NIRVANA AND THE WAY OF THE FORCE
“The Force is…an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”
—OBI-WAN KENOBI IN A NEW HOPE
Yoda shows us that letting go doesn’t need to be a dramatic, painful, or emotional experience. Letting go of concepts doesn’t need to be life and death, even when they’re about life and death. Yoda has seen entire star systems plummet from peace into chaos. He has witnessed the Sith ascend to galaxy-wide domination and the Jedi crumble into ruin. He knows he has reached the end of his life and that his mortal enemies would mock his final words. Yet he is not attached to a vision of the way things should be. He does not despair his lost Republic, his dead Jedi, or his own failures. He knows twilight is upon him and night will soon fall. Yoda is able to let go because he sees through concepts of life and death. He sees the truth of “the way of things.” Seeing and abiding in that truth is the ultimate state of freedom—nirvana.
Luke Skywalker, when he faced Darth Vader in Cloud City while still a novice Jedi who had not yet understood “the way of things,” handles things much less gracefully.
“Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father,” Darth Vader intones as Luke scrabbles away from the dark lord.
“He told me enough! He told me you killed him.” Luke reaches the end of the Cloud City gantry. There’s no escape from what’s to come.
“No,” Vader says. “I am your father.”
“No. No. That’s not true! That’s impossible!”
“Search your feelings. You know it to be true.”
Luke’s reaction is a thunderclap of despair. “No! No!”
Luke’s denial of the truth of his parentage was a moment of despair. Everything he believed in, the foundation of his faith and moral code, his very identity—they were all shattered by Vader’s calculated revelation. Luke responded poorly to despair—he fled from it. Leaping from the gantry, he sought escape in oblivion. For Luke, Vader’s words had rendered his existence, even his value for the universe, utterly meaningless. And Luke couldn’t bear it.
When we cling to our concepts about life as if they are reality, our world takes a fifty-story swan dive the moment those beliefs are stripped away. Luckily Cloud City still had weather vanes. The one that Luke tumbled upon saved him from death and gave the kid a second chance to gaze deeper into his despair and see nothingness was just another concept that diverted him from the truth.
To be clear, Luke’s concepts weren’t the trigger for his despair. Neither was the stripping away of them. It was his attachment to concepts, perceptions, and beliefs that caused him to fall to pieces when the truth behind his assumptions was revealed. Buddhist teachers since the Grand Jedi Master himself—the Buddha—have been urging people to let go of their attachments and get to the bottom of reality. When you reach the bottom you aren’t left with nothing—you’re left with the truth. The truth is nirvana.
Nirvana literally means “cessation.” In the time of the Buddha a common metaphor for suffering was the burning of fire. The Buddha would say that everything, body and mind, is burned by the fire of suffering. Nirvana is attained when the fire is put out, when suffering ceases.
The fire of suffering is extinguished when identification with and attachment to desire, views, ideas, and composite phenomena are put to an end. For a fire to burn certain conditions are necessary—heat, fuel, and oxygen. If one of those conditions is removed the fire ceases. Suffering, like a blazing fire, burns because of specific karmic conditions. Among those conditions is attachment. If attachment is removed the fire of suffering is extinguished. With discipline and training, we can calm impulses, wrong views, and other things that result in attachment or aversion to aspects of life. We could say that Yoda’s “way of the Force” is a practice of calm reflection, mindfulness, and deep commitment that transforms the dark side path. With calmness and mindfulness—supported by understanding of what Yoda calls “the way of things”—the fire of suffering goes out.
Mindfulness means seeing the world as it is without the veil of ideas or concepts and acting accordingly. When the thought “I” ceases and suffering drops away, that is nirvana. We all have perceptions of ourselves and others. We look at ourselves and say I am charming, timid, or boorish; we look at Darth Vader and say he is wretched and evil. We have a fixed unconscious view of ourselves and others and tend to act based on our belief in that view. Nirvana is the understanding that there is no “I,” no real, unchanging self, neither for ourselves or for others. But nirvana is also not the belief that there is not a self. Both views—that there is a real “I” and that there is none—are momentary points of view. Both must be relinquished to attain true peace.
In The Empire Strikes Back, Obi-Wan told Luke, “Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” I have to admit when I first heard these words I took them as a cop out. They seemed like a lame excuse for lying. I thought, “Just own up to your lie, Obi-Wan. Tell Luke your story about Anakin being killed by Darth Vader was a crock of bantha poodoo you fabricated because you didn’t think he was ready for the truth.” Now I understand that Obi-Wan was pointing to something much more profound, something Buddhists call the Two Truths.
