Good morning.
Today I'm offering the third talk of four talks on the subject of Nibbāna or Nirvana.
And it can be a pretty heady topic.
In some circles among Buddhist teachers there can be a lot of discussion about what really is Nibbāna.
And there can be controversy around it.
And one of the controversies that goes back thousands of years in the Theravada tradition is whether Nibbāna or Nirvana is a state or a place that's transcendent or whether really it's the absence like we talked about last week,
The absence of greed,
Hatred and delusion.
Much of the tradition finds it really unacceptable to consider the highest goal and the highest possibility of Buddhism to be an absence because then it doesn't have any power.
There's no big influence on freeing us.
So Nibbāna has to be something,
Right,
A transcendent state that's beyond time and space which is somehow unconditioned and uncreated and exists in some transcendental way.
So my own orientation to this discussion is that it's an absence.
That's the background for how I am talking about this.
I think it's an absence that is actually quite profound and transformative.
Imagine the absence of greed,
Of wanting,
The absence of hatred,
Of aversion and confusion.
Like how can that be,
Right?
So if I'm holding something and I put it down then there's the absence of the thing that's in my hand and if I've been caught and I've been clinging to something for a very,
Very long time it's a big deal then to put it down,
To have an open hand.
And the hand now that's absent from something,
That's profound.
It's not a minor thing,
Especially if I've been holding on to something for 20 years and finally my hand is free to do something else.
It's like if you think of a person,
Someone who's been in prison for like 20,
30,
40 years and finally they've been freed.
And now they're walking down the street and they're just like everybody else,
Living their lives.
But the longer that they've been in prison,
The more the absence of prison is something that they can really appreciate.
The absence is actually quite significant for them.
So it's the same thing with a lifetime of holding on,
Of clinging,
Of being attached,
Of being closed in so many ways that we don't even realize it.
And because we haven't really developed a deep sense of mindfulness,
Like the underlying holding and attachment,
The clinging,
It's just how life is for us.
And that's how we,
That supports all the ways in which we suffer,
All the stress that we feel.
But then with the cultivation of mindfulness and to really see and release,
Release some of those habit patterns,
Release some of that suffering.
And then it's absent.
You know,
It's no longer a trigger.
That's a really powerful potential for freedom.
Then the absence becomes an arena in which we can function and move in our life with a lot more space.
So one of the meanings of Nibbāna is release.
It's the releasing.
It's the releasing of whatever it is that limits us,
That binds us,
That oppresses us.
And to free ourselves from this is,
It's a move in the direction of really freedom,
Of this great path of freedom.
To start attaining and tasting the degree of the absence of clinging,
The absence of desire,
The absence of aversion,
The absence of confusion.
The Buddha described it as the Dharma,
Which is visible here and now.
So the Dharma,
Whatever the Buddha was talking about as the Dharma,
You don't find it in a book or in teachings.
The essence of it is something that's visible to us directly here and now.
And how is it visible?
The Buddha said very clearly it's visible when there has been greed and greed has been abandoned,
Released and brought to an end.
That's how the Dharma is visible.
It's kind of simplistic.
You know,
It doesn't take a PhD in Buddhist studies to understand this kind of Dharma.
It's very practical,
Something we can understand.
If we've been holding really tightly for a long time and then we release the holding,
In the release we see the Dharma.
There is freedom from clinging.
The releasing is really the heart of the practice,
The heart of the Dharma.
And sometimes I think we have to understand the holding before we can understand the release.
So mindfulness has a lot to do with just being present for all the ways we might be attached and clinging.
And as we understand,
You know,
Our clinging more deeply and well the underlying conditions then sometimes something can release.
You know,
We stop feeding it.
We stop fueling it,
Fueling the fires.
Remember we talked about this last week,
Fueling the fires of greed,
Hatred and delusion.
When we stop feeding it,
The fires go out.
And this idea of going out,
Releasing the fire,
The fire gets released.
It's like when you spread out the coals,
They dissipate.
Nibbana is the cooling of the fire,
The calming of the fire,
The going out.
And so to really experience this for ourselves in our life,
It's pretty ordinary and pretty common.
It's so common to have like these little movements in our life from hostility to ease,
Or even big movements like movements from jealousy or resentment,
Where there's actually a visceral experience that it's not there.
And if we learn to abandon it and release it,
It's kind of like,
Ah,
Look at that,
That thing that I was clinging to isn't,
It's not there.
That's where the Dharma is.
And it's possible to live without it,
Without that clinging.
It might be hard to do thoroughly,
You know,
We do it all the time.
But thoroughly completely.
I think that having that experience of this release,
It's really possible it shows that it's really possible for us.
So Nibbana as a release,
This is a like this wonderful absence.
It's the absence that follows letting go is really how we begin to understand,
You know,
Kind of the bigger picture of what it's really about.
