Mystical systems
Nirvana
Direct answer
Nirvana: Nirvana, nibbana in Pali, is the goal of the Buddhist path: the extinguishing of greed, hatred and delusion, which brings the round of birth and death to an end.
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At a glance
- Also called
- nibbana
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Samsara, Moksha, Karma, Anatta
Nirvana, nibbana in Pali, is the goal of the Buddhist path: the extinguishing of greed, hatred and delusion, which brings the round of birth and death to an end.
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What does nirvana mean?
The word nirvana means blowing out, as of a flame. In the early Buddhist discourses what goes out is a set of three fires, greed, hatred and delusion, and with them the craving that drives one life into the next. A person in whom they are out is called awakened and is said to be free of rebirth.
The texts speak of it mostly by negation: the unborn, the unconditioned, the end of suffering. They distinguish the nirvana a living person reaches, as the Buddha did at his awakening, from the final nirvana at that person's death. Asked what becomes of an awakened one after death, the Buddha is shown declining every answer offered. It is neither a heaven nor, on the teaching's own account, simple annihilation.
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What sets Nirvana apart
Nirvana is defined by what stops. Its root image is a fire that goes out because it is no longer fed, and in the Indian thought of the time a flame deprived of fuel was not destroyed so much as released. The early texts therefore refuse two readings at once: that the awakened person lives on for ever somewhere, and that the person is wiped out. It is also said to be reachable in this life. The Buddha lived some forty-five years after attaining it, teaching and walking the roads of north India.
- Literal sense: blowing out, extinguishing
- Pali form: nibbana, the spelling used in Theravada texts
- What is extinguished: the three fires of greed, hatred and delusion
- Two phases: nirvana in life, and final nirvana at the death of an awakened person
- Traditional sites: awakening at Bodh Gaya; final nirvana at Kushinagar
Often mistaken for something else: Moksha in most Hindu schools is the freeing or true knowing of an eternal self; nirvana is release reached by seeing that no such self is to be found.
The story behind Nirvana
The term was common to Indian religions of the Buddha's time, around the fifth century BCE, and Jains and Hindus use it too. Buddhist tradition places his awakening at Bodh Gaya and his final nirvana at Kushinagar. Later Mahayana schools taught that a bodhisattva puts compassion for others before personal release, and the philosopher Nagarjuna, about the second century CE, argued that nirvana and samsara are not two separate realms. In everyday English the word has drifted to mean bliss.
Why Nirvana matters
Nirvana states what the Buddhist teaching on rebirth is for. The round of lives is the problem in that teaching, and this is the name of its solution.
How to read Nirvana
The word is set beside moksha when the Indian traditions are compared, and against the modern idea of reincarnation as endless self-improvement.
Nirvana in practice: an example
A student who pictures nirvana as a paradise to be reborn into is corrected by the teacher: in this teaching it is the end of being reborn anywhere.
Where readings of Nirvana go wrong
The loose sense of a blissful mood is an English borrowing. The traditional texts mean something far more exact and far harder.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- nirvana meaning, nibbana, nirvana buddhism, what is nirvana, nirvana and samsara
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What does nirvana mean?
Literally it means blowing out or extinguishing. In Buddhism it is the going out of greed, hatred and delusion, and so the end of suffering and of rebirth.
Is nirvana a place like heaven?
No. Buddhist cosmology has heavens, but they are part of the round of rebirth and beings leave them in time. Nirvana is described as release from the whole round, not a realm within it.
What is the difference between nirvana and moksha?
Both mean release from rebirth. Moksha is the Hindu and Jain term and usually involves knowing or freeing an enduring self. Nirvana is the Buddhist term, and Buddhism teaches that no such self is found.