According to Buddhism there are two kinds of truth: relative truth and absolute truth. Relative truth is truth viewed from within the interdependent web of the symbiont circle. From this point of view, we see things only partially. Luke hears Obi-Wan’s justification for lying to him and is annoyed. He struggles with the task placed before him and worries about whether he can kill his father. He turns himself in to the Empire and grows angry when the Emperor taunts him. At each moment Luke sees himself as a fixed personality that things happen to. This view isn’t entirely wrong. It is the natural way that all beings see the world after all. It’s just that it is a limited view.
Absolute truth is grasped when we deeply understand what the symbiont circle implies about reality: when all things are conditioned and dependently produced, nothing can have an unchanging essence, or self, of its own. When Luke gets the absolute truth, he lets go of concepts of self and other and no longer clings to the way things are in the moment as the way they always are and will be. He stops believing he is separate from his father or that he is a fixed person with an identity that can be destroyed by the Emperor. Absolute truth is the reality that Obi-Wan’s symbiont circle points to. Luke cannot be separated from the universe. And the universe can’t exist without Luke.
In Attack of the Clones Obi-Wan tracked Jango Fett—the man behind an assassination attempt on Padmé—to the water world of Kamino. The seas outside Tipoca City on Kamino swelled. On Kamino oceans dominate the surface of the planet and their waves rolled and crashed like the troubled thoughts in Obi-Wan’s mind. Each of those waves had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some waves were bigger than others. Some crested quickly, while others rolled on for several seconds. Some were beautiful and some ugly. Looking out on those waves, Obi-Wan would have been able to contemplate both their relative and their absolute nature.
From the point of view of relative truth, a wave is a wave. It is born, exists for a span of time, and dies. If we look at ourselves from the relative point of view, we may experience a lot of anxiety, because we are caught in a conceptual view of the world that isolates self from other, birth from death, joy from suffering. But from the point of view of absolute truth these concepts aren’t real. Like a hologram of a Rancor monster they can’t do anything to us (there is no real “us” to do anything to), they’re just a vision. From the point of view of the absolute, a wave is ocean. The wave arises out of, abides in, and returns to the ocean, all while being indivisible from it. You cannot separate the wave from ocean. And you can’t have the ocean without the wave.
Our lives are like waves and nirvana is like the ocean. When tangled in concepts and ideas about our world, we see “I” and “mine”; we are tossed about by what happens to “us” and “ours.” But when we disentangle ourselves from conceptuality, where we previously saw crashing waves of “I” and “mine” we see only the peace of an infinite and all-encompassing sea. If Obi-Wan looked out at the waves on the seas of Kamino with the insights gleaned from understanding the symbiont circle, he’d know the nature of the waves is ocean; he’d understand that each discrete moment of relative experience is but a shimmer on the surface of the absolute. Relative and absolute truth are interconnected. In a way, the absolute truth is understanding what relative truth really is. Joy and suffering arise and fade away together.
We can learn more about nirvana by reflecting on the Force. Recall what Obi-Wan and Yoda said of it in the original trilogy. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi describes the Force as an energy field created by all living things. “It surrounds us,” he explains, “and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” Yoda echoes Obi-Wan in The Empire Strikes Back: “Life creates [the Force], makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…everywhere!”
We may imagine the Force as some sort of invisible river of magical energy or an intangible well of mystical power that can be accessed and manipulated. This perception sets up the Force as distinct from us, a tool used by a Jedi or Sith to compel others or to batter foes. But if we look deeper into what Obi-Wan and Yoda say we see that the Force, like nirvana, is not separate from us; it is a part of us—surrounding, penetrating, and binding us with it and the galaxy.
The Force, Obi-Wan tells us, surrounds us. Everywhere we look the Force is present. That means when Luke battles TIE fighters in the darkness of space, the Force is there. When he flounders through the snowdrifts of Hoth, he is with the Force. Yoda says the Force is here and everywhere. No matter where Yoda, Luke, or even Han Solo find themselves—the Force is there. The same is true with nirvana. It’s always present, within us and around us.
The Jedi say the Force binds the galaxy together. This is the same as saying all things in the galaxy are interdependent. The air depends on the tree and the tree depends on the air. The two are bound up with each other. This sort of relationship we have been calling interdependence, but it could just as easily be called the Force or nirvana. The reality is that the two—air and tree—are inseparable. However we describe these things, the label does not alter the truth.
Obi-Wan says the Force surrounds us and binds us, and it also penetrates us. It enters into our body from every direction. Penetrating us it becomes part of us. We know from Qui-Gon that communication with the Force is present in every living cell in the form of midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the source of all life. Qui-Gon told Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace, “Without the midi-chlorians life could not exist.” In turn, Yoda revealed to Luke the fact that life creates the Force. Put simply, the Force produces the life of midi-chlorians and this life creates the Force. The Force creates life and life creates the Force. This cycle is present in every living cell, in everything—a relationship of interpenetration.
