The Quandary of Nirvana: Or, why become a monk
If you ask, “is there nirvana?” that can be either a religious or philosophical question. But if you ask, “can I achieve nirvana?” or “should I achieve nirvana?” it is definitely a religious question. Skipping these overrated questions, I would like to ask an odd epistemological question in this blog post, that is, “how do you know for sure that you can achieve nirvana?” This is not strictly a religious question. So, everyone can make sense of this.
The time was around 9.45 pm. I was reading a book as usual at my table in the bedroom, sipping my coffee. My daughter gave me the phone, saying, “dad, your phone is vibrating.” It was a good friend’s call, and he sounded agitated and uneasy. “My brother is going to be a monk,” he said.
The story was this: His brother was 25 years old, a cook in a restaurant, earning a good salary, and the beloved son of the family. He had a charming, gorgeous girlfriend who he was planning to marry the next year. But recently he had been listening to the dharma preaching of a famous Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka – and now he wanted to be a monk, to achieve nirvana. He was ready to give up everything – his parents, girlfriend, job – everything. He wanted to achieve nirvana.
There are many religious figures, usually very famous, promoted by the media, who can cajole people into pursuing a religious goal. Usually, inexperienced, effervescent youth become the ‘prey’ of their eloquent, mesmerizing speeches. Nirvana is the ultimate achievement promised by Buddhism. Other religions have their own versions of religious promises.
I really don’t know whether this young man became a monk or not. But, I know for sure that his story is not unique. All around the world, there are hundreds of people who want to renunciate lay life and enter into monastic life, seeking nirvana or other goals prescribed by their religions.
I am writing from the standpoint of Buddhism, my comfort zone, but I invite the reader to adapt my argument to his or her own religious belief.
What is Nirvana?
Buddhist nirvana is not a heaven, or fantasy world full of all the luxurious comforts that you can enjoy after death. It is a state of understanding or level of realization. Up to this point, all Buddhist schools are in agreement. However, regarding two questions they have rival explanations: (1) What is the nature of nirvana? (2) What is the afterlife condition of the person who realizes nirvana?
To begin with the first question, Theravada Buddhism posits the scriptural definition, that is, nirvana is a cessation of suffering, lust, hatred, ignorance, and karma. They often use the ‘best-other’ model to explain the nature of nirvana, such as, this world is full of suffering, but nirvana is free from suffering; this life is subject to mortality, but nirvana is immortality, and so on. Most importantly, they consider nirvana as real and existent.
Mahayana Buddhism extends the scriptural definition, saying that nirvana is the realization of reality as firsthand experience. This status is usually considered ineffable and goes beyond all conceptual constructions. In this understanding, the cessation of suffering is not a ‘removal’ or ‘eradication’ of suffering but the suffering becomes itself nonsensical and invalid because it is unable to exist as an independent knowable entity. The same applies to lust, hatred, etc. For Mahayana Buddhists, nirvana has neither existence nor nonexistence. It is a status beyond the limit of our verbal expressions.
Turning to the second question, the most popular belief is that one who achieves nirvana will not be reborn. It sounds nihilistic! Theravada countries uphold this belief firmly. But in early Buddhism, and all Mahayana Buddhist schools, the afterlife status of the liberated person is inexpressible.
A Buddhist scholar can write a book on this topic, nirvana. But I will stop here as this seems sufficient for a knowledgeable reader to understand the concept called ‘nirvana.’
Now let’s move to the question of why you should renunciate lay life and become a monk to achieve this nirvana.
Some Justifications
I shall put forward the more common two justifications from the Buddhist point of view.
First, there is the more conservative response to this question: the ‘samsara,’ cycle of rebirth. Most Buddhists believe that human beings are subject to rebirth in five possible destinations, that is, among humans, gods, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings. The nature of an ever-recurring journey is the uncertainty of the destination. Karma is the decisive factor that determines the next birth, and committing bad karma that leads to bad destinations is unavoidable. Therefore, achieving nirvana is the only solution, because it eradicates all karma so that it breaks the cycle of transmigration; no afterlife afterward.
According to this view, the eradication of karma is the removal of lust, passion, hatred, ignorance, etc. Achieving this level of spiritual progress is not manageable with the responsibilities and relations of lay life. Therefore, renunciation is the only path. (Even though some Buddhists argue that a person can become an arahant – liberated one – without renunciation of lay life, it is always an exception, not the general rule).
