Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
122c ult ivat es the path to enlightenment as assiduously as Go t a ma did. Nibbāna is a
st ill center; it gives meaning to life. People who lose touc h wit h t his quiet plac e and
do not orient t heir lives t oward it can fall apart. Artists, poets and music ians can
only b e c o me fully c reat ive if they work from t his inner c ore of peace and int egrit y.
Onc e a person has learned to access t his nuc leus of c a lm, he or she is no longer
driven by c onflic t ing fears and desires, and is able to face pain, sorrow and grief
wit h equanimit y. An enlightened or awakened human being has discovered a
strength wit hin that c o me s from being c orrec t ly centered, beyond the reac h of
selfishness.
Onc e he had found t his inner realm of c a lm, whic h is Nibbāna, Go t a ma had
b e c o me a Buddha. He was c onvinc ed that, onc e egot ism had been snuffed out,
t here would be no f la me s or fuel to spark a new existence, bec ause the desire
(tanhā) whic h bound him to samsāra had been finally quenc hed. When he died, he
would at t ain his paranibbāna, his final rest. Again, t his did not me a n total
ext inc t ion, as Westerners s o me t ime s assume. The paranibbāna was a mo d e of
existence that; we c annot conceive unless we have b e c o me enlightened ourselves.
T here are no words or concepts for it , bec ause our language is derived from the
sense data of our unhappy, mundane existence; we c annot really imagine a life in
whic h t here is no egot ism of any kind. But that does not me a n that suc h an
existence is impossible; it b e c a me a Buddhist heresy to maint ain that an
enlightened person would cease to exist after death. In the s a me way, monotheists
have insist ed that t here are no words that can adequately describe the realit y they
c all ‘God.’ ‘He who has gone to his final rest c annot be defined by an y measure,’
the Buddha would t ell his followers in lat er life. ‘T here are no words capable of
desc ribing h im. What thought mig h t c omprehend has been canceled out, and so
has every mo d e of speech.’ In purely mundane t e rms , Nibbāna was ‘nothing,’ not
bec ause it did not exist , but bec ause it c orresponded to nothing that we know. But
those who had, by dint of the disc iplines of yoga and compassionate moralit y,
managed to access t his st ill center wit hin found that they enjoyed an imme a s u ra b ly
ric her mo d e of being, bec ause they had learned to live without the limit at ions of
egot ism.
The ac c ount of the Buddha’s attainment of enlightenment under the bodhi t ree
in the Pāli texts can leave the mo d e rn reader feeling baffled and frust rat ed. It is
one of the plac es where these T heravādin sc ript ures b e c o me opaque to people who
are not expert yogins, sinc e they dwell in suc h det ail on medit at ive t ec hnic alit ies.
More helpful to an out sider is the st ory t old in the lat er sc ript ure, the Nidāna Kat hā,
whic h ma ke s the notion of enlightenment mo re ac c essible to ordinary mo rt a ls. As
wit h it s version of Gotama’s ‘Going Fort h,’ t his st ory explores the psyc hologic al and
spirit ual implic at ions of enlightenment in a way that a lay person or Buddhist
beginner can understand, bec ause it has no yogic jargon but gives us a wholly
myt hologic al ac c ount of the enlightenment. The author is not attempting to writ e
hist ory in our sense, but draws ins tead on t imeless ima g e ry to show what is
involved in the disc overy of Nibbāna. He uses mo t if s c o mmo n in mythology, whic h
has been apt ly described as a pre-mo d e rn form of psychology, t rac ing the inner
paths of the psyc he and ma kin g clearer the obsc ure world of the unc onsc ious min d.
Buddhism is an essent ially psyc hologic al religion, so it is not surprising that the
early Buddhist authors ma d e suc h skillful use of mythology. Again, we mu s t rec all
that none of these texts is c onc erned wit h t elling us what ac t ually happened, but
rat her is intended to help the audienc e gain t heir own enlightenment.