The meaning of the word “Nirvana”
Selections from the article in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana
Nirvāṇa (Sanskrit: निर्वाण; Pali:
nibbāna ; Prakrit:
) literally means "blown
out", as in a candle. It is most commonly associated with Buddhism. In Indian religions, the
attainment of nirvana is moksha, liberation from the repeating cycle of birth, life and death
(reincarnation).
In the Buddhist context nirvana refers to the imperturbable stillness of mind after the fires of
desire, aversion, and delusion have been finally extinguished. In Hindu philosophy, it is the
union with the divine ground of existence Brahman (Supreme Being) and the experience of
blissful egolessness.
The abhidharma-mahāvibhāsa-sāstra, a sarvastivādin commentary, 3rd century BCE and
later, describes the possible etymological interpretations of the word nirvana.
Nir +
Leaving off
Vana
The path of rebirth
Without
Forest
Being free
Weaving
Without
Stench or stink
Nature of nirvana
Being away from the path of rebirth permanently avoiding all
paths of transmigration.
To be in a state which has got rid of, for ever, of the dense forest
of the three fires of lust, malice and delusion
Freedom from the knot of the vexations of karmas and in which
the texture of both birth and death is not to be woven
Being without and free from all stench of karmas
Each of the five aggregates (see footnote) is called a skandha, which means "tree trunk." All
five skandha serve to inform the study of experience, or else missing their causal relations
leads away from the path to nirvana. Skandha also means "heap" or "pile" or "mass," which is
the nature of their interdependence, like an endless knot's path, or a forest
Nirvāṇa is a term used in Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. It leads to moksha,
liberation from samsara, or release from a state of suffering, after an often lengthy period of
bhāvanā (cultivation/meditation) or sādhanā (practice/ritual).
The idea of moksha is connected to the Vedic culture, which had notion of amrtam,
"immortality", and also a notion of a timeless, an "unborn", "the still point of the turning
world of time". It was also its timeless structure, the whole underlying "the spokes of the
invariable but incessant wheel of time". The hope for life after death started with notions of
going to the worlds of the Fathers or Ancestors and/or the world of the Gods or Heaven. The
continuation of life after death came to be seen as dependent on sacrificial action, karma,
These ideas further developed into the notion of insight into the real nature of the timeless
Brahman and the paramatman. This basic scheme underlies Hinduism, Jainism and
Buddhism, where "the ultimate aim is the timeless state of moksa, or, as the Buddhists first
seem to have called it, nirvana."
Although the term occurs in the literatures of a number of ancient Indian traditions, the
concept is most commonly associated with Buddhism. It was later adopted in the Bhagavad
Gita of the Mahabharata.
In the Buddhist tradition, nirvana is described as the extinguishing of the fires that cause
suffering. These fires are typically identified as the fires of attachment (raga), aversion
(dvesha) and ignorance (moha or avidya). When the fires are extinguished, suffering (dukkha)
comes to an end. The cessation of suffering is described as complete peace.
Bhikkhu Bodhi states:
The state of perfect peace that comes when craving is eliminated is Nibbāna (nirvāṇa), the
unconditioned state experienced while alive with the extinguishing of the flames of greed,
aversion, and delusion.
Footnote:
The five aggregates:
1. “form" or "matter": external and internal matter. Externally, the physical world. Internally,
the material body.
2. "sensation" or "feeling": sensing an object as either pleasant or unpleasant or neutral.
3. "perception", "conception", "cognition", or "discrimination": registers whether an object is
recognized or not (for instance, the sound of a bell or the shape of a tree).
4. "mental formations", "impulses", "volition", or "compositional factors": all types of mental
habits, thoughts, ideas, opinions, prejudices, compulsions, and decisions triggered by an
object.
5. "consciousness" or "discernment": cognizance, that which discerns, the base that supports
all experience