Buddhist Romanticism

processes of becoming are not stopped, they provide the sustenance that
can cause you to keep taking on different identities in different rebirths—in
sensual realms, realms of form, and formless realms—indefinitely (§§9–10).
There are three types of craving that lead to becoming. One is the
craving for becoming itself. Another is craving for sensuality, which means
the mind’s passion for making plans for sensual pleasures. In other words,
the pleasures themselves don’t cause suffering, nor do they lead to
becoming. The mind’s obsession with thinking about how to gain sensual
pleasure is the cause for both.
The third type of craving that leads to becoming is, paradoxically,
craving for non-becoming, i.e., the desire to destroy a particular becoming
once it has arisen. This actually leads to further becoming because, in
pursuing this craving, you take on the identity of a destroyer. On the macro
level, this kind of craving can lead to rebirth in an unconscious realm from
which you will eventually return to consciousness and the processes of
craving (DN 1).
The cessation of suffering comes with the complete abandoning of the
three kinds of craving. The resulting freedom is called nibbāna. This word,
in common Pāli parlance, means the extinguishing of a fire. In the time of
the Buddha, a burning fire was said to cling to its fuel (again, upādāna).
When it let go of its fuel and went out, it was said to be released or
unbound into a state of calm, coolness, and peace. Thus the best translation
for nibbāna is unbinding. At the same time, the imagery implicit in the word
“unbinding” connects directly to the image of feeding, and makes an
important point: You are not trapped by your food. Instead, you are
trapped by your own act of clinging and feeding. Freedom comes from
letting go of the objects on which you feed.
Although unbinding is the ultimate happiness, it cannot be classed as a
feeling, for it shows none of the signs that feelings exhibit of arising or
passing away (§51; §§53–54). Nor is it a state of Oneness or non-duality, for
—as the Buddha observed from practice—even the highest non-duality
arises and passes away (§23). In fact, unbinding is not even classified as a
world within the cosmos. Instead, it’s an elementary property (dhātu) or
dimension (āyatana) that lies outside of space and time but can be touched
by the mind (§52; §§47–48).
Furthermore, unbinding is not a return to the source of all things, for
two reasons: (1) As the Buddha said, all phenomena originate, not in purity,
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