Enlightenment & Nibbana
Enlightenment
We have several descriptions, presented as words spoken by the Buddha, of his enlightenment experience. Perhaps the most complete, and probably one of the earliest, is from the Maha-Saccaka Sutta, the Longer Discourse to Saccaka, sutta number 36 in the Majjima Nikaya. The frame story involves a Jain monk, Saccaka, well-known for his disputing skills, who challenges the completeness of the Buddha’s development—his mastery of the body through the practice of austerities, and his mastery of the mind through meditation. After pretty much demolishing Saccaka’s claims for his own teacher’s accomplishments along these lines, the Buddha proceeds to give Saccaka the most complete narrative we have of what happened leading up to the experience with which the seeker Gotama Siddattha became the Buddha, the Enlightened One.
The Buddha describes the strenuous course of austerities he pursued and his recognition that they were not bringing him closer to his goal; his decision to take solid food and rebuild his strength; his remembrance of a state of meditative absorbtion that he’d experienced as a child and his realization that that could be the path to enlightenment; and his decision to sit in meditation under a fig tree until he recreated that state, went beyond it, and took it all the way to a realization of “the deathless”, nibbana.
First, he went progressively through four states of meditative absorbtion (jhanas), each more rarefied than the last:
And now, from within that fourth jhana, simply and completely mindful, with no affective feelings to distract him, the Buddha-to-be realizes the ‘three knowledges’ that all enlightened beings are said to experience. The first of these is knowledge of his own past lives, many hundreds of thousands of them, over many eons of cosmic expansion and contraction: “‘There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance.’” (ibid)
The Second Knowledge was the knowledge of kamma, “‘the knowledge of the passing away & reappearance of beings. I saw — by means of the divine eye, purified & surpassing the human — beings passing away & re-appearing, and I discerned how they are inferior & superior, beautiful & ugly, fortunate & unfortunate in accordance with their kamma‘” (ibid)
And finally, the Third Knowledge:
And so Gotama Siddattha became the Buddha. But what exactly was it that happened?
To get somewhat closer to an answer to that question, in my understanding, involves looking more closely at the Buddhist understanding of experience. Just how did the experience of the man Siddhatta Gotama, pre-enlightenment, differ from the experience of the Buddha?
Sue Hamilton, in an amazing work of scholarship, Early Buddhism: A New Approach—The I of the Beholder, makes the case that the Buddha understood the person as an ongoing continuum of contingent experience. The components of experience are the five khandhas, usually translated (rather confusingly) as “aggregates“. These are what the Buddha in his First Discourse, identified as synonymous with dukkha, “the five khandhas subject to clinging”. They are:
- rupa (body or form). This is almost universally taken to mean one’s physical body and the experiences rooted in it.
- vedana (feeling or sensation). This is the raw unprocessed experience of the world: the interaction of objects in the world with the body’s sense organs.
- sañña (perception or cognition). This is the experience of recognition—the perception of the color red, for example, as distinct from the imposition of light waves within the red region of the visible spectrum on the cones of the retina.
- saṇkara (volition, mental construction). This is one of the most difficult of the many difficult terms in the Pali texts. We’ll have more to say about it next session, in a somewhat different context, but for now, assume that it refers to all of what we make in our minds from the perceptual experiences we have—the fears and desires that emerge as we conceptualize that perceptual experience, the nuances we perceive between one experience and another that is somewhat like it, the memories we create, the patterns we weave, the concepts we create.
- viññana (consciousness). This is the whole that we make of all those mental constructions, the sense that it’s all one thing, the experience of having it under control, being able to focus attention on this or that, analyze the ideas we experience, reject or accept certain perceptions as real or imaginary.
