
nirvana (pāḷi nibbāna, sanskrit nirvāṇa)
+1 – English defn.
Noun: nirvana
|nir'vaa-nu|
(Hinduism and Buddhism) the beatitude that transcends the cycle of reincarnation;
characterized by the extinction of desire and suffering and individual consciousness
enlightenment
~
beatification, beatitude, blessedness
Any place of complete bliss and delight and peace
Eden, Shangri-la, heaven, paradise, promised land
~
part, region
+2 – CPED defn.
nibbāna c
nibbāna: cooling;
extinction (of a fire);
emancipation;
the final bliss.
(nt.)
+3 – five sense faculties active in this kind of nirvana:
Excavated canonical passages defining nibbana's destruction of
defilementsThe core canonical formula appears in the Nibbāna Sutta,
Jambukhādaka asks Sāriputta what nibbāna is,
and Sāriputta answers with the standard definition:yo kho,
āvuso, rāgakkhayo, dosakkhayo, mohakkhayo — idaṃ vuccati nibbānaṃ
"The ending of passion (rāgakkhaya), the ending of aversion (dosakkhaya),
the ending of delusion (mohakkhaya) — this is called nibbāna."
This exact stock formula recurs across the Jambukhādaka-saṃyutta (SN 38) with the same
"khaya" template applied to arahantship,
the taintless, and so on — nibbāna,
arahantship, and
"the taintless" (anāsava) all get answered with the same rāga/dosa/moha-khaya phrase,
which is part of why scholars treat khaya (ending/destruction)
as the operative term rather than something more metaphysical.A
second key passage is AN 3.55 (Nibbāna-pañha Sutta or similar; numbering varies by edition),
where a brahmin asks about nibbāna and the Buddha gives essentially the same rāga/dosa/moha-khaya answer,
sometimes with the added gloss that this is diṭṭheva dhamme —
"visible here and now," i.e. not merely a postmortem state.
+4 – five senses inactive, perception of nirvana in a special samādhi
see AN 10.6
all refs to etaṃ santaṃ etaṃ paṇītaṃ (this is peaceful, this is exquisite)
+5 – full treatment of the topic of nirvana
see 3💩🚫, the third noble truth.