The Two Nirvanas

Note : the Sanskrit word nirvana is a metaphor, i.e. a user friendly verb analogy, therefore a verbal fiction!

Consequently: Caveat Creditor (i.e. Believer Beware!)

Two nirvanas (and a host of alternative metaphors (= figures of speech) derived from figures of the mind derived from figure-less, direct experience) are mentioned in the Buddhist ‘canons’. They appear to circumscribe the affect of

1. ‘coming to rest’, i.e. the momentary (or relative) or complete ending of inner turbulence experienced as distress, or

2. the momentary stopping or complete extinction of the drivers of life, to wit, greed, hatred and stupidity, or

3. the momentary stopping or complete elimination of desire, or

4. the momentary stopping or complete elimination of the asavas, or

5. the momentary stopping or complete elimination of the kilesas

6. the momentary or complete elimination of the person (or ego), i.e. of birth and rebirth … and so on and on

1.      Nirvana 1 (albeit in 2 versions) happens as a particular (hence relative) @rest state, i.e. as a momentary ‘wait’ (in modern terminology, as the self-affect of sliced momentum). Nirvana 1 (i.e. the relative @ rest state, hence identifiable) is achieved when an active (i.e. living = dying, according to the Tathagata) system (or open process), i.e. an astasy (i.e. an unstable, unsteady or merely continuous state), stops, ends, halts, (self-decides), is sliced, thereby becoming an enstasy. An enstasy is a wholly stable (i.e. all internal turbulence, hence disorder, therefore friction, therefore heat, often experienced as distress (Pali: dukkha), eliminated) @maximum anti-entropy state, therefore presenting as a particular order of 1, to wit, as a momentarily fixed ‘emerged phenomenon’ ‘with/as residue’, hence identifiable. Note, the Tathagata remained unidentifiable until he spoke, i.e. generated content = dharma (and which was anatta).

2.      Nirvana 2, i.e. pari (= ‘beyond’ relative)-nirvana. Nirvana 2 = the absolute @rest, pre-conditions = relativity results when an active (i.e. living = dying, hence distressed) system (i.e. a continually emerging and changing astasy) has died down (as a fire whose fuel is spent) totally, i.e. when all (internal) order (hence all internal (hence productive) relative @ rest states or series of @rest states, hence fundamentally states of disorder (hence causing distress), so the Tathagata) is dissipated. In other words, Nirvana 2 = absolute @ rest’ness (and which is an imagined* rather than experiential state because experience is generated by the skandhas, and which, according to the Tathagata, are anatta, therefore ‘not own’ = original, hence prior to experience) ‘ensues’ when relative (wholly stable and identifiable) order (hence unitised difference, hence a self = nama-rupa) decays to (the) ‘ground’ potential of @maximum entropy ‘waiting’ (prior to time, space and formation), therefore ‘without remainder = residue’, as unborn, therefore undifferentiated, therefore as a non-identifiable one’ness (so Mahayana speculation) presencing potentially (but not presenting actually) as a virtual order of 1 with the potential of becoming n orders of 1 to n.

*… Non-relative (i.e. absolute = complete or whole) @rest’ness, indeed, the R.I.P post-relativity state of pari-nirvana, can only be imagined (or abstracted). The inventors of the Upanishads (and Meister Eckhart) imagined pari-nirvana as ‘ground’ potential (to wit, as God-ground or God-head), being undifferentiated (hence turbulence = distress free, hence @ zero temperature), to wit, as ‘unborn, un-ageing, un-ailing, death-less, sorrow-less, undefiled supreme surcease of bondage’, (in a word) nirvana as (SanskritJ atma (Pali: atta), = Brahman = Prajapati, to wit, as either the (formless, i.e. nirguna) ‘One without a Second’ (a ‘second’ really being the turbulated or split ‘one’ which has thereby self-generated a second, therefore relative @rest state) or as formal saguna Brahman.