"Nibbana is not trying to get anywhere.

The attention rests in the pure space of knowing.

As we attend again and again to this pure space of knowing, our being starts to take root in the deathless. The purity of Buddha nature, free from afflictive formations, starts to become the baseline of our experience.

As we rest in the empty knowing, we see all the changing phenomena come and go.

As we tune in to empty awareness, we are linking to Buddha nature, which is of the same unconditioned nature as nibbana.

The most liberating view is not conceptual. Abiding in empty knowing is key, and it requires neither thoughts nor concepts nor philosophical views."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"It is impossible to define nibbana through concepts, because words discriminate while the nature of nibbana transcends dualities.

Many Buddhist teachers agree that nibbana refers to a latent element within human experience that can be discovered and experienced. It is unconditioned in the sense that it is not subject to arising and passing based on other, prior conditions. The direct realization of this unconditioned element has the power to end craving and suffering. This is the goal of the Buddha's teaching and of our practice. We will take nibbana to mean both this latent unconditioned element and the end of suffering, which is the goal of the path.

The six senses cease to manifest anything, so there is no sense of a body or even of mind states.

What is being realized in this moment is only the unconditioned element, nibbana, which is not of the six senses and cannot be known by the six sense consciousnesses. This is a moment of enlightenment. The great Zen master Dogen referred to this experience as 'dropping off body and mind'.

Enlightenment experiences are described as having no awareness present at all or having the presence of an awareness that is not based in the six senses."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Enlightment is understood as a direct realization of the unconditioned or, one might say, an immediate personal experience of nibbana."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"It is the lack of satisfaction that leads most of us to a spiritual path. in Buddhism the entire goal of the spiritual life is to end this sense of unsatisfactoriness by finding an unshakable peace, called nirvana."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Gotama has not eliminated the forces of Mara but became immune to them.

When regarded with mindful awareness, greed and hatred are seen for what they are: impermanent emotions that, when left to their own devices, will fizzle out. Realizing that they are conditioned processes and not essentially 'me' or 'mine' takes away their power.

Nirvanic freedom is the result of understanding how reactivity works.

Mara is whatever imposes constraints and limits upon us." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"From the orthodox perspective, the goal of our practice is the attainment of a final, transcendent nirvana. A secular reading, however, treats rebirth as a metaphor for a repetitive existence in which we remain locked into cycles of reactive behavior. In this case, the goal of the practice is to stop thinking, speaking and acting reactively, thereby liberating ourselves to respond to life unconditioned by such impulses. Instead of lying beyond the transient, suffering world, nirvana is revealed to lie in the very heart of our own sentient experience here and now.

Transcendentalists regard the cultivation of the path as a precondition for the attainment of nirvana; secularists regard the experience of nirvana as a precondition for cultivating the path." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"The body is not self. If it were, it would not get sick. You could tell your body: be like this or don't be like that. But because the body is not self, it does get sick. You can't tell it: be like this or don't be like that. He points out that the same is true for feelings, perceptions, inclinations and consciousness. You cannot determine in advance how you will feel, what you will perceive, how you will be inclined to act, or what you will be conscious of. You do not choose to feel happy rather than sad, to perceive a world that delights rather than disturbs you, to always incline to a calm rather than an agitated response, to be unconscious rather than conscious of something distressing. In others words, you are not in charge of what is going on within your own experience.

The liberating insight he [Buddha] proposes is not the realization that there is no self but the realization that I am not the same as or reducible to any or all of the five bundles (aggregates) that constitute me.

Gotama understood awakening as the result of directly knowing how experience comes about.

The key to freeing oneself from the repetitive cycles of reactivity and beholding nirvana is attention. When attention becomes embodied through contemplation of the transient, tragic, impersonal and empty nature of the bundles, our relationship to experience begins to shift in disconcerting ways. The practice of embodied attention challenges our habitual perceptions of self and world as permanent, satisfatory and intrinsically ours. By stabilizing attention through mindfulness and concentration, we begin to see for ourselves how pleasurable and painful feelings trigger habitual patterns of reactivity and craving. These two insights not only undermine our inclinations to hold on to what we like and to push away what we fear but open up the possibility of thinking, speaking and acting otherwise.

'Seeing things this way', says Gotama at the conclusion of his discourse on not-self, 'the attentive noble disciple disengages from form, disengages from feelings, disengages from perceptions, disengages from inclinations, disengages from consciousness. By disengaging, reactivity fades; non-reactive, he is freed; the knowledge arises: 'I am freed.'' This is the experience of nirvana as immediate and clearly visible; it is at this crucial point that one sees for oneself how one is free not to react to life but to respond to it from a perspective that is no longer conditioned by such inclinations." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"Gotama declares: 'I will show you the burden and the carrier of the burden, the burden's addition and the burden's relief.' He explains that the burden is the five bundles (aggregates), the carrier of the burden is the person of such a name and clan. What is added to the burden is reactivity/craving and the burden relief is the fading away and ceasing of that reactivity, that is, nirvana." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"We are creatures who react as we come into contact with the world through our senses.