This otherworld justification now gets hardly any attention in scholarly discussions of Buddhism. Modern scholars (or Buddhist philosophers) prefer to understand nirvana as the status of a ‘healthy mind.’ Removing all lust, hatred, ignorance, etc., one’s mind becomes placid, beatific, and free from all psychological disturbances. The person enjoys ultimate happiness in this life.
As I have indicated at the outset, I don’t want to question the moral, socioeconomic or sociopolitical value of this achievement. My goal is purely epistemological.
Epistemological Issue
In terms of our day-to-day language, we can say, the epistemological issue stems from our understanding of the difference between knowing something and knowing something for sure.
Philosophically speaking, knowledge is determined by ‘knowing something for sure.’ If you are not sure about your ‘knowledge,’ it can be hardly categorized as ‘knowledge’, but belief or even error. However, this is not common parlance, for an ordinary person frequently claims knowledge regarding all their understanding of information, whether actually true or not.
Let me illustrate the point with an example. Suppose you’re going to make a biriyani by reading a recipe. Someone asks you, ‘do you know, how to make biriyani?’ You can answer, ‘well, I (think I) know because I read the recipe.’ (This is called ‘knowing something.’) At this stage, you don’t know ‘for sure’ how to make biriyani. After making biriyani at least once, and if your attempt is successful, then you can say ‘I know for sure how to make biriyani.’
What is the practical value of these two sorts of knowledge? When you know something for sure, there is less possibility of being unsuccessful in your action. Dharmakīrti, a Buddhist logician in the 7th century, underscored the value of knowing something for sure concerning this practical aspect at the beginning of his Nyāyabindu.
When you (think you) know something, but are not sure, there are two possibilities; it can be either true or false. The Buddha has elegantly clarified somewhat similar to this position in Caṅkī Sutta of Majjhima Nikāya.
Turn back to our example of making biriyani. Even though you have read the recipe correctly, there can be a mistake by the writer or a typographical error; there might be something missing in the description that cannot be written but that you must learn only by practice. There can be myriad reasons to spoil your biriyani.
If your biriyani went wrong, it is just a waste of time and money. You can start it again. But, think about achieving nirvana. If you have missed your goal, after the attempt of many years, you will lose the best thing in your life! It will be an irrecoverable mistake! You will regret it forever!
So, let’s analyze our epistemological question posed in the beginning, “how do you know for sure that you can achieve nirvana?”
The Quandary of Nirvana
Under the heading ‘some justifications,’ I have pointed out two justifications as possible motives to encourage a person to renounce lay life. I have consciously omitted the Mahayana paradigm of becoming a bodhisattva because it doesn’t necessarily invite a person to be a monk.
To begin with the conservative view of ‘samsara,’ we cannot simply reject this view because there is no substantial proof to claim the knowledge of previous birth or next life. I’ll save the argument of scriptural testimony to consider separately. For the time being, I’ll go with the idea that there is some empirical evidence to prove the truth of rebirth. According to this view, there are some persons – usually children – who have reminiscence of their past life. There are hundreds of fancy stories reported all over the world testifying to this claim. I don’t want to diverge from my main epistemological position by arguing with these people. Instead, I would like to point out the logical fallacy in these stories.
Imagine that there are one, two, three… or a hundred people who say that they remember their previous life. Even though you learn all these stories, still you don’t get the knowledge about the universal statement “all people have a rebirth,” because deducing generalization from specific cases is a fallacy.
Imagine that all these people prove for sure that they had past lives. That still doesn’t prove that they will have a future life as well, because we don’t acknowledge the possibility of future life just by knowing past life. It is the problem of induction.
Imagine all these people somehow proving they had a past life and that they will be born in the next life as well. That still doesn’t prove that they will be reborn infinitely in different realms as gods, animals, ghosts, etc. So, again, you can’t confirm the case.
Imagine all these people proving by their experience that samsara is factual. Yet, it may not apply to you.
In brief, if you don’t have an immediate understanding that samsara exists, you don’t know for sure whether samsara exists or not.
I invite you to read Cullahatthipadopama Sutta of Majjhima Nikāya, where the Buddha has argued somewhat similarly to prove the value of knowing for sure.
Let’s turn to the second possibility, that of a healthy mind.
First of all, one could question whether we should achieve such a state of mind. What is wrong with being a ‘normal person who gets angry sometimes and who loves the objects in the world? It is true enough that sometimes our behavior and attitudes bring us misery, and suffering and make us melancholy. But this is not a pretext to give up all happiness in this life. As Cārvāka, an ancient materialist philosopher, once said, we should not stop eating fish only because they have bones. We can remove the bones and enjoy the taste of fish.
