Fire Unbound Revisited
Questioning the Image of Nibbāna
by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
Nibbāna—in Sanskrit, nirvāṇa—is the Buddha’s primary metaphorical name for the goal of the practice he taught. The word means the going-out of a fire, and so the questions arise:
What metaphorical fires go out when the goal is attained?
And what does it mean for them to go out?
A discourse in SN 44 defines nibbāna as the ending of passion, aversion, and delusion. There are other discourses—such as the famous Fire Sermon (SN 35:28) and Iti 93—that explicitly refer to passion, aversion, and delusion metaphorically as fires, with Iti 93 adding that, when the practice is successful, those fires go out without remainder. So it’s easy to come to the conclusion that nibbāna means nothing more than the absolute ending of those three fires. They’re dead. They stop burning, never to be rekindled, never to return. This would mean that nibbāna is a psychological event pure and simple, and that it’s final, an absolute going out of existence that happens once and for all.
However, the discourses referring to passion, aversion, and delusion as fires mention that other fires go out when these three go out as well. When we track down the implications of those other fires, we find that those implications are more than simply psychological. They extend also to questions of ontology: what can and can’t be said about what a person—in this case, an awakened person—is.
At the same time, the image of these added fires’ going out carries implications influenced specifically by the views of early Buddhists and their contemporaries as to what was happening when a fire burned, and what happened when a fire went out. Those views, in many of their details, do not correspond to modern views about these phenomena.
In short, these further applications of the imagery of nibbāna carry other implications, some of which we may not expect. This greatly expands the range of what the word nibbāna means.
I
The suttas referring to passion, aversion, and delusion as fires vary in terms of what they have to say about other fires in the body and mind. The Fire Sermon starts by saying that the All—the world of the six senses—is aflame. This includes the six sense organs—counting the intellect as the sixth—their objects, consciousness at the organs, contact at the organs, and whatever there is that arises in dependence on that contact, experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. All that is aflame. For example, with the eye:
“The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Eye-consciousness is aflame. Eye-contact is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on eye-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, aging, & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs.”
These fires fall into three categories:
• The first category includes the fires of passion, aversion, and delusion.
• The second category includes the fires of birth, aging, and death. These fires are present in the six senses as they’re experienced here and now, but they also will result, in the future, from the fires of passion, aversion, and delusion that are burning now as long as those fires are not extinguished.
• The third category includes various forms of suffering that happen now and into the future based on passion, aversion, and delusion: the fires of sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, and despairs.
The fact that fires in the second and third categories exist both in the present and in the future is important. Actions based on passion, aversion, and delusion not only lead to suffering in the present but also create the conditions for rebirth into future lifetimes where suffering will continue. What you will be is shaped by which emotions you act on. It’s because of this fact that psychology, in the Buddhist worldview, leads to ontology.
The Fire Sermon concludes by saying that when you see that the All is aflame, you grow thoroughly disenchanted with the All, and so are released. That puts an end to birth. We will return to the theme of release below. Here we can simply note the ironic fact that the word nibbāna doesn’t appear in this sutta, and we can only infer from the sutta that, with the ending of birth, the fires burning the All will have to go out.
But as we noted, SN 44 explicitly defines nibbāna as the ending of the mind states of passion, aversion, and delusion.
So in this first application of the image of nibbāna, these mind states are represented by the fire, and their total ending without remainder is what the going out of the fire means.
II
But the image has other applications as well. One of them appears in Iti 93. This sutta, like the Fire Sermon, describes passion, aversion, and delusion as fires, and it makes even more explicit the connection between these fires and the fact that they shape rebirth. But then it goes on to say that the people who succeed in putting out these fires will themselves go out.
This introduces something new to the concept of nibbāna. It’s not something that happens only to mind states. It also happens to people.
The fire of passion burns in a mortal delighting in, smitten with sensual desires; the fire of aversion, in a malevolent person taking life; the fire of delusion, in a bewildered person ignorant of the noble teaching.