Such reactions are entirely natural. They are neither good nor bad. Strictly speaking, they are not even "ours". They are simply what happens when an organism interacts with its environment. They are what arises.

The person who lets go of reactivity does not shun involvement with the world but moves nimbly and lightly through it.

Gotama recognized that human beings spend an inordinate amount of time absorbed in the amplifications and proliferations of reactivity.

Letting go of reactivity is a consequence of comprehending reactivity.

The practitioner sees the tricksterish wiles of reactivity for what they are: the seductive, infantile play of an organism that is primarily - and, for the most part, redundantly - preoccupied with its biological survival.

Nirvana [is] to be understood in one of two senses: either as the ceasing of reactivity or as freedom and independence from reactivity.

To behold and thus become aware of nirvana means consciously to affirm and valorize those moments when you see for yourself that you are free to think, speak and act in ways that are not determined by reactivity.

Nirvana is clearly visible the moment reactivity stops." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"As practice matures, we reach a stage of perfect equanimity, where all the factors of enlightenment ripen. At this time, there are no cravings or yearnings, even for the next breath or the next moment of experience. There is not the slightest impulse toward either becoming or not becoming. As the mind settles into this perfect balance of noncraving, the flow of consciousness conditioned by changing objects suddenly stops. The mind then opens to and alights upon nibbana, the unconditioned, the unborn."

The end of suffering - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2013

"The Buddha discovered that the happiest mind is the nonattached one. This happiness is of a radically different order than what we're used to. When asked how there could be bliss in nibbana, since it offers no lovely sights or sounds, Sariputta, the Buddha's chief disciple, said: "That there is no sensation is itself happiness." Compared with this joy, he implied, pleasure falls woefully short. We read in the sutras that "everything the world holds good, sages see otherwise. What other men call 'sukha' (pleasure) that the saints call 'dukkha' (suffering) . . ." (SN 3.12). This isn't just an alternative viewpoint - it's ultimate reality."

What's so great about now? - Tricycle:  The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006

"The Buddha clearly stated the reason for practicing mindfulness: to uncover and eliminate the cause of suffering. That cause is desire. When its cause is absent, suffering cannot arise. At that point, the sutras tell us, one knows a happiness with no hint of anxiety to mar it. But that isn't because sights and sounds magically become permanent, lovely, and the property of Self. Rather, these impressions temporarily cease and consciousness touches a supramundane object called "nibbana," the unconditioned element. Although a mental object, nibbana, the "highest bliss," is not a formation at all; it is unformed and permanent. So the present moment is worthwhile because only in it can we experience nibbana - complete freedom from suffering.

Yet can't sense-impressions be pleasurable? Yes, but pleasure isn't the unending source of happiness we take it to be. In daily life we perceive beautiful sensations as solid and relatively lasting, when in fact they're only unstable vibrations that fall away the instant they form. Like cotton candy that dissolves before you can sink your teeth into it, pleasure doesn't endure long enough to sustain happiness. " 

What's so great about now? - Tricycle:  The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006

"The ultimate goal of life, liberation from rebirth, though in general shared by all soteriologies in Brahmanism, Jainism and Buddhism, was represented uniquely by Buddhists as the pacification of all psychological attachments through the extinguishing (nirvana) of desires, which would lead to a consequent extinguishing of karma and the prevention of rebirth."

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Nagarjuna

"Nirvana significa a cessação do sofrimento. Uma vez que o sofrimento é causado pela ilusão, nirvana significa também a cessação da ilusão. Dado que o sofrimento é causado pela crença na dualidade, nirvana significa também cessação da dualidade, ou da crença nela. Nirvana é a cessação da crença em um "eu" e em qualquer coisa permanente  e absoluta em qualquer lugar.

O nirvana é a natureza búdica que todos os seres sencientes possuem e sempre possuíram.

O nirvana é a libertação de todos os grilhões da ilusão. É o eu puro que buscamos, é a mente búdica, a verdade central de todos os ensinamentos do Buda.

O nirvana não é a morte, tampouco a supressão da consciência. O nirvana é a verdade, o mais elevado nível de consciência, a meta suprema da prática budista.

O nirvana é um estado de perfeita liberdade."

Budismo: significados profundos - p. 91-96, 135-136

"What joy is left in life? We find it in nirvana [the joy of completely extinguishing our ideas and concepts]."

