buddhism trying to end the world

ntlbell

OR is it?

Ok, since the attainment of nirvana is essentially about achieving a higher level of existence, presumably one in which the physical world is no longer necessary, is it your goal to actually end the world?

yomchi

I don't think ending the world is possible that way!
Maybe ending the suffering we know in the world is possible.
Nirvana has come to mean many things to different people.

ntlbell

are there any monks who claim to have experienced nirvana and wrote about it?

Asiaprod

ntlbell wrote: »

are there any monks who claim to have experienced nirvana and wrote about it?

What is your understanding of what Nirvana is?
In answer to your original question, why would we want to end the world? It does not just belong to Buddhists.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

ntlbell wrote: »

OR is it?

Ok, since the attainment of nirvana is essentially about achieving a higher level of existence, presumably one in which the physical world is no longer necessary, is it your goal to actually end the world?

No, because having reached enligtenment (or nirvana) the goal then becomes to help others to reach it too. Ending the world would mean ending everyone else's chance of experiencing it too.

ntlbell

Asiaprod wrote: »

What is your understanding of what Nirvana is?
In answer to your original question, why would we want to end the world? It does not just belong to Buddhists.

Well it was really a bit of tongue and cheek I just wanted to start a discussion on nirvana

I guess each and everyone's idea of nirvana is different, so has any monk or anyone for that matter openly claimed to reach what he/she beleive's to be nirvana, and then wrote about it? I assume they would want to help other's reach their "idea" of what nirvana is

Asiaprod

ntlbell wrote: »

Well it was really a bit of tongue and cheek I just wanted to start a discussion on nirvana

I know:)

I guess each and everyone's idea of nirvana is different, so has any monk or anyone for that matter openly claimed to reach what he/she beleive's to be nirvana, and then wrote about it? I assume they would want to help other's reach their "idea" of what nirvana is

To my knowledge, at least within my sect, no.
However, we do believe that a Bodhisattva is a person that is able to reach nirvana or enlightenment but delay doing so out of compassion to save other beings that are suffering. Another sect (mine) also believe that Shotenzenjin are the spirits of those that have achieved nirvana or enlightenment but that remain in our world as protective forces to be called upon.

MeditationMom

I guess each and everyone's idea of nirvana is different,

Then it is not Nirvana!

Nirvana means the disappearance of the world. That does not mean that the material world disappears to everyone else when someone reaches Nirvana. This "end of the world" is a very misunderstood idea and the cause of much trouble in religions.

"The world" after all is nothing other than what is reported to us by our senses, even when we add the help of math, physics, powerful telescopes and thinking, and even meditation "experiences". When all those senses are truly left behind in deepest meditation the whole world, and even our own body disappears into its infinite, eternal, non-material source out of which everything arises and to which everything returns.

Preparing for "the end of the world" is preparing for this moment of, what seems to us to be total annihilation in which we need enough trust, love and courage to face Nirvana. It can only happen if our motives are pure. Anything that is not pure will stand in the way of the final jump into truth that requires us to face our fear of death. Only then, death is revealed as Nirvana - Freedom - entirely independent of our physical form and circumstances.

In that sense, Karma is not what has happened in the past, but what we still carry with us as subtle, wrong motivations now (resistances), that prevent this. It is a case of having to get out of our own way. So easy, and so hard. The most simple is the most difficult. When we finally give up our clinging to the world we laugh at how easy it was all along. But - the fear of aloneness - All-One-ness - is indeed great, and in normal death, depending on how far we have evolved in our life, will be experienced as either forms of hell or heaven.

Asiaprod

Welcome back, its been a long time.

MeditationMom

My computer has just been released from a three week high-jacking by my sixteen-year-old visiting nephew from Germany who was on it whenever I found some time to write. I had to let go. It was easier for me than it would have been for him