Jain Journal 2001 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 17

12
.
JAIN JOURNAL : Vol-XXXVI, No. 1 July 2001
Nirvana as all the followers of the Buddha, who has, have accepted the summum bonum compared it to the expiring llame which has no more any hay or wood to burn. The mind released is like the extinction of a flame; it is the extinction of the fires of lust, hatred and ignorance; and Nirvana has been regarded as anidarśana and ananta 24 When one has attained enlightenment, he is free from all errors, free from desire and clinging, no new fetters of karma bind him, his mind is filled with wisdom, peace, calm and compassion.25 Such a man is called an arhant or arhat the holy one. This is nirvana attained in this life itself. Though the liberated lives in this world and leads a life of activity, the pains and pleasures of this world do not affect him. His lise is illumined all his remaining life with this experience, and he knows things as they are, is saved from fear and grief. This may be compared to the State of liberated while alive (jivarmukti) accepted by Vedānta, the Bhagavadgitā, and by certain thinkers of other systems of thought.26
This nirvana is distinguished from the parinirvana, i.e. emancipation with the disintegration of the body, i.e., death of the arhat. Vedānta raises the question as to what maintains life in the delivered being after enlightenment, till the moment of death comes, since the will to live has ceased, but the momentum of antecedent karma or action suffices to carry on the individual life, as a potter's wheel continues to revolve for some time even after the potter has stopped moving it with the momentum received earlier. 27 Parinirvāṇa is also called nirupādhisesa nibbänadhātu, i.e., extinction not only of desire and of the fires of passion, but also of the upādhi and of the fivefold aggregate. 28
It is the Buddha's silence over the nature of various concepts that is primarily responsible for diverse and sometimes opposing interpretations offered by his followers and later by eminent scholars of the east and the west.29 The Buddha himself usually speaks of the self or the perfect one or of nirvana in negative terms. Thus, he calls it 'an unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, uninformed 30 and further adds 'there would be no possible exit from the world of the born, originated,
24. Digha-Nikaya, 2.15; Majjhima Nikāya, 72. 25. Chakravarty : op.cit., p. 111. 26. Ibid. 27. Mahānidāna Sutta, 36.32. 28. Chakravarty : op.cit, p. 111. 29. ibid. p. 111; 140, f.n. 137. 30. Oldenberg : Buddha (ref. from Udāna).