Nibbana.

#WednesdayWisdom

The peace and ease to be gained through meditation when we are able to achieve samadhi is but a taster of the bliss to be found in Nibbana. This mythical place, which is the ultimate goal of Buddhist practitioners, certainly sounds like heaven but most people’s idea of ‘heaven’ is of a place filled with all the things and people they like the most and nothing unpleasant or which they don’t like. This indeed might be the culmination of a lifetime of craving!

When people start to learn about Nibbana on the other hand and we start talking about ‘emptiness’ and ‘no abiding’ they step back and wonder if they really want to go there. This is because we are still full of the attachment which we have spent a lifetime storing up. We just don’t know how to let go and therefore we can’t imagine the peace to be found beyond cyclic existence.

“The worldly way is to do things for a reason, to get some return, but in Buddhism we do things without the idea of gaining anything. The world has to understand things in terms of cause and effect, but the Buddha teaches us to go above and beyond cause and effect. His wisdom was to go above cause, beyond effect; to go above birth and beyond death; to go above happiness and beyond suffering.

To leave home and go where there is no home, we don’t know how to do it, because we’ve always lived with becoming, with clinging. If we can’t cling we don’t know what to do. So most people don’t want to go to Nibbāna, there’s nothing there; nothing at all.— Ajahn Chah

This extract is taken from ‘The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah, p33

May this teaching lead you to realisation; may it help you know the truth. May we all be freed from the suffering of birth and death.

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