Buddhist's Nirvana: Definition, Nature, Characteristics and how to achieve

Buddhism consists of two types of concept – one being negative and another positive. It starts with the pessimistic thought that human life is full of suffering (duhkha, dukkha in Pali). Men are responsible for their deeds. At the same time of their death, they become dissatisfied with their evil deeds, and later they get rebirth as dictated by their ‘Karma’, and thus, they can not get rid of the ‘bondage of life, death and rebirth (samsara). However, the Buddha suggests optimistically, all the suffering can cease to an end and the rebirth can be stopped by achieving ‘Nirvana’, the highest stage of Buddhist philosophy. Now, we shall discuss what Nirvana is, what its nature and characteristics are, and how one can achieve Nirvana.

Simon Blackburn, in his Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, defines Nirvana as –

“The perfect or beatific state characterized by the extinction of desires and passions and the transcending of the separate existence of the self.”

As Nirvana is often misunderstood, we should make the concept of Nirvana clear through further discussion.

Nirvana does not mean enaction. (“Nirvana is not renunciation of actions), but the purging of all actions, of attachment, aversion and delusion.” According to the Majjhima Nikaya and the Melinda Panda, Nirvana can be achieved even by a householder. (Not intense particularization, isolation and withdrawal)

“Nirvana is not death but eternal life, not annihilation but immortality not destruction but indestructibility; were truth and mortality negative, Nirvana would have been negative also; as they are positive, Nirvana is positive.”

We can mention an example of the very life of the Buddha who, after attainment of Nirvana, spent forty-five years of his life in preaching to the suffering people the way to end all suffering.

Many critics have considered Nirvana to be “a sophisticated version of suicide, a goal of self extinction, complete nihilism and absolute zero”. But Nirvana means only extinction of the evil, the desire, the craving, the fires which are the sources of all suffering, and not extinction of existence or life. ‘In Nirvana, the physical form remains, but the will to live be completely destroyed.’ After death, one attains ‘parinirvana’. So, ‘parinirvana’ menas death, but nirvana does not.  

   

The Buddha has talked of two types of desire and emotion – one is noble, another ignoble. Noble desire is not the desire for the worldly things. Buddha has only taught us to give up the latter. In addition, the attainment of nirvana is consistent with noble emotions – love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity – and with actions for the good of the community. So, the primary meaning of Nirvana, the extinction of pain and suffering does not mean the elimination of all feelings, emotions and desires.

 Actually, nirvana is a guarantee that rebirth will not occur, as ‘The Sutta Nipata’ refers to nirvana as the end of the wheel of birth and death. “The liberated person’s old Karma is exhausted, no new Karma is produced and longing after the future life is destroyed; the will to live being destroyed and no new craving for becoming springing up within him, he is extinguished like a lamp.”

As we mentioned earlier that Buddha’s doctrine begins with negative implication that human life is full of suffering. But this suffering can be turned into supreme joy and happiness by attaining Nirvana. “Pleasure is an empirical feeling and therefore painful. Nirvana is the supreme, perfect and eternal happiness; it is the blissful end, the highest good or the ‘summum bonum’ of man’s life.” Buddha says –

“There is no fire like passion, no ill like hatred; there is no happiness higher than tranquility.”

  

In Buddhism the terms, ‘atman’ (self or soul) and ‘nirvana’ are often misunderstood by different thinkers and the readers; and a question is raised that “can the concepts of Anatma and Nirvana be reconciled? Because, according to the second of the four Noble Truths, men are responsible for their deeds, and clinged with ‘samsara’ or the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. On the other hand Nirvana annihilates and transcends the separate existence of self. So there appears an apparent contradiction between the two ideas.

However, this contradiction can be easily resolved “by regarding suffering, craving ignorance and other links of the chain of causation or dependent origination (pratity asamutpada) as purely empirical, or rooted in Karma and by regarding nirvana as transcendental, the ultimate state of liberation, therefore would be regarded as the annihilation of the empirical self.” “In fact, nirvana is a state which is attained when all defilements, obsessions and imperfections of the empirical phenomenal self are made to disappear by self discipline and possession of perfect calm and tranquility.”

Therefore, to escape the contradiction of karma, to facilitate the freedom of the self from attachment to the world leading to suffering, the Buddha thought of nirvana.”

Actually, the Buddha’s observation of suffering of human life can be regarded as logical. But nirvana the ultimate goal of Buddhism can not be defined by logic. “Neither the self  is unread nor is the term ‘nirvana’ definable. Whatever attempts have been made to define it in words or phrases like annihilation, extinction, delivered emancipation, highest rapture, state of equanimity etc., have all been unsatisfactory. The state of nirvana is ultimately indefinable.

Now we can discuss how to achieve Nirvana

According to the last of the four noble truths, the “eightfold path” is the key to release from suffering. It is the Middle Path which tends to calm, to higher knowledge, enlightenment, Nirvana. They are:

• Right view
• Right aspiration
• Right speech
• Right action
• Right livelihood
• Right effort.
• Right mindfulness
• Right connection.

The Buddha has declared – “Nirvana is where precepts of justice and morality are followed; when fires of greed, of hatred and of delusion and the flames of all passions are extinguished then Nirvana is reached.”

He advises us to keep ourselves away from evil and to know the root of evil. He says –

“Killing is evil, stealing is evil, yielding to sexual passion is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil” and “desire is the root of evil, hatred is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.”

Pure acts are very important in Buddhism. The pure acts are those in which there is absence of desire, passion, ignorance, lust, hatred and which lead one to conquer all these. On the other hand, acts, contrary to these pure acts are impure acts. In fact pure acts “prepare the path of an individual to Nirvana.”

Meditation is stressed to reach Nirvana. The Buddha has said –

Meditation on transitoriness leads to victory over greed; meditation on suffering leads to the annihilation of hatred; meditation on the non-existence of an immortal soul leads to cessation of selfishness.

“According to Buddhist doctrine the path of knowledge is narrow. It is possible for every man to achieve Eternal Salvation.”  So one should cultivate ten ideal virtues. They are –

• Charity
• Purity of thought
• Patience
• Strenuousness
• Meditation
• Intelligence
• Employment of right means
• Resoluteness
• Strength, and
• Knowledge.

Love is also very important to achieve Nirvana. “Love according to the Buddha did not mean an attachment to a person or an object through which one hopes to satisfy his selfish cravings, but an endless self-immolating compassion freely flowing towards all creatures and possessing an inherent condition of enlargement.”