Not understanding these fires, people —fond of self-identity— unreleased from Māra’s shackles, swell the ranks of hell, the wombs of common animals, demons, the realm of the hungry ghosts.
While those who, day & night, are devoted to the message of the rightly self-awakened, put out the fire of passion, constantly perceiving the foul. They, superlative people, put out the fire of aversion with goodwill, and the fire of delusion with the discernment leading to penetration.
They, the masterful, untiring by night & day, having put out [the fires], having, without remainder, comprehended stress, go totally out without remainder. They, the wise, with an attainer-of-wisdom’s noble vision, right gnosis, directly knowing the ending of birth, come to no further becoming. — Iti 93
The fact that the nibbāna of the three fires is connected with the nibbāna of the individual—what the Buddha would call a “being”—is another example of the connection between issues of psychology and ontology in his teachings. SN 23:2 defines beings by their attachments: What you are is defined by the desires, passions, delight, and cravings in which you’re entangled.
As Ven. Rādha was sitting there, he said to the Blessed One: “‘A being,’ lord. ‘A being,’ it’s said. To what extent is one said to be ‘a being’?”
“Any desire, passion, delight, or craving for form, Rādha: When one is caught up [satta] there, entangled [visatta] there, one is said to be ‘a being [satta].’
“Any desire, passion, delight, or craving for feeling… perception… fabrications…
“Any desire, passion, delight, or craving for consciousness, Rādha: When one is caught up there, entangled there, one is said to be ‘a being.’”
SN 22:18 makes a similar point: A being is measured by its obsessions with the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. When it abandons those obsessions, it can’t be measured.
The being resulting from these attachments and obsessions is compared to a burning fire in a passage in SN 44:9, where the Buddha explains how a being is reborn.
“I designate the rebirth of one who has sustenance, Vaccha, and not of one without sustenance. Just as a fire burns with sustenance and not without sustenance, even so I designate the rebirth of one who has sustenance and not of one without sustenance.”
“But, Master Gotama, at the moment a flame is being swept on by the wind and goes a far distance, what do you designate as its sustenance then?”
“Vaccha, when a flame is being swept on by the wind and goes a far distance, I designate it as wind-sustained, because the wind is its sustenance at that time.”
“And at the moment when a being sets this body aside and is not yet reborn in another body, what do you designate as its sustenance then?”
“Vaccha, when a being sets this body aside and is not yet reborn in another body, I designate it as craving-sustained, because craving is its sustenance at that time.”
The word for “sustenance” in this passage—upādāna—also means “clinging.” So the last paragraph could also be rendered as,
“Vaccha, when a being sets this body aside and is not yet reborn in another body, I designate it as craving-clinging, because craving is its clinging at that time.”
Either way, the point of this metaphor is that a being is like fire in that, just as a fire needs sustenance to continue burning, a being needs the sustenance of the five aggregates to continue as a being in this lifetime. And just as fire needs the wind as sustenance to continue burning as it’s swept elsewhere, a being needs craving as sustenance as it leaves this body and seeks a new place to be reborn.
The implication is that if the being-as-fire has no more sustenance/clinging, it will go out and not be reborn. And this is precisely the connection made explicit in many other parts of the Canon: Anyone who feels dispassion for the five aggregates in which he or she has been entangled is released from them and will no longer be reborn.
“Seeing thus, the instructed disciple of the noble ones grows disenchanted with form, disenchanted with feeling, disenchanted with perception, disenchanted with fabrications, disenchanted with consciousness. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is released. With release, there is the knowledge, ‘Released.’ He discerns that ‘Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.’” …
And while this explanation was being given, the minds of the group of five monks, through lack of clinging/sustenance, were released from effluents. — SN 22:59
So the nibbāna of individuals means that they are freed from clinging and, as a result, from rebirth.
