                           Part II: THE ESSAY
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       Very well then, my friend, I will give you an analogy; for 
       there are cases where it is through the use of an analogy 
       that intelligent people can understand the meaning of what 
       is being said.
                      M 24
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
                              Introduction
                              ============
  
                "The wise, they go out like this flame."
  
  
  
  
  
    The discourses of the Pali Canon make a frequent analogy between 
  the workings of fire and those of the mind:  The mind unawakened to 
  the supreme goal is like a burning fire; the awakened mind, like a 
  fire gone out.  The analogy is made both indirectly & directly:  
  indirectly in the use of terminology borrowed from the physics of fire 
  to describe mental events (the word nibbana being the best-known 
  example); directly in any number of metaphors:
  
       I have heard that on one occasion, when the Master was newly 
       Awakened--living at Uruvela by the banks of the Neranjara 
       River in the shade of the Bodhi tree, the tree of 
       Awakening--he sat in the shade of the Bodhi tree for seven 
       days in one session, sensitive to the bliss of release.  At 
       the end of seven days, after emerging from that 
       concentration, he surveyed the world with the eye of an 
       Awakened One.  As he did so, he saw living beings burning 
       with the many fevers and aflame with the many fires born of 
       passion, aversion, & delusion....
                      Ud iii.10
  
       The All is aflame.  What All is aflame?  The eye is aflame.  
       Forms are aflame.  Visual cognition is aflame.  Visual 
       contact is aflame.  And whatever there is that arises in 
       dependence on visual contact, experienced as pleasure, pain 
       or neither pleasure nor pain, that too is aflame.  Aflame 
       with what?  Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of 
       aversion, the fire of delusion.  Aflame, I tell you, with 
       birth, ageing & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, 
       griefs, & despairs.
       The ear is aflame.  Sounds are aflame...
       The nose is aflame.  Odors are aflame...
       The tongue is aflame.  Flavors are aflame...
       The body is aflame.  Tactile sensations are aflame...
       The intellect is aflame.  Ideas are aflame.  Mental 
       cognition is aflame.  Mental contact is aflame.  And 
       whatever there is that arises in dependence on mental 
       contact, experienced as pleasure, pain or neither pleasure 
       nor pain, that too is aflame.  Aflame with what?  Aflame 
       with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of 
       delusion.  Aflame, I tell you, with birth, ageing & death, 
       with sorrows, lamentations, pains, griefs, & despairs.
                      S xxxv.28
  
       The fire of passion burns in a man
            excited with sensual desires;
       The fire of aversion, in an angry man
            taking life;
       The fire of delusion, in a bewildered man
            ignorant of the Noble Teaching.
       Not understanding these fires, people
               --fond of self-identity--  
            unreleased from the shackles of death,
       Swell the ranks of purgatory,
            the wombs of common animals, demons,
            the realm of the hungry shades.
       While those who, day & night, follow the teachings 
            of the rightly self-awakened one,
       Put out the fire of passion,
            constantly focusing on the repulsive.
       They, the highest men, put out the fire of aversion
                 with mercy,
       And the fire of delusion
            with the insight leading to penetration.
       They, the masterful, by night & day,
            having put out (the fires),
       Go totally out, 
            without remainder,
       having totally comprehended stress, 
            without remainder.
       
       They, the expert, with an attainer-of-wisdom's 
                   noble vision
            with regard to right knowing,
       Fully knowing the passing away of birth,
            return to no further becoming.*
                      Iti 93
  
    Not only is the extinguishing of passion, aversion & delusion 
  compared to the extinguishing of a fire, but so is the passing away of 
  a person in whom they are extinguished.
  
       Ended the old,
            there is no new taking birth:
       Dispassioned their minds
            towards future becoming,
       they, without seed,
            inclined to no-growth,
       the wise, they go out
            like this flame.
                      Khp 6
  
    Sister Sumedha:
       This, without ageing,
            this without death,
       this, the unageing, undying state
            with no sorrow
                    rivalry
                    bonds
            with no burning....
                      Thig xvi.1
  
    When the Master was totally gone out--simultaneously with the total 
  going out--Ven. Anuruddha uttered these stanzas:
            
       He had no in-&-out breathing,
       The one who was Such*, the firm-minded one.
       Free from want, evincing peace,
            the sage completing his span.
       With heart unbowed
            he endured the pain.
       Like a flame's going out
            was the liberation 
                 of awareness.
                      D 16
  
    The aim of this essay is to explore the implications of this 
  imagery--to give a sense of what it was & was not intended to 
  convey--by first making reference to the views concerning the physics 
  of fire current in the Buddha's time.  This, short of an actual 
  experience of Awakening--something no book can provide--seems the most 
  natural approach for drawing the proper inferences from this imagery.  
  Otherwise, we are bound to interpret it in terms of our own views of 
  how fire works, a mistake as misleading & anachronistic as that of 
  painting a picture of the Buddha dressed as Albert Einstein or Isaac 
  Newton.
    
