VARIANTS OF NIRVANA

VARIANTS OF NIRVANA

Jörg Fitz/Kunga Dordche

2016 

In the Bodhisattva Root Vows, among other things, the following vow is included:

Vow 10

To cultivate a significant understanding

and attitude towards Hinayana

and herewith, for example

not giving others a distorted view of the individual vehicle

saying that it does not lead to nirvana

or is not included in Mahayana.

Below, the essential meaning of this vow will be clarified.

Nirvanic consciousness is freer, wider, lighter, clearer, more observing and more holistically inclusive than samsaric mentality. At the beginning of dharma practice, the samsaric and nirvanic aspects of our wholeness tend to be kept separate in a dualistic way. A Hinayana practitioner renounces samsaric existence to seek achieving peace and clarity envisioned as conditions seen as completely beyond samsaric worlds... here it is about a stationary nirvanic being. A bodhisattva cultivates instead a dynamic nirvana consciousness, whereby one not only increasingly distinctly separates the observing and freer nirvanic consciousness from the more operative and less liberated samsaric conditions and thinking here, but also increasingly consciously and breath-dynamically seeks to unite these into a common clear and dharma-oriented samsara-nirvana consciousness. A Buddha can with dharmakaya consciousness naturally be simultaneously present everywhere both beyond spatio-temporal dimensions and within these. In Hinayana, samsara and nirvana are separate... in Mahayana, nirvana and samsara are both separate and united. Herewith one can understand the essential difference between Hinayana and Mahayana.

With bodhisattva practice, one seeks to contribute to everyone increasingly realizing Buddha-enlightenment. The Hinayana practitioner's vision is primarily about liberating oneself from samsara. Paradigmatically, the Mahayana vision can thus be principally generalized completely, which is not possible with the more individually oriented Hinayana vision. The Mahayana vision's goal can essentially, for example, be likened to the moon reflected in clear water and clear sky, whereby what is reflected and what reflects are united in the same unobstructed reflective consciousness, and that this de-dualized being is also united with illusion-penetrating clear, light, and pure reality consciousness. The Hinayana vision does not include such a more inclusive consciousness. With a Mahayana attitude, Hinayana travelers are viewed as dynamic aspects and chords in the Whole's developing breath towards increasingly Buddha-enlightenment. With a Hinayana attitude, such a dynamic holistic perspective is not cultivated, but rather one desires to turn away and realize a being beyond the samsaric breath, whereby one aims at either the Arhat's peacefulness beyond, among other things, divinely subtle conditions, or the Pratyekabuddha's clear emptiness, beyond, among other things, conceptual thinking and attachments.

We also have to deal with different levels of nirvanic awareness among bodhisattvas and Buddhas. The consciousness integrated when a bodhisattva in their development reaches the 10th of the so-called bhumi levels and thereby becomes an enlightened Buddha, can subsequently be further developed along approximately half a dozen Buddha bhumis. Herewith, the consciousness becomes even clearer, more subtle, deeper, and more inclusive, if we here use indicative terms from the conventional world's language. With Buddha consciousness, we are certainly beyond all conceptualizations... but, we can also with this consciousness unimpededly simultaneously dynamically reside in these conceptual and constructed worlds with parts of our holistic consciousness, to among other things guide and be able to communicate with different beings.

We thus have to distinguish between variants and levels of nirvanic conditions. Among Buddhas, we can also distinguish, among other things, between so-called parinirvanic and mahaparinirvanic consciousness... terms that are related to more evolutionarily final destination conditions.

If we bodhisattva-orientedly summarize essential aspects of nirvanic conditions, we can say that one as dharma-enlightened among other things has intimately heartfelt, empathetic, holistically penetrating, clear and dynamically breath-present significant awareness readily available. Successively, nirvanic consciousness includes more and more beings and existence conditions for the bodhisattva being... and herewith naturally also more and more Hinayana wanderers and other types of world citizens.