Cont'd
To the Buddha, the state of nirvāna
can be described in many different ways. One of the ways to describe it
is to equate it with that state of mind in which one experiences
absolute peace. We can only experience such a state of mind if our mind
is freed from the klesās
or kilesās (poisons)(毒) of craving, anger and inveterate ignorance (貪憎癡). We may
achieve such peace when our mental or volitional formations (行 and/or 識)
which has been building up or accumulating over countless previous
incarnations based on the relevant balance of our karmic account
(業報) have definitively been eliminated and the conditions for
initiating fresh mental or volitional formations have also been
completely eradicated i.e. when the deep-set roots of our disposition
towards craving or lusts or passions (our tanha or love (愛), raga or color (色, 好色, 慾) or lobha or greed (貪) and aversions, hatred (dosa)(憎) in our viññana or mind/brain/consciousness (識) which otherwise may lead to our suffering (dukka)(苦), have been permanently uprooted or dissolved. In the Dhammapada (法
句經 or 曇鉢偈) i.e. 423 poems divided into 19 chapters in 2 volumes,
recording what the Buddha was reported to have said under different
individual situations to explain what the dharma (法) means and collected together by later monks, the Buddha says that nirvāna is
"the highest happiness", an enduring, transcendental happiness
qualitatively different from the limited, transitory happiness derived
from impermanent things. It is sometimes said that the nirvāna is characterized by the possession of a "transcendent" knowledge or "bodhi"
or "enlightenment" (悟) meaning being fully awake or aware or mindful of
the true nature of what we normally conceive of as "reality" ( i.e.the
recognition or knowledge that there is no permanence in anything in this
world of appearances in which we live and have our being) such that a
being who permanently possesses or abides in bodhi is called a buddha or an arahant. A different way of saying the same thing is to say that an "enlightened mind" (悟覺) has become "unconditioned" (asankhata)
(or unformed, uncreated, unoriginated 緣滅, 緣盡) or free from the
conditions formerly obscuring it by the relevant volitional formations.
(行, 欲, 慾) This ultimate state is described by the Buddha as
"deathlessness" (Pali: amata or amāravati or
"abode of the deathless" (無死界)) and naturally accrues in the fullness
of time to one having lived a life committed to the Noble Eightfold Path
(八正道). Such a life is concerned with performing wholesome actions
(Pali: kusala kamma) (正行) with positive results, working towards the cessation of the origination (緣滅) of worldly activities (業). Until we attain nirvāna , we
remain beings forever wandering through the impermanent and
suffering-generating realms of desire (欲界) form (色界), and formlessness
(無色界); collectively termed samsara.
In one interpretation, the "luminous consciousness" is identical with nirvāṇa. Others disagree, finding it to be not nirvāṇa itself, but
instead to be a kind of consciousness accessible only to arahants. A passage in the Majjhima Nikaya (中阿含經) likens it to empty space (Peter Harvey Consciousness Mysticism in the Discourse of the Buddha in Karel Werner ed. The Yogi and the Mystic 1989 88). For liberated ones the luminous, unsupported consciousness associated with nibbāna
is directly known without mediation of the mental consciousness factor
in dependent co-arising (緣起), and is the transcending of all objects of
mental consciousness. In this respect, nirvāna differs radically from the pre-Buddhist Upanishad and the Bhagavad-Gita
idea of self-realization, described as accessing the individual's
inmost consciousness, in that it is not considered an aspect, even the
deepest aspect, of the individual's personality, and is not to be
confused inany way with a "Self". Furthermore, it transcends the sphere
of infinite
consciousness or devas (天) (see post), the sixth of the Buddhist Jhana (襌) in Theravada", which is in itself not the ending of the conceit of "I".
