PART ONE: THE ABSTRACT +quot;Released...with unrestricted awareness.+quot; According to th

                         PART ONE: THE ABSTRACT
                         ======================
  
  
       "Released...with unrestricted awareness."
  
  
  
    According to the Pali Canon--the earliest record of the Buddha's 
  teachings now extant--nothing outside of the realm of differentiation 
  can be properly designated by the conventions of language.  In one 
  mode of analysis, this realm is divided into the six senses (counting 
  the mind as the sixth) & their objects; in another, it is divided into 
  the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, thought processes, & 
  consciousness.  The two modes cover mutually equivalent areas.  
  However, one passage in the Canon points to another realm where the 
  six senses & their objects cease, which can be experienced although 
  not otherwise described, even in terms of existing, not existing, 
  both, or neither.  The attainment of the Buddhist goal belongs to this 
  second realm, and this of course raised problems for the Buddha in how 
  to teach & describe the goal.
    
    He solved the problem by illustrating the goal with similes & 
  metaphors.  The best-known metaphor for the goal is the name nibbana 
  (nirvana), which means the extinguishing of a fire.  Attempts to work 
  out the implications of this metaphor have all too often taken it out 
  of context.  Some writers, drawing on modern, every-day notions of 
  fire, come to the conclusion that nibbana implies extinction, inasmuch 
  as we feel that a fire goes out of existence when extinguished.  
  Others, however, note that the Vedas--ancient Indian religious texts 
  that predate Buddhism by many thousands of years--described fire as 
  immortal:  Even when extinguished it simply goes into hiding, in a 
  latent, diffused state, only to be reborn when a new fire is lit.  
  These writers then assume that the Buddha accepted the Vedic theory in 
  its entirety, and so maintain that nibbana implies eternal existence.
    
    The weakness of both these interpretations is that they do not take 
  into account the way the Pali Canon describes (1) the workings of 
  fire, (2) the limits beyond which no phenomenon may be described, and 
  (3) the precise implications that the Buddha himself drew from his 
  metaphor in light of (1) & (2).  The purpose of this essay is to place 
  this metaphor in its original context, so as to show what it was and 
  was not meant to imply.
    
    Any discussion of the way the Buddha used the term nibbana must 
  begin with the distinction that there are two levels of nibbana (or, 
  to use the original terminology, two nibbana properties).  The first 
  is the nibbana experienced by a person who has attained the goal and 
  is still alive.  This is described metaphorically as the extinguishing 
  of passion, aversion, & delusion.  The second is the nibbana after 
  death.  The simile for these two states is the distinction between a 
  fire that has gone out but whose embers are still warm, and one so 
  totally out that its embers are cold.  The Buddha used the views of 
  fire current in his day in somewhat different ways when discussing 
  these two levels of nibbana, and so we must consider them separately.  
    
    To understand the implications of nibbana in the present life, it 
  is necessary to know something of the way in which fire is described 
  in the Pali Canon.  There, fire is said to be caused by the excitation 
  or agitation of the heat property.  To continue burning, it must have 
  sustenance (upadana).  Its relationship to its sustenance is one of 
  clinging, dependence, & entrapment.  When it goes out, the heat 
  property is no longer agitated, and the fire is said to be freed.  
  Thus the metaphor of nibbana in this case would have implications of 
  calming together with release from dependencies, attachments, & 
  bondage.  This in turn suggests that of all the attempts to describe 
  the etymology of the word nibbana, the closest is the one Buddhaghosa 
  proposed in The Path of Purification:  Un- (nir) + binding (vana):  
  Unbinding.
    
    To understand further what is meant by the unbinding of the mind, 
  it is also important to know that the word upadana--the sustenance for 
  the fire--also means clinging, and that according to the Buddha the 
  mind has four forms of clinging that keep it in bondage:  clinging to 
  sensuality, to views, to precepts & practices, and to doctrines of the 
  self.  In each case, the clinging is the passion & desire the mind 
  feels for these things.  To overcome this clinging, then, the mind 
  must see not only the drawbacks of these four objects of clinging, 
  but, more importantly, the drawbacks of the act of passion & desire 
  itself.
    
    The mind does this by following a threefold training:  virtue, 
  concentration & discernment.  Virtue provides the joy & freedom from 
  remorse that are essential for concentration.  Concentration provides 
  an internal basis of pleasure, rapture, equanimity, & singleness of 
  mind that are not dependent on sensual objects, so that discernment 
  can have the strength to cut through the mind's clingings.  
  Discernment functions by viewing these clingings as part of a causal 
  chain:  seeing their origin, their passing away, their allure, the 
  drawbacks of their results, &, finally, emancipation from them.  
    
