Concept
Nirvana
Overview
Nirvana, in the Indian religions (Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism), is the concept of an individual's passions being extinguished as the ultimate state of salvation, release, or liberation from suffering (duḥkha) and from the cycle of birth and rebirth (saṃsāra).
In Indian religions, nirvana is sometimes used as a synonym of moksha and mukti. All Indian religions assert it to be a state of perfect quietude, freedom, and highest happiness; liberation from attachment and worldly suffering; and the ending of samsara, the cycle of existence. However, non-Buddhist and Buddhist traditions describe these terms for liberation differently. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union of or the realization of the identity of Atman with Brahman, depending on the Hindu tradition. In Jainism, nirvana is also the soteriological goal, representing the release of a soul from karmic bondage and samsara. The Buddhist concept of nirvana is the abandonment of the 10 fetters, marking the end of rebirth by stilling the "fires" that keep the process of rebirth going.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Be it that we learn to confront it with our pride, our scorn, our strength of will, doing like the Indian who, however sorely tortured, revenges himself on his tormentor with his bitter tongue; be it that we withdraw from the pain into the oriental nothingness—it is called Nirvana,—into mute, benumbed, deaf self-surrender, self-forgetfulness, and self-effacement: one emerges from such long, dangerous exercises in…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom
States what Nirvana is; opens on Nirvana.
We mistrust the chances of things. We want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father's neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water melts into the river or the sea. The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments is security against the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience. Nirvana means safety from this everlasting round of adventures of which the world…
William James, Pragmatism
States what Nirvana is; names Nirvana.
Again, what reaches unto its Perfector and attaches itself to Him is safe against corruption, all the more so if even during disconnection from Him it has not undergone corruption. Wherefore the soul after death shall ever remain and continue unwavering [and undying] and attached to this noble essence, which is called generic universal mind, and in the language of the lawgivers the Divine Knowledge. As to the other…
Avicenna, A Compendium on the Soul
States what Nirvana is.
Philosophers who discussed Nirvana
- Je Tsongkhapa
- Pyrrho
- Mircea Eliade
- Adi Shankara
- Nagarjuna
- Jean-François Lyotard
- Haribhadra
- Buddhism
- Frithjof Schuon
- Eduard von Hartmann
- Yogadṛṣṭisamuccaya
Related ideas
- Ātman (Hinduism)
- Tirthankara
- Bhagavata Purana
- Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
- Passion (emotion)
- Hinduism
- Nirvana (Buddhism)
- Indian religions
- Moksha (Jainism)
- Vedas
- Jainism
- Karma
- Soteriology
- Saṃsāra
- Moksha
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Mahabharata
- Meditation
- Śūnyatā
- Anattā
- Brahman
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
- Noble Eightfold Path
- Bhagavad Gita
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Buddhist modernism.