Metaphor and Literalism in Buddhism: The ... - misterdanger.net

THE DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT OF NIRVANA
In the early canon, nirvana was applied to the two most important events
in the Buddha’s life: enlightenment and final liberation. 8 The former, technically
called ‘nirvana with a remainder of clinging (sa-upAdisesanibbAnadhAtu)’,
is the state in which the triple fires of passion, hatred and delusion are
extinguished but the fuel, the five aggregates in a metaphorical structure, still
remains; the latter, technically called ‘nirvana without remainder of clinging
(an-upAdisesanibbAnadhAtu)’, is the state in which there is no more fuel left. 9
E. J. Thomas regarded Jainism as older than Buddhism 10 and said that it
is unlikely that the word nirvana, which has been used in both traditions,
was borrowed from the latter. However, we cannot be so certain that Jainism
predates Buddhism, because the existence of Jainism before the Jina, or
Mahavcra, has not been demonstrated and most of the Jain texts that survive
are apparently later than the early Buddhist canon. The problem of the
Jains’ use of nirvana is that it always refers, as Hermann Jacobi pointed out,
to the final liberation:
liberated souls will be embodied no more; they have accomplished
absolute purity; they dwell in the state of perfection at the top of
the universe, and have no more to do with worldly affairs; they
have reached nirvAOa (nivKti, or mukti). 11
The Jains’ notion of nirvana was clearly different from that of early
Buddhism. 12 However, there is a different use of nirvana in the Bhagavad-
GCtA. Although Buddhist influence on the Bhagavad-GCtA is well known, 13
the use of nirvana here gives a clue to what it refers to in early Buddhism.
The following verses in the fifth chapter clearly show that it refers not to the
final liberation but to Enlightenment:
Who finds his happiness within, his joy within, and likewise his light
only within, that disciplined man to Brahman-nirvaoa goes, having
become Brahman. Brahman-nirvaoa is won by the seers whose
sins are destroyed, whose doubts are cleft, whose souls are controlled,
who delight in the welfare of all beings. To those who have
put off desire and wrath, religious men whose minds are controlled,
close at hand Brahman-nirvaoa comes, to knowers of the self.
(5. 24–6). 14
The compound, ‘brahman-nirvaoa (brahmanirvAOa)’, recalls Buddhism, not
only because the word brahman is used in compounds in Buddhist texts, 15 but
also because ‘become Brahman (brahmabhEta)’ is used in the early canon to
describe the Buddha or a saint (arahant) who has already attained enlightenment.
16 Thus, although this word seems to have been used in Jainism with
the meaning of final liberation, it was later, in the Bhagavad-GCtA, borrowed
from Buddhism with the already established meaning of enlightenment. For
10