Sublime

If nirvana is not to be found by grasping, there can be no question of approaching it by stages, by the slow process of the accumulation of knowledge. It must be realized in a single flash of insight, which is tun wu, or, in Japanese, satori, the familiar Zen term for sudden awakening.

nirvana is the disappearance of the being from the Round of incarnations, not into a state of annihilation, but simply into a state escaping definition, and thus immeasurable and infinite.

Nirvana is a negative capability. In letting go of—“negating”—reactivity, one discovers a greater capacity—“capability”—to respond to life. To experience nirvana is to experience freedom from those attachments and opinions that prevent your own imaginative response to the situations you face in life. Nirvana is not the end point of the path but its

The term nirvana originally referred to an extinguished fire. In Buddhism, it is used to describe the condition that exists when the Three Fires of delusion, desire, and anger are extinguished. This is also called “incomplete nirvana,” because a being who achieves this state still has a body and is still subject to the laws of karma, and thus

Nirvana is the way of life which ensues when clutching at life has come to an end. In so far as all definition is clutching, nirvana is necessarily indefinable. It is the natural, “un-self-grasped” state of the mind; and here, of course, the mind has no specific meaning, for what is not grasped is not known in the conventional sense of knowledge.

nirvana—our true nature of no birth and no death.

If nirvana is not to be found by grasping, there can be no question of approaching it by stages, by the slow process of the accumulation of knowledge. It must be realized in a single flash of insight, which is tun wu, or, in Japanese, satori, the familiar Zen term for sudden awakening.