In my own early learning days, I was certain that nirvana did exist as a place; it was a real turn-on for me, this possible freedom from suffering.But I also felt, mistakenly, that nirvana was located elsewhere—that it was a space outside, that the world was mere illusion, and that the idea was to get out of it and into the trouble-free nirvana that seemed to be out there waiting for me. This dualistic way was how I understood nirvana in relation to samsara—a term that efers to the karmic evolution–driven endless cycle of life, death, and reincarnation. I knew immediately yet inexplicably that there was such a thing as nirvana, such a freedom—perhaps this strong feeling came from a previous life! It was as if I always expected it and did not doubt it at all. But I did think of it as being elsewhere, as somewhere else to go; because I had a strong sense of feeling separate from everything, I wanted that separateness to be nfirmed forever.
I easily accepted the first noble truth, the pain of all the struggling of the seemingly solid, independent self versus the universe. Once there seems to be a real separation of self from the universe, then others seem really to be “other” and we enter into conflict with them. It is when we lose that struggle that we experience the truth of suffering. The second noble truth I also understood right away as pointing to the negation of the illusory sense of separate self, but yet still wanting that separate self to become a selfless nirvana of a final apartness from the world around me. I was still selling short the third noble truth, However, the one that’s really true as a depiction of reality—Buddha’s great truth, his great discovery. I so wanted it to be a final separation, a state beyond. y calling it a final nondual state, I was able to ignore the fact that its imagined apartness was the final hideout of duality: the duality between the relative world and an imagined non-relational reality located outside of it and apart from it, yet accessible to me.
This self-centric psychosis about nirvana does not get beyond the first and second noble truths. As long as one misknows reality, feels separate from others, and reifies the self as the real thing, thinking that others are very different, then birth, life, death, and relationships are all unsatisfactory; they cause suffering. The dualistic understanding of a nirvana apart from the world around me—the way I understood nirvana at first—fit with my immature, escapist feeling that I wanted to reach a pure space away from everything. I thought one had to leave the world to find peace and satisfaction, so I misunderstood the real meaning of nirvana. Still, I was very gung ho. But Geshe Wangyal saw this escapism in me—just as the Buddha saw that tendency when he was teaching egoistic, mostly male Brahmins and saw their escapism, their seeking after someplace to get away from it all to a road less traveled, or perhaps a road of no more travel! The fact that the.goal of nirvana can be misperceived as a realm apart makes it a less effective path of a seeker’s evolution, because t leads to an addiction to quietistic states of aloofness, dwelling happily in contemplative realms wherein one cannot easily develop one’s compassion for thers.Compassion is the most important aspect of full enlightenment, because without it one too easily enters a state of being unmoved emotionally. By the way, there are people who achieve awakening without compassion.They do become a kind of saint, because they are beyond crude drives that lead them to cause harm to others, but since they see through others too easily, their motivation to love them and help them free themselvesbecomes weak. They tend to rely on full buddhas (those who become awake and nurture compassion) to do the job rather than feeling the intense motivation to become buddhas themselves, to take responsibility for others.
from Wisdom is Bliss (2021 - Hay House LLC)