In Buddhism, Parinirvana (Sanskrit: ; Pali language: ) describes the state entered after death by someone who has attained nirvana during their lifetime. It implies a release from samsara, karma and rebirth as well as the dissolution of the .
In some Mahayana scriptures, notably the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, parinirvāṇa is described as the realm of the eternal true Self of the Buddha.
In the Buddha in art, the event is represented by a reclining Buddha figure, often surrounded by disciples.
Final nirvana at death
In the Buddhist view, when ordinary people die, each person's unresolved karma passes on to a new birth; and thus, the karmic inheritance is reborn in one of the
Six Paths of
samsara. However, when a person attains nirvana, they are liberated from karmic rebirth. When such a person dies, it is the end of the cycle of rebirth. Contemporary scholar Rupert Gethin explains:
Parinirvana of Buddha Shakyamuni
Accounts of the purported events surrounding the Buddha's parinirvāṇa are found in a wide range of Buddhist canonical literature. In addition to the Pāli Mahāparinibbāna sutta (DN 16) and its Sanskrit parallels, the topic is treated in the
Saṃyutta-nikāya (SN 6.15) and the several Sanskrit parallels (T99 p253c-254c), the Sanskrit-based
Ekottara Agama (T125 p750c), and other early sutras preserved in Chinese, as well as in most of the Vinayas preserved in Chinese of the early Buddhist schools such as the
Sarvastivada and the Mahāsāṃghikas. The historical event of the Buddha's parinirvāṇa is also described in several later works, such as the Sanskrit
Buddhacarita, the
Avadāna-śataka, and the Pāli
Mahāvaṃsa.
According to Bareau, the oldest core components of all these accounts are just the account of the Buddha's parinirvāṇa itself at Kushinagar and the funerary rites following his death.[Bareau, Andrė: La composition et les étapes de la formation progressive du Mahaparinirvanasutra ancien, Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient 66, 45–103, 1979] He deems all other extended details to be later additions with little historical value.
Within the Mahaparinibbana Sutta (Pali)
The
Parinirvana of the
Buddha is described in the
Mahaparinibbana Sutta. Because of its attention to detail, this
Theravada sutta, though first committed to writing hundreds of years after his death, has been resorted to as the principal source of reference in most standard studies of the Buddha's life.
[Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies, Paul Williams, Published by Taylor & Francis, 2005. p. 190]
Within the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa sūtra
In contrast to these works which deal with the Buddha's
parinirvāṇa as a biographical event, the
Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa sūtra was written hundreds of years later.
[The Mahaparinibbana Sutta is pre-Ashokan; see Juliane Schober, Sacred biography in the Buddhist traditions of South and Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1997, p. 171, while the Mahayana text dates to the second century CE or later: see Shimoda, Masahiro: A Study of the Mahāparinivāṇasūtra ~ with a Focus on the Methodology of the Study of Mahāyāna Sūtras, Shunjū-sha (1997) pp. 446–448.] The Nirvana Sutra does not give details of the historical event of the day of the
parinirvāṇa itself, except the Buddha's illness and Cunda's meal-offering, nor any of the other preceding or subsequent incidents, instead using the event as merely a convenient springboard for the expression of standard Mahayana ideals such as the
tathagata-garbha/
buddha-dhatu doctrine, the eternality of the Buddha, and the soteriological fate of the
and so forth.
["The Doctrine of Buddha-nature in the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra", by Ming-Wood Liu, in: Buddhism: Yogācāra, the epistemological tradition and Tathāgatagarbha. Paul Williams, Published by Taylor & Francis, 2005. p. 190]
Location of Gautama Buddha's death and parinirvana
It has been suggested by Waddell that the site of the death and
parinirvana of
Gautama Buddha was in the region of
Rampurva: "I believe that Kusīnagara, where the Buddha died may be ultimately found to the North of
Bettiah, and in the line of the Aśōka pillars which lead hither from
Patna (Pāțaliputra)"
["A Tibetan Guide-book to the Lost Sites of the Buddha's Birth and Death", L. A. Waddell. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1896, p. 279.] in Bihar. It still awaits proper archaeological excavation.
In Mahayana literature
According to the
Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (also called the
Nirvana Sutra), the Buddha taught that
parinirvāṇa is the realm of the Eternal, Bliss, the Self, and the Pure. Dr. Paul Williams states that it depicts the Buddha using the term "Self" to win over non-Buddhist ascetics.
[Paul Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations.Taylor & Francis, 1989, p. 100. "... it refers to the Buddha using the term "Self" in order to win over non-Buddhist ascetics."] However, the
Mahaparinirvana Sutra is a long and highly composite Mahayana scripture,
[Paul Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations.Taylor & Francis, 1989, pp. 98, 99.] and the part of the sutra upon which Williams is basing his statement is a portion of the Nirvana Sutra of secondary Central Asian provenance - other parts of the sutra were written in India.
[Williams quotes Ruegg "La Traitė du Tathāgatagarbha de Bu Ston Rin Chen Grub" pp. 113–144, where the reference for this passage is given as Taisho 0525a12-b02 of the Dharmakṣema translation. The entire Dharmakṣema translation is found at Taisho 0365c06-0603c26. The first 10 juan which scholars unanimously accept as Indic in origin occupies just Taisho 0365c06-0428b20, while the remaining portion from 428b24-0603c26 is deemed by all scholars to be of Central Asian origin. See Nirvana Sutra, subsection "Transmission & Authenticity" for details of scholarly opinions of textual structure with references.]
Guang Xing speaks of how the Mahayanists of the Nirvana Sutra understand the mahaparinirvana to be the liberated Self of the eternal Buddha:[Guang Xing, The Concept of the Buddha: Its Evolution from Early Buddhism to the Trikaya, RoutledgeCurzon, Oxford, 2005, p. 89]
Only in Mahaparinirvana is this True Self held to be fully discernible and accessible.[Kosho Yamamoto, Mahayanism: A Critical Exposition of the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Karin Bunko, Tokyo, 1975, p. 62]
Kosho Yamamoto cites a passage in which the Buddha admonishes his monks not to dwell inordinately on the idea of the non-self but to meditate on the Self. Yamamoto writes:[Kosho Yamamoto, Mahayanism: A Critical Exposition of the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Karinbunko, Tokyo, 1975, p. 75]
Michael Zimmermann, in his study of the Tathagatagarbha Sutra, reveals that not only the Mahaparinirvana Sutra but also the Tathagatagarbha Sutra and the Lankavatara Sutra speak affirmatively of the Self. Zimmermann observes:[Zimmermann, Michael (2002), A Buddha Within: The Tathāgatagarbhasūtra, Biblotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica VI, The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, pp. 82–83]
See also
Notes
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