But as the Buddha states repeatedly, it would be a mistake to say that they go out of existence. In fact, he says it’s a mistake to say that after death they exist, don’t exist, both, or neither. That’s because beings are defined by their attachments. When they have no more attachments, they can’t be defined. This holds not only after death, but also before it (SN 22:85–86). And when something can’t be defined, you can’t describe it.
How this point relates to the image of a fire going out is connected to the way brahmans in ancient India viewed fire. Fire, in their eyes, was an immortal, omnipresent potency existing in all things. This potency existed prior to any individual fires and continued to exist after those fires went out.
In borrowing this image of fire from brahmans, the Buddha didn’t adopt all its implications. For instance, he didn’t adopt the idea that this fire-potency was immortal. In his eyes, it ended with the ending of each physical universe, and he emphasized instead its inconstancy in the meantime (DN 1; MN 28). But he did draw on the idea that the fire-potency is immanently present everywhere, putting his own twist on the idea: If latent fire is everywhere all at once, it’s nowhere in particular. If it’s conceived as always present in everything, it has to be so loosely defined that it has nothing by which it might be known at all.
So instead of using the subsistence of latent fire as an image for immortality, he used the diffuse, indeterminate nature of extinguished fire as understood by the brahmans to illustrate the absolute indescribability of the person who has reached the Buddhist goal.
In two dialogues with brahmans, the Buddha used this imagery to make precisely this point, and in both cases they approved of how he used it.
“What do you think, Vaccha? If a fire were burning in front of you, would you know that ‘This fire is burning in front of me’?”
“…yes…”
“And if someone were to ask you, Vaccha, ‘This fire burning in front of you, dependent on what is it burning?’: Thus asked, how would you reply?”
“…I would reply, ‘This fire burning in front of me is burning dependent on grass & timber as its sustenance.’”
“If the fire burning in front of you were to go out, would you know that, ‘This fire burning in front of me has gone out’?”
“…yes…”
“And if someone were to ask you, ‘This fire that has gone out in front of you, in which direction from here has it gone? East? West? North? Or south?’: Thus asked, how would you reply?”
“That doesn’t apply, Master Gotama. Any fire burning dependent on a sustenance of grass & timber, being unnourished—from having consumed that sustenance and not being offered any other—is classified simply as ‘out.’”
“In the same way, Vaccha, any form by which one describing the Tathāgata would describe him: That the Tathāgata has abandoned, its root destroyed, made like a palmyra stump, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined for future arising. Freed from the classification of form, Vaccha, the Tathāgata is deep, boundless, hard to fathom, like the sea. ‘Reappears’ doesn’t apply. ‘Does not reappear’ doesn’t apply. ‘Both does & does not reappear’ doesn’t apply. ‘Neither reappears nor does not reappear’ doesn’t apply.
“[Similarly with feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness].” — MN 72
The Buddha: As a flame overthrown by the force of the wind goes to an end that cannot be classified, so the sage freed from the name-body goes to an end that cannot be classified.
Upasīva: One who has reached the end: Does he not exist, or is he for eternity free from dis-ease? Please, sage, declare this to me as this phenomenon has been known by you.
The Buddha: One who has reached the end has no criterion by which anyone would say that— for him it doesn’t exist. When all phenomena are done away with, all means of speaking are done away with as well. — Sn 5:6
So, in this case, the nibbāna of a being means that the being is no longer defined, and so can’t be described, just as—in the brahmanical view—the fate of an extinguished fire can’t be described. It’s important to note, however, that this indescribability didn’t carry connotations of extinction or annihilation. Instead, as the passage from MN 72 makes clear, the connotations tend to be more associated with limitlessness. This same association appears elsewhere in the Canon as well.
Sister Khemā: “What do you think, great king? Do you have an accountant or calculator or mathematician who can count the grains of sand in the river Ganges as ‘so many grains of sand’ or ‘so many hundreds of grains of sand’ or ‘so many thousands of grains of sand’ or ‘so many hundreds of thousands of grains of sand’?”
