Buddhist doctrine of no-self and the later Mahayana doctrine of emptiness
tell
us
that
there
is
in
fact
no
principled
distinction
between
others
and
ourselves. The doctrine of dependent origination also tells us that
everything depends on everything else. Given this, it’s not too hard to
understand why someone might think that Buddhists would want to become
one
with
everything.
It is just as easy to understand why scholars would endorse some
version of the Nirvāṇa View. Nirvāṇa is final liberation, and so it must be
the ultimate Buddhist goal, which means that it must be the Buddhist
summum bonum. And the third noble truth sure seems like it’s about nirvāṇa,
and
so
that’s
probably
what
the
word
“nirodha”
is
referring
to.
And
of
course,
nirvāṇa
is
intriguing
and
elusive,
and
so
it
is
a
prime
candidate
for
popular and even scholarly fixation. Yet, as I have argued, it is not
the positive state of nirvāṇa that counts as the ultimate good according
to the Pāli Buddhist tradition, but it’s negative counterpart—the cessation
and elimination of suffering. In fact, nirvāṇa of either kind is valuable
only because it represents a very specific achievement—the utter
eradication of suffering. I’d wager that the Buddha himself would be just
as puzzled about any version of the Nirvāṇa View as the Dalai Lama was
about that bad joke.