Expert: Joe McSorley - 5/24/2006

Question
what is the meaning of nirvana

Answer
Hi Steffen,
 I assume you are talking about the Sanskrit word here and not the band from Seattle.  
The word means extinction or to blow out.  It is the ending of ignorance and the attachments of the ego.  It is also understood as liberation and bliss though there are other Sanskrit words that define this better.
 Nirvana is greatly misunderstood in the West and also in Buddhism.  Many think Nirvana to be a place, like heaven, or a state of mind but it is neither. It is not something to be ‘reached’ or a level of awareness and it is not apart from everyday life.  To have a nirvana that is separate from samsara/suffering  ( the cycle of life and death) is to have a dualism that only the ego self has, in other words, you would not have realized nirvana to have this distinction.  Nirvana is the realization of self as other and other as self.  It is the living paradox of non- dualism in a non-dual duality. One cannot be ‘in Nirvana’ for that would mean that the self distinguishes itself from that which is not in nirvana.  Since the problem for the individual in Buddhism is dualistic consciousness, that which is our ego or the act of separating from other, than the resolution of this problem must be a realized non-dualism.  So when one awakens to ‘nirvana’ what one awakens to is immediate, here and now, and was here prior to the persons awakening.  It did not happen because of the awakening but was already the fact.  When the person breaks through to this he sees what already is and eternally is, not separate but infinite and interpenetrating.  
  I know this is a complex answer but it is accurate.  I guess most simply put Nirvana is to realize yourself not as your now know yourself but as the universe expressing itself as you.  
  I hope this helped you.  Take care,
         Joe