachings. The first was that neither samsara nor nirvana is a "place." Samsara is a process (revolving, cycling, and recycling) creating places, even whole worlds. This is called becoming (bhava). Then wandering through them, these places to experience the results of deeds, this is called rebirth.

Nirvana is the cessation of this miserable process. One may be able to be in two places at once — or even develop a sense of self so infinite that one can occupy all places at once — but we can't feed a process and experience its end at the same time. We are either feeding samsara or not. If one feels the need to course through both samsara and nirvana, we are simply engaging in more samsara-ing (wandering on, revolving) and keeping ourselves trapped.

The second point is that nirvana, from the very beginning, was realized through unestablished consciousness — one that neither comes nor goes nor stays in place.

There is no way that anything unestablished can get stuck anywhere at all, for it is not only non-localized but also undefined.

The idea of a spiritual ideal as resting beyond space and definition is not exclusive to the Buddha's Dharma (Teachings). Issues of locality and definition, in the Buddha's eyes, had a specific psychological meaning. This is why the non-locality of nirvana is important to understand.

Just as all phenomena (all things) are rooted in desire, consciousness localizes itself through passion (craving, clinging, attachment).

Passion is what creates the "there" on which consciousness lands or gets established, whether the "there" is a form, feeling, perception, mental formation (thought-construct), or a type of consciousness.

Golden Buddha deep in meditation, Sukhothai

Once consciousness becomes established on any of these Five Aggregates clung to as self, it becomes attached (stuck, trapped) then proliferates, feeding on everything around it and creating all sorts of havoc.

Wherever there is attachment (clinging, which is just habitual grasping), that is where one gets defined as a "being."

One creates an identity there, and in so doing one is limited there. Even if the "there" is an infinite sense of awareness grounding, surrounding, or permeating everything else, it is still limited. This is because "grounding" and so forth are aspects of place.

Wherever there is place, no matter how subtle, passion is latent, looking for more fuel to feed on.

If, however, the passion can be removed (let go of, abandoned, undone), there is no more "there" there.

One sutra illustrates this with a simile of the sun shining through the eastern wall of a house and landing on the western wall.

If the western wall, the ground beneath it, and the waters beneath that ground were all removed, the sunlight would not land. In the same way, if passion for form, feeling, perception, mental formation, or consciousness, could be removed, consciousness would have no "where" (no place, no there) to land, and so would become unestablished.

This does not mean that consciousness would be annihilated. It simply means that — like the sunlight — it would now have no locality. With no locality, it would no longer be defined.

The Buddha represented not as resting but reclining into complete nirvana (Sukhothai, Thailand)

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This is why the consciousness of nirvana is said to be "without surface" (anidassanam), for it does not land. Because the consciousness-aggregate (vinnana-khandha) covers only consciousness that is near, far, past, present, or future — that is, connected with space and time — consciousness without surface is not included in the Five Aggregates clung to as self.

It is not "eternal" because eternity is a function of time. And because non-local also means undefined, the Buddha insisted that an enlightened/awakened person — unlike ordinary, uninstructed worldlings — cannot be located or defined in relation to the aggregates in this life.

Moreover, after passing away, one can neither be described as existing, nonexisting, neither existing nor nonexisting, nor both existing and nonexisting. Why? It is because descriptions can apply only to definable things.

The essential step toward this non-localized, undefined realization is to cut back on the proliferations of consciousness.

This first involves contemplating the severe dangers and drawbacks of keeping consciousness trapped in the process of feeding. This contemplation gives a strong sense of urgency to the next steps:

Bringing the mind to oneness in stillness (concentrating it on a single object, which temporarily purifies it), gradually refining that oneness (or coherence of mind), then dropping it to zero.

The drawbacks of feeding are most graphically described in SN 12.63, "The Discourse on a Son's Flesh." The process of gradually refining oneness is probably best described in MN 121, "The Lesser Discourse on Emptiness [the Impersonal]," while the drop to zero is best described in the Buddha's famous instructions to Bāhiya of the Barkcloth :

Meeting an independent sadhu

"Regarding the seen, there will be [to you] only the seen. Regarding the heard, only the heard. Regarding to the otherwise sensed, only the otherwise sensed. Regarding the cognized, only the cognized.' That is how to train yourself [Bahiya]. When for you there is only the seen in regard to the seen, only the heard in regard to the heard, only the otherwise sensed in regard to the otherwise sensed, only the cognized in regard to the cognized then, Bahiya, there is no you in connection with that. When there is no you in connection with that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor there [yonder, beyond] nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of dukkha."

• Dukkha is the Pali term for "stress, pain, suffering, unsatisfactoriness, disappointment," and refers to the inability of all things to fulfill. All things (conditioned amalgams, fabrications, dependently originated constructs) ultimately disappoint. Nirvana is not a "thing" (composite) but rather the unconditioned element free of all suffering.

With no here or there or between the two, you obviously can't use the verb "enter" or "reach" to describe this realization, even metaphorically.

Defilements ended, there is quenching/cooling.

The word nirvana should be made into a verb (cool, slake, quench) or in any case understood as such: "When it is understood that there is no you (self) in connection with that, you nirvana." (One nirvanas).

• [How is this not annihilation? If one understands that all that arises as "self" is dependently originated (conditioned), then it will be understood that all that "goes out" is ignorance. This is awakening.]

That way we can indicate that liberation, unbinding, release is an action unlike any other, and we can head off any mistaken notion about getting "stuck" in total freedom.

• Ven. Thanissaro (Geoffrey DeGraff), Wat Metta, California (accesstoinsight.org); edited and expanded by Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly