Observations placeholder
Metteyya, Ananda
Identifier
004063
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
From Wisdom of the Aryas and Religion of Burma
A Truth so deep that could our minds but grasp the whole of it, then, where erst our petty, finite minds were limiting and determining the Life, at that same point of Time and Space and Consciousness were none of these—were but Infinitude, Infinite Understanding and Compassion, Nibbana’s sure, inalienable Peace.........
If I am asked, “Is the Nibbana Annihilation? Is it Cessation? Is it the End of All?” I reply, thus even have we learned. It is Annihilation—the annihilation of the threefold fatal fire of Passion, Wrath, and Ignorance. It is Annihilation—the annihilation of conditioned being, of all that has bound and fettered us; the Cessation of the dire delusion of life that has veiled from us the splendour of the Light Beyond. It is the End of All—the end of the long tortuous pilgrimage through worlds of interminable illusion; the End of Sorrow, of Impermanence, of Self-deceit. From the torment of the sad Dream of Life an everlasting Awakening,—from the torture of selfhood an eternal Liberation;—a Being, an Existence, that to name Life were sacrilege, and to name Death a lie:—unnameable, unthinkable, yet even in this life to be realised and entered into.............
Nirvana stands for the Ultimate, the Beyond, and the Goal of Life—a State so utterly different from this conditioned ever-changing being of the Self-dream that we know as to lie not only quite Beyond all naming and describing; but far past even Thought itself