By Ajahn Sumedho
Many Buddhists see nibbana (Sanskrit: nirvana) as something unobtainable—as so high and so remote that we’re not worthy enough to try for it. Or we see nibbana as a goal, as an unknown, undefined something that we should somehow try to attain.
Most of us are conditioned in this way. We want to achieve or attain something that we don’t have. So nibbana is looked at as something that if you work hard, keep the sila (moral precepts), meditate diligently, become a monastic, devote your life to practice, then your reward might be that eventually you attain nibbana—even though you’re not sure what it is.
Ajahn Chah would use the words “the reality of non-grasping” as the definition for nibbana: realizing the reality of nongrasping. That helps to put it in a context, because the emphasis is on awakening to how we grasp and hold on even to words like “nibbana” or “Buddhism” or “practice” or “sila” or whatever.
It’s often said that the Buddhist way is not to grasp. But that can become just another statement that we grasp and hold on to. It’s a Catch-22: no matter how hard you try to make sense out of it, you end up in total confusion because of the limitation of language and perception. You have to go beyond language and perception. And the only way to go beyond thinking and emotional habit is through awareness—awareness of thought and awareness of emotion. “The island that you cannot go beyond” is the metaphor for this state of being awake and aware, as opposed to the concept of becoming awake and aware.
[Read Full article]
