Getting a grip on nirvana
At times, I agree, it is much easier to describe nirvana (P., nibbana) in negative terms. Ask anyone to describe freedom or liberty in positive terms. It is extremely difficult. The easier route is to explain these terms negatively. Still, we shouldn't draw the conclusion that nirvana is a form of annihilation or mystical death. It is a mistake to adhere to a nihilistic interpretation of nirvana which, I admit, is easy to do.
From the Pali canon we learn that nirvana has the nature of being unconditioned (P. asankhata) but on a positive side we also learn that it is the ultimate, the truth, the farther shore, the subtle, the stable, the peaceful, the excellent, the good, the security, the wonderful, the marvelous, the purity, the island, the cave, the protection, the refuge and the goal (cp. S. iv. 369–373).
Nirvana has more to do with realizing the true substance or suchness (tathatâ) of phenomena. By doing so, one is forever liberated from the delusion that phenomena are something real in themselves, furthermore, that there is nothing beyond phenomena. By analogy it is like understanding that waves are merely the undulation of water and nothing in themselves. The attainment of nirvana puts one, not in the conditioned world but beyond it in the unconditioned which is thoroughly real, more real in fact that anything conditioned. As a result, the thrist to possess conditioned reality ceases including all it implies, including our temporal bodies.
Interestingly enough, one "attains utter nibbana in his very self" (paccattamyeva parinibbâyati) and nowhere else (cp. M. i. 255-256). The self, in this sense, is nothing less than ultimate reality which remains unrealized by those who have not attained nirvana. Without nirvana, ordinary beings or prithagjana are only able to see composed, conditioned reality; not the unconditioned from which it is made. In Mahayana Buddhism the self or atman is nirvana.
Kâshyapa, accordingly at the time one becomes a Tathagata, a Buddha, he is in nirvana, and is referred to as "permanent" "steadfast", "calm", "eternal" and "atman" (Mahâbherîhâraka Sutra).
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