    Although the Canon reports cases where individuals cut through all 
  four forms of clinging at the same time, the more common pattern is 
  for discernment first to cut through sensual clinging by focusing on 
  the inconstancy & stressfulness of all sensory objects and on the 
  worthlessness of any passion or desire directed to them.  Thus freed, 
  the mind can turn its discernment inward in a similar way to cut 
  through its clinging to the practice of concentration itself, as well 
  as to views in general and notions of 'self' in particular.  Once it 
  no longer views experience in terms of self, the entire self/not-self 
  dichotomy collapses.
    
    The mind at this point attains Deathlessness, although there is no 
  sense of 'I' in the attainment.  There is simply the realization, 
  'There is this.'  From this point onward the mind experiences mental & 
  physical phenomena with a sense of being dissociated from them.  One 
  simile for this state is that of a hide removed from the carcass of a 
  cow:  Even if the hide is then placed back on the cow, one cannot say 
  that it is attached as before, because the connective tissues that 
  once held the hide to the carcass--in other words, passion & 
  desire--have all been cut (by the knife of discernment).  The person 
  who has attained the goal--called a Tathagata in some contexts, an 
  arahant in others--thus lives out the remainder of his/her life in the 
  world, but independent of it.
    
    Death as experienced by a Tathagata is described simply as, 'All 
  this, no longer being relished, grows cold right here.'  All attempts 
  to describe the experience of nibbana or the state of the Tathagata 
  after death--as existing, not existing, both, or neither--are refuted 
  by the Buddha.  To explain his point, he again makes use of the 
  metaphor of the extinguished fire, although here he draws on the Vedic 
  view of latent fire as modified by Buddhist notions of what does and 
  does not lie within the realm of valid description.
    
    To describe the state of the Tathagata's mind, there has to be a 
  way of knowing what his/her consciousness is dependent on.  Here we 
  must remember that, according to the texts, a meditator may develop 
  intuitive powers through the practice of concentration enabling 
  him/her to know the state of another person's mind, or the destination 
  of that person after death.  To do so, though, that person's 
  consciousness must be dwelling on a particular object, for it is only 
  through knowledge of the object that the state of the mind can be 
  known.  With ordinary people this is no problem, for ordinary 
  consciousness is always dependent on one object or another, but with 
  Tathagatas this is impossible, for their consciousness is totally 
  independent.  Because terms such as existing, not existing, both, or 
  neither, apply only to what may be measured against a criterion of 
  knowing, they cannot apply to the Tathagata.
    
    The Buddha borrows two points from the Vedic notion of fire to 
  illustrate this point.  Even if one wants to assume that fire still 
  exists after being extinguished, it is (1) so subtle that it cannot be 
  perceived, and (2) so diffuse that it cannot be said to go to any one 
  place or in any particular direction.  Just as notions of  going east, 
  west, north, or south do not apply to an extinguished fire, notions of 
  existing and so forth do not apply to the Tathagata after death.
    
    As for the question of how nibbana is experienced after death, the 
  Buddha says that there is no limit in that experience by which it 
  could be described.  The word 'limit' here is the important one.  In 
  one of the ancient Vedic myths of creation, the universe starts when a 
  limit appears that separates male from female, sky from earth.  Thus 
  the implication of the Buddha's statement is that the experience of 
  nibbana is so free from even the most basic notions that make up the 
  universe that it lies beyond description.  This implication is borne 
  out by other passages stating that there is nothing in that experience 
  of the known universe--earth, water, wind, fire, sun, moon, darkness, 
  coming, going, or stasis--at all.
    
    Thus, when viewed in light of the way the Pali Canon describes the 
  workings of fire and uses fire imagery to describe the workings of the 
  mind, it is clear that the word nibbana is primarily meant to convey 
  notions of freedom:  freedom in the present life from agitation, 
  dependency, & clinging; and freedom after death from even the most 
  basic concepts or limitations--such as existence, non-existence, both, 
  or neither--that make up the describable universe.
  
    
  
       Here, Hemaka,
       with regard to pleasant things
            seen, heard, felt, & cognized,
       There is:  the dispelling of passion & desire,
                   the deathless state of Unbinding.
       Those who, knowing this, mindful,
            fully extinguished/unbound
            in the here & now,
       are forever calmed
       have gone beyond
            entanglement in the world.
  
                           Sn v.9
  
  
  
       Freed, dissociated, & released from ten things,  the 
       Tathagata dwells with unrestricted awareness, Vahuna.  What 
       ten?  Freed, dissociated, & released from 
       form...feeling...perception...processes...consciousness... 
       birth...ageing...death... stress*... defilement, he dwells 
       with unrestricted awareness.  Just as a red, blue, or white 
       lotus born in the water and growing in the water, rises up 
       above the water and stands with no water adhering to it, in 
       the same way the Tathagata--freed, dissociated, & released 
       from these ten things--dwells with unrestricted awareness.
  
                           A x.81
  
  
  
       Just as the great ocean has but one taste, the taste of 
       salt, even so does this doctrine & discipline have but one 
       taste:  the taste of release.
  
                           A viii.19