Page 279

Alexandr Korol
Site Admin
Posts: 5543
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2023 7:38 pm

Page 279

Post by Alexandr Korol »

But it’s really just a kind of psychological, as they say, state of mind. “According to the common view, after experiencing enlightenment (bodhi), the Buddha was freed from craving (trishna). In doing so, he cut off the root of future rebirths, which made it possible for him to experience “nirvana with remainder,” meaning the continuation of life until the consequences of karma from past births were exhausted. At the moment of physical death, the Buddha experienced “nirvana without remainder,” or parinirvana — the final disappearance from the three planes of existence: the realm of sensuality (kama-dhatu), the realm of form (rupa-dhatu), and the formless realm (arupa-dhatu).
Five hundred years after the Buddha, Nagarjuna in his treatise “Ratna-avali Raja-parikatha” (“Precious Verses of Advice to the King”) says:
It is incorrect that nirvana is non-being.
But can its being be imagined?
The cessation of thoughts about being and non-being
Is called nirvana.”
“In Buddhism, the path to attaining nirvana is the Noble Eightfold Path (arya-ashtanga-marga), proclaimed by the Buddha in the Fourth Noble Truth (“Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta,” SN 56.11). The Eightfold Path consists of three “practice blocks” (Buddhist texts emphasize the importance of practicing all three blocks simultaneously):
Shila — cultivation of morality: right speech (vacha), right action (karma), right livelihood (ajiva).
Samadhi — cultivation of the mind: right effort (vayama), right mindfulness (smriti), right concentration (samadhi). Corresponds to shamatha.
Prajna — cultivation of wisdom: right view (ditthi), right intention (sankalpa). Corresponds to vipashyana.
The experience of the state of nirvana in Buddhism is often designated by the term amata, the absolute spiritual achievement, suchness (in Mahayana sutras), which destroys the causal link of karmic existence.
The Sutta Pitaka characterizes nirvana as “a liberated mind (chitta), no longer possessing attachments.” The mind is no longer identified with the phenomena of existence; it becomes unchanging, thereby becoming free. At the same time, the Buddha avoids speaking of nirvana in terms of “eternity” or “non-eternity,” or of whether the one who has realized it possesses “personal qualities” or lacks them, and so on.