6.9. Happiness of Nibbāna

The Buddha says; “Nibbānaṃ paramaṃ sukkhaṃ”–Nibbāna is bliss supreme”.^[1] All happiness ends in nibbāna. It is unable higher than nibbāna. There are two types of happiness, happiness to be experienced (vedayitasukha) and happiness remains peace (santisukha). Nibbāna is a type of a happiness which remains peace (santisukha).

On one occasion Ven. Sāriputta talked on happiness of nibbāna thus: ‘Friends, this nibbāna is happiness’. Then Udāyī, a monk said: ‘What is the happiness in nibbāna where is nothing to be experienced?’ Then Ven. Sāriputta replied: ‘What is nothing to be experienced is the happiness in nibbāna’.^[2]

Nibbāna is beyond logic and reasoning (atakkāvacara). However much may engage, often as a vain intellectual pastime, in highly speculative discussions regarding nibbāna or ultimate truth or reality, we shall never understand it that way. Nibbāna is ‘to be realized by the wise within themselves’ (paccattaṃ veditabbo viññūhi). If we follow above the way to nibbāna patiently and with diligence, train and purify ourselves earnestly, and train the necessary spiritual development, we may one day realize it within ourselves–without taxing ourselves with puzzling and high-sounding words.^[3]

What is nibbāna, friend? The destruction of lust, the destruction of hatred, the destruction of delusion–that friend, is called nibbāna.^[4] The Buddha has described nibbāna as inner peace (ajjattasanti).^[5] It is a radical transformation of our inner selves. There cannot, therefore, be any question of a systematic path in the matter of widening and deepening our understanding of ourselves. The flash of insight occurs within us not when our minds and bodies are in tension on account of strenuous effort but when we are cooled, relaxed, unhurried, inwardly aware and free from all manner of ideal and ideology, religious, political or any other.

Nibbāna is not born of volitional effort nor is the result of a cause.^[6] To be free from effort and endeavour is not be idle and inactive, lethargic and sluggish. To accept the rivers as the flow is not to attach oneself to the status quo or to surrender to the tyranny of the passions. To do so would be to stay up. That the Buddha did not do. To understand reality is to understand oneself in relation to the rest of the world. To so understand is not to exert effort to be and become what one is not. To do so would be to allow oneself to be carried away by the flood. That the Buddha did not do. This then is the meaning of the riddle of the Buddha. The way to nibbāna is by way of the total inner awareness of ourselves together free from the tension and excitement of self-centered effort. Our constant and incessant effort to be and become takes our interest away from our real nature. What is real to us is the ideal we have set for ourselves. To the extent we do so the actual becomes less real to us. This creates for us all a perennial contradiction.

The way out of the contradiction is no further effort but wisdom and understanding through inward awareness.

“There are two kinds of happiness, O monks: the happiness of sense-pleasures and the happiness of renunciation. But the greater of them is the happiness of renunciation”.^[7]

Thus these seemingly negative words of the destruction of greed, hatred and delusion will convey to the thoughtful and energetic a stirring positive message: of a way that can here be trodden, of a goal that can here be reached, of a happiness that can here be experienced. That aspect of a lofty happiness attainable here and now should, however, not be allowed to cover for us the fact that the attainment of Nibbāna is the end of rebirth, the cessation of becoming. But this end or cessation in no way involves the destruction or annihilation of anything substantial. What actually takes place is the ending of new origination owing to the stopping of its root-causes: ignorance and craving. He who sees deeply and thoroughly the truth of suffering is “no longer carried away by the unreal, and no longer shrinks back from the real.” He knows: “It is suffering, indeed, that arises, it is suffering that ceases.”

With a mind unswerving he strives after the deathless, the final cessation of suffering—Nibbāna.^[8]

The Holy Ones know it as bliss:
the personality’s cessation;
Repugnant to the worldly folk,
but not to those who clearly see.

What others count as highest bliss,
the Holy Ones regard as pain;
What those regard as only pain
is for the Holy Ones sheer bliss.^[9]

For the concept of nibbāna, I explained the nature of nibbāna, the terms for nibbāna, types of nibbāna, the way leading to nibbāna, the happiness of nibbāna etc, according to Pāli literatures.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Dh, p. 203-204

[2]:

AN III, p. 213

[3]:

What the Buddha Taught, Walpola Rahula, p. 43-4.

[4]:

SN IV: p. 252

[5]:

Suttanipāta verse 837

[6]:

Nibbānaṃ akammajaṃ ahetuajaṃ -Milindapañhā, p. 268

[7]:

AN II, p. 64

[8]:

Anatta and Nibbāna, Nyanaponika, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri Lanka, 1986

[9]:

Sn vv, p. 761–62