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Nirvana: A New Experience
If they only realized it, they are already in the Tathagata’s Nirvana, for, in Noble Wisdom, all things are in Nirvana from the beginning.”
If relief from suffering seems negative, is there nothing positive in life to seek? Is everything merely illusion, or is something more to be found in our lives? Buddhism offers the hope of something better. A different view of life appears on the horizon of consciousness. A new way to experience is born that enhances the ability to cope with suffering, even transcend it: nirvana.
What is this new experience? What makes it so different, so unique that the impossible becomes possible, the unsolvable can be solved? The answer is found in Buddhism’s unique logic.
We have a long tradition in the West of problem-solving that is based in scientific reasoning and Aristotelian logic. Our culture is firmly rooted on this basis. An object or situation exists or does not exist. Cause leads to effect, premises lead to conclusions. For example, I am sitting in a chair, writing. From the usual perspective, this chair is solid and belongs to a certain class or category: a hand-crafted modern chair. We believe we understand an object when we can define and classify it in a category. We take this for granted. We can describe the chair to others. They know what to do with it—sit in it—as with all members of the category chairs. And as the renowned philosopher Bertrand Russell explained, a category is not a member of itself. So I do not sit on the category chairs, an abstraction. I am sitting on this particular handcrafted chair. It is an actual chair, an object, not an abstraction.
But Buddhist doctrine suggests that when we classify and reason about chairs in this way, we are perceiving our thoughts, not the real world. We think we know an object by its category, but we do not. We only know the category. We could sit on a desk, on the floor, or on the ground.
A wonderful experience awaits us when we free ourselves from the limitations of our categories. Since all are chairs, there is no chair! The category chairs is an illusion. Anything can be a chair when we sit in meditation.
Problems occur when consciousness attempts to grasp a situation with a narrow, limiting perspective. Enlightenment promises to liberate us from these confines, to allow us to use more of our potential.
LIFE IS CHANGE
Nothing is able to exist for more than a fraction of time. We look at ourselves in the mirror today and feel an identity, but soon we grow old. We change. We may discuss our views, asserting “This is what I think, really, and this is who and what I am.” But a year from now, or ten years from now, will we still think the same? Or do we change our views as we travel through the developmental stages of life? At one point in history, no one believed that people could fly. Yet today, anyone can fly using an airplane. Computers and the internet make a worldwide linkage possible. But even as recently as the mid- twentieth century few people could imagine technology’s possibilities. The problem is that we believe these temporary assumptions are true for all time, and in so doing, we limit ourselves.
Each moment of each experience is complete. When we can appreciate and embrace the goodness of each moment, suffering can be transcended and positive potential can be discovered.
ENLIGHTENED NATURE
Buddhism assures us that we share enlightened nature. All worldly objects and beings have the same inner nature at their core. Sharing this nature in common, nothing or no one can be separated from anything or anyone else. This is what is meant by saying we all have buddha-mind or that everyday life is enlightening. From this foundation, this fundamental nature that we all share in, everything we think and do, literally, is enlightenment.
Zen master Dogen told his students that practice is enlightenment. Practice of meditation helps us to realize what is already there: the enlightened nature within. To live it compassionately is true wisdom.
NIRVANA IS FOUND IN THIS WORLD
Temporary existence is the ground, the stage on which the drama of enlightened life takes place. The light of awareness appears through the lens of nothingness, dissolving the shadows, showing us the true world.
The essential element of nirvana is found in compassionate relationships, interaction between persons and events. An intelligent, self-correcting consciousness develops in interactions with others and the world. So in a real sense, mind is world: The universe, as Buddha said, is mind, and mind is universe, in a pattern of interaction, of interrelationship. Mind cannot be separated from body or world, and yet no world or living body exists without mind.
We express nirvana with compassionate love for others as ourselves in the peaceful harmony of the Middle Way. This harmony is a pattern of meaning that is not causal, not based in space, time, or matter. Nirvana is how this is possible.
Everything is unique, perfect, just as it is, while also inseparably part of everything else. We exist in many realms, on the relative plane of being as well as the absolute, and yet both are part of each other. Without our everyday lives, jobs, relationships, and ways of play, we would not be who we are. But we are more than just that. Without enlightenment, we would have no identity, no basis for our relative existence. Each is part of the other. The Middle Way mysteriously emerges in the Oneness between.
Nirvana is beyond any possible frame of reference, transcending all boundaries. Everything is possible because nothing is possible. Each moment is new.