Nirvana and Samsara 涅槃與輪迴 2

Cont'd

In part one of this blog, we learn about how from the Buddhist point of view, the 12 nidanas (十二因緣) work together to produce for the ordinary folks, an endless cycle of pain and suffering called samsara (輪迴),
through not just one life but many lifetimes. But what is most
important for the non-Buddha is certainly not why and how he suffers nor
the finer details of the nature of suffering but whether and if so, how
he can avoid or otherwise transcend his suffering and how and when he
can be freed or liberated from this terrible repetition of suffering for
all eternity. On this, they have Buddha on their side. It is said in Majjhima Nikaya (中阿含經 ) (63: 427 )that the Buddha resolutely refused to answer, despite being  challenged by the monk Malunkyaputta, questions like whether or not the world is eternal or is spatially infinite or whether the soul (jiva) is identical with the body and whether Tathāgata (a perfectly enlightened being and a term which the Buddha uses to refer to himself, "tatha" meaning "like this" (如是) or "thus" and "agata"(來) meaning "come", the two meaning "as if he were now come or present)(多陀阿伽陀 or 如來 ) exists after death. In some interpretations, the Buddha may exist as a "real tathāgata (真身如來) but when he introduces the dharma(法)
to the ordinary folks to make them increase in wisdom, to help them
alleviate their troubles, he may in that sense be said to continue to
exist as a Nirmanakaya or "responsive tathāgata"
(應身如來 or 應身佛) after his death. To him, it is unnecessary for us
to know the answers to such questions to become enlightened and to be
liberated from the cycle of eternal suffering. To illustrate his point, 
the Buddha gave his famous parable of a man being pierced by a poisoned
arrow. What is far more important for the injured man and those around
him is to get the arrow out. If he insisted before receiving medical
treatment on knowing who shot him, to what clan that enemy belonged,
what kind of bowstring he was using, or what kind of material the shaft
was made of and from what kind of bird the the feathers the arrow came
etc, he would die before his thirst for knowledge was satisfied, To him,
if we distract ourselves from the path of enlightenment by trying to
find out the answers to such metaphysical and cosmological questions, we
may well not focus on disrupting the relevant cycle of birth, aging,
dying, grief, sorrow, suffering, lamentation and despair because if we
spend too much time on such questions, we may not have time for the
far more important business of diverting and eventually terminating our
passions, our cravings, our clingings to the relevant sources of our
suffering and to obtain the kind of calming knowledge which
enlightenment may bring, something which we really need.(ibid 63:
431).   

Is it possible then for the ordinary folk to be freed from the endless cycle of deaths and rebirth in the world of samsara?
Yes, according to the Buddha. Disagreeing with what the Hindu brahmins
of his times were teaching, the Buddha believes that not only can buddhas and arahants (阿羅漢 or 羅漢) free themselves from the endless cycle of death and rebirth in samsara,
it is theoretically possible for every man to do so too, no matter how
bad and evil he may appear. That is because each living person or being
has inherent in himself what he calls Tathägatagarbha  or Buddha-nature (佛性). But different Mahayana Buddhist (大乘佛教) traditions understand the nature of Tathägatagarbha
differently. However, no matter what they believe and teach, they all
think that it is concerned in one way or another with what enables
sentient beings to become a buddha.

What then is nirvāna (Sanskrit) or nibbāna (Pali)? Put simply, nirvāna is the "state" of being "free from the cycle of births and death" (samsara) (輪迴). The word nirvāna comes from three root sound in Sanskrit viz." ni" (nir, nis, nih) which means out, away from or without; "va" which means blowing as in the blowing of the wind and "na" which means "never", "do not", "did not" or "should not". The word "vana"
means "forest", "in or of the forest", "made of flowers and other items
of the forest".  In this regard, we may look at what the abhidharma-mahāvibhāsa,(阿毗達磨大毗婆沙論 or 大毗婆沙論), a sarvastivādin ( 說
一切有部 i.e.an early Buddhist school holding that the dharma existed in the
past, exists at present and shall always exist in future) commentary, 3rd century BCE, has to say about the nature of nirvāna:

1.
through the image of "leaving the path of rebirth" in which to be in
nirvana is to be in the state of being permanently away from the path of
rebirth and of avoiding all paths of transmigration.

 2.
through the image of "without forest" in which to be in nirvana is to
be in the state of having forever gotten rid the dense forest of the
three fires of lust, malice/anger and delusion (貪癡).;

3. through the image of "being free of the weaving" in which  to be in nirvana is to be in a state free from the knot of the klesās or vexations (煩惱) of karmas and in which the texture of both birth and death has ceased to be woven.

4.
through the image of being "without stench or stink" in which to be in
nirvana is to be without and free from all stench of the karma.

 In this regard, Buddhism takes the view that what leads us away from the state of nirvāna is our five skandha
(a Sanskrit word meaning literally "heap", "pile", "mass", "bundle" or
"tree trunk" but in the context of Buddhist doctrine, it means
"collection" or "aggregate" ) (五蘊) or five types of phenomena that serve
as objects of our clinging or our attachment behavior and the bases for
a sense of our "self" . The five skandha are respectively rūpa (form or matter)(色), vedanā (sensation or feeling) (受),  sañña (perception conception, apperception, cognition, or discrimination) ( 想), sankhāra (mental formation, impulses, volition or compositional factors) (行) viññana (consciousness or discernment)( 識). In Buddhist thinking, rūpa is derived from Mahābhūta (in both Sankrit and Pali ) for the four "great elements" of air, earth, water and fire and consciousness arises from its phassa or contact (觸) with the other three aggregates of vedana (sensation or feeling), sañña (perception) and sankhāra (mental formation). The Theravada
tradition (小乘) thinks that suffering arises when we identify with or
cling to one of the five aggregates so that when we relinquish our
attachment thereto, the relevant type of suffering will also be
extinguished. The Mahayana tradition (大乘) thinks a bit
deeper and thinks that we may obtain ultimate freedom or liberation from
all suffering by penetrating even more deeply into the nature of all
the aggregates by being fully and completely aware or conscious of the
fact that none of such aggregates has any permanent independent
existence (in the sense that none of them can arise independently from
the existence of other co-arising causes giving rise to their own
existence at the relevant time and place) or in other words, that they
are "empty".(空) or "illusory" (妄) The Buddha teaches that although we
normally associate one or the other of our five aggregates as forming or
being part of the structure of our own concept of our  "self" , nothing
among them is properly speaking, "really" "I" or "mine" because none of
the parts which we think form part of our "self" has any permanence
for the reason that not being independent from other co-arising causes, when one or more of the co-arising causes disappear(s) at the relevant time
and place, so will the phenomenon of the relevant aggregate we think of
as our "self" disappear.