What happens after nirvana, liberation, perfection?

Discussion in 'Eastern Philosophy' started by VitalOne, Apr 1, 2007.

  1. VitalOne Banned Banned

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    After the death of a person who has attained nirvana, liberation, or perfection, what happens? You do not simply gain non-existence (like the sunyavadis, the worshippers of the void), Gautama Buddha says the experience is unexplainable, Krishna says that you will share his own opulences. But what does that mean, what really happens after you escape from this cycle of birth and rebirth?
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing.
     
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  5. VitalOne Banned Banned

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    But it isn't nothing, at least not according to Gautama-Buddha and Krishna, nothingness is the void (sunya) or pradhana....
     
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  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing special.
     
  8. VitalOne Banned Banned

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    Where do you draw this conclusion? It seems like something beyond special. While alive if you achieve nirvana, liberation, or perfection (siddhim), you will gain the highest point of happiness, the highest knowledge, fearless, free from all forms of suffering (fear, anger, sorrow, etc...)

    Gautama Buddha says that the experience after parinirvāṇa (nirvana after death) is outside of all concievable experience...

    Krishna says "A person who gives up all fruitive activities and offers himself entirely unto Me, eagerly desiring to render service unto Me, achieves liberation from birth and death and is promoted to the status of sharing My own opulences [ātma-bhūyāya]" (SB 11.29.34)

    Seems like something special to me...
     
  9. heliocentric Registered Senior Member

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    Nirvana is just a fleeting holisitic mind-state, its not the endgame of existance and you certainly wont be perfect or enlightened just from the experience alone.
    After nirvana comes mediocre, drab life. You still have to live it and get on with it

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  10. VitalOne Banned Banned

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    This does not agree with any scripture...I'm wondering where you guys draw these conclusions...

    For instance in the dhammapada Gautama Buddha describes an enlightened person as being fearless, wise, enjoying the highest point of happiness, yet for some reason this is not the way it is portrayed...

    "He is full of power.
    Fearless, wise, exalted.
    He has vanquished all things.
    He sees by virtue of his purity.
    He has come to the end of the way" (Dhammapada, 26.)

    Also how can things be worse after nirvana? You gain the very very highest point of happiness, and enjoy every moment...

    "But the master finds joy in giving
    And happiness is his reward.
    And more -
    For greater than all the joys
    Of heaven and earth,
    Greater still and than dominion
    Over all the worlds,
    Is the joy of reaching the stream" (Dhammapada, 13.17-18)
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2007
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I don't see the contradiction.
     
  12. VitalOne Banned Banned

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    "Nothing special" vs "Unlimited power, happiness, etc..."
    "After nirvana comes mediocre, drab life" vs "full knowledge, fearlessness, power, etc.."
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Exactly, what's the difference?
     
  14. kmguru Staff Member

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    "Nirvana" is simply "understanding"

    Understanding about the very nature of your being.

    When you die with Nirvana, you get absorbed into the cosmic consiousness - the very consciousness that is part of the creation.

    If you chose to come back to further the creation process, you can (a la Buddhism)..if not, you do what the stars and planets do at a level inconceivable to humans....

    Humanity is just the beginning of an ever evolutionary process....

    enjoy the process....
     
  15. VitalOne Banned Banned

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    But Nirvana is not the same as right understanding (which is part of the Noble Eight-Fold path)

    As for the stars and planets, you will become more powerful than all the devas in the universe if you achieve the "most difficult accomphishment", you will finally have full-fledged freedom, free at last from all this, able to whatever desired, with unlimited power, unlimited freedom, the highest knowledge, etc....

    Also the uncreate, unmade, unborn, etc...is not the same as cosmic consciousness...

    Oh well I guess I'll fully understand if I achieve nirvana while in this life, all this speculation is useless, I'll just meditate on true knowledge...
     
  16. kmguru Staff Member

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    Nirvana (Devanagari निर्वाण) is attained through enlightenment.

    Enlightenment is Bodhi (बोधि)

    Bodhi (बोधि), the Pāli and Sanskrit word for "awakening" or "enlightenment", is an abstract noun formed from the verbal root budh (awake, become aware, notice, know or understand), corresponding to the verbs bujjhati (Pāli) and bodhati or budhyate (Sanskrit).
     
  17. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    even while there are descriptions like this .......

    CC Madhya 6.266: "There are five kinds of liberation: sālokya, sāmīpya, sārūpya, sārṣṭi and sāyujya.

