This state of mind; this nature of living, is something that cannot be defined but experienced. It is not that it cannot be comprehended through words, but the qualification of ‘nirvana’ is such that it is beyond words, beyond concepts.
Nirvana is not the end, not the destination. It can be a raft to nothingness? There are many questions, instead, on nirvana, than conclusions. If there is a conclusion, how can it quantify it? If it cannot be measured, how it is to be experienced? And, is it subjective between the surface and the depth if it can be measured?
It was ‘nirvana’, as they say, that transformed Siddhartha Gautama into Buddha, an enlightened being. Had it not been for this so-called enlightenment, would nirvana exist? If nirvana exists, how it is to be located? If it is found, why it is not accessible? If nirvana is not existential, what is the alternative? Or, should nirvana necessarily exist?
The science of Buddhism states that ‘nirvana’ is a stage of enlightenment; freedom from suffering; liberty from mental defilements; emancipation from the cycle of birth and death; the salvation of the self from “I”. Nirvana qualified ‘the Buddha’ to guide the world, which makes any layman conclude that a normal human being can attain it, of course with diligence, dedication, and discipline. One need not be ‘the God’ to achieve it.
So, is nirvana the state of perfectionism? Or, is it simply a mental construct to ‘feel good’ about self? Considering the cacophony inside and outside our mind and body, is nirvana the state of equanimity to be experienced? Or, is it the bliss of mindfulness?
The hermeneutics, in Buddhism, also hints that the one who masters himself and goes beyond the idea of ‘self’, without conquering others; the one who realizes that everything lacks a solid foundation and there is no intrinsic existence of any being and thing; and, the one who realizes emptiness, through interdependency, is already in nirvana.
If nirvana is the answer, what is the question? If nirvana is the question, what is the answer? Or, is nirvana beyond the binaries of questions and answers? Or, is there nothing called nirvana?
Heaven or hell may or not may exist, after-life, since there exists no empirical evidence on the same. Nirvana may be a personal project to experience? Nirvana, without gardening the plants or not, is likely to exist and it can cease to exist, even without human beings, when darkness was already there in this universe, before ‘the light’ came into being?
Brood, for tonight!