    The presentation here is more like a photomosaic than an 
  exposition.  Quotations have been aligned & overlapped so as to 
  reflect & expand on one another.  Comments have intentionally been 
  kept to a bare minimum, so as to allow the quotations to speak for 
  themselves.  The weakness of this approach is that it covers several 
  fronts at once, and can make its points only incrementally.  Its 
  strength lies in its cumulative effect:  revealing--beneath apparently 
  disparate teachings--unifying patterns that might go unnoticed in a 
  more linear narrative, much as satellite pictures can reveal buried 
  archeological remains that would go unnoticed by a person standing on 
  the ground.   
    
    One of the noteworthy features of the Pali Canon is that common 
  patterns of thought & imagery shape the extemporaneous words of a wide 
  variety of people reported within it.  Here we will hear the voices 
  not only of the Buddha--the speaker in all passages from the Canon 
  where none is unidentified--but also of lay people such as Citta, 
  monks such as Vens. Ananda & Maha Kaccana, and nuns such as Sisters 
  Nanda, Sumedha, & Patacara.  Each has his or her own style of 
  expression, both in poetry & in prose, but they all speak from a 
  similarity of background & experience that makes it possible to view 
  their message as a single whole, in structure as well as content.  
    
    The structure we are most concerned with here centers around the 
  image of extinguished fire and its implications for the word 'nibbana' 
  (nirvana) & related concepts.  Used with reference to fire, nibbana 
  means 'being out' or 'going out.'  Used with reference to the mind, it 
  refers to the final goal and to the goal's attainment.  Our essay into 
  the cluster of meanings surrounding this word is meant to read like a 
  journey of exploration, but a brief preview will help us keep track 
  both of where we are in relation to the map provided by the Abstract 
  and of where we are going.
    
    The first chapter surveys ancient Vedic ideas of fire as subsisting 
  in a diffused state even when extinguished, and it then shows how the 
  Buddha took an original approach to those ideas to illustrate the 
  concept of nibbana after death as referring not to eternal existence, 
  but rather to absolute freedom from all constraints of time, space, & 
  being.  
    
    The remaining three chapters deal with the concept of nibbana in 
  the present life.  Chapter II introduces a cluster of Buddhist ideas 
  concerning the nature of burning fire--as agitated, clinging, bound, & 
  dependent--and draws out the implications that these ideas have for 
  what happens when a fire goes out and, in parallel fashion, when the 
  mind attains nibbana.  In particular, it concludes that of all the 
  etymologies traditionally offered for nibbana, Buddhaghosa's 
  'unbinding' is probably closest to the original connotations of the 
  term.
    
    Chapter III takes up the notion of clinging as it applies to the 
  mind--as sensuality, views, precepts & practices, and doctrines of the 
  self--to show in detail what is loosened in the mind's unbinding, 
  whereas Chapter IV shows how,  by detailing the way in which the 
  practice of virtue, concentration & discernment frees the mind from 
  its fetters.  This final chapter culminates in an array of passages 
  from the texts that recapitulate the pattern of fire-&-freedom imagery 
  covered in the preceding discussion.  If read reflectively, they also 
  serve as reminders that their perspectives on the concept of nibbana 
  can best be connected only in light of that pattern.  
    
    We should note at the outset, though, that nibbana is only one of 
  the Buddhist goal's many names.  One section of the Canon lists 33, 
  and the composite impression they convey is worth bearing in mind:
  
  
       
       The unfashioned, the end,
       the effluentless*, the true, the beyond,         
       the subtle, the very-hard-to-see,
       the ageless, permanence, the undecaying,
       the featureless, non-differentiation,
       peace, the deathless,
       the exquisite, bliss, solace,
       the exhaustion of craving, 
       the wonderful, the marvelous,
       the secure, security, 
       nibbana,
       the unafflicted, the passionless, the pure,
       release, non-attachment,
       the island, shelter, harbor, refuge,
                 the ultimate.
  
                      S xliii.1-4
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