losing things
Also, I came across this quote today:
"As a word, nirvana is negative. It means "to blow out", as one would extinguish a fire, and the Buddha often describes it as putting out, cooling, or quenching the fires of self-will and selfish passion. But the force of the word is entirely positive. Like the English word flawless, it expresses perfection as the absence of any flaw. Perfection, the Buddha implies, is our real nature. All we have to do is remove the self-centeredness that covers it.
Someone once asked the Buddha skeptically, "What have you gained through meditation?"
The Buddha replied "Nothing at all."
"Then, Blessed One, what good is it?"
"Let me tell you what I lost through meditation: sickness, anger, depression, insecurity, the burden of old age, the fear of death. That is the good of meditation, which leads to nirvana."
What draws one back from this sublime state? The separate personality is lost, yet we cannot say nothing remains. There is a kind of shadow which the Buddha wears, clothing him in humanity, yet it is so thin that the radiance of infinity transfigures him. Siddhartha dissolved in the fourth dhyana (meditative state), and one called the Buddha returned from it; that is all we can say."
-From The Dhammapada translated and introduced by Eknath Easwaran
"As a word, nirvana is negative. It means "to blow out", as one would extinguish a fire, and the Buddha often describes it as putting out, cooling, or quenching the fires of self-will and selfish passion. But the force of the word is entirely positive. Like the English word flawless, it expresses perfection as the absence of any flaw. Perfection, the Buddha implies, is our real nature. All we have to do is remove the self-centeredness that covers it.
Someone once asked the Buddha skeptically, "What have you gained through meditation?"
The Buddha replied "Nothing at all."
"Then, Blessed One, what good is it?"
"Let me tell you what I lost through meditation: sickness, anger, depression, insecurity, the burden of old age, the fear of death. That is the good of meditation, which leads to nirvana."
What draws one back from this sublime state? The separate personality is lost, yet we cannot say nothing remains. There is a kind of shadow which the Buddha wears, clothing him in humanity, yet it is so thin that the radiance of infinity transfigures him. Siddhartha dissolved in the fourth dhyana (meditative state), and one called the Buddha returned from it; that is all we can say."
-From The Dhammapada translated and introduced by Eknath Easwaran