Has Anyone Since Buddha Reached Nirvana, Really?

Is there even a remote chance that anyone (including the Buddha) who claims to have "achieved" Nirvana...is simply experiencing a delusion?


If your answer to that is "yes":

Then is there a pretty good chance that anyone (including the Buddha) who claims to have "achieved" Nirvana...is simply experiencing a delusion?


If your answer is "no":

Go back and take another look...and repeat until you come up with "yes" as an answer. Then go on to the second paragraph.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Very good. What energy! I continue to think of Nirvana as a primordial condition that is realized ("uncovered") now rather than a future condition to be achieved. This bias of mine informs my approach to meditation-- passive and choiceless rather than a struggle for the gratification of a desire.

Here is my struggle with that frame of thinking. I use the analogy of a boat on the ocean. Your goal is to get back to land but lets say you have no idea which way to go to get to land? You could decide on a direction and then put in effort to row in that direction but you might be wrong and instead of reaching land you end up deeper in the ocean. But if you do nothing perhaps the ocean itself will lead you back to land without any effort required, but instead just time and patience.

So my perspective has now become based on this premise;

If samsara continues from one life to another. Then time is irrelevant. If time is irrelevant then eventually you will arrive at the goal regardless of any input or struggle. Sure you might get lucky and arrive sooner if you do struggle but at the same time a struggle can potentially lead you further away from the goal. So it is better to wait, be patient and let the time run itself out and eventually you'll arrive without effort.

But for this analogy to work, you must fully understand what it means when I use the term "struggle". If you don't understand what struggling in this terminology means then it becomes part of the actual problem. I believe the Buddha actually fully and completely defined what this term means. However; by putting it into practice you immediately start to struggle. The task itself to put into utilization the path to awakening is in itself it's own hindrance. Therefore all that is required is that you just understand the definition and then do nothing and let time run it's self out.

I am supported in this mindset by many of the sutras where it is stated that eventually all beings arrive at nirvana. This means even the most wicked and evil beings will ultimately awaken at some point, no beings are left stuck in samsara.

It also seems to be in line with the middle way mindset. If you struggle too much you get lost and if you don't even take part in understanding the struggle then you are already lost. A loose string doesn't play a note and an over taught string will snap. Only a properly tuned string will play a note. But the problem is knowing what it means to be properly tuned, to understand the struggle and avoid it. This seems like being too slack but it actually isn't. It is the point.

I guess my questions were too threatening for you guys to answer...

...right?

Frank, you do not ever address the same problem Krumple, Igm and I do. That is to say, we are not on the same rhetorical page.
Krumple. I get your points and appreciate them. Nevertheless I can't help but sense that samsara IS nirvana. Mindfulness of whatever is happening is the middle way, if one's awareness is free of intention to change or grasp something IN THE FUTURE or THE PAST. We are already enlightened; we need only appreciate it. If that is not an acceptable principle--and it isn't for most people--it is because it is contrary to some desire for a future state that differs from what is happening now.

I get the feeling that people here are stuck on a very poor definition of dukkha, the 1st NT. The popular translation of dukkha as "suffering" is inaccurate and unfortunate, as it suggests that every experience in life is somehow unpleasant. Obviously, everyday life contradicts this.

It's also contradicted in the Pali suttas, where the Buddha caategorizes experience into the pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. Even the pleasant and neutral experiences are characterized by dukkha because they are impermanent, not because they are "suffering." Since it's oxymoronic to say "pleasant suffering," it's better to either use a variety of words to translate dukkha according to the context, or to just use the Pali word itself.

Here's a better elaboration on the meaning of the word:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/dukkha.html

I was in Nirvana many times. Its about 20mi E of Luddington. Sweet Cherry Country. Great walleye Fishin

I shouldn't argue about the nature of dukkha, but if it refers to impermanence as the basic condition of life then it suggests that any attempt to fix or render absolute the ephemeral and relative is a kind of self-imposed dissatisfaction. I suggest that the dukha of the first noble truth is not just an experience of suffer pain or discomfort, it is a lack of appreciation of just how wonderful our changing reality is.

That sounds pretty good to me. The second NT says that dukkha is caused by tanha, thirst (also, craving/desire). I think of it in broad terms as wishing things were different from the way they are.

I agree samsara and nirvana are the same but it is the mind itself which resides in either. There is something fundamental that occurs once the mind completely unifies with nirvana that is very distinct from how it was while under the effects of samsara. You can frame your mind to be disattached to samsara and realize that it is unfavorable but that still does not make the mind fully absorbed in the awakened experience.

Oh, I understand that completely. But I keep wondering why you guys do not address the questions I am asking about your guesses.

I am not making guesses about REALITY...I am often questioning the guesses people make.

I ask again: Instead of blindly supposing there is a Nirvana to achieve...is there even a remote chance that everyone (including the Buddha) who claims to have "achieved" Nirvana...is simply relating an experience of delusion?

The implications of the answer to that question are important...so why not answer it rather than simply remaining immersed in the guess that "Nirvana" is an attainable state; that the Buddha attained it; and that the Buddha's teachings can help others to attain it also?

Why not?

This "nirvana" is simply tapping into the life force, or healing power, that is part of the fabric of all life.

I've been there. It's not unattainable. If I hadn't attained it, I'd be long gone from this Earth.

Interesting part of your belief system, Builder. Thank you for sharing this guess.

Ummm...what if it isn't?

And what does "I've been there" mean?

I suffered from shingles that entered my left eye, with blisters on the cornea, back when I was still a pup. The resulting post-herpetic neuralgia pain was enough for me to consider topping myself. Painkillers did nothing, and medical advice was an endless script for tranks.

I was assisted down the path of meditation by one who had done the whole India experience with Sai Baba, and under her tuition, and joint meditation sessions, coupled with massage, and doing the wheatgrass fast for a month, I found my nirvana, and experienced the "cosmic" healing process.

If you need more details, I can go say more, Frank.

I thank you for this responses, Builder...and I do not need more. Please understand that I mean no disrespect in what I say here in response.

I just would call to your attention that what you wrote could easily have been written by a Catholic substituting a "trip to Lourdes" for your "experience"...and arriving at essentially the same result. (Fact is, those kinds of attributions to trips to Lourdes HAVE been offered often.)

And more importantly, there are probably people who could easily write the same thing saying, "So I just rode it out"...with the same result.

The attribution of the "result" to your experience has no more inherent validity than attributing a similar result to burying a rabbit's foot wrapped in St. John's wort during a full moon in a Christian graveyard.

My argument here (not just with you or with this particular incident) is with the guessing involved in the questionable reasoning: "This"...therefore "that."

Ahh, but the experience of feeling the heat of the healing force taking over my being, Frank. I can describe it to you. If you have the patience to read it.

And the "management" of the excruciating pain of post-herpetic neuralgia that baffled two doctors.

I'll leave it at that.

Once again, Builder...there are people who have visited Lourdes who talk about the "feeling of healing force." And doctors profess great bafflement at the kinds of "cures" that happen at sites of that sort.

Placebos can, at times, result in a cure...holy places, holy people, and quacks can also.

I ask you this: Keeping all that in mind, is there even a remote possibility that what you experienced was simply an illusion of what you expected or hoped for?

Is there?

This is one key point that distinguishes Mahayana from Theravada. You won't find any such statement in the Pali suttas. Instead, you'll find quite the opposite.