To
the Buddha, the mind is often conscious and is aware of everything
which goes on in the world outside as well as what is going on inside
our own brain. Therefore, sometimes, he describes nirvāna or enlightenment in terms of "knowing" (識) e.g in the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutra (轉法輪經) , he said "Knowing arose" (ñāna adapādi) or
knowing is lifted or removed meaning that consciousness is released or
liberated from its usual mode of perception and understanding the world
and our self, whereupon the mind becomes aware in a way that is totally
unconstrained by anything in the conditioned world. e. g. he says that
that "consciousness is without feature, without end, luminous all
around." According to Ajahns Pasanno and Amaro, what is referred to by the word "viññana"(識) is the quality of awareness (覺). Peter Harvey
too thinks that the Buddha adopted a broad brush approach to its use,
unlike the nit-picking pedantry of some philosophers of his day because
he had to fit his talk to the level of understanding of his audience,
often illiterate villagers. Thus he says that "viññana"
here can be assumed to mean "knowing" but not the partial, fragmented,
discriminative (vi) knowing (-ñana) which the word usually implies.
Instead, it must mean a knowing of a primordial, transcendent nature,
otherwise, the passage which contains it would be self-contradictory". (The Island: An Anthology of the Buddha's Teachings on nibbāna 131)
They
then give examples of various contexts of passages in the sutras in
which the Buddha used this word where he appeared to be using his "skill
in means" to teach Brahmins in terms they were familiar with. This
"non-manifestive consciousness" differs from the kinds of consciousness
associated to the six sense media, which have a "surface" that they fall
upon and arise in response to. According to Harvey,(op cit. 87, 90) the early texts are ambivalent as to whether or not the term viññana or "consciousness"( 識) is
accurate. In a liberated individual (覺者), this is directly experienced,
in a way that is free from dependence on conditions at all.
The Pali Canon also contains other perspectives on nirvāna.
It is linked to our ability to see the "empty" or "illusory" nature of
all phenomena. It is sometimes also presented as a radical reordering of
our consciousness and of unleashing of our full awareness of the nature
of suffering. Scholar Herbert Guenther speculates that with nirvāṇa
"the ideal personality, the true human being" becomes reality. A
liberated (enlightened) individual performs neutral actions (Pali: kiriya kamma) producing no fruit (vipaka)
(果報) but nonetheless preserves a particular individual personality which
is the result of the traces of his or her karmic heritage. In this
regard, it may be argued that the very fact that there is a
psycho-physical substrate during the remainder of an arahant's lifetime
shows the continuing effect of karma.The stance of the early scriptures
is that attaining nirvāna in either the current or some future birth depends on effort and is not pre-determined. Nirvāṇa
in the sutras is never conceived of as a place (such as one might
conceive heaven), but rather the ultimate state of an entity's achieved
attainment of complete enlightenment, accompanied by the permanent,
complete and non-relapsible annihilation of avidya (無明 or 癡 or 妄) . It is said that 'the liberated" mind (citta)(識 , 心, ) which no longer clings' means nibbāna" (Majhima Nikaya 2-Att. 4.68). The word also means "that which ends the identity of the mind (citta) in the world of phenomena. Doctrinally, nibbāna is said of the mind which "no longer is coming (bhava)(來) and going (vibhava)
(去)" but which has attained a status in perpetuity, whereby "liberation
(vimutta) can be said." In one interpretation, the "luminous
consciousness" is identical with nirvāna ( Thanissaro Bhukkhu's commentary on the Brahmananimantanika Sutta,
Access to Insight: Readings in Theravada Buddhism (http://www.
acesstoinsight. org/tipitaka/mn..o49,than.html#n-9 & Harvey The
Selfless Mind 88) but others disagree, arguing that the Buddha was not
talking about the "nirvana" itself but only the kind of consciousness accessible exclusively to arahants (see Ajahn Brahmali. bswa.org (http://www.bswa.org/modules/icontent/index.php?page=107 and Rupert Gethin who objects to Harvey's argument in buddhistethics.org. http://www.buddhistethics.org/4/gethin1.html).Nagajuna alluded to a passage relating to the level of consciousness in the Dighanika
(長尼伽耶 or 長部) in two different works , writing: "The Sage has declared
that earth, water, fire and wind, long short, fine and coarse, good and
so on are extinguished in consciousness...Here long and short, fine and
coarse, good and bad, here name and form all stop.". Another related
idea which finds support in the Pali Canon and the contemporary
Theravada (小乘) practice tradition despite its absence in the Theravada commentaries and Abhidhamma (論藏), is that the mind of the arahant is itself Nibānna.(Harvey Op cit 100).
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