IB World Religions 2.1.3. Nibbana, Arahants, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas Notes

2.1.3. Nibbana, Arahants, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas

Nibbana as extinguishing

1. Nibbana (Sanskrit nirvana) is built from a verb meaning to blow out or to be extinguished, and the picture behind it is a flame dying for want of fuel.
2. What goes out is tanha (craving), together with the Three Poisons of greed, hatred and delusion, which Buddhist texts often call the three fires.
3. The definition therefore describes a change in a person rather than a destination. Nibbana is what is left when the burning stops.
4. Pali texts are careful about saying more. They prefer negations, calling nibbana the unborn, the unmade and the deathless, and they decline to fit it into ordinary categories.
5. Positive descriptions do appear. The Dhammapada calls nibbana the highest happiness, and the canon speaks of it as peace, security and the end of all unsatisfactoriness.
6. Buddhists classify nibbana as asankhata (unconditioned), so anicca and dukkha do not reach it, although the wider formula that all things are without self is held to cover it too.

The two stages of nibbana

1. Because nibbana happens to a living person, Buddhists mark it in two stages. The first is sa-upadisesa nibbana, nibbana with the aggregates remaining, where craving has been extinguished while the body and mind carry on.
2. The Buddha himself is the standard case. Buddhists hold that he awakened at around the age of thirty-five and then spent roughly forty-five years walking, teaching and organising a community.
3. The second stage is parinibbana, final nibbana at the death of such a person, when the aggregates break up and no further birth follows.
4. Asked what becomes of an awakened one after death, the Buddha is recorded as setting the question aside. It belongs to the avyakata, the undeclared questions, alongside whether the universe is eternal.
5. The reason given is practical. A man shot with an arrow, the texts say, does not need the archer's name and caste before the arrow is pulled out.
6. That refusal shapes how the doctrine reads. Buddhists are given an account of what ends and of why the ending is worth having, and no account at all of a place.

Buddha as a title

1. Buddha means awakened one, and Buddhists use it as a title for a condition rather than as a personal name. The branches count its holders very differently.
2. Theravada teaching centres on one historical figure, Siddhartha Gotama (Sanskrit Siddhartha Gautama), also called Sakyamuni, the sage of the Shakya people.
3. Even Theravada tradition allows others. Buddhas of past ages are named in the canon, and Metteyya (Sanskrit Maitreya) is expected as the Buddha of an age to come.
4. What distinguishes a Buddha on this account is discovery. A Buddha finds the dhamma in an age when it has been lost, while others reach the same liberation by following what he taught.
5. Mahayana teaching multiplies the figure enormously. Countless Buddhas are held to be present across countless world systems, teaching now rather than only in the distant past.
6. Mahayana thinkers formalise this with the trikaya, the doctrine of three bodies, which distinguishes the historical human appearance from the glorified form met in visions and from the ultimate reality a Buddha is said to embody.
7. Amitabha, the Buddha of infinite light, is the most widely venerated of these. Pure Land Buddhists across East Asia recite his name in the hope of rebirth in Sukhavati, a realm from which awakening is said to be assured.

The arahant ideal

1. An arahant (Sanskrit arhat) is a worthy one: a person in whom craving has been extinguished and for whom no further rebirth will occur. Theravada teaching presents the arahant as its portrait of a finished human being.
2. The canon describes the achievement as the breaking of ten samyojanas (fetters), the last of which include conceit, restlessness and the final residue of ignorance.
3. Progress towards it is mapped in four stages: sotapanna (stream-enterer), sakadagami (once-returner), anagami (non-returner) and arahant.
4. The stages are defined by consequences rather than by feelings. A stream-enterer is said to face at most seven more births, and a non-returner will not be born into this world again.
5. An arahant goes on acting but is held to generate no fresh kamma leading to rebirth, because the craving that used to drive such action is gone.
6. The ideal shapes Theravada institutions. Monastic life is presented as the setting best suited to the work, and tradition holds that arahants carried the teaching after the Buddha's death.
7. The portrait is not a cold one. Arahants in the texts teach, travel and found communities, and karuna (compassion) is counted among the qualities the training produces.

The bodhisattva vow

1. Taking the bodhisattva vow makes one person's liberation everybody's business. Bodhisatt (Pali bodhisatta) means one intent on or destined for Buddhahood, and Theravada texts use it for Gotama in the lives before his awakening.
2. The Jataka stories tell those earlier lives, showing the future Buddha perfecting generosity, patience and truthfulness across immense stretches of time.
3. Mahayana teaching turns that preparatory stage into the ideal itself. A bodhisattva is a being destined for enlightenment who postpones final Buddhahood in order to help living beings.
4. The vow is deliberately unfinishable. A bodhisattva undertakes to liberate all sentient beings, which is why Mahayana teaching describes the path as running for countless lifetimes.
5. The training is set out as the six paramitas (perfections): generosity, ethical conduct, patience, energy, meditation and wisdom.
6. Because great bodhisattvas are understood as available helpers, the doctrine becomes devotion. Mahayana Buddhists address them in chanting, statuary, painting and pilgrimage rather than treating them as a topic for study.
7. Tibetan Buddhists regard the Dalai Lama as a manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, which shows how directly the ideal can shape an institution.

Arahant and bodhisattva compared

1. The two ideals disagree about the finish line more than about the road. Theravada and Mahayana Buddhists both accept the three marks, dependent origination, the precepts and the Eightfold Path.
2. They differ over what a practitioner should be aiming at. The arahant ideal completes one life, while the bodhisattva ideal makes completion conditional on everyone else.
3. Mahayana polemic once sharpened the contrast into a label, calling the older schools Hinayana (lesser vehicle), a term Theravada Buddhists reject and scholars now generally avoid.
4. Theravada Buddhists answer that the charge of selfishness misreads them. Arahants in the canon teach for decades, and metta (loving kindness) and karuna are trained deliberately at every stage of the path.
5. The disagreement is visible in what each branch builds. Theravada temples centre on the Buddha image and the monastic routine, while Mahayana halls are populated with bodhisattva figures a worshipper can address directly.
6. Both branches still describe the same extinguishing at the end of it all. What they dispute is who arrives first, and whether arriving alone would count as arriving at all.