nirvana

the central concept of the religious philosophy of Buddhism (as well as Jainism), signifying the highest state and ultimate goal of human spiritual strivings.

In Buddhist texts, Nirvana is characterized as something unfathomable and inexpressible, the opposite to that which can be “in this world and the other world,” representing essentially a condition of inner fullness and absolute detachment from external being. Psychologically, the state of Nirvana is described negatively as the absence of passion and of the thirst for life in general; it is described positively as a state of perfection, contentment, and self-sufficiency. The self-absorption that excludes the need for turning outward in Nirvana is characterized by a certain indivisible “activity” of intellect, feeling, and will, which may be defined as a state of meditative concentration. The Buddhist ideal—the absence of thoughts about happiness and unhappiness and good and evil, and an apparent indifference to basic human aspirations—may even be interpreted as an absence of any definite goal. In the state of Nirvana the only distinguishable sensation is that of disentanglement, independence, freedom. However, this is not a freedom that has “overcome” the world but a freedom that has “removed” the world, for in Buddhism, the world is not considered to be in opposition to the human personality, and, therefore, it does not have to be overcome.

Although the attainment of Nirvana presupposes a rejection of the idea of happiness in general, Buddhist texts describe Nirvana as a state of bliss, as well as a state of peace. In the 20th century, Nirvana ceased to be identified with a state of absolute nothingness (R. Childers of Great Britain and F. I. Shcherbatskoi of the USSR). However, the identification of Nirvana with a state of superbeing that begins in this life and continues after death is scarcely justifiable (the works of T. W. Rhys Davids of Great Britain and H. Glasenapp of the Federal Republic of Germany, for example). In principle, the state of complete contentment eliminates any question of the continuity of satisfaction and, consequently, any question of a future life. In view of this and the Buddhist refusal to recognize death as annihilation, one may assume that Nirvana has no relationship whatsoever to the category of time.

As Buddhism developed, the ethical and psychological concept of Nirvana was supplemented by hypotheses that Nirvana is absolute reality. Attempts were made to ontologize the psychological state (for example, the concept of the Sarvastivadins in Hinayana and the doctrine of Madhyamika in Mahayana, which equates Nirvana with sunyata, or “emptiness”). In Jainism, Nirvana is interpreted as a perfect state enjoyed by the soul when it is freed from the coils of matter and the endless play of births and deaths.

The concept of Nirvana is one of the many mystical ideas about the attainment of a perfect state of the soul or psyche, the construction within man of a “kingdom not of this world.” A special feature of the Buddhist and, to some extent, the Jain idea of Nirvana distinguishes them from the ideas of Christian mysticism, as well as from Manichaeism, Sufism, and Hindu concepts of “liberation.” (The Mahayana concept of Nirvana, however, is somewhat similar to these forms of mysticism and asceticism.) This distinguishing feature of the Buddhist and Jain ideas of Nirvana is their reliance on the individual’s own powers and their total dissociation of the attainment of Nirvana from the idea of the transcendent (god or the good). Thus, the postulate of the divine nature of the human being is affirmed. Absolute separation from everything external and the undeniable egocen-trism of many followers of Nirvana leads to their withdrawal from participation in the life of society.