|
"Nirvana" does not mean nothingness. It means the extinction of greed, hated, and delusion which are the attitudes that perpetuate the cycle of rebirth. Here is an article about what the Buddha actually said about nirvana in the Pali Canon:
http://fraughtwithperil.com/ryuei/2010/06/14/nirvana-the-third-noble-truth/
The Buddha was asked what happens to the liberated person after death, do they exist or not or both or neither? The Buddha refused to answer and it was in this discourse that the Buddha gave the parable of the poison arrow - the point of which is that metaphysical speculations like this distract from understanding suffering, cutting off its causes, realizing liberation, and cultivating the path to liberation. Here is an article about those questions and the parable of the poison arrow:
http://fraughtwithperil.com/ryuei/2010/06/19/the-dead-end-of-philosophy/
So even in the Pali Canon the Buddha never equates nirvana with nothingness or annihilation of a self (as there is no self to annihilate in the first place). Nirvana in this life is freedom from greed, hated, and delusion. What may happen after the death of such a liberated person the Buddha did not say.
The Mahayana was not content to just let things rest there, however. In the Lotus Sutra the Buddha gives predictions to his disciples who had realized nirvana (and were therefore Earhart's or "worthy ones") and predicted that they would go on to attain BuddhasOdo other worlds in the distant future, thus all but saying that after death they would become bodhisattvas who would appear as needed in accord with the compassionate vows of a bodhisattva but no longer compelled by greed, hatred, or delusion. In chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra the Buddha states that his awakened lifespan began in a remote incalculable past and that even after his nirvana he would continue to be present in the world helping people attain buddhahood. The "nirvana" of the Buddha is therefore not a passing away or extinction of the Buddha but is synonymous with the unborn and deathless nature of Buddhahood itself. The Mahayana Nirvana Sutra makes this even clearer by saying that buddha-nature is pure, blissful, eternal, and the true self (a Mahayana rehabilitation of the term "atman").
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
|