Demystifying Nirvana

Unit 1 | Preparing the Ground

In this first module, we have several aims. One is to contextualize this word, nirvana: how is it used in Buddhist teachings? What is meant by nirvana? How should we understand this in terms of our own experience?

We will also explore the landscape of an awakened mind, and how that translates into the ways that we live: how we engage with the world, with one another, and with our own inner experience.

Unit 2 | The Conditions for Realization

In this module we're going to explore the conditions that incline the mind toward nirvana. We'll talk about wholesome supportive qualities like confidence, aspiration, a sense of possibility, and the kinds of wholesome desire that support us in our practice.

We'll also talk about the awakening factors that incline the mind toward nirvana: mindfulness, investigation, energy, rapture, tranquility, collectedness of mind, and equanimity.

Unit 3 | Gradual and Sudden Awakening

Is the path we're on one where we awaken suddenly, or is it a process of gradually moving toward a particular realization? Certain traditions will very firmly nail the flag to the mast of sudden awakening. Other traditions see the path as a long, slow, cumulative process. Is there a sense in which both ways of viewing the path are valid?

Unit 4 | The Four Stages of Awakening

During this module, we would like to reflect on a map of awakening that we can apply in our lives. It begins with stream entry—the understanding that enters us into the stream of the dhamma—and culminates with the arahant: someone who is fully awakened, who's seen the ending of greed, hatred, delusion, restlessness, conceit, and ignorance.

It's interesting to see what falls away in this process of deepening and waking up, and what comes to fruition: the qualities of heart that come to fruition, bringing with them the deliverance of the heart.

Unit 5 | Unbinding and the End of Becoming

The teaching on dependent arising describes how painful senses of self are created and identified with, and why we can feel lost in unskillful patterns. This is a kind of binding, a lack of freedom.

Yet when we look at these processes in detail, we gain insight into how that binding can be released: how mindfulness, curiosity, insight, wisdom, friendliness, and compassion can unbind the tangle of distress.

Unit 6 | Practicing Nirvana

Let's examine some approaches to practicing nirvana. Part of the demystification process is moving nirvana from an ideal into the center of our lives as something we can do.

How do we recognize nirvanic experiences in our ordinary lives? How do we see those moments of freeing, of the absence of compulsion? This is hugely transformative. Gradually and suddenly, those little moments of nirvana become a transformed way of living.