NIRVANA (from the Sanskrit nir, out,'and vdna, blown; hence, literally, that which is blown out or extinguished) is, in Buddhistic doctrine, the term denoting the final deliverance of the soul from transmigration. It implies, consequently, the last aim of Buddhistic existence, since transmigration is tantamount to a relapse into the evils or miseries of samara, or the world. But as Hinduism, or the Brahmanical doctrine, pro fesses to lead to the same end, the difference between nirvana and moksha, apavarga, or the other terms of Brahmanism designating eternal bliss, and consequent liberation from metempsychosis, rests on the difference of the ideas which both doctrines connect with the condition of the soul after that liberation. Brahman, according to the Brahman ical doctrine, being the existing and everlasting cause of the universe, eternal happiness is, to the Brahmanical Hindu, the absorption of the human soul into that cause whence it emanated, never to depart from it again. According to this doctrine, therefore, the liberation of the human soul from transmigration is equivalent to that state of felicity which religion and philosophy attribute to that entity (see 'INDEt—Religion). As, how. ever, the ultimate cause of the universe, according to Buddhism, is the void or non-entity, the deliverance from transmigration is, to the Buddhists, the return to non-entity, or tha absolute extinction of the soul. However much, then, the pious phraseology of their oldest works may embellish the state of nirvana, and apparently deceive the believer on its real character, it cannot alter this fundamental idea inherent in it. We are told, for instance, that nirvana is quietude and identity, whereas sansara is turmoil and variety; that nirvana is freedom from all conditions of existence, whereas sansara is birth, dis ease, decrepitude, and death, sin and pain, merit and demerit, virtue and vice; that nir vana is the shore of salvation for those who are in danger of being drowned in the sea of sansara; that it is the free port ready to receive those who have escaped the dungeon of existence, the medicine which cures all diseases, the water which quenches the thirst of all desires, etc.; but to the mind of the orthodox Buddhist, all these definitions convey but the one idea, that the blessings promised in the condition of nirvana are tantamount to the absolute "extinction of the human soul," after it has obeyed, in this life, all the injunctions of Buddhism, and become convinced of all its tenets on the nature of the world and the final destination of the soul.
Although this is the orthordox view of nirvana, according to the oldest Buddhistic doc trine, it is necessary to point out two categories of different views which have obscured the original idea of nirvana, and even induced some modern writers to believe that the final beatitude of the oldest Buddhistic doctrine is not equivalent to the absolute annihila tion of the soul.
The first category of these latter, or, as we may call them, heterodox views, is that which confounds with nirvana the preparatory labor of the mind to arrive at that end, and therefore assumes that nirvana is the extinction of thought, or the cessation to thought, of all difference between subject and object, virtue and vice, etc., or certain speculations on a creative cause, the conditions of • the universe, and so on,'' Afl these views the Buddha himself rejects, as appears from the work Lankdratra (q.v.), where relating his discourse on the real meaning of nirvana, before the Bodhisattwa Mahar coati. The erroneousness of those views is obviously based on the fact, that the mind, even though in a state of unconsciousness, as when ceasing to think, or when speculat ing, is still within the pale of existence. Thus, to obviate the mistaken notion that such a state is the real nirvana, Buddhistic works sometimes use the term nirupadhisesha nir vana, or " the nirvana without a remainder of substratum" (i.e., without a rest of exist ence), in contradistinction to nirvana with a remainder;" meaning by the latter expression that condition of a saint which, in consequence of his bodily and mental .austerities, immediately precedes his real nirvana, but in which, nevertheless, he is still an occupant of the material world.
The second category of heterodox views on the nirvana is that which, though acknowl edging in principle the original notion of Buddhist salvation, represents, as it were, a compromise with the popular mind. It belongs to a later period of Buddhism, when this refigion, in extending its conquests over Asia, had to encounter creeds which abhor red the idea of hn absolute tiihilisiMe This coniprotni§e'coincidea tiritt;the creation of a Buddhistic pantheon, and with the classification `Buddhist three classes, ez..,11 of which has its own nirvIna; that of the two lower degrees consisting of a vast number of years, at the end of which, however, these saints are born again; while the absolute nirvana is reserved for the highest class of saints. Hence Buddhistic salva tion is then spoken of, either simply as nired na, or the lowest, or as pariniretina, the middle, or as maluiparinirvana, or the highest extinction of the soul; and as these who have not yet attained to the highest nirvana must live in the heavens of the two inferior classes of saints until they reappear in this world, their condition of nirvAna is assimi lated to that state of more or less material happiness which is also held out to the Brah Manical Hindu before lie is completely absorbed into Brahman.
When, in its last stage, Buddhism is driven to the assumption of an Adi, or primitive, Buddha, as the creator of the universe, nirvilua, then meaning the absorption into him, ceases to have any real affinity with the original Buddhistic ferna. See BUDDHISM and LAMAISM.