King Pasenadi: “No, lady.”
“Then do you have an accountant or calculator or mathematician who can count the water in the great ocean as ‘so many buckets of water’ or ‘so many hundreds of buckets of water’ or ‘so many thousands of buckets of water’ or ‘so many hundreds of thousands of buckets of water’?”
“No, lady. Why is that? The great ocean is deep, boundless, hard to fathom.”
“Even so, great king, any form by which one describing the Tathāgata would describe him: That the Tathāgata has abandoned, its root destroyed, made like a palmyra stump, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined for future arising. Freed from the classification of form, great king, the Tathāgata is deep, boundless, hard to fathom, like the ocean. ‘The Tathāgata exists after death’ doesn’t apply. ‘The Tathāgata doesn’t exist after death doesn’t apply. ‘The Tathāgata both exists and doesn’t exist after death’ doesn’t apply. ‘The Tathāgata neither exists nor doesn’t exist after death’ doesn’t apply.
“[Similarly with feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness].” — SN 44:1
So in this second application of the nibbāna image, the fire in the image is a being, and the nibbāna of the being means that the being has become so limitless, immeasurable, and undefined that it’s no longer a being, and so can’t be limited to concepts of existing, not existing, both, or neither.
III
Even though the person who has attained the goal can’t be described, still the goal itself, as a state (pada) or dimension (āyatana), can be described. One of the most prominent features of this dimension is one we’ve already encountered in the passages we’ve quoted from SN 22:59 and SN 44:1: freedom. Here, too, the nibbāna image gets applied. For example, Sister Patācārā used it to describe her own awakening:
Washing my feet, I noticed the water.
And in watching it flow from high to low, my heart was composed like a fine thoroughbred steed.
Then taking a lamp, I entered the hut, checked the bedding, sat down on the bed.
And taking a pin, I pulled out the wick: Like the flame’s going out was the liberation of the mind. — Thig 5:10
Ven. Anuruddha used the same image to describe the Buddha’s passing away: He had no in-&-out breathing, the firm-minded one, the one who was Such, imperturbable, intent on peace: the sage completing his span.
With heart unbowed he endured the pain. Like a flame’s going out was the liberation of the mind. — DN 16
In this case, the fire in the nibbāna image represents the mind, and its going out represents the mind’s liberation.
Why the image would have this connotation can be explained by the way fire is understood in the early Buddhist texts. In their physics, natural events are caused by the provocation of dhātu, material potentials or properties. Individual fires, for instance, are caused by the provocation of the heat property. To burn, they require sustenance (MN 99; SN 44:9), and as we’ve already noted, the word for sustenance, upādāna, also means clinging. This double connotation carries over into their understanding of what’s needed to start a fire: The fire has to stick to its fuel, and at the same time, it gets stuck (AN 7:46). When it leaves its fuel, it’s released (MN 115). When it has no more sustenance to cling to, it goes out (SN 44:9). Yet again, this is not an image of annihilation, because the heat property remains, ready to be provoked and give rise to other individual fires again. As we noted above, the Buddha described this property as lasting as long as each physical universe, ending when the universe ended, and reappearing when a new physical universe took its place (DN 1).
The parallel between the nibbāna of a physical fire and nibbāna as the goal of Buddhist practice is underlined by the fact that nibbāna as the goal is also referred to as a dhātu, but with two important differences. (1) This dhātu is not provoked (MN 29), so unlike physical fires, it won’t end when the force of the provocation ends. This is also why the fire of the mind won’t ever be lit again. (2) The nibbāna dhātu is undying, and so it’s permanent (SN 43).
Given this view of how fire works, it’s no wonder that the image of nibbāna carries connotations of freedom and total, unending release.
And given these connotations, it would appear that of all the etymologies offered to explain the word nibbāna, the one closest to its original implications is one quoted by Buddhaghosa in The Path of Purification (VIII, 247). There he derives the word from the negative prefix nir, plus vāna, or binding: “unbinding.”
