Nirvana Now

Nirvana, says Ajahn Sumedho, is not some far off goal that can only be attained through years of effort. It is a state of being you can realize at any moment once you let go of grasping.

A difficulty with the word nibbana is that its meaning is beyond the power of words to describe. It is, essentially, undefinable. Another difficulty is that many Buddhists see nibbana (Sanskrit: nirvana) as something unobtainable—as so high and so remote that we’re not worthy enough to try for it. Or we see nibbana as a goal, as an unknown, undefined something that we should somehow try to attain. Most of us are conditioned in this way. We want to achieve or attain something that we don’t have. So nibbana is looked at as something that if you work hard, keep the sila (moral precepts), meditate diligently, become a monastic, devote your life to practice, then your reward might be that eventually you attain nibbana—even though you’re not sure what it is.

Ajahn Chah would use the words “the reality of nongrasping” as the definition for nibbana: realizing the reality of nongrasping. That helps to put it in a context, because the emphasis is on awakening to how we grasp and hold on even to words like “nibbana” or “Buddhism” or “practice” or “sila” or whatever.

It’s often said that the Buddhist way is not to grasp. But that can become just another statement that we grasp and hold on to. It’s a Catch-22: no matter how hard you try to make sense out of it, you end up in total confusion because of the limitation of language and perception. You have to go beyond language and perception. And the only way to go beyond thinking and emotional habit is through awareness—awareness of thought and awareness of emotion. “The island that you cannot go beyond” is the metaphor for this state of being awake and aware, as opposed to the concept of becoming awake and aware.

In meditation classes, people often start with a basic delusion that they never challenge: the idea that “I’m someone who grasps and has a lot of desires, and I have to practice in order to get rid of these desires and stop grasping and clinging to things. I shouldn’t cling to anything.” That’s often the position we start from. So we start our practice from this basis and, many times, the result is disillusionment and disappointment, because our practice is based on the grasping of an idea.

Eventually, we realize that no matter how much we try to get rid of desire and not grasp anything, no matter what we do—become a monk, an ascetic, sit for hours and hours, attend retreats over and over again, do all the things we believe will get rid of these grasping tendencies—we end up feeling disappointed because the basic delusion has never been recognized.

Excerpted from the Spring 2010 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly, available on newsstands February 23rd.

AJAHN SUMEDHO is abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery near Hemel Hempstead in England, which is part of the network of Buddhist monasteries in the lineage of Ajahn Chah. He was ordained as a Buddhist monk more than forty years ago and studied for many years in Thailand with Ajahn Chah.