There’s another way to look at this healthy-mind position. Imagine that someone is utterly motivated to acquire this nirvana of a healthy mind. Again, we find that this motivation is an outcome of logical possibility only.
It is like arguing for the ultimate case. For instance, you can experience the cessation of lust or hatred temporarily while donating your money to a needy person. You can enjoy happiness and moral satisfaction after this action. Based on this experience, if you argue that “I can enjoy this happiness and moral satisfaction temporarily because I removed my lust and hatred temporarily, and therefore if I can eradicate my lust and hatred permanently, then I can enjoy this happiness and moral satisfaction permanently,” you’re making a fallacious argument. It is like predicting the height of your child by arguing that “my child showed continuous growth of 2 inches every year for last 5 years, and therefore, she will be 10 inches taller in the next five years.”
This sort of thinking is rejected by the Buddha as a ‘reflection of appearance’ (ākāraparivitakka).
At this point, you understand that both motives are untenable: Pursuing nirvana without direct knowledge of samsara, and proceeding towards nirvana based on fallacious arguments are both dangerous. Neither enables you to know for sure that nirvana is a reliable goal on which you should stake everything It is a huge risk.
On one hand, you can’t know for sure that nirvana is a reliable goal as long as you have no direct experience of nirvana. On the other hand, you can’t stake your life on attaining nirvana directly when you don’t know for sure what it is. This is the quandary of nirvana.
Let’s think about some plausible solutions to this quandary.
Some Remedies
The ready-made answer is the ‘belief’ in religious scriptures. It is not God or any other supernatural element like karma that makes Buddhism sound like religion, but this recourse to scriptural testimony.
If someone argues that nirvana is beyond logic and you can never understand it by arguing in this way, but only by believing in Buddha’s words, there is no difference between Buddhism and other religions in the world. Besides, belief can do little service for truth. It will generate hundreds more questions, rather than help solve the predicament.
Moreover, believing in texts does not give you knowledge for sure. They can provide some information, which you should doubt.
Dharmottara, an 8th-century Buddhist logician, attempted to answer this issue logically.
He says that people are not necessarily motivated to proceed only by knowing something for sure. They sometimes proceed with doubt. In other words, they sometimes take risks in their life to know something for sure. But logic and philosophical investigation can assuage the risks in our lives.
If I translate his philosophy into plain English, he says we need some supporting proof to proceed along with our unconfirmed knowledge. Imagine, in our example of making biriyani, you have not just read the recipe but you have seen someone else who made biriyani following that recipe successfully. This increases your confidence to follow that recipe.
In the case of nirvana, you can hardly follow the example of other people because they can consciously or unconsciously deceive you. Therefore, the best option is to follow your inclination to enter the preliminary stages of nirvana without totally changing your way of life.
This is why the Buddha instructed his followers to achieve nirvana as a gradual process. In early Buddhism, there are four levels of spiritual progress in stepping towards nirvana: stream-enterer, once-returner, no-returner, and liberated-one (arahant).
You don’t need to renounce lay life to be a stream-enterer. Once you have achieved that level, and you are confident that the texts are correct, you can continue on the path, and attain the next level towards nirvana. This is, I believe, the most acceptable Buddhist advice for those who want to become a monk to achieve nirvana.
One Last Word
There can be dozens of reasons to be a monk, such as to learn Buddhism with monastic practice, to enjoy an isolated life without social responsibilities, to earn social respect, and so on. If you have this sort of reason to choose a monastic life, it is up to you to think whether it is worth sacrificing your life for that reason. This doesn’t appeal to my logical concern.
If your goal is to achieve nirvana, logically speaking, I suggest thinking twice, because you are about to stake your life on something that you don’t know for sure.
Life is too short to do all experiments. Your past is always over. It never comes back. Most Buddhist monks become frustrated in their thirties and forties. Many monks return to lay life at this age. Some write books or find academic success, or seek fame as preachers, rectitude monks, or even dedicated political leaders because they want to find a ‘meaning’ for their poor and miserable life. It is still believed that there are a few monks who enjoy monastic happiness. But I confess, I haven’t witnessed any such person in my life, except for some rumors.
Think long and hard, in every possible way, before staking your life and risking your future lest you make an irreversible mistake.