Modern scholars have tended to scorn this derivation as fanciful, and they favor such hypotheses as “blowing out,” “not blowing,” or “covering.” But although these hypotheses may make sense in terms of modern Western ideas about fire, they’re hardly relevant to the way nibbāna is used in the Canon.
Freedom, on the other hand, is more than relevant. It’s central, both in the context of ancient Indian theories of fire and in the psychological context of attaining the goal.
So unbinding would seem to be the best equivalent for nibbāna we have in English.
To understand what it’s like for the mind to be unbound, we first have to recall that the texts use this image in two different situations: what happens at awakening, and what happens at the death of the totally awakened person.
Iti 44 refers to these two situations as two nibbāna dhātus: unbinding with fuel remaining (sa-upādisesa) and unbinding with no fuel remaining (anupādisesa).
“And what is the unbinding property with fuel remaining? There is the case where a monk is an arahant whose effluents have ended, who has reached fulfillment, finished the task, laid down the burden, attained the true goal, destroyed the fetter of becoming, and is released through right gnosis. His five sense faculties still remain and, owing to their being intact, he experiences the pleasing & the displeasing, and is sensitive to pleasure & pain. His ending of passion, aversion, & delusion is termed the unbinding property with fuel remaining.
“And which is the unbinding property with no fuel remaining? There is the case where a monk is an arahant whose effluents have ended… and is released through right gnosis. For him, all that is sensed, being unrelished, will grow cold right here. This is termed the unbinding property with no fuel remaining.”
The verses following this passage make clear that the first property is unbinding as experienced in this lifetime, whereas the second property is unbinding as experienced at death.
The choice of terminology—with or without fuel remaining—is explained by a poem that appears both in AN 6:43 and inThag 15:2:
Ven. Udāyin: A great blazing fire unnourished grows calm, and though its embers exist is described as unbound: Conveying an instructive meaning, this image is taught by the observant. Great nāgas will recognize the nāga as taught by the nāga as free from passion, free from aversion, free from delusion, effluent-free. His body discarded, the nāga will, without effluent, totally unbind.
Here Ven. Udāyin compares the unbinding property with fuel remaining to a fire whose flames have died out but whose embers are still warm. Although he doesn’t complete the analogy, he seems to imply that the unbinding property without fuel remaining—when the arahant discards the body at death—is like a fire so totally out that its embers have grown cold.
This is a fourth application of the image of nibbāna: The fire stands for the All of the six senses, plus the experience of pleasing and displeasing things, pleasure and pain, based on those senses. Its unbinding means that the All goes totally cold at death just as the arahant is totally unbound.
Yet this going totally cold is described as the liberation of the mind. So obviously, even though the phrase “the liberation of the mind” is applied to both unbinding properties, its meaning depends on which property is being referred to, the first or the second. In other words, it depends on whether we’re talking about liberation as experienced at awakening or at the death of the awakened one.
• First, at awakening: As we noted above, the standard description of how unbinding is experienced at awakening is that “[the] mind, through lack of clinging, is released from the effluents.” The effluents—sensuality, becoming, and ignorance—are mental factors that lead to rebirth. This means that the first experience of the first unbinding property is freedom from anything that would lead to rebirth.
The freedom that continues to be experienced in the first unbinding property, as the arahant continues living, is one of an awareness unrestricted by any object of clinging or craving—in other words, anything constituting any suffering that would weigh down the mind. Even though there may still be an experience of pleasures and pains, that experience places no restrictions on awareness:
“Freed, dissociated, & released from ten things, Vāhuna, the Tathāgata dwells with unrestricted awareness. Which ten? Freed, dissociated, & released from form, the Tathāgata dwells with unrestricted awareness. Freed, dissociated, & released from feeling… Freed, dissociated, & released from perception… Freed, dissociated, & released from fabrications… Freed, dissociated, & released from consciousness… Freed, dissociated, & released from birth… Freed, dissociated, & released from aging… Freed, dissociated, & released from death… Freed, dissociated, & released from stress… Freed, dissociated, & released from defilement, the Tathāgata dwells with unrestricted awareness.