The heart of Buddha's teaching

"Awakening too is a shunya concept. Nirvana is not something objectively real, for the distinction we make between samsara and nirvana is another example of dualistic thinking that we project onto our experience. Instead, Nagarjuna referes to nirvana as "the end of prapanca (conceptual elaborations)", which includes the end of such dualistic ways of thinking. I experience the world as it really is when I let go of the ways of thinking that I am normally stuck in.

Nagarjuna never actually claims that "samsara is nirvana". Rather, he says that no diferrence can be found between them. The two terms simply refer to different ways of experiencing the world. Nirvana is not another realm or dimension but the deep peace experienced when our mental turmoil ends, because the objects that we have been tryng to identify with - including the sense of self - are realized to be shunya. If things arise and pass away according to conditions, they have no reality of their own that we can cling to. When we do not cling to names and concepts, we can experience things as they are. This includes buddhist names and concepts, even the concept of nirvana and the very notion of  "a Buddha".

Lower truths are needed to point to the "higher truth". Yet, as Wittgenstein put it, after you have climbed up the ladder you must kick it away. Fortunately, buddhism is very good at helping us let go of such ladders."

Money, sex, war, karma

"Buddhism distinguishes two truths, the relative (conventional) truth and the ultimate (absolute) truth. Since samsara, the world of suffering, is not different from nirvana, the relative truth does not refer to a different reality than the ultimate truth does. The relative truth is the way we usually experience the world, as a collection of separate things - including us - that arise and pass away. This occurs in time that is experienced as objective and external. The ultimate truth is realizing the way things really are, that they are not separate from each other and therefore are not really things in the usual sense."

Money, sex, war, karma

"When wisdom is developed and cultivated according to the fourth noble truth, it sees the secret of life, the reality of things as they are. When the secret is discovered, when the truth is seen, all the forces which feverishly produce the continuity of samsara in illusion become calm and incapable of producing any more karma formations, because there is no more illusion, no more thirst for continuity.

He who has realized the truth, Nirvana, is the happiest being in the world. He is free from all complexes and obsessions, the worries and troubles that torment others. His mental health is perfect. He does not repent the past, nor does he brood over the future. He lives fully in the present. Therefore he appreciates and enjoys things in the purest sense without self projections. He is joyfull, exultant, enjoying the pure life, his faculties pleased, free from anxiety, serene and peaceful. As he is free from selfish desire, hatred, ignorance, conceit, pride and all such defilements, he is pure and gentle, full of universal love, compassion, kindness, sympathy, understanding and tolerance. His service to others is of the purest, for he has no thought of self. He gains nothing, accumulates nothing, not even anything spiritual, because he is free from the illusion of self and the thirst for becoming."

What the Buddha taught - p.43

"But what is Nirvana? The only reasonable reply to give to the question is that it can never be answered completely and satisfactorily in words, because human language is too poor to express  the real nature of the absolute truth or ultimate reality which is Nirvana. Language is created  and used by masses of human beings to express things and ideas experienced  by their sense organs and their mind. A supramundane  experience like that of the absolute truth is not such a category. Therefore there cannot be words to express that experience.

Nirvana is generally expressed in negative terms - a less dangerous mode perhaps. So it is often referred to by such negative terms as extinction of thirst, uncompund, unconditioned, absence of desire, cessation, blowing out or extinction.

Referring to Nirvana the Buddha says: O bhikkus, there is the unborn, ungrown and unconditioned. Were there not the unborn, ungrown and unconditioned, there would be no escape for the born, grown and conditioned.

Nirvana is definitely no annihilation of self, because there is no self to annihilate. If at all, it is the annihilation of the illusion, of the false idea of self.

Nirvana is neither cause nor effect. It is beyond cause and effect. Truth is not a result nor an effect. It is not produced like a mystic, spiritual, mental state. Truth is. Nirvana is.

What is there after Nirvana? This question cannot arise, because Nirvana is the ultimate truth. If it is ultimate, there can be nothing after it. If there is anything after Nirvana, then that will be the ultimate truth and not Nirvana.

If there is no self, who realizes Nirvana? It is the thought that thinks, there is no thinker behind the thought. In the same way, it is wisdom, realization, that realizes. There is no other self behind the realization.

Nirvana is beyond logic and reasoning."

What the Buddha taught - p.35-43

"A cessação da continuidade e do vir-a-ser é Nirvana.

Nirvana é o estado de permanente plena atenção, é o fim dos renascimentos.

O nirvana não pode ser descrito porque não há nada em nossa experiência mundana com o qual possa ser comparado, e nada que possa ser usado para fornecer uma analogia satisfatória."

Budismo: psicologia do autoconhecimento - p. 68, 69, 72