Some speak of becoming one with the Force or entering nirvana. Such ideas are not quite right. A person cannot become something he already is. Based on our interpretation of the Force we know that Luke was already one with the Force long before he began his Jedi training. Luke cannot exist outside of the Force because it penetrates him and he in turn penetrates it. In fact, he and the Force exist in perpetual interpenetration. Likewise, nirvana is not something entered into. Nirvana is not found outside or later—we are nirvana, right here, right now. Looking deeply we see that there is absolutely no distinction between Luke and the Force, nor any between nirvana and us.
Our nature is the nature of nirvana. It is part of us like a Tatooine sand dune is part of Tatooine or a Kamino wave is part of the ocean. The wave may seem to be distinct from the ocean, but both wave and ocean are by nature water. In the same way, we are inimitable and wondrous waves of nirvana forming, breaking, and returning to the source. We are an expression of nirvana—of the world as it is.
Investigating life with mindfulness and effort we can also destroy these barriers that exist only in the mind. Looking deeply we can see that we are part of all of life. Our bodies, thoughts, and consciousness are not distinct from the world; they do not exist independently—our true nature is the nature of the undying nirvana. Death does not reduce us to nothing. We can never become nothing because our nature is emptiness and that means we are made up of everything. The practice of living Force-mindfulness allows us to touch our no-birth, no-death nature and helps us remove the shroud of the dark side and see the truth that life just is, and we can never be outside it. This realization shatters the illusion of death.
Examine the Force with the insight of interdependence. On the surface, it may appear that the Force is divided. There is the good side of the Jedi and the dark side of the Sith. But the two cannot exist independently; they define each other. We need the dark side to know the good side, to know the right choices to make. Looking deeply into the good side of the Force we find the dark side, showing us the path to avoid. In Buddhist terms you cannot have nirvana without samsara. Samsara is the suffering in life. It’s the repetitive cycle of craving, attainment, loss, forgetfulness, and sorrow that we are bound up in.
It’s common to think that nirvana and samsara are unrelated opposites. One is the cessation of suffering and the other is bondage to suffering. However, like the dual aspects of the Force, nirvana and samsara interpenetrate one another. You can’t have nirvana without samsara. You can’t have the absolute without the relative. We realize freedom and bondage simultaneously.
You don’t run away from the dark side to realize the good side. But, at the same time, you must recognize that the dark side is not the same as the good side. They are interconnected, but not the same. Turning to the dark side, sleepwalking through samsara, is not the same as living a realized life. By facing up to the dark side, by understanding samsara, we gain insight into the good and really know nirvana. But facing up to the dark side doesn’t mean giving in to it. You can’t become a realized Jedi by practicing the arts of the dark side. Like Yoda told Luke, “If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”
Our destinies are currently dominated by samsara because we fail to examine it thoroughly and see it for what it is. Because we are attached to the idea of an enduring self, we struggle to acquire what we prefer or to make ourselves into invented images of perfection—enlightened beings, Jedi masters, Republic senators, or roguish space pirates. This samsaric struggle is the path of the dark side. The Sith are caught in the idea of a separate self: “They think inward, only about themselves.” The Sith strive to attain more for themselves: power, control, eternal life. Their goal is to empower the self.
The Jedi, on the other (cyborg) hand, are about unlearning blind assumptions, letting go, allowing the Force to guide their actions. They are, as Anakin put it, “selfless.” By this he means they aren’t out for power for themselves—for an illusory self—or struggling to achieve an ideal state of mind or behavior. The Jedi are concerned with living a realized life, a life of self-discovery. They strive to realize their true nature and express it without pretense. Their true nature, and yours, is nirvana.
If we understand what nirvana is, it’s easy to see that Buddhism isn’t a quest for nirvana. It’s more of an attitude toward life, or a way of being, that allows the truth of nirvana to reveal itself. We needn’t isolate ourselves from normal life or try to avoid ordinary tasks (like cleaning droids and repairing junky freighters) in order to attain transcendent states or hokey Jedi powers. We simply continue to do everyday things, but with the “deepest commitment” to doing them mindfully and always with the ready attitude of (re-)discovering the dynamic, immediate truth of their reality.
You don’t have to leap from a gantry or ascend to the pinnacle of the Jedi ranks to touch your true nature. You just need to bring your full presence to what you’re doing, even if you’re just scrubbing muck off your R2 unit.