“Just as a red, blue, or white lotus born in the water and growing in the water, rises up above the water and stands with no water adhering to it, in the same way the Tathāgata—freed, dissociated, & released from these ten things—dwells with unrestricted awareness.” — AN 10:81
The mind is dissociated from these things because it has no clinging for them. In other words, it doesn’t feed on them. Not feeding on them, it experiences them as separate (SN 35:80) or as disjoined from it (MN 140).
• As for the liberation experienced at the death of the arahant: The definition of the second unbinding property—“all that is sensed, being unrelished, will grow cold right here”—means that the six senses cease. AN 4:173 discourages any questions as to whether there is or isn’t anything left after their cessation, on the grounds that such questions try to “objectify the unobjectified.” In other words, they try to apply the categories of thought that begin with the perception, “I am the thinker” to something that doesn’t lie under those categories. We can also note that the words “after” and “left over” assume time, whereas unbinding lies outside of time.
Still, SN 35:117 indicates that the cessation of the six senses is a dimension that should be experienced, and MN 49 describes a consciousness that is not known through the six senses, and so would not grow cold when the six senses grow cold. That would allow for that dimension to be experienced. Ud 8:10, meanwhile, indicates that the experience is one of unwavering bliss:
Just as the destination of a glowing fire struck with a [blacksmith’s] iron hammer, gradually growing calm, isn’t known:
Even so, there’s no destination to describe for those rightly released —having crossed over the flood of sensuality’s bond— for those who’ve attained
unwavering bliss.
IV
In conclusion, we can note that there are four ways in which the analogy of an unbound fire is applied to the experience of unbinding at the end of the Buddhist path:
• In the first application, the fire represents passion, aversion, and delusion, and their unbinding represents their total ending without remainder.
• In the second, the fire represents the meditator as a being, defined by attachment, and the unbinding of the being means that the attachments that defined the being no longer exist. For this reason, the meditator is no longer identified as being, cannot be located (Dhp 348), and cannot be described as existing, not existing, both, or neither. This understanding of unbinding draws on brahmanical ideas of what happens when a fire goes out.
• In the third application, the fire represents the mind, and the unbinding of the mind represents two things: (1) its liberation in this lifetime from any mental factors that would constitute suffering or lead to rebirth; and (2) its liberation from the six senses at death. This understanding of unbinding draws on Buddhist views of how fire burns when it has sustenance to cling to, and how it’s released when freed from its sustenance/clinging.
• In the fourth application, the fire represents the six senses themselves, which go out in two stages: While the arahant is still alive, they remain like the warm embers of an otherwise extinguished fire, as explained in the first application of the image of unbinding. When the arahant dies, they totally cease like a fire whose embers have gone cold.
These four applications, even though they draw on different facets of the image of a fire’s unbinding, are not in any way separate.
Because beings are defined by their attachments, they become undefined and unlimited when the passion, aversion, delusion causing their attachments are ended.
When the mind has no more attachments to cling to, it’s freed from the suffering that comes with clinging.
Because passion, aversion, and delusion not only cling to the six senses but also provoke actions that produce the six senses into the future, their ending means that the world of the six senses will eventually run out and finally end as well.
So even though the early Canon indicates a number of ways in which the image of unbinding can be understood, they all apply to facets of a unified experience of total freedom.
Here, Hemaka, with regard to things dear —seen, heard, sensed, & cognized— there is: the dispelling of passion & desire, the unfallen, undying state of unbinding.
Those knowing this, mindful, fully unbound in the here-&-now, are always calmed, have crossed over beyond entanglement in the world. — Sn 5:8
