(Buddha's Wisdom) We're closer to Nirvana than we think: 7 signs the Buddha described in Theravada Buddhism's Pali canon.
COMMENTARY
Explained by Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal
But what is "nirvana" and why would anyone want it?
It is "the end of all suffering" or dukkha. It is the extinguishing of all greed, hatred, and delusion (craving, aversion, and ignorance) that keep the illusion and suffering going. It is the cooling of these fires (raging flames, smoldering coals, and blinding smoke). It is the highest bliss, the dissolution of all formations, the end of samsara, the incessant "continued wandering on" of rebirth and death.
- Nirvana is the "deathless" (amata, amrita, ambrosia)
- Nirvana is the "unconditioned element" (asankhata dhatu)
- Nirvana is the highest peace, the true refuge (sarana)
- Nirvana is the freedom (vimutti) from all afflictions
- Nirvana is the liberation (moksha) by wisdom
- Nirvana is the summum bonum of Early Buddhism and therefore of the back-to-basics Theravada school
But what is it, this thing with no equal?
In Theravada Abhidhamma texts such as the Vibhanga, where Sanskrit nirvana is called nibbana in Pali, the "unconditioned element" is defined this way:
"What is the unconditioned element (asankhata dhatu)? It is the cessation of passion, the cessation of hatred [aversion], and the cessation of delusion" [Note 12].
The Dhammasangani likewise describes it as that reality which is a sphere of experience unproduced by any cause or condition, according to L.S. Cousins [111].
The Dhammasangani also describes it in numerous other ways, such as the "immeasurable," "superior to everything," as "not past, present, or future" [the Ancient Greek anionic, the "not aeons," the "timeless," the "eternal now"], as "neither arisen nor not-arisen" and as "neither within nor without" [111].
- In Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, "aeon" is used as a translation of the term kalpa and sometimes maha-kalpa or "great aeon" (Sanskrit महाकल्प). A maha kalpa, which cannot be pinned down to an exact numerical figure, is often said to be 1,334,240,000 years or the life cycle of the world (cakkavāḷa).
- Christianity's idea of "eternal life" comes from a Greek form of aión (αἰών) and the word for life, zōḗ (ζωή) [6], which has been translated to mean [timeless] immortality in the majority of texts, but is argued by some [7, 8, 9] to mean life in the next aeon, the Kingdom of God, or Heaven, instead.
- According to some proponents of Christian universalism, the Greek New Testament scriptures use the word aión (αἰών) to mean "a long period" (or age-long) and the word aiṓnion (αἰώνιον) to mean "during a long period" (or similarly, age-during); thus, there was a time before the aeons, and the aeonian period is finite. After each person's mortal life ends, one is judged worthy or not worthy of aeonian life...
- Another universalist reading, prevalent among Neoplatonists due to its similarity to views expressed in Plato's Timaeus [10], is that the "aeon" does not refer to a time, finite or infinite, but instead a Greek parallel of a Judaic view of distinct natures of time, between the χρόνος (chronos) of the present "age," or עולם הזה ('olam ha-zeh) and the αιώνιος (aionios) of the "age to come," or הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא ('olam ha-ba). More: aeon
Cousins also notes that "suggestively, however, it may be reckoned as nama (name) rather than rupa [form]. This does seem to suggest some element of underlying idealism of the kind which emerges later in the vijñanavada" (the "teaching of consciousness") [111].
Furthermore, for Theravada Buddhism, nibbana is uniquely the ONLY unconditioned element or phenomenon. Theravada argues that nibbana is unitary, that it cannot be divided.
Unlike other Buddhist schools, Theravada does not agree that there are any other unconditioned elements or phenomena, nor that there are different types of nirvana (such as the apratistha or "non-abiding nirvana" invented by Mahayana) [112, 111].
As noted by Thiện Châu, the Theravadans and the Pudgalavadans "remained strictly faithful to the letter of the [Buddha's original] sutras" and thus held that nirvana is the only unconditioned dhamma (phenomenon), while other schools posited various asankhata dhammas, such as the Sarvastivadan view that space (akasha) is unconditioned) [112].
Medieval Theravada exegesis
The fifth century Theravada scholar-monk and exegete Buddhaghosa says in The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga): "It is called nibbana (extinction) because it has gone away from (nikkhanta), has escaped from (nissata), is dissociated from craving, which has acquired in common usage the name ‘fastening (vana)’ because, by ensuring successive becoming, craving serves as a joining together, a binding together, a lacing together, of the four kinds of generation, five destinies, seven stations of consciousness, and nine abodes of being" [Note 13]. More
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