What is nirvana?
A creative definition of the Buddhist term ‘nirvana’:
Simply stopping.
“One of the things that most children learn quite easily is the joy of spinning, or; it doesn’t cost anything. You just spin round very fast and then you stop and you are off-balance and dizzy. This is the cheapest drug available. You, yourself, make yourself feel funny. If you stop spinning, you will be quite grounded, but if you keep spinning you will get dizzy. That is all the Buddha ever said. Spinning is ignorance, just stand still.”
This quote reminded me of Alan Carr’s ‘Easy Way to Stop Smoking’ book. He realised we are not smoking because we enjoy the cigarette but as a way of getting rid of withdrawal symptoms caused by smoking the cigarettes in the first place.
Smoking is “like banging your head against a brick wall in order to feel better when you stop”.
Both these examples point to the relief of cessation.
Cessation, far from being a nihilistic concept, can have such positive connotations.
The term Nirvana more literally means ‘blowing out’, like a candle is blown out or ‘snuffed out’.
But as Andrew Olendzki points out, the word is probably based on the idea of removing fuel so that a fire goes out.
When we think about putting out a fire, it can conjure up dramatic images of frenetic activity, fire engines, hoses and a lot of drama. But another way of putting out a fire is to simply stop adding fuel, an altogether quieter image.
We stop adding the fuel of greed, hatred and ignorance and the fire goes out by itself.
The term Nirvana is pointing to something beyond concepts. Ironically, when something is beyond concepts, I think it’s best to employ lots of concepts! And not just concepts, but images and metaphors, too. By having so many, we avoid taking any of them too literally.
We are trying to avoid falling into either a nihilist or eternalist interpretation of nirvana.
The idea of stopping, or cessation, can seem to head in the nihilistic direction.
But if we remember the teachings on Buddha Nature, that we have Buddha nature right now, then there’s nothing to attain we just need to stop creating dukkha and therefore samsara.
See What is Samsara?
