This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Nibbāna (3 of 5) Nibbāna is Release

Today I'm giving the third of five talks on Nibbāna^[1], or Nirvāna. It can be a complex topic. Sometimes, especially in some circles of Buddhism and among Buddhist teachers, there can be a lot of discussion about what Nibbāna really is. There can be controversies around it. One of the controversies that goes back thousands of years in the Theravada^[2] tradition itself is whether Nibbāna is a transcendent state, thing, or place, or whether it really is an absence.

Much of the tradition finds it distasteful or unacceptable to consider the highest goal and highest possibility of Buddhism to be an absence. They feel that if it is an absence, it can have no profundity, no power, and no big influence on freeing us. They believe Nibbāna has to be something. A transcendent state, for example, that is beyond time and place, unconditioned, uncreated, and somehow exists in some transcendent way. My own orientation to this is that it is an absence. That is the background for how I'm talking about it this week. I think it's a radical absence—an absence that is actually quite profound and transformative. It is quite powerful in its own way. So how can that be?

One of the things to understand about the word Nibbāna is that it is a noun, but it's a verbal noun, like the word walking. A person is walking, and because the person is walking, we can talk about the walking the person is doing. The word walking functions as a verbal noun of the verb to walk. It is the same with Nibbāna. We can release our clinging, and then we can talk about the release. "The release felt so good." Releasing is the verb, and the release is the verbal noun. It turns out that Nibbāna is a verbal noun directly connected to a similar verb: nibbāyati. Nibbāyati is the act of release, of cooling, or of a fire going out—the fire of clinging, the fire of attachment.

Sometimes translators into English find it awkward to translate nibbāyati. In English, it would be something like "Nibbāna-ing," if you use the Pali^[3] word. So sometimes they will translate it—even though it's a verb—as "to attain Nibbāna." Then we read it as a noun: to attain this noun, this thing. But it is really the act of releasing. In the Buddha's teachings, you find that the tradition over and over again uses verbs to describe the action of freeing: freeing, the destruction of the attachments we have, the ending of something, the releasing of something. There is this movement that happens.

That is the important movement of freedom: freeing ourselves from our attachments. When we free ourselves, there is the absence of what we were caught by. If I'm holding something and I put it down, there is the absence of the thing in my hand. If I've been caught, if I'm clinging to something for a very long time, it's a big deal to put it down and have an open hand. The hand now is an absence of something, but it's not a minor thing that the object is no longer there. If I've been holding it for twenty years, finally my hand is free to do something else.

The analogy I like to use for how significant an absence can be is someone who's been in prison for ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years. Finally, they are freed from prison. Now they walk down the street and look like everyone else, living their lives. But the longer they've been in prison, the more the absence of prison is something that they appreciate. The absence is actually quite significant for them in a way that other people walking the streets, who have never been to prison, wouldn't appreciate.

The same thing happens with a lifetime of clinging, of holding, of being attached, or being closed in ways that many of us don't even realize. We haven't developed the deep sensitivity of mindfulness to truly understand the underlying holding, attachment, and clinging that supports all the ways in which we suffer—all the distress and stress that we feel. To really have that release of suffering and release of clinging—and to experience the absence of it—shows the powerful potential of freedom. That absence then becomes an arena in which we can function and move with freedom.

One of the meanings of Nibbāna, and the way I often like to translate it, is that Nibbāna is release. It's the releasing. It's the release of whatever limits us, binds us, and oppresses us that has its genesis in ourselves. To free ourselves from this, to move in that direction, is one of the great paths of human life. We begin to taste a degree of this absence of clinging, this absence of greed, hatred, and delusion, and we truly appreciate this possibility.

The Buddha describes it as the Dharma^[4] which is visible here and now. Whatever the Buddha was talking about as the Dharma, you don't find it in a book or in teachings. The essence of it is something that is visible to us directly here and now. How is it visible? The Buddha was very clear. He said it is visible when there has been greed, and the greed has been abandoned, released, and brought to an end. That is how the Dharma is visible. It's kind of simplistic; it doesn't take a lot of books and deep philosophy to understand this kind of Dharma. But it's very practical. At least in our imagination, we can understand that if we've been holding tight for a long time and then release that holding, in the release we see the Dharma. The releasing is really the heart of the Dharma.

Sometimes we have to understand the holding first before we can release it. Mindfulness often has a lot to do with just being present for all the ways we might be attached and cling. As we understand it deeply and well, including the underlying conditions for it, then something can release. As we stop feeding and fueling the fires of greed, hate, and delusion, the fires begin to go out. This idea of going out, releasing—the fire gets released. It's an ancient idea that doesn't quite work with modern English. But this Nibbāna is the cooling of the fire, the calming of the fire, the going out of the fire, the release of the fire.

To really experience that for oneself in these areas of our life is so ordinary and common. It is common to have little movements of hostility, or big movements of hostility, jealousy, and resentment. To then have the palpable, visceral experience of it not being there is profound. Especially if we can learn how to abandon it—not being there because we've been distracted from it, but not being there because something was really let go, something was released: Ah, look at that. That is where the Dharma is. In the teachings of the Buddha, this can also be seen as a possibility of tremendous inspiration. Oh, this is possible. It is possible to live without clinging. It might be hard to do it thoroughly or do it all the time, but it is possible to have some experience of this release and the resulting absence of clinging. To really appreciate that absence, and what a breath of fresh air, fresh heart, and fresh mind it gives, is really fantastic.

I think of Nibbāna as the release. This wonderful absence that follows the release is how we begin to understand the Dharma and what it is really about in the big picture. You don't need to have a lot of philosophy for this.

Making Nibbāna a transcendent thing—maybe it is; there are different points of view. But once we have a sense of the release of clinging, we don't want to then cling to the transcendent idea of Nibbāna as a thing or a state. It would be a little bit like holding our hand in a fist for a very long time, and finally opening the fist. It feels so good for the fingers and the hand to be free, open, and relaxed. We like it so much that we want it more. Because we want it, we close the fist to grab hold of it. Of course, you can't have both. You can't grab the open hand. As soon as you grab for the open hand, you've lost it.

This freedom of Nibbāna, this release which is what Nibbāna is—this releasing feels so good. But if we want that goodness, paradoxically, we go in the opposite direction by grabbing onto it again. It is a wonderful balancing act, a wonderful space to walk in, to really appreciate freedom, letting go, and calm. And then not to pick up clinging again. Not to over-evaluate it, hold onto it, or get stuck on it.

So, Nibbāna as release. As we develop our mindfulness, we begin experiencing small—and sometimes big—experiences of that release and freedom. That is the Dharma, to appreciate that. Don't be blinded from it by thinking that the Dharma is something much more difficult and sophisticated that only people with PhDs will understand. It is to be understood right there in the release.

May you be released. May you delight in your release. May you understand how it leads to the release of all suffering. Thank you.