In the Buddha’s second discourse, the Annattalakkhana Sutta, the Discourse on the Not-Self Characteristic, the Buddha explained how we create a sense of Self from the five khandhas, and how that sense of Self is delusional. It’s not just that all of the khandhas are impermanent, changing from one moment to the next, and that all are contingent, emerging from the particular conditions that evoke them, but that our belief that those experiences are our experiences; that our bodies, our sensations, our perceptions, our emotions, ideas, beliefs, our sense of being in control, somehow or other gives us an individual being that is independent of the contingencies from which those experiences emerge, and that that individual being has some sort of essential reality, that I am that being, that I have those experiences, that they are mine—that very complex belief is the very meaning of dukkha.
The khandhas are among those constituents of phenomena known to Buddhist philosophy as the dhammas (with a lower-case ‘d’, as distinct from Dhamma; it’s similar to the difference in English between truths and Truth). Depending on the system of philosophy you’re paying attention to, there are somewhere between about 40 dhammas and close to 80; all lists include such things as the khandhas, the “Great Elements” (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water), the factors comprising the Eight-Fold Path, the jhanas, etc. Although the dhammas are basic constituents of phenomena and can’t be analyzed into their component parts, they are all still contingent; they emerge from preceding conditions, and they cease to be when their supporting conditions cease to be. The only dhamma that is not contingent, that does not depend on preceding conditions, and that can never cease to be, is nibbana. And nibbana is the dhamma that the Buddha entered when he achieved Enlightenment. Before his Enlightenment, all of his experience was, like the experience we all have, contingent: arising from preceding conditions and ceasing to exist when those conditions ceased to exist. And he was, as we all are, identified with those experiences. After his Enlightenment, he continued to experience bodily sensations, feelings, perceptions; to have thoughts and make decisions. But his identity, as the Buddha, was no longer bound up with those experiences. As the Buddha, his only identity, and his entire identity, was nibbana—not contingent on anything, not arising from any preceding conditions, not subject to cessation.
Nibbana is what we will turn to next.
Nibbana
The etymology of nibbana, as one might expect, is somewhat complicated, but it is commonly accepted that, for the Buddha and his followers, the term referred, by analogy, to the extinction of a fire—not, as it’s commonly asserted, by blowing it out (blowing on a fire typically makes it burn hotter), but by removing the fuel on which the fire feeds. So, generally, nibbana means extinction. But it quite emphatically does not mean, as it’s commonly interpreted to mean, extinction of “self”. It’s certainly true that when an enlightened being, a Buddha, has entered the condition of nibbana, he has no essential “self”. But he never did. Any idea of an essential self that he might have clung to before the experience of enlightenment was a delusion, based on ignorance. It is true, as the Buddha himself proclaimed, that with his enlightenment, he was liberated. But he was not liberated from experience, from the khandhas, but from the clinging to those khandhas that causes repeated becoming—in terms that meant something to the Buddha and his audiences, he was liberated from the clinging that causes rebirth, that ties one to the repeated round of birth and death, samsara, that is the realm of dukkha.
Richard Gombrich, in an illuminating, but outrageously over-priced, book called “What the Buddha Thought”, talks about the importance, in the Buddha’s teachings, of the metaphor of fire. In the Brahmanic culture that dominated Northern India in the Buddha’s time, fire was sacred, identified with the processes essential to life: conception, growth, digestion, energetic effort. God Agni, who embodied Fire, was at the center of the Sacrifice, the primary ritual of the culture. At a Brahmin’s coming-of-age ceremony, three fires were lit, which he was charged with maintaining throughout his life. At his death, those fires were used to ignite his funeral pyre.
As he did with so many Brahmanic concepts and symbols, the Buddha redefined fire. In what is traditionally recognized as his Third Discourse the Aditthapariyaya Sutta (The Fire Sermon), he was speaking to 500 members of a fire-worshipping sect—”matted-haired” ascetics who believed that Fire was the ultimate element, from which all things derived. He opened with a statement that accorded with that belief: “Bhikkhus, all things are burning.” But then he went on:
“The eye is burning, visible forms are burning, visual consciousness is burning, all sights are burning; and whatever is experienced as pleasant or painful or even neutral that arises with sight as its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of sensual craving, with the fire of anger, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrow, with lamentation, with pain, grief, despair.
