Importance of Nirvana (Buddhism)

Nirvana, more than a place, is a state of being in which self-liberation is reached, the cessation of suffering and the wheel of birth-death-reincarnation is broken. It is the moment in which being ceases to be and joins the absolute whole.

Buddha: Suffering and Liberation

The young prince Siddharta Gautama, despite living among luxuries and pleasures, discovers one day that life is suffering. His father had done the impossible so that his son did not know that terrible reality of the human being. The prince's curiosity pushed him to explore what was beyond the palace walls, without even thinking that such a discovery would change his life and that of millions of people. The first of his discoveries was that of the suffering caused by the passing of the years when he saw how his carriage almost ran over an old man bent over with age. The second reveals the reality of the suffering caused by the disease experienced by a man lying in the street and moved spasmodically by pain and fever. And finally, in a third escape from the palace, he discovers the expiration of the human being by witnessing, for the first time, a funeral procession.

The dialogues that the young Siddharta maintains with his coachman reveal the innocence of the one who for almost 30 years he had not known, directly or indirectly, the reality of old age, disease and death. Far from staying in the palace, the prince goes out again, but this time the encounter with reality will reveal an answer to the anguish that suffering had aroused in him.

A mendicant monk shows the peace achieved by the one who has left everything in this world and lives without any type of ties. There he will begin the search for Siddharta Gautama that will lead him to find a way out of suffering, reaching the state of nirvana and that will lead him to become a Buddha (The Enlightened One). His teachings reach our days and mark an itinerary of self-liberation of the being.

Buddha describes nirvana as follows:

The stages of existence

The being can not only reincarnate on this plane of existence, but there are about thirty stages where the being can go through depending on karma. In some way, these stages could be similar to heaven/paradise or hell/underworld of the rest of the cosmologies of many of the known religions, especially theistic religions. In the Buddhist conception there would be different hells and different heavens through which the being can also transit. The difference is that, if in most religions that present heaven as the ideal to be achieved, in Buddhism It would be one more stage to reach the end of existence, and with it suffering, and thus reach the desired state of nirvana. In this way, nirvana is not the last and definitive state of being, but the absence of it.

meditation and detachment

The practice of meditation will awaken the consciousness of the being in such a way that he is aware of the reality of the Four Noble Truths. Progressively, the being should exercise total detachment, even from himself, since attachment is considered one of the main causes of suffering and the greatest impediment to reaching the state of nirvana. Attachment to material things, to people (eg. the different forms of love to the couple, to the children, to the friends, etc.), to the divinities or even to the own Buddha, attachment to reaching one of the stages of well-being, etc., can interfere with the process of self release.

The different currents of Buddhism offer different ways to practice meditation and thus illuminate the reality of being and the chains that prevent you from freeing yourself. Some of these practices are used in certain psychological therapies, such as mindfulness whose objective is for the subject to focus your attention in the here and now and thus you can achieve a full awareness that helps you observe reality in greater detail and depth.