    PURPORT

    Sālokya means that after material liberation one is promoted to the planet where the Supreme Personality of Godhead resides, sāmīpya means remaining an associate of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, sārūpya means attaining a four-handed form exactly like that of the Lord., sārṣṭi means attaining opulences like those of the Supreme Lord, and sāyujya means merging into the Brahman effulgence of the Lord. These are the five types of liberation.


    ..... one who is attached to god does not desire the liberation of merging .....

    CC Ādi 5.31: Those who attain brahma-sāyujya liberation cannot gain entrance into Vaikuṇṭha; their residence is outside the Vaikuṇṭha planets.

    CC Ādi 5.32: Outside the Vaikuṇṭha planets is the atmosphere of the glowing effulgence, which consists of the supremely bright rays of the body of Lord Kṛṣṇa.

    CC Ādi 5.33: That region is called Siddhaloka, and it is beyond the material nature. Its essence is spiritual, but it does not have spiritual varieties.


    ...... because such a liberation is bereft of any varieties or activities

    so one has the option of accepting a liberation with varieties, relationships and activities or the choice of accepting a liberation where there is no distinction between knowledge, the knower and the process of knowledge (Sayujya - merging into the absolute) (there is no "I" to even talk of having an experience of liberation)

    - which one would you prefer?
     
  18. heliocentric Registered Senior Member

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    You draw it from personal experience, scripture will only tell you so much and useally in a pretty dogmatic way.
    The nirvana experience in itself is meaningless, it wont make you instantly wise and perfected. It all about what you decide to take from it.
    I know people whove had these types of experiences whove gone onto to live their lifes with zero responsibility to the people around them, so its really no garantee of anything.

    How long does it take to truely forget a moment? because thats all it is really, you dont forget it but like all memories it becomes hazy after a while and you have to ultimately deal whats lying in front of you.
    Its not like the matrix where you 'see the code' and turn into this super-hereo, you still have to deal with day-to-day drudgery.

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  19. RoyLennigan Registered Senior Member

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    I would say, in agreement with buddhism, that the bliss of nirvana is the single moment of complete realization--something that will never occur again in that person's lifetime. After that single moment of ultimate bliss, life is normal except for the fact that the enlightened one has lost ego, has lost discontent, has lost personal desire, has lost bias, has lost overpowering emotion.

    Desire remains in the form of remnants of his past life--the neccessities of his own body to follow the path like an arrow that cannot stop flying through the air once let loose. Emotion remains but only because of an earthly body--the enlightened mind is now able to overpower the body.

    In other words, the mind is no longer processes of the body, it is the network of connections forged in the pureness of enlightenment--in finally seeing the relationships of the universe as they truly are and imprinting those relationships into the connections within the mind. Enlightenment is like making a (seemingly or truly) infinitely accurate and to scale map of universal relations out of the mind.
     
  20. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    "Learned Audience, the Wisdom of Enlightenment (Bodhiprajna) is inherent in every one of us. It is because of the delusion under which our mind works that we fail to realize it ourselves, and that we have to seek the advice and the guidance of enlightened ones before we can know our own Essence of Mind. You should know that so far as Buddha-nature is concerned, there is no difference between an enlightened man and an ignorant one. What makes the difference is that one realizes it, while the other is ignorant of it..."

    The Platform Sutra of the 6th Patriarch, Hui Neng
     
  21. VitalOne Banned Banned

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    I'm guessing you don't have many spiritual experiences then....your view of spirituality is very different from mine. In the beginning when I first experienced the deepest states of relaxation, I thought that was great, but something still wasn't right, then I experienced the happiness from the brahmarandra (crown chakra), and that was even better, but then I experienced a happiness even greater than all of these, in this state I could even feel that the feeling of from the crown chakra was "not me", hard to explain, but its beyond the greatest feeling

    In a way I do see it as seeing 'the code' (the actual truth) and turning into this super-being. No longer do you have to deal with the day-to-day drudgery, if you did, then the point of attaining nirvana is meaningless.
     
  22. VitalOne Banned Banned

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    These scriptures do not seem to agree with what Krishna says. He describes only one real liberation (the escape from the cycle of birth and rebirth).

    "But those who fully worship the unmanifested, that which lies beyond the perception of the senses, the all-pervading, inconceivable, unchanging, fixed and immovable — the impersonal conception of the Absolute Truth — by controlling the various senses and being equally disposed to everyone, such persons, engaged in the welfare of all, at last achieve Me" (BG 12.3-4)

    According to Krishna even those who worship Brahm can achieve him...
     
  23. Grantywanty Registered Senior Member

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    You are all speculating on things that you have not experienced. And speculating as if you know or can know by quoting and analyzing translated texts written by people who may or may not have experienced these things.
    I wish their was a Zen master there to hit you all with a stick.
     

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