[The Buddha then goes on to make the same claims about the ear, aural consciousness and sound, the nose, olfactory consciousness and odors, the tongue, gustatory consciousness and taste, the body, tactile consciousness and touch, finishing with what, in the Buddha's understanding, was the sixth sense.]
“The mind is burning, ideas are burning, mental consciousness is burning, thinking is burning; and whatever is experienced as pleasant or painful or even neutral that arises with thinking as its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of sensual craving, with the fire of anger, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrow, with lamentation, with pain, grief, despair.
“Bhikkhus, when anyone learned in the Aryan discipline who realizes this, he finds nothing attractive in the eye, nothing attractive in visible forms, visual consciousness, or any sights at all; moreover, whatever had been felt as pleasant or painful or neutral in all such experience, no longer holds appeal for him.
[Similarly with experience of sound, of smell, of taste and touch.]
“He finds nothing attractive in the mind, nothing attractive in ideas or mental consciousness or thinking; whatever he’d felt as pleasant or painful or neutral arising from such experience no longer holds any appeal for him.
“When he no longer finds appeal in such experiences, passion fades away. With the fading away of passion, he is no longer enslaved by passion. No longer enslaved, he knows freedom. He understands: ‘Birth no longer has any fuel to feed on, the holy life has been lived out, what had to be done has been done, nothing any longer is bound to be.’”
That is what the Honored One said. The bhikkhus were glad, and they approved his words.
Finally, let’s look at a passage that relates nibbana to the extinction of fire more explicitly. It’s the last part of the Aggi-Vachagotta Sutta (Majjima Nikaya 72, the Discourse to Vachagotta on Fire.) The Buddha’s questioner here is the wanderer Vachagotta, who appears several times in the canonical texts, always as a person who’s trying very hard to get the Buddha to agree that what he really means is what Vachagotta believes to be true, i.e. he’s trying to impose his views on the Buddha. This sutta begins with Vachagotta asking the same questions that Malunkyaputta asked in the Cula-Malunkyaputta Sutta and getting pretty much the same answers: the Buddha simply refused to declare a position on whether the world was eternal or not, whether the soul was the same as the body or different, and other such “Big” questions, including the question of what happened to the body of a Tathagata after death.
Vachagotta was frustrated, and finally demanded, “Does Master Gotama hold any positions at all?”
“A ‘position,’ Vaccha, is something that a Tathagata has done away with. What a Tathagata sees is this: ‘Here form emerges, here are the conditions, here it ceases; Here form emerges, here are the conditions, here it ceases; here sensation emerges, here are the conditions, here it ceases; here cognition emerges, here are the conditions, here it ceases; here consciousness emerges, here are the conditions, here it ceases.’ Because of this, I say,— with the ending, dissolving, cessation, renunciation, & letting go of all attempts to make something of that raw experience, all mulling it over, all I-making & mine-making & obsession with self—a Tathagata is, through the removal of any support for new becoming, released.”
“But, Master Gotama, the monk who is so released: Where does he reappear?”
“‘Reappear,’ Vaccha, doesn’t apply.”
“In that case, Master Gotama, he does not reappear?”
“‘Does not reappear,’ Vaccha, doesn’t apply.”
“…both does & does not reappear?”
“…doesn’t apply.”
“…neither does nor does not reappear?”
“…doesn’t apply.”
“How is it, Master Gotama, when Master Gotama is asked if the monk reappears… does not reappear… both does & does not reappear… neither does nor does not reappear, in every case he says, ‘that doesn’t apply’. At this point, Master Gotama, I am befuddled; at this point, confused. What I thought I understood from your earlier conversation now seems to make no sense at all.”
“Of course you’re befuddled, Vaccha. Of course you’re confused. Deep, Vaccha, is this phenomenon, hard to see, hard to realize. This is smooth, refined, beyond rationalization, subtle, an understanding for the wise to experience directly. For those holding to other views, practicing other paths, seeking other satisfactions, pursuing other aims, listening to other teachers, it is difficult to grasp. That being the case, let me now put some questions to you; answer as you see fit. What do you think, Vaccha: if a fire were burning in front of you, would you know, ‘This fire is burning in front of me’?”
“Yes, Master Gotama, of course I would know that.”
“Now, suppose someone were to ask you, Vaccha, ‘This fire that’s burning in front of you, dependent on what does it burn?’ How would you reply?”
“I would reply, ‘This in front of me burns dependent on grass & timber for its fuel.’”
“If the fire burning in front of you were to go out, would you know, ‘This fire that was burning in front of me has gone out’?”
“Yes.”
“Now, suppose someone were to ask you, ‘This fire that’s gone out, in which direction has it gone? East? West? North? South?’ If someone were to ask that question, how would you reply?”
“That doesn’t apply, Master Gotama. Any fire burning dependent on grass and timber for its fuel, if it’s not fed—if it’s used up its fuel and has not been given any more—it’s simply said to have gone ‘out’.”
“Even so, Vaccha, any physical form which someone describing the Tathagata might ascribe to him—any form he might be said to have or experience—that form experience the Tathagata has abandoned; its root is destroyed, it’s been made like the stump of a palm tree, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined to arise again. Liberated from any definition in terms of form, Vaccha, the Tathagata is deep, boundless, hard to fathom, like the sea. ‘Reappears’ doesn’t apply. ‘Does not reappear’ doesn’t apply. ‘Both does & does not reappear’ doesn’t apply. ‘Neither reappears nor does not reappear’ doesn’t apply.
“In the same way, any sensation which the Tathagata might be said to experience, any cognition he might be said to entertain, any volition he might be said to develop, any consciousness he might be said to know—all such experience the Tathagata has abandoned; its root is destroyed, it’s been made like the stump of a palm tree, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined to arise again. Liberated from any definition in terms of sensation, cognition, volition, consciousness, Vaccha, the Tathagata is deep, boundless, hard to fathom, like the sea. ‘Reappears’ doesn’t apply. ‘Does not reappear’ doesn’t apply. ‘Both does & does not reappear’ doesn’t apply. ‘Neither reappears nor does not reappear’ doesn’t apply.
When the Honored One had spoken, the wanderer Vacchagotta said to him: “Master Gotama, it is as if there were a great sala tree not far from a village or town: With age, its branches and leaves would wear away, its bark would wear away, its sapwood would wear away, so that finally—divested of branches, leaves, bark, & sapwood—it would stand as pure heartwood. In the same way, Master Gotama’s words are divested of branches, leaves, bark, & sapwood and stand as pure heartwood.
Summary
Let’s summarize: experience is analyzed by Buddhist tradition into five khandhas. Clinging to those khandhas, to those various aspects of experience, is what defines us as individuals. So, clinging to the pleasure derived from sexual activity, we become lustful beings; clinging to the satisfaction we associate with wealth, we become greedy beings; imagining an enemy and clinging to hatred of that imagined entity, we become Rush Limbaugh. Clinging to beliefs, we become Jews, or Muslims, or Catholics, or Tea Partiers, or Buddhists.
It is possible, through practice, to progress through an increasingly rarefied series of states of awareness, during which we let go, more and more completely, of the clinging to experience; that progress culminates in a knowledge and vision of things as they are which shows them to be impermanent, unsatisfying, not worth holding onto. When clinging ends, we no longer become this one or that one, this sort or that sort; we are neither here nor there; we cannot be labelled or defined. That knowledge and vision of things as they are is known as enlightenment, and the release it brings from the chains of passion that bind us to experience is nibbana: again, neither here nor there, neither this nor that, undefinable, not to be confined by labels or descriptions, no matter how skillful or subtle.
The being who is enlightened is known as a Buddha; his body continues to exist, and continues to experience, but he is released from (the delusion of) identity. He exists in (or as) nibbana.
At the end of a Buddha’s life, when he is finally released from the last clinging, to the material form that is perceived as his body, he attains the final nibbana, known as parinibbana. If nibbana is beyond words, parinibbana is beyond imagining.
